Soul Hackers 2 (2022)

Soul Hackers 2 is a pretty fun and I think fairly underrated Shin Megami Tensei game. Everything I see online about this game, quite honestly, is pretty negative. Not really too critical, but there are a lot of complaints about its mediocrity. And I don’t know, I think it’s a little overblown, to be honest.

I have played mostly Persona, which I think is the benchmark for a lot of people’s comparisons with this game, especially as it’s a modern SMT. But I’ve also played, you know, I played and beat SMT3 and a few others, so I’m definitely not a noob to the series. And I also beat SMT4 and 5, so I might not have seen some of the earlier titles, but I definitely have a decent benchmark with the series.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of complaints about this game being a corridor simulator or being repetitive, and okay, that’s true. It’s very true. It’s not anything like Persona 5 with these dynamic palaces and big stages and all this other stuff. But I don’t think that’s necessarily true to the design of SMT games generally. If you look at the early SMT games on Super Nintendo, what are you doing? You’re really just walking through corridors that are quite plain and repetitive and getting into random encounters.

So I get that we’re making a comparison between games from the 80s and a game from 2022, but still, as far as fidelity to the design vision of SMT, I don’t think you can really knock this game. It does have some repetitive corridors and hallways, but the freshness and the dopamine of the game doesn’t really come from that kind of exploration. It comes from the systems, and there are a lot of really good ones.

For starters, you have the typical SMT fusion system that is not too different from any of the modern games. To be clear, I think it really functions just the same. You fuse demons, you get a new demon, you can carry over abilities. It’s just straight up fun. That’s the bread and butter of the series.

You also have weapon upgrades, which I think is a lot of fun because it’s essentially a very simple system where you have a choice of what kind of upgrade you want. You might want to improve attack. You might want to get a passive ability that improves your healing spells. You might want to get a passive ability that lets you run from battles. You can choose whatever you want from a shop. It costs money, but you also need the components.

So the game rewards you for fighting different enemy types because different enemy types drop different components. You can hunt those down or just organically gather them, but it shapes how your characters develop. In turn, your characters have different affinities for different elements, and you might want to consider that when you’re equipping them with different demons and when you’re building your demons with spells. So the systems are actually rather cohesive. They’re not perfect, but they’re cohesive, they’re fun, and they’re addicting, as you’d expect from an SMT game of this era.

There’s more too. You can upgrade these kinds of gems, I can’t remember what they’re called, but there are these gems that you can upgrade and equip and find that boost your spells of different elements as well. That fits into the whole cohesive design conversation too. You can really buff your characters in a certain direction, and you have quite a bit of control over that. It’s cool from a strategy point of view.

Not that the game is ultra hard, but look, this is an SMT game. If you try to steamroll or skip a bunch of battles, you’re going to get bodied pretty quickly. If anything is repetitive, it’s the strategy at this point, because the push-turn system is masterful. It’s one of my favorites. It’s everyone’s favorite. But it’s also limited, because you’re dealing with the exact same abilities that you were in SMT3, a game that came out almost 20 years ago now. Very little has changed.

Same with Persona 3 even. So many of these games have tapped into the same types of battles. You have battles where you have to exploit an enemy’s weakness, but another enemy reflects or resists that element. Or the adjacent enemy is weak too and you have to figure that out. Or you have a battle where all the enemies are debuffing you. Or you have to deal with a healer in the battle. But as someone who’s played a lot of these games, these are all strategy archetypes that you have to overcome in literally every SMT game, so that becomes repetitive. It’s still fun because you can still push-turn, but it’s repetitive.

So where is the game at fault? I’m going to say not in the graphics department either, because the game utilizes a really colorful and, once again, artistically cohesive cyberpunk demon world design, and it totally works. I really enjoyed the character designs for the most part. Some characters like Saizo I’m kind of indifferent to or think are kind of lame, but at least Ringo’s design is awesome, and the demons look fantastic in this game.

The world itself is just really cool and really colorful, neo-neon demony cyberpunk Japan. You can’t go wrong. It’s just fun. The visuals I also liked, and I’m sure that’s something else people knocked online for whatever reason, but I think the visuals are awesome.

Sound design is great. I even thought the voice acting was pretty good. It’s definitely a letdown for people who have played Persona, since Atlus has a high bar there. To be honest, the voice acting is not the problem. The character writing is pretty bad, so you get a lot of crappy dialogue that’s well acted, and that contrast makes it seem like the voice acting is bad. But purely from a sound design standpoint, the game succeeds.

Even the story is pretty good. It’s not bad, especially considering that this is an SMT game. These games are not known for their story. It’s true that there are no branching paths, which is pretty typical, although I think the original Soul Hackers might have had that. Maybe that was removed. I can understand if people are disappointed with that.

The story itself is, for this kind of game, pretty okay. I was decently invested in the characters. A lot of their individual stories are on the derivative side for a JRPG. There’s nothing mind-blowing, and the story is admittedly light and thin, but I actually liked that. It’s very clear what’s going on. I’m like a dad now who can play this game for two hours every once in a while, but I know exactly what’s going on. I have to beat the Iron Mask guy and recover the magic spear thing before he gets them and rules the world. I was like, okay, this is something I can understand.

The emphasis really is on gameplay and grinding, but not in an overtly grindy way. You are tackling a lot of the same dungeons while also doing a lot of side quests, and there are a lot of side quests. But the game doesn’t feel that grindy as long as you’re willing to look at the quest log as a fun component of the experience. If you ignore it, your characters will be underleveled. But if you embrace it and you’re okay with checklist-style gameplay, you’ll enjoy this game because there’s a variety of activities.

You’re fetching stuff, defeating a certain number of demons, targeting mini-boss demons with gimmicks or constraints. Your characters are leveling up, you’re improving, and you’re engaging with the systems, which is where the game really wants you to focus.

There’s also some social link light stuff where you can have meetings at a bar with your party members. They’re mostly kind of lame, frivolous conversations, but I appreciate the effort to deepen the character relationships.

So I don’t know, I find that this game was pretty solid. I didn’t think it was really bad in any specific area. It’s lean. I think it’s very purposefully designed. I think it just came off wrong to players because it’s way more in the spirit of SMT than people are comfortable with.

I think Soul Hackers 2 is one of those flawed games that most people will bounce off of, but is potentially a strong hidden gem for the right person.

Good:

• Unique and intriguing setting. Near-future cyberpunk dystopia of sorts, but with a hidden world of "demons" and "devil summoners." Competing organizations vying for magical entities capable of summoning a god to end the world. And a higher intelligence born within cyberspace that predicts all this, and creates a couple artificial beings to assist the right demon summoners in preventing the catastrophe.
• Limited main cast of characters. It's refreshing to have a four-member party, and it simply stays that way to the end of the game. Allows each of them to feel fleshed out, and to get a full grasp of how they all interact with one another and develop their relationships.
• Non-silent protagonist with a personality. Ringo is a fun and interesting character to play as, and more plucky yet sardonic than you'd expect of an artificial being.
• Adult cast of characters. Extremely refreshing to not be following a bunch of teenagers around. Some topics covered in the game are thus more mature than usual, and the characters feel less driven by "high school anime tropes." In place of Persona-style social link events, you instead go to the local bar and chat with teammates over a drink. It's simple but effective, and helps give the game a unique mood.
• I also liked the character designs in general. Readily distinctive but not too over the top (IMO).

Fine:

• Gameplay. It's your standard Atlus turn-based battling system, the main new gimmick being "sabbaths" wherein attacking enemy weaknesses multiple times creates a "stack" for an increasingly larger final bonus attack at the end of your turn. It's not deep, but it's engaging enough. (And for some people, the relative simplicity may be a boon.)
• Plenty of menus to fiddle around with. As in other Atlus RPGs, you collect demons to fight with, and can fuse them to create new stronger demons. Loads of different abilities to try to give them. Your characters meanwhile can acquire accessories (that boost or un-boost a wide variety of stats), and can upgrade their weapons in dozens of ways with collected items. You can spend all the time in the world with this stuff.
• Music is good enough. Dungeon music (what you hear most) is mostly ambience, so not a lot that's too memorable. My favorite tune was the battle music when fighting bosses.
• Presentation is nice. Not quite Persona 5 level, but still pretty stylish.
• I praised the setting and characters a lot, but sadly I'd say the plot itself is just all right. Nothing about the story stood out to me that much, but there wasn't anything about it I disliked either. It's serviceable, and has its nice moments and a decent surprise or two.

Bad:

• Everyone will tell you the dungeons are boring, and this is true. The shipping yards are dull, the office buildings are dull, the subway lines are dull, and cyberspace is interesting at first but gets really boring after a while (and the optional dungeons of this go on for ages so I didn't bother with most of those). The main exception is the final dungeon of the game, which is varied and really cool-looking. I feel the "boring dungeons" thing is a recurring issue for Atlus RPGs though, if we're being completely honest.
• Exploration of the city (outside of dungeons) is kept to a very bare minimum, with shops all being in visual novel style presentation. Nothing interesting to find unfortunately.
• Side quests aren't anything to write home about. Which is a shame, because they would've been the perfect way to really flesh out this world a lot more. They're mostly just fetch quests and defeat enemies quests.
• In battle, characters just won't shut up. x_x Arguably an issue in many RPGs, but it seemed the chatter was much more prevalent here than usual. Practically every time you select anything in a menu during battle, your character or a teammate has to say something about it. Tone it down next time, Atlus.
• Similarly, when going through dungeons your recon character will let you know every time an enemy appears and every time an enemy is approaching and every time the area is clear of enemies. Do not want!!! At least give me the option to toggle this off.
• Researching this game, I was under the strong impression this was a notably shorter RPG than most. I still took 70-80 hours on it though, and that's without attempting full completion or true ending stuff. It's possible I'm just very slow, but I was really hoping this would be a more succinct adventure. I continue to beg RPG developers to start trimming the fat, or at least include an optional "I'm over thirty and have limited free time and am not asking for a baby easy mode I still would like some challenge I just want to finish this in like 20-30 hours instead of 70-140 hours" mode. Someone come up with a snappier name for that.
• Apparently there's a bonus story arc as DLC. Did it have to be DLC? =/

Soul Hackers 2 was another fun ride through the SMT franchise. Far from being a very memorable experience and it does go on for a bit longer than it should, but I think it managed to do well what it sets out to do.

One thing that is immediately clear in SH2 is how they tried to inject a lot of style over substance. And, hey, don't get me wrong, there's still a lot of gameplay to be had here. Just not the most diverse, because "stylin' it" worked, for the most part. It's probably the least atmospheric and immersive SMT game I've played, but still manages to convey a nice Tokyo-like city in a near-future. They don't show much, but I really liked what is there to see and discover.

That's why, of course, graphics, art style and soundtrack played a great part in my enjoyment of this world. I like the direction they went with its looks, character and demon design is top-notch as usual and the OST is great! Unfortunately, there are not a lot of tracks in the game, but the ones present are pretty cool.

The story could've been better, however and that's what hurts it the most.

It's solid, but gets fairly boring towards the end. Which is a shame given how well it starts and how charming the main characters and villains are. Writing is to blame here. The concept and plot are interesting, but dialogues are ghastly. Conversations are redundant (borderline useless at times), motivations are questionable, characters NEVER shut up even DURING combat and there's a twist near the end that made no sense to me.

This aspect alone could've ruined SH2 for me because it's also quite time consuming (I clocked around 60 hours). Still, its classic SMT gameplay works so well! There's not a lot of praise to be said about the press turn system that I already haven't before, so I'll just say that this is one of the most accessible ways to get into it. Even more so than SMT V. Especially due to the Sabbaths, which were a fun strategic addition. It's also fairly forgiving, while challenging. Bullshit moments are still the, just, well... I got used to it by this point.

Two things I wish I could change from this game, however, were the Axis and Requests. Requests are ok, but they get stale due to lack of variety and lukewarm rewards. Axis dungeons are just obnoxious. It starts off pretty cool, as it looks and sounds very ominous, can be a bit challenging and you find out more about the main characters. But BY GOD, DID IT NEED TO HAVE 5 FLOORS OF THE SAME FUCKING THING? Wasted potential, I guess.

And I think that's it for Soul Hackers 2. Honestly, there's not a lot more to it. It's another fun SMT spin. Just not a remarkable one. But I feel like it's a good entry point to the franchise, even though it doesn't pack the best it has to offer.

I wrote a review about this game in Chinese already but I don't think my fury is gone after playing this piece of... . It doesn't have any connection with previous titles except some keywords and settings yet they insist to call it "Soul Hackers 2".

Gameplay is mediocre to its best. The new mechanics are nothing to write home about since all of them are basically straight ports from Strange Journey and Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. There are a lot of skills requiring RNG to be actually useful.

Dungeons are the worst. THE WORST. Especially the SOUL FXXKING MATRIX. I love dungeon crawling but I hate Soul Hackers 2's dungeons. There are little rewards for exploration and you are going to face tons of dead ends that are just there to waste your time. Some dungeon might even take you hours just to traverse through.

The story is serviceable but has so much wasted potential. And to be honest with you, I do not like its cheap anime style of this game. Anime is totally fine. And Shiro Miwa's character design is actually great. But the game did a horrible job at making these into a full price game.

In all, Soul Hackers 2 is a CHEAP game in every aspect. BTW, please go to listen to the 25th Anniversary Music Album. The remixes are godsend. The album itself is already worth much more than the game.

Soul Hackers 2 is held back from true greatness by insufficient budget and a somewhat uneven story, but at its core is a stylish, fun, and addictive sci-fi/fantasy JRPG. I can see the potential for a Soul Hackers series to one day reach the heights of Persona, its Shin Megami Tensei spinoff cousin, but that potential is not quite reached here. Still, it's an approachable and enjoyable time that I can recommend if you're willing to be patient through its rockier sections.

Like the first Soul Hackers, this game is first and foremost a dungeon crawler, so it's unfortunate that it has a serious issue with dungeon variety. Gameplay time is almost entirely spent in the same few dark, cramped, bland environments. The big final dungeon alone has multiple visual themes that are better than anything that came before, so I'm not sure what happened with the rest. Annoyingly, a much-needed extra dungeon is locked behind Day 1 DLC—gross.

This is all particularly a shame seeing how vibrant the futuristic overworld city is, and how underutilized that style is relative to these less interesting dungeon areas. I think the game could range anywhere from 20-60 hours in length based on difficulty and how much side content you do; if you're like me, you'll probably get sick of the repetitive-feeling side stuff long before you're through with it and stay between 20-40.

Your party of demons scatters throughout those dungeons and provides you healing, items, and opportunities to recruit more demons that they find. I like how this makes demons mean more outside combat. In the first Soul Hackers, demon recruitment and usage were a lot more chaotic and unpredictable, which I liked a lot. Here it has been made "user-friendly" and palatable in a way that feels good to engage with, but does rob the game of something that makes Shin Megami Tensei unique and memorable. Otherwise, the loop of leveling up demons, maxing them out and getting some reward, then fusing them into other demons is really fun here. It makes building a balanced, optimized team an engaging ongoing process.

Combat starts out a bit iffy, but once you finally get a full party and a wider variety of abilities and mechanics, it comes into its own. The game's signature mechanic is the "Sabbath" attack. Hitting weaknesses and activating certain other abilities increases a damage multiplier, which at the end of each turn unleashes a big neutral hit to all enemies. This feeds heavily into a broader problem I have with the combat and the game as a whole, where its pace is bogged down by too many repetitive animations and voice lines, but it does bring its own fun strategic element to even basic encounters.

Large portions of the story and character stuff are just "okay" here, not super gripping but not bad. However, I found that the second half of the game was much better in this regard than the first. There are a lot of mysteries, character arcs, and twists to set up early on, and some of that setup can be a bit dull, but I found my patience was rewarded. If you like the early goings of the game, I think you can trust that it only gets better in almost every aspect as it goes on.

Despite the issues, once it finds its rhythm, the core formula of this game just... works. It's fun to play, it's got a nice style (sometimes), a pretty good story, and some enjoyable upgrade systems and demon collection that maintain a constant forward momentum. I think this is a very natural next step into the rest of Shin Megami Tensei for those who've already played Persona 5 or don't have time for it. While I think the original Soul Hackers did several things better, this game does some things better, too. It's nice to see parts of that very retro-feeling game's DNA successfully brought into the current generation.

I am seriously chugging along through this thing. I've played an absolute ton of it yesterday and today, like literally almost all I did when I wasn't working. Would not be surprised at all if I finish it this weekend -- like the first Soul Hackers, it seems dramatically shorter than the likes of the Persona series.

I have a lot of issues with it, which I'll go over in a review once I'm done. I think there is serious missed potential here for something genuinely great that they just don't hit. There are enough lackluster aspects that I definitely recommend waiting for a sale if you're uncertain.

But I'm still finding it really enjoyable, since something about this formula just flows so nicely and doesn't get old, and this one is particularly approachable and playable.

I can't play JRPGs back to back to back like I do with some genres, but I expect my relatively limited Shin Megami Tensei experience will not stay limited for too long after an overall positive experience with the two Soul Hackers games.