Where Soul Hackers 2 Went Wrong 

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I feel like the reason why ppl want a persona with adults is because people who played persona in high school are now adults

I think that in trying to make a game that appeals to everyone in the various parts of the MegaTen fandom, they ended up making a game that appeals to no one in the various parts of the MegaTen fandom. It lacks the things about Persona that appeals to Persona fans such as the strong characters and narrative, but it also lacks the things about SMT that appeals to SMT fans such as the challenge and ideological conflicts. It tried to throw all of those things together but stretches itself too thin to make all those parts work (minus the challenge, even the free DLC extra hard mode wasn't too difficult). It's not a horrible game by any means, but it doesn't have a unique identity within MegaTen nor a strong focus on anything that would intice newcomers to explore the franchise.

This truly was one of the games ever made

This game gives me the vibes of a Persona enthusiast inside Atlus deciding to make a sequel for a game he never played because he liked it's name.

I'll admit, you got me with the thumbnail. Despite being concerned I was about to waste 38 minutes of my life on clickbait, as soon as you addressed the thumbnail I was like, "okay he actually has a point." Watched the whole rest of the video and left satisfied.

9:35 "Why does this game love subway so much?" you asked, because it saved them the trouble of making the surrounding scenery and skybox. Cost-cutting at its finest.

This game made me realize that SMTV despite all it flaws is still a great game.

i like how they had to add the ability for ringo to sprint as a post launch update. priorities

21:00 clearly the virus was like when Yugi fused his Mammoth Graveyard to Kaiba's Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon by using an arrow card, zombifying it to make it lose attack By which I mean I have no clue how she managed that at all

"there are 3 subway dungeons in this game!" *nocturne flashbacks*

I’m happy for the people who enjoyed SH2 but personally I wish that instead of even making it, Atlus just put those resources and effort into making SMTV a more well rounded experience.

Going by interviews and the like, it seems pretty obvious that the creators, the same people behind TMS by the way, just wanted to create their own Persona game rather than actually make a Devil Summoner or Soul Hackers game. As such, just as with TMS, they just take the IP they were handed and slapped it on top of their Persona fan creation. So calling it a game made by Persona fans seems quite apt.

In short It's Persona without the heart.

I honestly feel like the problem with Soul Hackers 2 is the story feeling too rushed and feeling very linear. Beat a Dungeon, safe house, new Dungeon and repeat. It felt like there was no real exploration of the world, just ham fisted exposition.

This is what you get when you try to appeal to everyone but by doing so it appeals to no one

I have to say, the english voice actress, Megan Harvey, for Ringo is amazing. She adds the perfect mix of charisma, sarcasm, and care. It's _so_ hard to do right. She took a really mundane and uninteresting story, and injected a lot of life and interest into it. I swear, if she wasnt reading the lines, I dont think I would have stuck with it.

Something that struck me during SH2's final dungeon was that P5S was a better cyberpunk game. SH2 barely does anything with its futuristic-looking setting, and the only part where the tech level matters at all is the finale, with the OMNI System suddenly becoming relevant. Said OMNI System is also a one-of-a-kind piece of outright magitech made by a Covenant holder, and is so powerful that the lack of a subplot involving espionage and/or government intervention with the thing is just silly. Meanwhile, P5S's EMMA is a souped-up version of modern convenience technologies that provides commentary on surveilance capitalism from the very beginning of the story, well before it becomes clear that it's actually the main villain. You could set SH2 in the present day and the only thing that changes is that you'd have to actually justify Aion instead of shrugging and saying "it's the future in a Megaten universe, of course there's a machine spirit".

Everyone should play Devil Survivor 1. It's easily one of the top Atlus games that isn't just Persona. If anyone has the opportunity to play Devil Survivor 1, do so. Play 2 if you really liked 1.

Saving this video to come back to after finishing the game, but I wanted to add my (mid-game) thoughts, which kind of turned into a novella, but anyway: I think SH2 is a solid mid-tier SMT game. It feels like the devs could have made a truly great game out of it, but were constrained by a lack of time, budget, staff, and/or other support. As it is, it's... fine. Decent, even. Fun enough. Probably worth its price tag. For perspective, I consider myself a fan of the idea of SMT, and a fan of the execution of modern Persona (3 through 5). I've tried other SMT umbrella titles (SMT3 mainly, but also earlier Persona games and a few other SMT spinoffs as well), and while I enjoyed the act of playing them for a short while, I never got hooked on any of them the same way. SH2, for whatever reason, be it characters, story, presentation, or something else, is sticking with me better. I think Persona's success (especially post P5) has been both good and bad for SMT as a whole. We have fewer games being made and fewer risks being taken: fewer new subseries, fewer sequels to existing subseries, and it's debatable how much Persona has to do with that, vs. games just being more complicated and taking longer to make nowadays. What Persona has done is raise the bar considerably higher to measure what "success" looks like for non-Persona games. That's bad because what would have otherwise been a success can now be seen as a failure, but good in that there's now more drive to make these new games better so they can hold their own. I'd like nothing more than for every new SMT game to stop being compared negatively to Persona. It's almost always people talking about plot and/or characters like those things are exclusively Persona's domain: SMT5 was judged for not having a focus on those aspects when SMT never really has historically, and SH2 is judged for being too similar to, but still worse than Persona, because it's trying to do more than SMT5 did but in a different way than P5. Story and characters aren't a Persona thing, they're a "good video games" thing, and they don't have to be ignored to have the world tone or strategic depth that longtime fans want. It doesn't have to be a choice between a hard-core game or a game with good writing, and a game that's both is going to appeal to more people than the same game with poor writing. Isn't that a good thing, shouldn't every Atlus fan want more fans throwing money at the people that make these games? They don't make more games unless they're making money, and they don't make money if they don't reach enough people. Tough dungeon crawling niche games don't have enough fans, but you can make that same game with a more interesting story or character cast and more people are going to want to try it. When I think about the future, I'd like a wealth of SMT style Atlus subseries being supported that each hold that SMT core, while each having their own unique style and standing on their own merits, appealing to different subsets of fans of this style of game. We don't need a bunch of different "Discount Persona" games, we need games to appeal to the non-Persona crowd that can still dip into some of the huge Persona customer base. And I think SH2 is hopefully the first step towards that. I have kind of started looking at SH2 the same way I do Persona 3. From what I understand, it's significantly different from the first Soul Hackers, and people are upset about that, or accusing Atlus of stealing the name of an existing property to try and boost sales. That sounds an awful lot like how different P3 is from the first 3 Persona games, and we all know how well that drastic change to the Persona formula panned out. P3, the first of its kind, became the template for the rest of its series. Innovation and evolution is good, and judging by Persona, there can be value in radically reapproaching an existing IP from a new direction. I don't think either SH2 or P3 is a masterpiece, but without P3 shaking it up, we never would have gotten P4 or P5. And it feels like right now, we're in charge of how Atlus acts in the future. If SH2 isn't viewed as a success by Atlus, we can probably say goodbye to lofty ideas of an SMT umbrella. Mainline might still be around, in its backburner capacity, but why would Atlus keep devoting time and resources to non-Persona, non-mainline games, when everything they make is judged unfavorably, compared to their golden child, money-printing Persona? On the other hand, we can back SH2 for what it is: a decent attempt at a revival, and give this game the attention and money needed in order to give this dev team a chance to show us what they can do when they're let loose with more at their disposal, whether that future game is Soul Hackers 3, a different subseries sequel like a new Devil Survivor or a sequel to TMS, or something entirely new under the SMT umbrella. I'm confident that Atlus is using SH2 as a trial run to decide whether new non-Persona SMT games are worth the investment, and accepting SH2 for what it is and supporting it is the only way we get to that bright future where SMT fans get lots of games again. Being grumpy that it isn't enough like Soul Hackers 1, or isn't enough like Persona, or is too much like Persona, is the path towards Atlus deciding it isn't worth it, and us only ever getting Persona games after this. I'm not suggesting we can't criticize it. I'll happily talk about both what I like about it, and why it falls short of greatness for me, and I think everyone should be doing that, to give Atlus some idea of what the fans care about and want. But when every review mentions Persona, and many boil down to "Persona but not as good," that makes Atlus think Persona is all anyone cares about anymore, and worse, it turns away potential sales from people who hear that and decide to just stick with Persona. Obviously nobody but Kotaku can be responsible for what Kotaku says, but we can all do our part to approach SH2 as its own new thing, discuss it on its own merits and flaws instead of through the Persona lens, and yes, buy it even if it's not a 10/10. Persona 5 broke the ranking scale in a lot of ways, and SH2 doesn't have to be at that level in order to be fun and worth playing.

It's soul hacking time

Plot sounds really convoluted, thanks for your review, good work

I remember talking to a friend about our expectation for Soul Hackers 2 before the release. We joke about how the game will be like persona with varying levels of character development.

I just wish it kept the same specifically 90s cyberpunk aesthetic of the first game.

i love to watch ppl nerd and give information abt games and anime. it’s so helpful with my stress when i’m going through stuff. thank you for this video

It really feels like they designed the main character first and worked everything else around Ringo, and it all feels kind of cheap.

I think the biggest issue with it was it needed more time to develop the ideas, as you said things get set up then resolved moments later, if this was a longer game with more fleshed out dungeons with a better/more relaxed pacing, it could have been a lot better. Same goes for the combat, the idea of stacks and sabbaths are interesting, yet I think they should have expanded on it more, let people go crazy with it, allow for people to gamble there stacks between turns to rack up higher ones, or have more skills that rely on it~ Good ideas, just not explored enough~

Style over Substance: The Game

Dunno, I as a Persona fan, always wanted to P-Studio and RGG Studio collab into one game series, that similar to Rockstar Games "BULLY", but more mystical.

Hey man good video! It reminds me of going to some random restaurant and getting a pretty good stake I appreciate it

Let's just hope that Atlus is willing to give them the Persona treatment and take in player feedback and come up with some sort of a remake like Golden or Royal did.

Figue simping Raven for literally no reason. Man... the ending was so trash. But the bad ending is a little better.

A lot of SH2 just felt incomplete to me. Some really intriguing character and story moments got dropped midway through. Atlus has never been great with plot consistency, but the whole covenant arc felt like a trainwreck. Arrow not losing the covenant when dying would have stopped any party from completing their set. Covenant holders sensing other ones didn't seem to work for Figue for no clear reason. Not sure if they wanted to foreshadow Aion actually being the reason everything turns to shit

Hot take (apparently?), Randomized dungeons are some of the most fun parts of persona games. P3 Tartarus, and P5 mementos were very fun imo, though p5 floors were a little too short.

I personally enjoyed the game and characters.

I feel like Atlus should have more time to make a story to make sense, gameplay, characters, style all that also the release date I feel like November or December should be those months to have more time also. If they were doing the persona stuff wait for the development of those games and finish the main project which is Soul Hackers 2

I"d say the dumbest thing about this game is how they for some unknown reason made it a default option for the game to have "loading times" so you could read the "tips" between locations. I played through the whole game before realizing there was the option to turn off this lag between going to zone but because of the loading screen I lost the desire to play through the game again to see other routes/scenarios. It just mystifies me that they would have an option that makes it appear that their game had bad optimization when the reality was the game was able to seamlessly load between locations.

The game might not be amazing, but Shirow Miwa's character design doesn't miss I love their artstyle and how they do colors.

As someone who played Tokyo Mirage Sessions and every other SMT game and spinoffs including Personas my main gripe was I hated stacks instead of press turns the COMP system was cool but it felt like mirage sessions system a bit but that system was actually super fun and the abilities you get were crazy like ignoring affinities to activate a 12 person chain of amazing idols kicking ass with a fire emblem twist it was great anyway TLDR: This game felt like they didn't utilize the mature cast or setting to it's full potential what I mean by that is everything I encountered in this game didn't feel innovative or as stylish as Atlus's other titles. I mean it's placed in a cyber punk setting but none of the cities are cyber punk at all and most just look like regular old settings. I got bored but finished the game out of obligation and min maxing

Soul Hackers 2 tone sucks especially when compared to the first game. I actually want some of what Soul Hackers 1 was, except better executed on modern consoles. More inspiration from mainline SMT than Persona too.

Is it just me or does SH2's visuals look like it could've ran on vita? Really makes you wonder why there wasn't even a switch port.

This game would be way better if it wasn't named Soul Hackers 2. They made a devil summoner game and you can't even summon/see your demons. If they named this shit idk "Ringo" i think i would've like it more

I still can't help but love this game. It's just... Really is my kind of a game. Can't quite put my finger on the reason why.

I Don't know why this video was in my notifications. But good video Essay.

I asked my mom for this game on my birthday and to this day I still feel bad for not finishing it cause I dropped it cause it’s of the soul matrix it although I’m debating on going back and giving it another chance after the recent update

The bad ending is more satisfying tbh.

Persona without Person.

i do like Soul Hackers 2 i just really HATE the fact that certain DLCs are locked behind digital pre orders (Rip Physical fans like myself) and locked behind the deluxe edition. It’s such a bad business practice

I will say this game made me retroactively enjoy SMT5 more, so that's nice

I noticed that some of your videos are missing like the video essay on the first Soul-Hackers is their a reason?

I played it last month together with the lost numbers dlc and had previously planned to get the good ending and all trophies. In the end I had 40 out of 47 trophies and not the good ending because no guide had said anything about 100 for all of them and I was too broken by the teleporters in the Soul matrix to replay the necessary part for all of them.

What upsets me most about SH2 is that it’s just made with such little care. Why even invest any time at all if you’re going to half ass it? The answer is probably money, obviously, but that kind of proves my point: they made this game with no passion. And I’m sure some developers within this team really cared, but the higher-ups especially didn’t. And it’s been like this with Atlus for years now. SMT V had a decade long cycle and yet felt aimless and had shockingly little content. Other than Strikers all the persona spin-offs were lame or cashgrabs. And the enhanced releases all suck. I miss old Atlus

I always wanted a game were you just control 4 persona instead of playing as yourself and you are like a persona trainer or something. Ah Pokémon like game but with story and shin Megami gameplay with fusions and a bigger persona variety. For me that is how soul hacker should be, a Pokémon like game were you can have 4 different persona at the same time, so this would increase the difficulty and keep while having all the amazing gameplay mechanics from shin Megami and persona. I find this concept impossible to fail to be honest, this would be an amazing game.

My favorite moment is when they’re examining a stalker board or something and and red dudes there (can you tell I was invested) and the green lady I think (mind you both are there) says something like “*gasp* they’re following you” like no shit dude there’s a board full of photos of the guy and your both there and he’s like “*gasp* for real!?!” Like yeah. Yeah dude. For real.

I hate the fact that atlus constantly ignores their older series in favor of persona spin offs, and when they finally take the time to make something for their older fans it's either a persona remake or a cashgrab like soulless hacks 2 or a an unfinished game product of development hell like smt5.

The story sounds like they made up stuff as it went along and didn't revise their writing afterward. Meaning it sounds like a first draft

God ringo's design is fantastic though

This game is basically FF13.... but with no love or care put into it

Thanks for recommending this game to me. I’ll buy it when it’s on sale. Really wish it released on the switch for portable play. Wish u well

I agree with pretty much everything you said in this, game was pretty meh. But the whole time I was thinking how did you miss the skill expansion. It’s in the upgrade shop, how did you spend time jamming to the background music and miss that. Inflicted paralysis on my brain

Omg I'm close to the end

Game was great, it's obvious it was built around the excellent combat system which is great if you take the time to unlock it all and master it. You really need to focus on making your stack as big as possible to make fights super quick. If it was taking you 20mins on any fight you were doing it wrong.

Something I wondered while playing the game is that there's the entire idea that a covenant leaves a body if the person holding the covenant dies, right? That's like the main driving force for all the murder in the game. So why did Arrow not lose his covenant when he died at the beginning of the game?? Am I missing something? Or is that just a massive plot hole?

I legitimately believe that the only appealing aspect of Soul Hackers 2 is the music. that being said, *I can't find it anywhere!*

Yep the soul matrix thing is one of the main reasons I quit after like 2 hours of play.

Man, I remember the song from 23:55 but I can't remember where from. Feel like I spent a lot of time hearing it.

1:59 Funny, I was just thinking about that.

The arrow guy looks like dante from that hated devil may cry reboot

As an adult that never played Soul Hackers before...I quite enjoyed it...but in the future I hope it's able to get more support the same way Persona would grow up to be. There really is potential for this series.

I never understood why people want persona but with adults. Is it cause we've had most of the games mostly consist of teens and they're tired of it? Or is it a more lewd reason cause fan service and such??

optimistic part of me hopes they listen to the feedback and make new spin-offs based on the feedback pessimistic part of me thinks that it might be the end for spin-offs due to low sales let's hope the optimistic part wins

Played soul hackers 2 for a few hours bc it is on gamepass in prep for persona 3 reload, it has cool aesthetics and I like ringo

why can’t I save when playing this it makes me so nervous i don’t trust auto save at ALL

soul hackers 2 is the reason why we cant give anybody outside of the protagonist, the wild card buff, lol and there are wayyy too many things to upgrade for a game that is ungodly short and passionless

just like what certain youtuber said we're our own biggest enemy

I feel like the main reason this game doesn't click with me is that It tried to do what smt 4: apocalypse tried and that was try to combined both aspects of Main line Smt and Persona despite the two being different ends of the spectrum when It comes to story, characters and gameplay in Smt case it focused more on the combat and dungeon crawling gameplay and the story being more focused on the ideologies and the world it self rather than the characters while Persona focused more on the day to day life gameplay and the story focusing on the characters and the situation they get caught up in what I'm saying is that atlus tried to appel to both fans that are on two end of the spectrum but didn't do too well. But that's my opinion.

I enjoyed this game but I have also enjoyed, Persona games, the SMT games and spin-offs. I don’t understand the whole battle between Persona people vs SMT people. Let’s give them both love ❤

Fixing Soul Hackers 2 1. Make playable characters look better. Compared to older Devil Summoner games, Soul Hackers 2 characters look gaudy. 2. Add some environmental challenges and design on the soul matrix dungeons. The soul matrix looks boring, really. 3. More challenging gameplay. You can punish enemies because of their weaknesses, but they can't do the same? They are demons and devil summoners!

You do mention how they wanna use nostalgia for the first game but it barely has anything to do with the first game at all outside of a few returning characters

Truly a game of all time

If you ask me It went wrong when they didn't develop it for Switch Seriously Soul Hackers 1's Western release was on the 3DS, nowadays most people don't really want to sit on their couch and play a JRPG IF they aren't already invested in the series and as pointed above the people invested in Soul Hackers are the ones with a Nintendo system They tried too hard to pander to Persona fans when they ONLY really care about Persona(and even then mostly P5) and not really any other ATLUS series Most in-game issues wouldn't have had such a significant effect on sales as they wouldn't be experienced until you already bought the game which the numbers show not many people did

BUBBLETEA , I have one very important question to ask you. Can you please tell what was the song in the conclusion time stamp of the video Best version of every persona game? I know it's some kind of a remix of whipping all out from P3 . BUT I CAN'T FIND IT ANYWHERE :((((((((

It's a low budget, low effort, premium priced piece of Atlus shovelware. Cel shading doesn't disguise the fact they've been using the same demon models since Nocturne in 2003. That's almost two decades of literal asset flipping. Let's not even mention the UI is recycled straight from SMTV and the corridor-box-corridor dungeon "design". Do better, Atlus.

I feel like the game was a half baked SMT story concept with half baked Persona gameplay mechanics.

why do the graphics looks so low quality? It looks like witcher 3 on the switch

Where Soul Hackers 2 went wrong was it's existence.

I love smt games, from smt 3 to strange journey, I’ve played a lot of them And I had to drop this game because I didn’t like the combat system at all, and neither did I like that I didn’t have a party of demons lol And that boring looking dungeon with the Ai also made me drop the game My expectations were definitely too high, I’ll have to try playing it again one day

Idk I really loved the game and I think I'd have been much better if the Lost Numbers DLC was not paid DLC bc spoiler basically Figue admits her feelings for Raven. Also if they did the dungeons more different and more Quests with strong demons you can't find anywhere else than it that quest would be amazing, like the Seth fight unlocked Seth and not being able to fuse him from the start, Soul Matrix was horrible I think just changing tje colors from red/green/blue would have make all the thing a little better

it was an alright game, idk if I will go back and play it like I did with P5, P3, SMT3. If it is on a good sale I would say pick it up. Then again I also had no hope or expectation for SH2

Interesting

Honestly dude, when you told me about the sabbath mechanic, that was it I already know this game already could have been better The 1 more baton pass mechanic would go so hard, why did they do this

I agree that the majority of the fan base for smt are adults. It honestly would expand the world if you played as an adult in the adult world instead of school. Could even have a funny moment where you run into a phantom thieves esq group and make fun of their ambiguous ideologies. Like playing adachi but your a good guy.

Someone should just do indie persona that would be cool I think

The game didn't disappont me because I'm used to JRPGS like Dragon Quest 3 and the Pre-FFVII Final Fantasies being narratively lean and formulaic. And in the narrative and character department, I'd argue that SMT 3 was even leaner. But it definitely could have been more had it actually had a budget--that much I will admit. I just kind of feel like that demanding too much from what is essentially a b-list game that had a lower budget is kinda like getting mad at McDonald's because its cheeseburgers don't have truffle shavings. While such a cheeseburger will never be the best in the market, it was never supposed to be and you shouldn't expect it to be. Then again I got this on Gamepass, so maybe that's why I don't feel resentment towards it. But honestly I really like it. If anything I've been playing it a lot while Persona 3 Portable is rotting on my SSD.

Just to give an idea, this game is discounted to 9.99 physical. And on a discussion post no one can find a reason as to why anyone should play this over any other game in it's genre. Some even mentioned buying it on release and instantly regretted it.

Spoilers ahead!? Damn, i'll have to wait and come back to write a complaint with the new bubbletea video.

That was the plot? What in the world...they must have really rushed this game. Makes no sense considering they wanted this to be another pillar franchise for them.

I wish we got Devil survivor 3 .

I know Aion is some type of advance computer, but I don’t think humans made it though. My theory is Aion is an ancient god of the entire universe and actually created. God actually know her real name, Sophia The mother of God did a little research on the word. Aion which are elder gods, that are older than God and Sophia created God. Aion created Ringo and Figue which are artificial life forms/clones they would technically be angels, technically. And they’re trying to prevent the destruction of humanity from some ancient God, the great one. which was sealed away thousands of years ago because it was probably an evil killing machine. I have a theory that Aion is a god because Ringo can use Soul hacker to bring back the dead which is something a computer can’t usually do. there’s also the soul matrix and technology that is pretty much impossible for humans to make yet. My theory is that their world is the matrix because the funny thing is the world used to be called the matrix that God created.(which come Gnostic religion, which predates Christianity) My theory is that Aion/Sophia created God or Yahweh and probably created other gods, including the great one, and governs over the entire universe. Because the SMT multiverse was created by a supreme being called Xion /Monab. Who also created Aion who is main job is to observe mankind or protect it.

I've only played persona 5 and I thought this was a fangame