Soul Hackers 2

Soul Hackers 2 is pretty much bog, standard everything I hate about modern JRPGs (And modern RPGs in general). The gameplay is shallow, the level design is dreadful, full of pointless side quests, it has that moronic "Slash the enemy before battle to surprise attack", grinding for rare-drop crafting materials and it even has the newfangled crooked UI where it's more important to look stylish than be readable. But despite this, I'm enjoying my time with the game. The game moves at fast pace. I haven't had to stop and grind for levels (And I can ignore the crafting/items), the plot is a well-paced movie instead of an epic multipart special, and it just seems to know what it is. I likely only have ~5 hours left in the main story. The story is actually really good and I've enjoyed both the cast and the plot. This is a rare game that has a cast of adult character, that actually act like adults. While the tone is anime hopeful, it fully embraces that its a dark world. It doesn't ignore the fact that you kill human beings on your quest to save the world, the characters acknowledge it. My mind was blown when your main character mourn after an emotionally relevant boss battle. (15 seconds of mourning shouldn't be a surprise in a creative story format... but I've been playing games for decades now and I've mostly given up on game writing) - - - Dungeons - - - The main story dungeons are alright once I realized what they were. These are not well-designed and interesting levels showcasing varied parts of a world, but pure 1985 dungeon crawler mazes. You explore long hallways connecting empty rooms. But it lacks many of the puzzles and gimmicks that allowed the dungeons to be engaging in the better of those games. The dungeons just feel very same-y and you really have to be an old-school dungeon crawler to enjoy them. Thankfully, I am. But it's worse than just each dungeon having a similar feeling with a changed tile set. I cleared the SUBWAY DUNGEON to unlock: - A side dungeon (A subway) - The next story map (Also a subway). I wasn't really bothered by that because these levels flowed just fine and they end fairly fast. They do what they need to do. But the "optional' side dungeon, The Soul Matrix, is freaking dreadful. Three identical large dungeons with 4 or 5 floors each... of endless hallways and no meaningful cutscenes in between. I've spent more time in this dungeon than any other part of the game, and every minute of time there has been depressing. The worst part is that I need to complete these dungeons to get the true ending. :/ - - - Combat - - - Combat is exactly what you'd expect from Atlus and, really, modern RPGs in general, all the combat depth of a preschooler playing with a shape puzzle. Use the fire attack on the fire hole, and the ice attack on the ice hole. The more times you hit (stack) weaknesses... the more powerful a supermove (called a sabbath) you do at the end of each turn. Over time, you'll unlock personal skills that add more weakness stacks per hit. The real problem here is that, unlike many Atlus game, you play by a different set of rules from the enemy. The bonus sabbath attack is so heavily stacked in your favor that there is no other way to play the game. Knowing how shallow and easy combat is, most of the bosses I've encountered have been built around 1 annoying move each. For example: "This boss puts you to sleep", "This boss steals mana", "This boss summons allies", and "This boss can be immune to its elemental weakness". I think the intention is that you're supposed to create a unique party to each boss to not be annoyed... but that's stupid. There is absolutely lots of systems to play with and cool things you CAN do, but there's zero reason to do so. Between the extreme reliance on elemental weaknesses and Atlus' absolutely dreadful damage formula that assigns too much value to your raw level... none of the micromanaged systems actually matter. - - - Quality Of Line - - - The final thing I want to mention is that the Quality of Life features are absolutely excellent. - You can fast-forward all cutscenes and the battle animations. - You can skip long battle animations such as the Sabbath attacks. - The "Ally/Treasure Box" system allows you to reenter any dungeon and easily collect money/items/allies every time you enter - It drops LOADS of money and XP naturally - You can activate healing skills of monsters that aren't equipped (Or just hit "Auto-heal") - There's free DLC for easy XP grind (Which I haven't needed) About my only complaint is that I can't pause the game and view the entire map. But I have a minimap I can scroll... so its a small problem. I feel like the game isn't wasting my time and it makes me far more happy to deal with the negatives. - - - Overall, I'd rate this game as a 6/10 with some wiggle room. If you like old-school dungeon crawls or modern JRPG trends it's better. If you want interesting level designs, a large cast or a deep story with lots of world-building... it'll be worse.