Soul Hacker 2 Review: Atlus Knows Now; Let's just get by;

In 1997, when the Internet era was in the ascendant, the relationship between the Internet world and mankind seemed to be a hot topic for many people at that time.

In 1997, the year known as the "first year of the Chinese Internet", in Japan across the sea, Atlus launched the second work of the "Devil Summoner" series, "Soul Hacker". In addition to reducing the difficulty of the game compared with the previous one, its biggest feature is that when the Internet was just emerging, it discussed how the soul should exist in the era of network and reality.

This work foreshadows the lifestyle that we are now accustomed to, and it is also a manifestation of fashion. Soul Hacker was recognized and pursued by many players back then. In 2012, Atlus also ported this work to the 3DS platform to make more players aware.

Of course, the stories that followed the Devil Summoner series became a personal show for the popular character "Raymond Kobayashi", perhaps because of his "serious" background, which led to the sequel of "Soul Hacker" - the protagonist of this article - "Soul Hacker 2" abandoning the title of "Devil Summoner".

Can Soul Hacker 2, created by the team of Phantom and Fantasy FE #, inherit the temperament of its predecessor? Or rather, is the entire game just a "nesting doll" version of "Persona 5" or "True Goddess Reincarnation 5"? This review may give you an answer.

No longer pursuing the turn system

Players familiar with the "True Goddess Reincarnation" or "Goddess Strange Tales" series will definitely be extremely familiar with the current core gameplay of these two series - the pursuit turn system. Simply put, the pursuit turn system means that after hitting the enemy's weakness, one can gain additional opportunities for action. Four characters can have up to eight opportunities for action, and the pursuit turn system is applicable to both the enemy and ourselves. If the enemy hits our weakness, there will also be additional opportunities for action.

The existence of this mechanism determines the "suffering" during the game process - on the one hand, it is the uncertainty of the opponent's attribute weaknesses, and on the other hand, under the sharing mechanism between the enemy and ourselves, players have to find ways to avoid their own weaknesses.

The creative team previously created "Phantom and Strange Tales FE #" which underwent a "magic modification" of the "pursuit turn system". They further changed it in "Soul Hacker 2", or rather abandoned the pursuit turn system this time, and instead transformed it into a new mechanism called "Magic Banquet".

Simply put, "Magic Banquet" means that after a player hits an enemy weakness, they will receive corresponding Stack points without increasing the number of our actions. The maximum Stack points cannot exceed the number of demons on their body. Launch a magic feast in the last round, and the damage generated by the attack is directly proportional to the accumulated stack points. The more stack points, the better the attack effect.

As the process unlocks, the four characters in the game will unlock corresponding passive skills to increase the number of stacks they can obtain. For example, the protagonist "Ringo" can use electrical attacks to attack weaknesses and obtain additional stacks, and Arrow can obtain shooting gains, etc. At the same time, there is also a "commander skill" in the game, which is to generate an attack to obtain a stack.

So, the core of "Magic Banquet" is still to exploit the weaknesses of monsters in order to achieve maximum damage.

Compared to previous works, the most unique aspect of Soul Hacker 2 is the imbalance between the enemy and the self. This is also the first time in recent years that the "True Goddess Reincarnation" series, including branch works, has experienced an imbalance between "enemy and self".

Because the pursuit turn system itself is a mechanism shared by both the enemy and ourselves, and in Phantom and Strange Tales FE #, both the enemy and us can break through weaknesses to form a connection. However, in this game of Soul Hacker 2, the enemy does not have the term "magic feast", which means that even if the enemy hits our weaknesses, the damage is only slightly higher.

This design may have taken into account the low difficulty level of Devil Summoner: Soul Hacker itself, so even the Hard difficulty in Soul Hacker 2 does not have the "suffering" feature of the previous True Goddess Reincarnation series. At most, the enemy's attack is stronger and causes more damage.

In other words - the advantage lies in me.

Demons carrying the Magic Banquet skill also have QTE to obtain attack effects when the Magic Banquet is launched

On the demon side, it is more like "Persona of the Goddess", where each person can only bring one demon to the field. If you change "Zhong Mo" in battle, you need to use the "Commander Skill" mentioned earlier. However, this work does not have fixed demons (well, Persona, Phantom) like in Persona or Phantom FE #, except for the protagonist.

In Soul Hacker 2, "Zhong Mo" is similar to "equipment". In addition to using the demon's skills and sharing attribute weaknesses, the demon also provides numerical panel enhancements to the character. That is to say, the game encourages players to synthesize high-level demons in order to obtain higher numerical gains.

It is worth mentioning that the demon designer of this work is Tsukumasa, who started working in the fourth generation of the "True Goddess Reincarnation" series. His designed demon image is also considered the first time it has entered the side series. Perhaps in future "Goddess's Strange Tales" new works, we can also see Tsukumasa's "new demon" appearance.

"Phantom Soul Hacker"

After the release of Soul Hacker 2, the official website indicated the list of creators. Both product manager Shinjiro Takada and director Mimi Hirata are production personnel for "Phantom and Strange Stories FE #". Therefore, before the release of the new game, I had basic expectations for the game. I thought "Soul Hacker 2" would be very similar to "Phantom Fantasy FE #", but I didn't expect to find it so similar after experiencing it myself. The basic advantages and disadvantages were covered.

I personally think the most annoying aspect of the game is the encounter mechanism - although it is a clear thunder mechanism, it is really annoying for enemies to ignore level differences and directly attack you.

Even if the player reaches the middle and later stages of the game and enters the maze in the early stages of the game, the monsters with bright thunder will still charge towards the player with anger. Even if they are instantly killed by players, they are still brave enough to charge. The courage of these demons is indeed admirable, but the annoyance they bring to players cannot be erased.

Moreover, similar to Phantom and Fantasy FE #, the game's side quests require players to enter the previous maze to search for NPCs or bosses, which are generally not guided by maps. That is to say, players rely solely on task descriptions to "luck" on the map. This is already troublesome enough, and low-level demons keep appearing, which causes "restless mothers to open the door for restlessness" - restlessness has reached home.

Because the protagonist can attack enemies on the map, causing them to lose their mobility and be able to bypass them directly, which to some extent alleviates the problem of restlessness. However, this game can be like the Impression Maze in the Royal version of Persona 5, where enemies with low levels can be directly used to "kill" them and avoid unnecessary battles.

When low-level enemies repeatedly appear and even launch surprise attacks on players from behind, and players have to constantly try and make mistakes in the maze, it feels quite helpless.

(Just use the pictures posted online, which are more convincing)

However, having NPCs on the map giving us hints about enemies is better than not having them.

Another issue is the design of the map itself. In the early stages of the game, it was relatively good compared to the "One Book Road", but in the later stages, there were a large number of one-way portals in the maze, especially in the final "Underwater" maze and the personal post game maze of three teammates. The number of one-way portals was so many that it was frustrating. After finally arriving at a new map, the fog was lifted, but once the choice was wrong, it immediately returned to the origin, making it tiring and unlovable.

Perhaps 10 years ago, if Atlus had done this, we would have said "Wow, this has a taste of Atlus", but coming back to this set after the optimization map of Persona 5 and the semi open world of True Goddess Reincarnation is clearly a retreat.

Okay, I have to say it again for the side quests. Just like in Phantom and Strange Tales FE #, there is a lack of guidance. It is understandable to have done so in 2015, and it will continue to do so in 2022

It's a bit trendy, but not enough yet

When we look at many personal recommendations for games produced by Atlus on the internet, we can always see the word "trendy".

UI, character design, story design, and music from Teacher Mu Hei, starting from Persona 3; We do associate "fashion" with the demonic designs of the "Reincarnation of the Goddess" series, the cold and silent protagonist, and those enemy characters.

Even if we mention "Demon Summoner: Soul Hacker", in addition to the golden horse, the discussion of the Internet and the accurate prediction of the future will also remind us of these two words.

That is to say, whether in Japan, China, Europe or America, Atlus's works always have a special temperament or style to attract players.

However, Soul Hacker 2 did not do well in this regard.

At the story level, Soul Hacker 2 extends the content to the near future, indicating that humanity has fallen into a slump due to the stagnation of scientific development. However, it is difficult to see the "predictions" about the future from the game's description. Our protagonist, "Ringo," is just an AI gathered by data, and her involvement in the story is nothing more than "saving the world.". This is just a vulgar scene that JRPG has said countless times.

When "Ringo" saved someone at the beginning, I couldn't feel the weight between life and death. In the performance segment of the personal maze, although it pays tribute to the "Soul Journey" in the previous work, to feel the memories of each person before their death, the length is more like a free relationship between people, rather than the process of discussing the network and reality in the previous work.

Similarly, the description of the world in "Soul Hacker 2" is also hollow. Apart from the neon lights of the dark night, which are cyberpunk like symbols, we cannot see the near future things that can be imagined in the present. Officially, you can at least turn "Ringo" into a Youtube or virtual idol. Can you still ride the popularity of a singer with the same name?

So in Soul Hacker 2, I couldn't feel that futuristic feeling, and the various corners of the game actually reminded me of another Sega series - Dragon like. What kind of port, what kind of "disappearing flat", is really "not a family, not entering a family door".

MONACA's music doesn't have any impressive plot, but rather the character Sanlun Shiro, which left a little bit of "fashion" for "Soul Hacker 2". Of course, this was already felt when Sanlun was portrayed as "The Seventh Dragon God" a few years ago.

However, the modeling of "Ringo" is indeed quite impressive, especially during the process of exploring the maze. "Ringo" faces away from our long leg, especially the "groove" in the back of the thigh that can only be seen with extremely low individual fat content, which is really hard to control. And the voice actor Akira Kurosawa's performance was also very impressive, as far as the character "Ringo" itself is concerned, it is still impressive. This can be considered as retaining the last bit of "trendiness" for Soul Hacker 2.

Soul Hacker 2 is such a game, and in terms of its various performances, it can be considered a "qualified" JRPG. However, just because it is a side series of the True Goddess Reincarnation series, one cannot expect too much from it. It still bears the shadow of Phantom and Strange Tales FE #, and even inherits its shortcomings.

However, its content is indeed quite rich, and there are many elements for cultivating the game. Synthetic demons are still a series feature, including the setting of the "Magic Banquet", which cannot be said that Atlus lacks innovation.

The emergence of Soul Hacker 2 is "good news" for Atlus, which means that Atlus no longer needs to invest a lot of resources into every work, such as the "number one" Goddess's Strange Tale 5, or the first open map version of "True Goddess Reincarnation 5". At the same time, Soul Hacker 2 is also the first appearance of a demon designed as a hermit in a supporting work.

It represents that Atlus has now entered a new stage of its own through several games that have both been well received and well received.

But for players, the all-out Atlus may be even more worth looking forward to.

By the way, if you want to upgrade all branches and branches within a week (all Zhongmo requires two rounds), please make sure to save a different file before completing the game, because reading the save after the game is completed will directly open two rounds... Don't ask me how I found out.

Welfare period:

In this article, we will select a friend to send out the PlayStation version of Soul Hacker 2.