There's even separate paths towards the end of the game, where you can choose between Persona alumnists Nate or Elly to join your team. There are some small graphical upgrades (including fog around the battle fields, which make it feel a little bit more like the original Persona). There's now an option to turn off battle animations, which makes fights go much faster. While it reuses some music, most of it is entirely new, and just as good. It also features some cross continuity with the other Megaten titles - you can visit the Kuzonoha Detective Agency, the same one run by Kyuoji in Devil Summoner, and one of the staff members is Tamaki, the female protagonist from Shin Megami Tensei if.Įternal Punishment plays exactly the same as its predecessor, and you even visit some of the same locations.
PERSONA 2 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT PSP ENGLISH HACK PATCH
Thankfully, a full translation patch can be found here. Overall, it's an excellent game, and a shame that it never came to North America. There are voice clips used in battle and at certain small sequences in the game, although they're pretty rare. The fights too tend to look a little dull, especially with the single repeating texture as a landscape. However, it ultimately ends up making boss battles less tedious, since you really just need to identify a certain pattern and keep cycling until it's dead. It takes a little while to get used too, as it feels cumbersome and a bit too automated, since in most battles, you just sit and watch, maybe altering a spell to take advantage of a certain enemy's weakness. In order to target a specific enemy or do a certain attack, you need to wade through several menus to change your orders. Strangely, the default option is to auto-battle. The grid-based battle system is thankfully gone, and there are tons of fusion attacks that allow Personae to combine their magic into super powerful attacks. Also new are "contracts" - when you make an enemy happy, they're make a guarantee that they won't hurt you, and can also give you special items. In addition to each character having four conversation skills, you can team members up for different combinations. Conversations work much the same way, although the "moon phases" present in almost all of the other Megaten games have been eliminated. Many of the mechanics of the first game are back, although they've been streamlined. Many of them fit into the usual stereotypes - the hormonal yet effeminate punk, the ditzy blond girl - but they're pulled off so well that they transcend the usual clichés. Party members talk amongst themselves a lot more, especially when commenting on the situation at hand. These are some of the coolest characters ever to grace an RPG, with characterizations that rival the Lunar games. It's a journey back into the same strange world, with demented principals who seek to punish slacking students with death, and neo Nazis looking to resurrect Hitler. They meet Philemon and are granted Personae, much like the original, and begin their journey to discover the meaning behind the Joker curse. Sure enough, the Joker appears - only he seems to bear a grudge towards Tatsuya, Eikichi and Lisa, taunting them about a sin they can't remember. Unfortunately, a lot of people are being killed by this Joker fellow, but your gang decides to try it out anyway. The latest urban myth is that calling your own cell phone number will summon a demon called The Joker, who will grant you a wish. Taking place a few years after the original, strange things have been going on, the most bizarre being that rumors are now becoming reality. Much like the first game, Persona 2: Innocent Sin focuses on a small group of Japanese high schoolers.
There's no real official reason why it was never released in America - Atlus USA has stated that no one currently working there has any idea - but theories include SCEA denying it due to content due to schoolyard violence (Columbine was around the same time) and the appearance of Hitler. Innocent Sin, the first part, was only released in Japan. It's also so big that it had to be contained in two games. It still looks low-tech, but at least it's serviceable now. It ditches the first person dungeon in a favor of a completely overhead view, with sprite based characters and polygonal landscapes. Persona 2 is a welcome change from the original.