Persona 2:
Eternal Punishment

Review by Chi Phan

It's funny but the title, Eternal Punishment fits this game like a glove. If you plan on playing this game, get ready for a punishment as Persona 2 is one of the hardest, longest, and most rich rpgs around. This is definetly a game for mature pro rpgers and not for the young and weak. Persona 2 is the sequel to the sleeper hit Persona 1 that came out 4 years ago. It's also a direct sequel to the game. Actually the truth is that there are two direct sequels to Persona 2. You have Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Both games were released in Japan but North America only got Eternal Punishment. Eternal Punishment really is the sequel of sort to Innocent Sin. It's not everyday that a game have two direct sequel like Persona 1 did. Still this is one of the richest and most rewarding rpg game that I've played this year. It is also one of the most frustrating and hardest rpg game in a long time for me. A lot of gamers may tend to give up when they start playing this game but if you stick with it and learn how to properly play the game, it becomes easier later on. It may take you over 20 hours of gameplay before you feel comfortable with this game. Continue reading the review fellow rpgers....

Persona 2 story starts off with a female reporter, Maya, for a newspaper on the trail of serial killings done by the Joker. No, the Joker is not from Batman. Maya is the lead character in this story and game. She is accompanied by her friend, Ulala to a high school where they meet up with a detective by the name of Katsuya. Together they share information on the Joker. It appears at the surface that the Joker is a person that kills people on request. If anyone wants someone killed by making a request, this Joker shows up and kill that person by request whether or not that person actually meant the request as real or not. Maya, Ulala, and Katsuya meets up with the Joker at the high school. Here the Joker mysteriously talks about the "Other Side" and the use of Personas. From this point on, the story focusses on the 3 people and their quest to find more about the Joker and who he/she is and what that "Other Side is".
Sorry but this is as brief of a story description I can give you without any spoilers. What I can say is that the story is somewhat complicated at times and refer alot to the happenings that took place in Persona 1 and Persona 2: Innocent Sin. Hence the direct sequel part. Throughout the game, you'll be introduced to old faces from the previous two Persona games that will please any Persona fans out there. Another thing that is unique about this story or the Persona series is that unlike regular rpg game, Persona takes place in modern day Japan. Like with modern day times, there are alot of references to this timeline, such as party member smoking a cigarette when they aren't doing anything, use of guns, and swearing. There are alot of swearing involve in this game. Which is kind of refreshing. The story itself is pretty good but sometimes you tend to get lost in the whole story as you really don't know much of what's going on base on the characters history and previous Persona plotlines unless you've played both Persona 1 and Persona 2: Innocent Sin. This is the sad part as even if you've played Persona 1, you still missed out on certain plotlines that took place in Persona 2: Innocent Sin. It's a shame that Atlus didn't want to bring both Persona 2 over here. Another thing I didn't like with the storyline is that they tried very hard to jam it into somewhat of a love story at the very end of the game for the lead character Maya. For 90% of the game, there was no hint of any chemistry and love connection for Maya with anyone. Then all of a sudden we are suppose to believe that Maya was in love with this person from the very beginning of the game. It doesn't make any sense and contradics what the story showed us for 90% of the game. An rpg story doesn't always have to have a love story inorder for it to be good. The gamemakers should take note of this. Still, a very nice story that involves pretty much all the characters from each Persona game. There aren't that many true direct sequels out there and I sure wish there were more.

Characters that appear in this game are very good and strong. We are talking about the key party members as well as the secondary characters. Each party members has his/her own unique personalities and past that as the game moves along, you'll learn more about them. The secondary characters are as strong as the key members cause all secondary characters are key characters from the previous two Persona games. We're talking about an all star cast here. It's like the entire Star Trek series actors appearing together in one big movie. Definetly in my opinion, the strongest part of this game.

The graphics in this game is your typical rpg graphics. Basically you have hand drawn characters and a 2-D and sometimes 3-D background environment. The drawn characters and monsters sprites are pretty good and realistic looking. The background graphics is okay but it doesn't "wow" you like the bigger rpg game out there. The colors in this game are decent too. There are small animation/CG sequences in the game but nothing that gives you a lasting impression. The graphics are good enough that you won't complain about it but you won't mention about it as well.

The music is good overrall. Most of the musical score fits the setting of the game but the bad thing is that none of them really stands out. There are a couple of english Persona songs in this game that you can listen to if you collect the CDs during the gameplay. If fact you can pretty much listen to all of the game music by collecting the CDs during one of the game mini extra side quest. But the point is, in about 3 days from now, I won't even remember anything musical about this game. I like to point out that the music has a pop japanese flavour in all of them. Whether you like that or not depends on you.
The game also uses alot of voice overs/acting. This to my surprise is done very well. You can't complain at all. Most of the voice overs take place right before a boss fight so the voice over isn't a big part of the game at all if you're one who doesn't like voice overs in rpg games.

The heart and soul of this game is the gameplay. The gameplay is huge and very hard. From the getgo, you'll find that Persona 2 isn't like any other rpg game out there. There's alot of work involve in this rpg other than simply leveling up to fight bosses. You can level up but you still are going to get your ass kick if you don't have the right Persona and magic spells. Everything in this game centers around Personas, spreading rumours, and making contact with monsters. These three things are what makes Persona 2 unique from the other rpg games out there. Before I get to that, I'll start with the stuff that are more familiar to the regular rpgers out there. This game is very straightforward. If you're not suppose to be at a certain place, the game will tell you. Dungeons are huge giant size mazes. They're not hard at all just big and long. Your best friend when going into a dungeon is the overhead map. This will allow to get your bearings straight. You have your hp and sp. Sp is exactly like mp only they call it sp here. Everytime you level up, your hp and sp refills to full. This is a great advantage as those dungeons are really big. The battle system is fairly the same with attack, persona, defend, ect. Think persona as magic. Most of these stuff you can get from the instruction book. As I said, this game is very hard as each boss fight is an eternal punishment. Chances are that from the very beginning of the game to middle of the game, you're are going to be getting your asses kicked in every single boss fight. Two reasons for this. One is that your levels aren't as high as they should be and the second is that you haven't gotten familiar with using the Personas to your full advantage. Only till the middle of the game where things start to be easier as by this time, you have the magic spells you need to make things easier and the Personas that you feel comfortable with. Now let's move onto the big three.

As you can tell from the title, Personas are a big feature in this game. What are Personas?? Think of them as your party members Magic Guardians that they summon when they need to cast a certain elemental magic or special attack. Now each Personas comes with it's own card class. Card Class can range from Hermit to Empress. There are about 20 Card Classes. Within each Card Class, each Personas comes with their own individual levels. Now each Personas comes with their own element magic spells and special attack. Each Personas comes with it's own unique abilities to help and influence that particular member that is equip to them. For example, one Persona can be strong against physical attack and weak against magic attack. This of course makes whomever is equiping that Personas has that same attribute. Are you with me so far?? Now a Persona doesn't level up. It gains in Rank. A Persona start from Rank 1. As you begin to use a Persona, it starts to gain experience. Gradually with experience, the Persona will move up in Rank. Note that the maximum Rank is 8. Moving up in Rank allows better access to higher level magic attacks. Now once a Persona reaches to Rank 8, you can return the Persona and get an item for it. Eventually you'll going to have to return a Persona as your inventory becomes full with too many Personas. You also will have to return a Persona to get a better higher level Persona as the game goes on. Remember that each Persona comes with it's own level. Persona does not gain level only in Rank. So midway into the game, you have a Level 1 Persona with Rank 8, it still won't do squat to an enemy cause it's still a level 1 Persona. The only way to get a higher level Persona is to get a new Persona. Inorder to get a new Persona, you have to have a certain number of cards. You need cards to get Personas. For example, you want a Level 10 Devil class Persona. Inorder to summon that Persona for you to use, you need to get 80 Devil class cards. How do you get cards?? By contacting with monsters in conversation. This brings us to the second big unique feature of this game.
Contacting with monsters allow you to get cards. As stated before, you need a certain amount of cards to summon a Persona. Everytime you enter a battle, you have a choice of fighting a monster or making contact. If you chose contact, you will then choose which of your members to make contact. This is a review so I'm not going into details of how contacts works as that's for the instruction book. Nevertheless, once you have successfully engage in a converstation with the monsters, and if the monsters show interest in you, you will then get a certain amount of cards from that monster. This is very time consuming as not only do you have to spend time fighting random battles to level up, you have to also make contact with monsters. Remember that it's very important that your Personas are at the right level too as well as your party members. It's no good to have a weak level Personas while your party members are at a high level. So start making contact with monsters.
Lastly, the game uses a unique feature called spreading rumours. In the world of Personas, spreading rumours make things come true. Please don't ask me how that is. Ask the gamemakers that question. Just work with me here. Why spread rumours?? Not only will spreading rumours get you a whole bunch of extra mini side quests and bosses but it also opens up new shops. So if you're playing the game and wondering why the shops out there aren't selling any new armours and weapons, it's because you haven't spread any rumours about new weapons and armours. So it's a good idea to always spread rumour when you can.

The key to this gameplay is very simple, always concentrate on getting new higher level Personas, make contact with monster, and spread rumours. If you work hard on this game and spend time on working those three key points then this game would be fun. Let me point out that doing all those three is very time consuming. It took me nearly 60 hours before I could finish this game. I would say half of those hours are spent on doing those big three. This gameplay is very unique and hard for the regular rpgers but it's still one of the best gameplay around. You just got to be very patience with it. If you don't have patience then this rpg game is definetly not for you cause simplying leveling up ain't going to do you any good.

There's quite alot of mini extra stuff to do in this game. The biggest on in the optional bomb shelter quest that you can do. Note that you cannot finish the bomb shelter quest in one game. You'll have to enter the clear game save restart option to access the final level of the bomb shelter. There are a few extra mini bosses that you can fight as well. There's always a man-search mini game that you can do to get extra money. There's a casino for you to play in to get extra cool stuff. There are many more stuff to do in this game that I can't mention. Most of these can be obtain by spreading rumours. Replay is done to access that last areas of the Bomb shelter. The question is, "Do you really want to play this hard rpg game again?".

In the end of it all, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is really an excellent rpg game that is hampered by being too hard. This is not an rpg game for the mainstream rpg fans. If you're going to play this game, you better make sure that you are a die-hard rpger that will take the time to learn how to play this game and be patience with it. Boss fights in this game are very hard from the beginning to the middle. Dungeons are very long and big. I spend 6 hours alone on the last dungeon. If you have the patience and the never give up motto then go ahead and pick up this game as it's a very satisfying rpg game once you finish it. Although I wish the ending would be better. Just get ready to spend 59 hours on the game.

Favorite character: Katsuya

Least favorite character: Tatsuya

Ellen or Nate scenario: Ellen

Best Persona: Pariker (Saved my life a few times)

Most feared spell attack: Old Maid

Most annoying spell attack: Charm

Most annoying boss fight: Evil Police Captain and his 4 men.

Best Advice: Learn find those healing spells

Second best advice: Learn those fushion spells

Third best advice: spread those rumours

Up next: ?? where are all the rpgs?