hey, all. if you notice a thumbnail change, it's because i'm trying to see if it'll improve the video's performance. i may change it back if i don't notice a difference. support the channel on patreon for update posts and early access to videos: 🖤 www.patreon.com/bubbletea_
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.
It's definitely less refined of a niche than Persona or SMT considering it's trying to be both of those mixed together. The low sales likely reflect that. There could be a place for this kind of game though. I think people who have unsuccessfully tried to get into mainline SMT after getting into Persona would be able to get into this game. Soul Hackers could work as a bridge for people who think the jump from Persona to SMT is too jarring
@@scofield117 since it came to the west much later, it's easy to forget that the original Soul Hackers is 26 years old now, so what we now see as "retro futurism" was at the time of the games original release not "retro" but was seen as a realistic idea of what the future could look like.
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.
hmm let me think of better scenery that don't get stale after hours of gameplay: underground shopping mall, catacombs, office buildings, powerplants, a mansion, the sewers, a sports arena, a road tunnel. I'm pretty sure they could've found a way to reuse the same three skyboxes and still cut cost. If they were going to have not that much variety in the game's scenery then they might as well have made the game's dungeons shorter.
The combat is great. The story was meh. The art style was really good. I like the 'filter' the monsters had on them, the darker edges. Made them seem really creepy
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.
@@nr2676 or make another actual devil summoner game. With rei or a pre raidou or in-between raidou and kyouji devil summoner game time frame. Or a game playing as kyouji as prequel to the first devil summoners
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
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.
might've been a while the real issue with Soul Hackers is there is no real "flow" to the game its shoving a bad copy of the smt formula into gameplay that doesn't fit the franchise my first thought when i started playing was... "why does it feel so stiff??"
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.
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.
SH2's issues are not unique to Atlus/Sega. Square-Enix's recent new titles like Harvestella, Valkyrie Elysium and DioField Chronicles all suffer the same issue: small budget for a relatively small team to develop a console title, thus their gameplay loops dry up incredibly fast for the first few hours of normal playthrough. In the end, money talks.
on one hand i kind of agree with you, on the other i see sh2 as more of a continuation of tokyo mirage sessions (same leads i think) and i would much rather avoid that. if sh2 is where smt games are going, then i want no part of that-i would rather it be the devil survivor games, which did pretty well.
@@ultracapitalistutopia3550 A small dev team can put out a good title with some of those constraints though. I believe the problem was going into a persona style level of gameplay for the direction. I don't believe that a small dev team could make a persona style level game on a small budget with publisher constrains. Now that is impossible for Atlus to make a cheap like persona on a SH2 budget due to any persona like game requiring more resources. A better direction that steered any from too many persona like gameplay elements in favor of developing more to establishing the game's core identity. The game needed to become more than just a discount persona.
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.
I like TMS, but more as its own thing than as the crossover it seemingly started as. If the teaser for that game hadn’t been shown, I think most people would still be ambivalent towards it, but there wouldn’t be any hostility like it ended up getting.
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
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.
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.
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".
@@skywoofyt5375 Now it would have been so much better if P5 "actually" tackled that topic rather than dancing around it. Like, it is trying to appear like this punk work, but at the same time it is like it is afraid to step on somebodies toes. The whole thing ended up more of a standard power fantasy than any kind of social commentary. And I think that is quite sad given that the early trailers for the game really seemed to imply it was gonna go full hog into that territory, only for it to turn into more of the same as the rest of the Neo-Persona games.
@@matteste tbf the game was made in Japan so idk how much flak the upper class there would give Atlus for making an actually good commentary on their brutal and cruel system but yeah, i share in your disappointment, they did amazing with Royal's additional story tho
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.
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.
Randomized dungeons never seem to add anything significant. It always felt lazy. I'd rather take handcrafted dungeons over randomized any time of the day. The only good parts of mementos and tartarus was the dialogue between the party members
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.
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~
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
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.
Omg bro, I agree...It felt so random, when Figue suddenly gives so much of a shit about Raven. There wasn't a good enough reason for her to lose her shit because of Raven's death. Terrible writing
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.
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.
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
I personally have a love/hate relationship wt the game and for me the main reason I keep coming back to it is that I find it SO beautiful. It's just so pleasing to look at a it and listen to it
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 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
Well there were reports of optimization issues on PC, that probably has something to do with it. Something about how this game runs just doesn't utilize hardware properly, and they'd have to do a great deal to make Switch performance feel decent enough.
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.
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
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
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
you could beat the game without finishing the soul matrix if you feel you have enough skills on your party members. you just won't get the "good" ending.
I agree with the comments here stating that we should stop comparing every MegaTen game with Persona. It keeps us from enjoying the newer games and it restrains Atlus, since it makes them think that all people want is "another Persona game" - and this could restrain them from taking risks in the future and trying new things. Soul Hackers 2 is a good game. I think some reviewers have been too strict about it. I've been enjoying it and it's definitely a nice contribution to the MegaTen franchise. It takes some aspects from the existing games, it combines them with a nice futuristic atmosphere and likeable adult characters - and, well, it's an enjoyable game. Not groundbreaking, but enjoyable. Perhaps Atlus could have taken some more "risks" with the game - but how can you do that, when everyone compares everything they do with Persona. Come on. The MegaTen franchise is the one that started it all and Persona remains a sub-series (hugely popular, of course). For me, Soul Hackers 2 is a welcome return to one of the franchises most interesting spinoffs. Not "perfect", but good nonetheless. A step in the right direction. I'd like to see them trying more things like that in the future - and go even further.
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
SMT V had its writers leave 2 years into development and they were left without a writeing team and basicly what notes they left were stitched together. The big Problem with modern atlus is most of the veteran staff moved into studo Zero to work on Project Re:Fantasy and most of the young blood wants to work on the series that put Atlus on the map not the other franchises and since the veterans are takeing their sweet time on their new project theirs nobody to realy properly manage the rookies. Hell Persona 6 is probably going to be a very different animal from 3-5 as the entire core staff that made that version of persona is working on Project Re:Fantasy now. It's the same problem Game Freak had had since gen 6 and that is the veterans wanted to experiment and make things outside their core money makeing franchise as they were board doing the same thing again and again so they left the rookies to do their job for them while they do whatever they want resulting in the quality of the games dropping like a rock as the rookies don't have the same experience the veterans have and they don't even have many supervising them to point them in the right direction something that was only recently fixed when Nintendo put their foot down after the flop that was little town hero and told the veteran staff to get back to work on pokemon and that's why Legends Arceus turned out well as it had more experienced devs working on it for the final leg of development. The same problem is happening at atlus and sega needs to tell Studo Zero to shit or get off the toilet and actually help the new kids make stuff on their level of quality instead of piddleing around on one project for over 5 years with nothing to show anyone and a Catherine remaster. Soul Hackers 2 and SMT5 are good but very flawed games and you can tell just by playing them that these were made by inexperienced newbies and not the people who have been working on SMT and persona between Nocturne and P5 and its high time Atlus Adresses this problem and it's probably the reason the writeing team for 5 left
@@demi-fiendoftime3825 I can see Atlus making Persona 6 a Persona 5 Royal - 2, I don't think they will change or upgrade regarding a lot of stuff P5R had like the combat system, social link or slice of life stuff. They will probably pick everything they had going for P5R, port it to Unreal Engine and develop a new and good story on top of that with good characters, that is if they don't copy the same character tropes they did with P5 or mix said tropes with P3, 4 and 5 characters (at least a Makoto type character is a guarantee, considering how popular she is in Japan and in the west), and in the end it will sell well, make the company happy and a lot of the Persona playerbase that started with 5 happy too. Maybe they will try a higher bet with 7.
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 ❤
@@lemonlime8949 You are right, I don't understand. I feel like SMT is harder than Persona games. You have to put more time and energy into your gameplay. Persona is more laid back and fun. I honestly love them both and I don't see how Persona ruined SMT. To each their own.
@@personamaven9466 dw I’ll explain. You’re absolutely right that persona is more laid back, with its slice of life anime style to it. Ever since Joker joined smash bros it has led to an influx of insufferable weirdos (which is what a lot of the smash community is) and sadly they’ve got their hands on the gem that is persona. The fanbase has never been as terrible as it is nowadays. That doesn’t change the fact that Persona is still amazing, but when you see what’s happened to the fanbase, as an SMT fan you can’t help but be incredibly scared the same thing will happen to your games.
@@lemonlime8949 Thank you for the explanation and now I understand what you are saying. Not a smash fan myself but I do know the community you speak of. I can't say they are all bad but like with everything there are the norms and then there are the exceptions. I just want to keep loving and playing the games I'm passionate about.
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
Glad we've got people like bubbletea to review this game so I don't have to play it. As a long-time Megaten fan who's gradually lost interest in the direction the franchise has headed, I would've still given this game a fair shot, despite my misgivings. But the moment Atlus decided to remove finished content from the game and sell it separately as DLC, I wanted nothing to do with it. It's not like I'm starving for quality JRPG content this year, either, when Xenoblade 3 exists. It's the polar opposite of this game. A finished product first and foremost, with DLC being made AFTER the base-game finished development, all created by developers who are capable and willing to learn from past mistakes to create the best game they possibly can. Xenoblade 3 is a masterpiece with a fantastic story, addictive gameplay, well-crafted side-content and the kind of scope and ambition I could only dream of from a triple-A game. While it hurts to see a series I'd once held in high regard fall this low, there are still alternatives I think are worth trying. - Undernauts is a gritty dungeon-crawler that released earlier this year, with a bleak atmosphere reminiscent of older SMT games. - Digimon Survive is a darker, bold new take on its franchise, that combines turn-based strategy gameplay with choice-driven visual novel segments, leading to one of 5 different endings. - Kadokawa Games and Crem's own SMT-inspired RPG, The Lost Child, might as well be the modern-day Soul Hackers game we should've got from Atlus. It's quirky, charming, fun to play, and even features cameos from El Shaddai characters.
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?
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.
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.
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??
I think is a bit of that first thing, but also they want the games to deal with adult topics and themes, things that are relatable to an adult audience. This is most likely due to the fact that most who were introduced to Persona back in the day are now adults.
having the cast in school does limit the plot and people you can meet in some aspects. All adults were teens once so anything with teens will be relatable. But how many games where the points are 'authority sucks', 'teens saving the world', 'everyone wants to gossip about you', and 'there's a non-human mascot trying to find out what it means to be human' do people need?
I'm pretty sure it's the purple fake covenant that effected Zenon. You'll notice that it's when he switches to purple he's weak to everything. Figue (somehow) put her real one into her drone doll which is why Iron Mask gets all of them but the purple one after that battle, including the one Figue had.
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.
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.
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
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!
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
the skill expansion is actually gotten through talking to the ringo apparition at the entrance of the soul matrix, not the COMP Smith (which i never did and feel dumb about still).
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.
Most of the older megaten games were about adults, or at least college aged characters. But atlus seemed to have decided with smt iv final that they want to go with highschool aged protags from now on, they even changed the ages of that cast during development, nanashi was originally shown to be at least flynn's age.
The thing about Shin Megami Tensei's fanbase being mostly adults is kind of ironic considering that the last 2 mainline SMT where released on both the Nintendo 3DS and Switch, which many people consider consoles that target a more younger audience, and it wasn't until recently that Atlus decided to port 3 mainline Persona games to the Switch, while Shin Megami Tensi V is still stuck on the Switch without any news if it's going to get ported to the PS5 or Xbox
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 yeah, I'm glad that more people will be able to experience SMT V, it seems the reveal trailer for Vengeance amassed over 2 million views so I hope that the game will be successful. The regular version managed to sell over a million on Switch alone, I don't know if people will double dip on Switch, I'm not expecting a Persona 5 Royal situation, but this could be an important moment for the SMT series On the other hand, just a couple of weeks ago the Persona team got interviewed and they asked them why they didn't make a Persona 3 Reload version for the Switch and they answered that they never intended to release the game for the console, they didn't mention that it couldn't be done due to hardware limitations and it seems they said a port could come later, they just didn't think about it. Considering that the Switch has sold over 140 million units, 32 million in Japan alone, one would think they would've wanted to capitalize on that user base. We'll see if P3R will be ported to the Switch or if it's going to arrive to the Switch's successor
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
Good Video. I have this to say though: This game is getting major flack from the community for things that SMT V did way worse. This game's story wasn't the best ever but it was better than SMT V's story. But in stark contrast to the way people judge Soul Hackers 2, due to the fact that SMT V doesn't spend as much time on its story there are a lot of fans treating SMT V's lackluster story like it doesn't matter to the overall quality of the game. Megaten fans treat mainline SMT with a weird double standard where they look past a lackluster story if the game is fun. I know for a fact that Megaten fans don't do the same for non-mainline. Even though it was convoluted and messy, the journey in Soul Hackers 2 didn't feel pointless. The journey in SMT V did feel pointless. The entire time you're being an errand boy for the Prime Minister and Bethel until the final part of the game where it feels like the game is saying "Okay, all that stuff from before didn't matter. You can pick your ending now". And as far as the characters go, there is really no contest. Which character is better: Ringo or Yuzuru Atsuta? Saizo or Ichiro Dazai? Soul Hackers 2 wins and it's not close. I wish megaten fans who excuse SMT V's lackluster story would apply the same fine-toothed comb that they're using to find faults in this game's story to the stories of mainline games including V.
For me, I feel both were a bit of a let down, but for different reasons. SMT V definitely does have that long fodder of doing inane jobs like it's a form of filler to get you up to level for the final act where things at last get interesting again (the beginning being the only time prior for me). Even then, the endings felt a bit too blatant with the law/neutral/chaos choice. I much preferred SMT III and to a lesser extent IV, where your choice was built from interactions with the pillar characters through the story. Gave me too much of a Mass Effect 3 vibe, even if there was a fourth ending to kind of make up for that basic trinary choice. With Soul Hackers, I think it was the combination of the blandness of the dungeons along with being a bit too much like Persona with the gameplay. It was easy becoming over powered, but I liked having a little army of demons in the first game. The trailer even made it appear to have that kind of battle system, though I was expecting it to be closer to SMT V by having a few rather than five active at once. Sure the story was rather cheesy and didn't make all that good use of the cyberpunk setting, but at least it was character driven which does seem to be Atlus' wheelhouse these days. Plus the dub was surprisingly good, the actors seemed to into playing their roles. I was expecting a much more average performance given it's been a long abandoned sub series, not even trying to leverage the Persona or SMT name.
@@ShaimingLong I'm a bit surprised with the comparison with Soul Hackers 2's gameplay to Persona. Maybe you could say it's similar to Persona Q or the old Persona games with every character being able to switch personas/demons. But the Sabbath system was more of its own thing
@@athorem Oh, yeah I should have been clear on that. I did mean the early games with everyone equipping whatever demons you had available, so your characters tended to change skill sets often. I had forgotten PQ let you do that, actually. I have mixed feelings on the Sabbath system, I generally preferred the press turn system, but then I much prefer it over the all in system. It also gives quite a nice little dopamine hit when you end up with a large stack and you get to see your little horde just nuke your foes!
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.
Was it just me or did soul hackers 2 seems super short compared to Persona titles it only took me about 20 hours but I still had fun, but I wasn’t a fan of not being able to make builds like in the other games
All Devil Summoner games are short (arround 20-25 hours). Persona is also not long game if you'll throw away filers, Visual Novel and Dating Sim, especially the calendar which artificially lengthens the game. Without those elemnents Persona is arround 30 hours game, just like P1 and P2.
Even if the gameplay itself isn't all that great, I can usually overlook that if the characters and story is good (Rule of Rose is one of my favorite horror games despite the bad gameplay). So it's really disappointing to find out that both story and characters are mostly meh. Especially coming from Atlus who are known to make great stories and characters.
They made Devil Survivor 2 only. Devil Survivor 1 was made by diffirent people - Careersoft (Langrisser, Growlancer). They were experienced with SRPG's and good storytelling, unlike dudes behind Devil Survivor 2, Tokio Mirrage Sessions and Soul Hackers 2, where most of them are just novices.
That thumbnail is misleading Soul Hackers 2 isn't a game about boring people who hate their office jobs. You have some legit criticims though, I'll keep them in mind when I buy my copy of the game.
Honestly I thought it was a pretty awesome game. The reason why it didn't work out though was because Persona fans dgaf about any Atlus games besides persona and SMT fans are a bunch of nutjobs that hate anything that even closely resembles persona (smt iv apocalypse and Tokyo mirage sessions). It tried to bridge the two communities the same way the aforementioned games did but atlus didn't take into consideration neither community wants anything to do with one another. It would be like trying to put conquest in call of duty or hardpoint in battlefield.
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
![[4K] Watch SpaceX Catch A Starship Rocket From Space!!! #IFT5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIKI7y3DTXk/mqdefault.jpg)
hey, all. if you notice a thumbnail change, it's because i'm trying to see if it'll improve the video's performance. i may change it back if i don't notice a difference.
support the channel on patreon for update posts and early access to videos:
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Bold of you to assume that if Persona fans made a game it would be comprehensive and not creepy
Didn't see the old one, bc I'm only watching it now. But did it work tho? I'm curious
I feel like the reason why ppl want a persona with adults is because people who played persona in high school are now adults
Or because P2EP is kino and we simply want to replicate it.
Woah todd howard finally Speaking facts
@@sonicsucks2961 p2is I basically the same and you are in fact a high schooler in that game
Theres literally a persona game with adults in it. This idea aint new and it aint sumn ppl recently started to want
@@LizardKingRequiem yes persona 2
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.
It's definitely less refined of a niche than Persona or SMT considering it's trying to be both of those mixed together. The low sales likely reflect that. There could be a place for this kind of game though. I think people who have unsuccessfully tried to get into mainline SMT after getting into Persona would be able to get into this game. Soul Hackers could work as a bridge for people who think the jump from Persona to SMT is too jarring
It also lacks the things that appeal to Soul Hackers fans, such as the 90s cyberpunk vibe and retro futurism.
@@scofield117 since it came to the west much later, it's easy to forget that the original Soul Hackers is 26 years old now, so what we now see as "retro futurism" was at the time of the games original release not "retro" but was seen as a realistic idea of what the future could look like.
That’s fair
How is soul hackers 1 then on the 3ds?
This truly was one of the games ever made
Indeed
12 out of 10
This comment is getting old. I've seen it commented on every movie, game, song in the past 6months
@@drowningin 🤓
01 out of frog
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.
*MegaTen enthusiast.
cause let's be honest, none of us will be able to make a game.
@@skywoofyt5375why not? A large number of people in the world do video games
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.
don't worry. i wouldn't say such a thing unless i meant it.
@@bubbletea_NGL man you're kinda startin to sound like a biiig elitist
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.
hmm let me think of better scenery that don't get stale after hours of gameplay: underground shopping mall, catacombs, office buildings, powerplants, a mansion, the sewers, a sports arena, a road tunnel. I'm pretty sure they could've found a way to reuse the same three skyboxes and still cut cost. If they were going to have not that much variety in the game's scenery then they might as well have made the game's dungeons shorter.
@@BladeMasterIcarus Yeah and what game have we seen tons of levels of subways...? Reminds you of anything? Rhymes with "My mentos"
A sky box is fairly easy to implement, but scenery dressing is definitely one of the reasons to use "clean" looking subways.
@@BladeMasterIcarusEverytime a sewer level is mentioned, Civvie 11 has an existential crisis.
This game made me realize that SMTV despite all it flaws is still a great game.
Great is bit too much. It's good..
@@alsaiduq4363 Tied with SMT4A as the best gameplay ever in the series. the story is a mess however yes.
exactly this
I would not say great. It does combat very well. The rest eh not so much
The combat is great. The story was meh. The art style was really good. I like the 'filter' the monsters had on them, the darker edges. Made them seem really creepy
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.
Or remaster Digital Devil Saga and Raidou games.
@@nr2676 or make another actual devil summoner game. With rei or a pre raidou or in-between raidou and kyouji devil summoner game time frame. Or a game playing as kyouji as prequel to the first devil summoners
Sh2 is my favourite smt game and I agree
Silent hill 2
Well guess what
i like how they had to add the ability for ringo to sprint as a post launch update. priorities
This is what you get when you try to appeal to everyone but by doing so it appeals to no one
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
lol
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.
might've been a while
the real issue with Soul Hackers is there is no real "flow" to the game
its shoving a bad copy of the smt formula into gameplay that doesn't fit the franchise
my first thought when i started playing was... "why does it feel so stiff??"
then every dungeon outside of the final dungeon was bland and lifeless
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.
This, 100%. She is carrying a lot of weight.
I could not agree more!
In short It's Persona without the heart.
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.
Good read. Agreed
My thoughts exactly
SH2's issues are not unique to Atlus/Sega. Square-Enix's recent new titles like Harvestella, Valkyrie Elysium and DioField Chronicles all suffer the same issue: small budget for a relatively small team to develop a console title, thus their gameplay loops dry up incredibly fast for the first few hours of normal playthrough.
In the end, money talks.
on one hand i kind of agree with you, on the other i see sh2 as more of a continuation of tokyo mirage sessions (same leads i think) and i would much rather avoid that. if sh2 is where smt games are going, then i want no part of that-i would rather it be the devil survivor games, which did pretty well.
@@ultracapitalistutopia3550 A small dev team can put out a good title with some of those constraints though. I believe the problem was going into a persona style level of gameplay for the direction. I don't believe that a small dev team could make a persona style level game on a small budget with publisher constrains. Now that is impossible for Atlus to make a cheap like persona on a SH2 budget due to any persona like game requiring more resources. A better direction that steered any from too many persona like gameplay elements in favor of developing more to establishing the game's core identity. The game needed to become more than just a discount persona.
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.
what's TMS?
@@skywoofyt5375 Tokyo Mirage Sessions, or as it was originally known, Shin Megami Tensei x Fire Emblem.
@@matteste devil survivor still the best
I like TMS, but more as its own thing than as the crossover it seemingly started as. If the teaser for that game hadn’t been shown, I think most people would still be ambivalent towards it, but there wouldn’t be any hostility like it ended up getting.
I like how Digital Foundry called this game a “Persona lite” and everyone got SO MAD
IMO it’s entirely accurate
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
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.
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.
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".
They somehow made a futuristic cyberpunk game, a genre that heavily criticizes greed and aggressive capitalism, with day 0 dlcs
Man, you really know you have screwed up your cyberpunk game when modern Persona can be considered more punk than it.
@@mattestetbf, societal reform (what the P5 crew were trying to do) is a VERY punk thing
@@skywoofyt5375 Now it would have been so much better if P5 "actually" tackled that topic rather than dancing around it. Like, it is trying to appear like this punk work, but at the same time it is like it is afraid to step on somebodies toes.
The whole thing ended up more of a standard power fantasy than any kind of social commentary.
And I think that is quite sad given that the early trailers for the game really seemed to imply it was gonna go full hog into that territory, only for it to turn into more of the same as the rest of the Neo-Persona games.
@@matteste tbf the game was made in Japan so idk how much flak the upper class there would give Atlus for making an actually good commentary on their brutal and cruel system
but yeah, i share in your disappointment, they did amazing with Royal's additional story tho
It really feels like they designed the main character first and worked everything else around Ringo, and it all feels kind of cheap.
I just wish it kept the same specifically 90s cyberpunk aesthetic of the first 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.
Actually the best request from a Persona fan I've ever seen, that would slap
Finally, a good wish/request from a persona fan
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.
Randomized dungeons never seem to add anything significant. It always felt lazy. I'd rather take handcrafted dungeons over randomized any time of the day. The only good parts of mementos and tartarus was the dialogue between the party members
Style over Substance: The Game
It barely had style
@@Chelaxim that too, but I can at least see others being into it, mayhaps tea (comma) bubble himself?
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.
Wait, are you for real? I didn't know that lol
The game might not be amazing, but Shirow Miwa's character design doesn't miss I love their artstyle and how they do colors.
It's soul hacking time
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~
I personally enjoyed the game and characters.
Gottem
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
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.
Plot sounds really convoluted, thanks for your review, good work
Figue simping Raven for literally no reason. Man... the ending was so trash. But the bad ending is a little better.
Omg bro, I agree...It felt so random, when Figue suddenly gives so much of a shit about Raven. There wasn't a good enough reason for her to lose her shit because of Raven's death. Terrible writing
@@GilgaMax305 Yeah! was mission accomplished world saved, and she charge for a quick soul hack. So many random "plot twists".
Ok glad am not the only one who thought I miss something... Maybe a hint?
@@stevendelancy6421 Well, it exists...in one of the DLCs
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.
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.
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
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 personally have a love/hate relationship wt the game and for me the main reason I keep coming back to it is that I find it SO beautiful. It's just so pleasing to look at a it and listen to it
Everyone has that one game, for me it's starbound, i would never recommend it or call it good but i can't help but keep it as a favorite of mine.
I will say this game made me retroactively enjoy SMT5 more, so that's nice
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
The bad ending is more satisfying tbh.
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
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.
Well there were reports of optimization issues on PC, that probably has something to do with it. Something about how this game runs just doesn't utilize hardware properly, and they'd have to do a great deal to make Switch performance feel decent enough.
@@TheHeartThatRunsCold I think he's playing the XBox One version with a bad capture card so it looks kinda crunchy.
@@hypotheticaltapeworm He said he was playing on an old laptop with low settings.
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.
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
Persona without Person.
a
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
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
you could beat the game without finishing the soul matrix if you feel you have enough skills on your party members. you just won't get the "good" ending.
I legitimately believe that the only appealing aspect of Soul Hackers 2 is the music.
that being said, *I can't find it anywhere!*
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
I agree with the comments here stating that we should stop comparing every MegaTen game with Persona. It keeps us from enjoying the newer games and it restrains Atlus, since it makes them think that all people want is "another Persona game" - and this could restrain them from taking risks in the future and trying new things. Soul Hackers 2 is a good game. I think some reviewers have been too strict about it. I've been enjoying it and it's definitely a nice contribution to the MegaTen franchise. It takes some aspects from the existing games, it combines them with a nice futuristic atmosphere and likeable adult characters - and, well, it's an enjoyable game. Not groundbreaking, but enjoyable.
Perhaps Atlus could have taken some more "risks" with the game - but how can you do that, when everyone compares everything they do with Persona. Come on. The MegaTen franchise is the one that started it all and Persona remains a sub-series (hugely popular, of course). For me, Soul Hackers 2 is a welcome return to one of the franchises most interesting spinoffs. Not "perfect", but good nonetheless. A step in the right direction. I'd like to see them trying more things like that in the future - and go even further.
Where Soul Hackers 2 went wrong was it's existence.
I noticed that some of your videos are missing like the video essay on the first Soul-Hackers is their a reason?
I feel like the game was a half baked SMT story concept with half baked Persona gameplay mechanics.
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
SMT V had its writers leave 2 years into development and they were left without a writeing team and basicly what notes they left were stitched together. The big Problem with modern atlus is most of the veteran staff moved into studo Zero to work on Project Re:Fantasy and most of the young blood wants to work on the series that put Atlus on the map not the other franchises and since the veterans are takeing their sweet time on their new project theirs nobody to realy properly manage the rookies. Hell Persona 6 is probably going to be a very different animal from 3-5 as the entire core staff that made that version of persona is working on Project Re:Fantasy now. It's the same problem Game Freak had had since gen 6 and that is the veterans wanted to experiment and make things outside their core money makeing franchise as they were board doing the same thing again and again so they left the rookies to do their job for them while they do whatever they want resulting in the quality of the games dropping like a rock as the rookies don't have the same experience the veterans have and they don't even have many supervising them to point them in the right direction something that was only recently fixed when Nintendo put their foot down after the flop that was little town hero and told the veteran staff to get back to work on pokemon and that's why Legends Arceus turned out well as it had more experienced devs working on it for the final leg of development. The same problem is happening at atlus and sega needs to tell Studo Zero to shit or get off the toilet and actually help the new kids make stuff on their level of quality instead of piddleing around on one project for over 5 years with nothing to show anyone and a Catherine remaster. Soul Hackers 2 and SMT5 are good but very flawed games and you can tell just by playing them that these were made by inexperienced newbies and not the people who have been working on SMT and persona between Nocturne and P5 and its high time Atlus Adresses this problem and it's probably the reason the writeing team for 5 left
@@demi-fiendoftime3825 I hope at least Re Fantasy will be good at least
@@demi-fiendoftime3825 I can see Atlus making Persona 6 a Persona 5 Royal - 2, I don't think they will change or upgrade regarding a lot of stuff P5R had like the combat system, social link or slice of life stuff. They will probably pick everything they had going for P5R, port it to Unreal Engine and develop a new and good story on top of that with good characters, that is if they don't copy the same character tropes they did with P5 or mix said tropes with P3, 4 and 5 characters (at least a Makoto type character is a guarantee, considering how popular she is in Japan and in the west), and in the end it will sell well, make the company happy and a lot of the Persona playerbase that started with 5 happy too. Maybe they will try a higher bet with 7.
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 ❤
i agree.
You don’t understand it because you don’t see how Persona damaged everything else.
@@lemonlime8949 You are right, I don't understand. I feel like SMT is harder than Persona games. You have to put more time and energy into your gameplay. Persona is more laid back and fun. I honestly love them both and I don't see how Persona ruined SMT. To each their own.
@@personamaven9466 dw I’ll explain. You’re absolutely right that persona is more laid back, with its slice of life anime style to it. Ever since Joker joined smash bros it has led to an influx of insufferable weirdos (which is what a lot of the smash community is) and sadly they’ve got their hands on the gem that is persona. The fanbase has never been as terrible as it is nowadays. That doesn’t change the fact that Persona is still amazing, but when you see what’s happened to the fanbase, as an SMT fan you can’t help but be incredibly scared the same thing will happen to your games.
@@lemonlime8949 Thank you for the explanation and now I understand what you are saying. Not a smash fan myself but I do know the community you speak of. I can't say they are all bad but like with everything there are the norms and then there are the exceptions. I just want to keep loving and playing the games I'm passionate about.
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
For most companies I'd say the second one is more likely but this is Atlus we're talking about so I think that optimist option would be more likely
Hey man good video! It reminds me of going to some random restaurant and getting a pretty good stake I appreciate it
just like what certain youtuber said
we're our own biggest enemy
Glad we've got people like bubbletea to review this game so I don't have to play it. As a long-time Megaten fan who's gradually lost interest in the direction the franchise has headed, I would've still given this game a fair shot, despite my misgivings. But the moment Atlus decided to remove finished content from the game and sell it separately as DLC, I wanted nothing to do with it.
It's not like I'm starving for quality JRPG content this year, either, when Xenoblade 3 exists. It's the polar opposite of this game. A finished product first and foremost, with DLC being made AFTER the base-game finished development, all created by developers who are capable and willing to learn from past mistakes to create the best game they possibly can. Xenoblade 3 is a masterpiece with a fantastic story, addictive gameplay, well-crafted side-content and the kind of scope and ambition I could only dream of from a triple-A game.
While it hurts to see a series I'd once held in high regard fall this low, there are still alternatives I think are worth trying.
- Undernauts is a gritty dungeon-crawler that released earlier this year, with a bleak atmosphere reminiscent of older SMT games.
- Digimon Survive is a darker, bold new take on its franchise, that combines turn-based strategy gameplay with choice-driven visual novel segments, leading to one of 5 different endings.
- Kadokawa Games and Crem's own SMT-inspired RPG, The Lost Child, might as well be the modern-day Soul Hackers game we should've got from Atlus. It's quirky, charming, fun to play, and even features cameos from El Shaddai characters.
listen man. i’m just a guy. you should take whatever i say with a grain of salt. it’s not that deep.
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?
God ringo's design is fantastic though
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 Don't know why this video was in my notifications. But good video Essay.
thank you
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.
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??
I think is a bit of that first thing, but also they want the games to deal with adult topics and themes, things that are relatable to an adult audience. This is most likely due to the fact that most who were introduced to Persona back in the day are now adults.
having the cast in school does limit the plot and people you can meet in some aspects. All adults were teens once so anything with teens will be relatable. But how many games where the points are 'authority sucks', 'teens saving the world', 'everyone wants to gossip about you', and 'there's a non-human mascot trying to find out what it means to be human' do people need?
I'm pretty sure it's the purple fake covenant that effected Zenon. You'll notice that it's when he switches to purple he's weak to everything. Figue (somehow) put her real one into her drone doll which is why Iron Mask gets all of them but the purple one after that battle, including the one Figue had.
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.
One thing I will say about soul hackers 2 is the charecters were good even if the story, as you said, set things up then quickly shoved them aside.
This game is basically FF13.... but with no love or care put into it
How so?? I genuinely see no parallels at all other than the weapon upgrade system at a stretch?
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.
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
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!
Yea, at least the summoners should be able to use a Sabbath on you as well - would make things like Kaburagi and Iron Mask much harder too
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
the skill expansion is actually gotten through talking to the ringo apparition at the entrance of the soul matrix, not the COMP Smith (which i never did and feel dumb about still).
@@bubbletea_ now i feel dumb about being wrong. missing those makes way more sense to me
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.
Most of the older megaten games were about adults, or at least college aged characters. But atlus seemed to have decided with smt iv final that they want to go with highschool aged protags from now on, they even changed the ages of that cast during development, nanashi was originally shown to be at least flynn's age.
The thing about Shin Megami Tensei's fanbase being mostly adults is kind of ironic considering that the last 2 mainline SMT where released on both the Nintendo 3DS and Switch, which many people consider consoles that target a more younger audience, and it wasn't until recently that Atlus decided to port 3 mainline Persona games to the Switch, while Shin Megami Tensi V is still stuck on the Switch without any news if it's going to get ported to the PS5 or Xbox
@@pablocasas5906 Well, that aged well
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 yeah, I'm glad that more people will be able to experience SMT V, it seems the reveal trailer for Vengeance amassed over 2 million views so I hope that the game will be successful. The regular version managed to sell over a million on Switch alone, I don't know if people will double dip on Switch, I'm not expecting a Persona 5 Royal situation, but this could be an important moment for the SMT series
On the other hand, just a couple of weeks ago the Persona team got interviewed and they asked them why they didn't make a Persona 3 Reload version for the Switch and they answered that they never intended to release the game for the console, they didn't mention that it couldn't be done due to hardware limitations and it seems they said a port could come later, they just didn't think about it. Considering that the Switch has sold over 140 million units, 32 million in Japan alone, one would think they would've wanted to capitalize on that user base. We'll see if P3R will be ported to the Switch or if it's going to arrive to the Switch's successor
The arrow guy looks like dante from that hated devil may cry reboot
Too bad you only control 4 people instead of 6 slot parties like in the first SH1
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
Yeah it's like (mostly) Sonic fans care only for Sonic not Sega games.
>Game is made by Persona fans
>Has no dating elements
Pic one
Good Video. I have this to say though: This game is getting major flack from the community for things that SMT V did way worse.
This game's story wasn't the best ever but it was better than SMT V's story. But in stark contrast to the way people judge Soul Hackers 2, due to the fact that SMT V doesn't spend as much time on its story there are a lot of fans treating SMT V's lackluster story like it doesn't matter to the overall quality of the game. Megaten fans treat mainline SMT with a weird double standard where they look past a lackluster story if the game is fun. I know for a fact that Megaten fans don't do the same for non-mainline.
Even though it was convoluted and messy, the journey in Soul Hackers 2 didn't feel pointless. The journey in SMT V did feel pointless. The entire time you're being an errand boy for the Prime Minister and Bethel until the final part of the game where it feels like the game is saying "Okay, all that stuff from before didn't matter. You can pick your ending now".
And as far as the characters go, there is really no contest. Which character is better: Ringo or Yuzuru Atsuta? Saizo or Ichiro Dazai? Soul Hackers 2 wins and it's not close.
I wish megaten fans who excuse SMT V's lackluster story would apply the same fine-toothed comb that they're using to find faults in this game's story to the stories of mainline games including V.
For me, I feel both were a bit of a let down, but for different reasons.
SMT V definitely does have that long fodder of doing inane jobs like it's a form of filler to get you up to level for the final act where things at last get interesting again (the beginning being the only time prior for me). Even then, the endings felt a bit too blatant with the law/neutral/chaos choice. I much preferred SMT III and to a lesser extent IV, where your choice was built from interactions with the pillar characters through the story. Gave me too much of a Mass Effect 3 vibe, even if there was a fourth ending to kind of make up for that basic trinary choice.
With Soul Hackers, I think it was the combination of the blandness of the dungeons along with being a bit too much like Persona with the gameplay. It was easy becoming over powered, but I liked having a little army of demons in the first game. The trailer even made it appear to have that kind of battle system, though I was expecting it to be closer to SMT V by having a few rather than five active at once.
Sure the story was rather cheesy and didn't make all that good use of the cyberpunk setting, but at least it was character driven which does seem to be Atlus' wheelhouse these days. Plus the dub was surprisingly good, the actors seemed to into playing their roles. I was expecting a much more average performance given it's been a long abandoned sub series, not even trying to leverage the Persona or SMT name.
@@ShaimingLong I'm a bit surprised with the comparison with Soul Hackers 2's gameplay to Persona. Maybe you could say it's similar to Persona Q or the old Persona games with every character being able to switch personas/demons. But the Sabbath system was more of its own thing
@@athorem Oh, yeah I should have been clear on that. I did mean the early games with everyone equipping whatever demons you had available, so your characters tended to change skill sets often.
I had forgotten PQ let you do that, actually.
I have mixed feelings on the Sabbath system, I generally preferred the press turn system, but then I much prefer it over the all in system. It also gives quite a nice little dopamine hit when you end up with a large stack and you get to see your little horde just nuke your foes!
Mom can we have Phyconauts?
No son we have Phyconauts at home.
Phyconauts from home: Soul Hackers
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 from persona 3 dancing. it's literally the first result when you search "wiping all out remix" on youtube.
@@bubbletea_ thank you very much, my bad for not seeing it, but of course the part I like starts at 1:20 and I skipped over the song 😔
Yep the soul matrix thing is one of the main reasons I quit after like 2 hours of play.
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.
They haven’t though?? They replaced the demon models in persona 5 and even replaced some of them for this game too
I loved the game. My only complaint is I tried to do everything and was 2 soul points short on Arrow. This felt incredibly bad and punishing.
IGN: *Soul Hacker 2 is Soul Hackers without the heart*
why do the graphics looks so low quality? It looks like witcher 3 on the switch
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
Play smtv
@@lemonlime8949SMT V is so mid
@@NepheneeGyattRizz gameplay wise, no, story wise, sure.
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.
Was it just me or did soul hackers 2 seems super short compared to Persona titles it only took me about 20 hours but I still had fun, but I wasn’t a fan of not being able to make builds like in the other games
All Devil Summoner games are short (arround 20-25 hours). Persona is also not long game if you'll throw away filers, Visual Novel and Dating Sim, especially the calendar which artificially lengthens the game. Without those elemnents Persona is arround 30 hours game, just like P1 and P2.
Even if the gameplay itself isn't all that great, I can usually overlook that if the characters and story is good (Rule of Rose is one of my favorite horror games despite the bad gameplay).
So it's really disappointing to find out that both story and characters are mostly meh. Especially coming from Atlus who are known to make great stories and characters.
why can’t I save when playing this it makes me so nervous i don’t trust auto save at ALL
Imagine that a lot of people who worked on this, made Devil Survivor...
Makes you sad, doesn't it
They made Devil Survivor 2 only. Devil Survivor 1 was made by diffirent people - Careersoft (Langrisser, Growlancer). They were experienced with SRPG's and good storytelling, unlike dudes behind Devil Survivor 2, Tokio Mirrage Sessions and Soul Hackers 2, where most of them are just novices.
@@nr2676 Studios are not people. Both the head writer, director and many more people from the og Devil Survivor team worked on Soul Hackers 2
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
That thumbnail is misleading Soul Hackers 2 isn't a game about boring people who hate their office jobs. You have some legit criticims though, I'll keep them in mind when I buy my copy of the game.
Honestly I thought it was a pretty awesome game. The reason why it didn't work out though was because Persona fans dgaf about any Atlus games besides persona and SMT fans are a bunch of nutjobs that hate anything that even closely resembles persona (smt iv apocalypse and Tokyo mirage sessions). It tried to bridge the two communities the same way the aforementioned games did but atlus didn't take into consideration neither community wants anything to do with one another. It would be like trying to put conquest in call of duty or hardpoint in battlefield.
I don’t fall into their camp. Soul hackers 2 is just mid, bro. It’s mediocre and super flawed and not fun
Ppl say that persona 2 is the persona with adults, but every persona before p3 was more like a shin megami
And now is more like Tokimeki Memorial
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