There are certain things that game developer Atlus consistently gets right now: style, presentation, and a banging soundtrack. Ever since the explosion in popularity the Persona series received, Atlus has nailed the atmosphere in its Shin Megami Tensei games and its spin-off titles, and Soul Hackers 2 is no different.
As you hover over the icon in your PlayStation menu, the music begins to blare. A euphoric electronic anthem that sets the tone for the rest of the game. Your protagonist is Ringo, a digital idol with abilities humans can barely imagine. Her key ability is the Soul Hack. This allows Ringo to bring humans back from the dead, though the ability is incredibly draining for her. Still, she manages to revive several Devil Summoners, and uses their abilities along with her own in order to save the world. Yes, it is anime.
Ringo and the team of Devil Summoners battle similarly to other SMT games. Ringo can swap through a variety of demons at her disposal, using advantageous attacks to down foes. Once your enemies are all weakened, you can use what essentially amounts to Persona‘s All-Out Attack, dealing huge damage to remaining enemies and potentially ending the battle early.
Animations aren’t quite as lavishly detailed as those in Persona 5, but the game manages to look gorgeous. Instead of bold and striking uses of colour to define its style, Soul Hackers 2 leans in on Ringo’s idol appearance, having her draw shapes in the air, pose, and even tap her tongue for some cute emphasis. Each battle feels like a performance, though not quite as extravagant as Tokyo Mirage Sessions‘ fights, which come complete with a stage and audience.
At first it feels as if Soul Hackers 2 hits all the right buttons for a modern SMT fan. The characters are beautifully detailed and stylish, with distinct personalities that shine through instantly. But instead of engaging cutscenes and story beats to drag you through, Soul Hackers 2’s opening is like someone reading a plot synopsis from Wikipedia. The world is in trouble, and that’s pretty much all the context we get before Ringo and her sister, Figue, are thrown into the real world to deal with it. We even begin inside a small dungeon.
That small dungeon, near the docks, is a sign of things to come. SMT dungeon designs have never been too complex outside of those map-based crawlers such as Strange Journey, and here, each corridor comes to a 90 degree angle, at which point you turn. A “wrong” turn might result in your finding an item. It’s serviceable, sure, but they feel like tedious time wasters, instead of the multi-layered puzzles that the likes of Persona 5 attempted to introduce. Each dungeon is a simple labyrinth, one which you aim to escape as quickly as possible.
Luckily you can bargain with demons to have them join your team, which at least makes visiting a dungeon seem worthwhile. Each new dungeon isn’t a challenge or a test of your abilities – especially not early on – instead, they’re a chance to enhance your team and complete your “Pokédex” of demons. Collect enough demons and you’ll unlock the ability to fuse and summon more powerful creations, as you can in pretty much any other SMT game.
It hits all the notes you need an SMT game to, but it suffers from the same problem that Tokyo Mirage Sessions did. The cast here isn’t bad, but far from memorable. Arrow, frankly, looks like a generic NPC, to the point that I was surprised to find him become a primary part of the team. The characters are fleshed out over the course of the story, naturally, but only Milady manages to make an instant impression, and it’s mostly because of the jokes you’ll make about her name. *Doffs fedora*
When SMT fans rant and rave about the games they love and why, the characters are a central part of the conversation, and the social link system made Persona the most popular SMT brand by far. In Soul Hackers 2, the characters are just fine, and so is everything else. Atlus once again nailed the presentation and battles we expect from an SMT game, but without characters who make an instant and lasting impression, Soul Hackers 2 ends up feeling soulless.
Written by Dave Aubrey on behalf of GLHF.
