PERSONA 2 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT SERIES

Persona 2 is an interesting mix of mature themes (mass murder, the occult, monsters that ask questions about your character's breasts) and a hint of Japanese pop culture that lends a bit of misguided but welcome humor to the proceedings. What starts as a simple investigation into the Joker murders becomes a full-fledged adventure once the Joker shows up at Seven Sisters High School and murders the principal. At the center of all this madness is Maya Amano, a reporter for a popular teen magazine called Coolest. The Joker's curse turns rumor into fact, causing all sorts of trouble, from mass murder to filling the land with tons of different demons. To make a long story short, Sumaru City is plagued by a curse. Eternal Punishment takes place in the same setting as the first chapter, but it retells enough of the first chapter's story throughout its first few hours to ensure that you're up to speed with the game's bizarre events. The first chapter, subtitled Innocent Sin, was released in Japan in 1999. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is actually the second half of the Persona 2 saga. But in both storyline and in execution, Persona 2 isn't your average RPG, and results are mostly pleasing. For the most part, Persona 2: Eternal Punishment sticks to the conventions of the genre - your party moves from place to place, randomly encountering monsters on a quest to save the city. Should the game have random encounters, or should the monster be visible from the world map? Should status effects last outside of battle, or should every character be returned to normal status at the completion of the battle? The list of 'either ors' goes on and on, and the result is a genre that, for better or worse, is packed with games that are extremely similar to one another - yet one key system or concept can either make or break each game in the minds of the genre's fans. It almost seems like, outside of twisting the combat and magic system in new ways, RPG developers are designing the rest of their RPGs' systems with a 'one from column A, two from column B' mentality. We cut to black.ĬOMING UP NEXT: Less heavy-handed crap as the damn game gets started.When it comes to the RPG genre, most games really don't stray too far from the normal conventions that made the genre popular. The creature in the shrine observes the ritual in silence. The group bows several times to the shrine before them, then proceeds to add in some clapping for good spiritual measure.

There is a conference occuring in the conference room, appropriately enough. We cut to the game engine as an old woman approaches the boy. but, with the blink of an eye, turns out to be completely intact. that appears to be caught in a raging inferno. or does he? He stands in front of a shrine. We cut back to the real world, as the dreamer awakens.

Please.just forget about me.go on without me. with a young woman reaching out for his hand. This story starts, as many do, with a dream and a dreamer:

We're going with this one instead of the first Persona because, quite simply, the translation of that particular title was a hack job and we'd all die of sympathetic embarassment long before the game was through.Įnough of that, though. While they're basically two halves of the same story, you don't need to worry about missing much, as nearly all of the loose ends are tied up in Eternal Punishment and there's a fair amount of recap. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment is technically the third Persona game, following Persona 2: Innocent Sin, which was never released in English. They're not so unique for being far more popular over in Japan than they are over here, so there's a fair chance that many of you never got to try them. They're fairly unique amongst console RPGs for featuring both a modern-day setting and an absolute mind trip of a story.

PERSONA 2 ETERNAL PUNISHMENT SERIES

Strap yourselves in, slip into something more comfortable, call for a pizza, do whatever you need to do to prepare yourself because we're going for a trip.įor those of you who are new to this series, the Persona games are part of the Megami Tensei, or MegaTen, series of console-style RPGs from Atlus - this is the same series from which we get Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne, and.er.DemiKids. but before we get started, let's get one thing straight:īuckle your seat belts, folks.

Persona 2 eternal punishment