Macabre, mature, innovative, daring and lacking.
User Rating: 7 | Persona 2: Batsu - Eternal Punishment (Deluxe Pack) PS
Gameplay- Gameplay is by far the shinning feature of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. Let us begin with the battle system. EP uses a random battle engine. Once in a battle (where you can use all of your party members at once) you are given a menu to form a battle strategy. You will select each command for each member of your party, and they will repeat this command automatically until the battle is finished (this is very similar to the Phantasy Star battle system except EP has much more variety of commands and is generally more advanced and pleasant to watch). Party members will call personas that will launch magical attacks (Personas can be changed and there are A LOT of personas in the game), or they will physically attack themselves or a third option which will be discussed momentarily. All of the actions the characters is done smoothly so it actually appears as they are fighting instead of, attack, return to position, attack again ect. The third option, mentioned earlier, is the ability to actually negotiate with the enemy (demons only) into giving you money or items, or even talking them into a contract where that specific type of enemy will make an alliance with your party provided that you gave favorable responses (from the right party member or members) to the questions that the enemy poses to them. Every enemy type slain and contracted will be added to Eternal Punishment's vast bestiary to be reviewed at any time outside of storyline sequence or battle. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment features gambling, shopping, fortune telling, affinity reading, aroma therapy, private investigation, and rumor spreading (rumors ALWAYS come true) among many of the features outside of battle. EP's map is adequate but is sometimes difficult and/or annoying to navigate (most of the stages are designed as mazes) and the battle system, although fresh and fun is extremely repetitive due to party members taking too long to level up. This is why I deducted a point from gameplay. Story- Eternal Punishment is part of a popular series in Japan known as Megami Tensai that has a semi-continuing storyline. I think this may be my reason for thinking although the story is well composed, it is VERY DULL. I am someone who will play an RPG for the story, I play Eternal Punishment only for gameplay because compared to a game like Xenogears (my basis of comparison), EP is nothing. Sorry Eternal Punishment, although your story is VERY WELL COMPOSED, IT IS ALSO EXTREMELY SLOW AND UNINTERESTING (I am also sorry for comparing you to Xenogears, life really is not fair). Graphics/Sound- Ugh... Eternal Punishment is full of ambient repetitive noise for level music. The battle music is not that bad and the sound effects are tolerable with laughably bad voice translation "Whoopass completed" and "I'm sorry" (after winning the battle) are among my favorites. There are also some catchy if not funny lines delivered by some of the characters including "Don't underestimate me you f***ing b***ard" and "You're all under arrest." Persona 2: Eternal Punishment uses a sprite graphic engine with polygon levels. None of the visuals could be called anything better than mediocre. Playtime-Replayability- Here is the other place EP gets a high score. Eternal Punishment is a long game with "new game plus" features, a library of enemies and personas to collect and even a hidden dungeon. Eternal Punishment will keep anyone who wants to spend OVER TWO HUNDRED HOURS to complete a game very entertained. This is of course assuming they like the game they are playing. Final Recommendation- First and foremost, EP is NOT FOR CHILDREN (rated T). Getting that out of the way, I would recommend Eternal Punishment very strongly to two kinds of people. Those who love an innovative RPG battle system, and those who want to spend a very long time playing a game. I personally fit into both of those categories, so I will warn you, EP take a very large amount of dedication and is not something that can be played casually. You either dedicate a huge chunk of your free time to it, or never play it at all. -Geusprime
