Any JRPG fan owes it to themselves to experience this game's amazing storytelling and character development
Later in 2000, Atlus published Persona 2: Eternal Punishment and it was considered to be a much superior game. The localization team made a nice faithful translation and the game itself was very good on its own. However, Persona 2 was actually so big that it had to be fit into two games. Eternal Punishment was the 2nd part. So what happened to the first part of the game, Innocent Sin? It was never actually released outside Japan so much of the world didn't get to experience the first part of this wonderful two-part game which was really a shame considering how superb and unique Persona 2: Innocent Sin really is.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin puts you in the shoes of Tatsuya Suou, a student at Seven Sisters High School. Joining him in his adventure is a popular fellow classmate known as Lisa Silverman, an iconic narcissistic student from a rival school called Eikichi Mishina, an incredibly optimistic reporter named Maya Amano, and her photographer partner Yukino Mayuzumi. The game's story follow them in their pursuit of a mysterious man known as the "Joker" who puts them in a near death situation at the beginning of the game and seems to have a connection to their past and the mysterious Personas, powerful creatures which the main characters can summon which a strange man gives to them.
I'll say it now so I don't have to say it again: These characters are some of the best characters to ever appear in a video game. At first, they seem like typical clichés. Tatsuya seems like a typical popular bad boy who likes motorcycles and Lisa seems like the usual popular blonde girl who likes him and is always trying to get his attention. However, all the playable characters are given an insane amount of character development to the point where it's just amazing. It was also really great how the personal problems that the characters face are all very realistic. The characters all go through problems like family, extreme cultural diffusion, regrets from the past, and friendship. By the end of the adventure, almost everyone will have something to relate to and some of these characters will stay embedded into your mind for the longest time.
While the characterization is the highlight of Innocent Sin, the main storyline is very noteworthy as well. The main concept of the story is that "rumors become reality". With all the crazy stuff that happens at the beginning of the game, the man who informs the main characters of their Personas also give them the message that rumors are going to start becoming reality. At first, things don't seem too bad. Rumors about emblems being cursed and a broken clock tower that starts spinning once again start coming true, but it's nothing that's made a huge effect on people. Unfortunately, soon enough, this whole system starts being abused and some much more intense stuff begin to happen which end up impacting the whole world. The story of Innocent Sin is actually very dark and depressing. Lots of conspiracies and theories are present in the game and the developers weren't afraid to use religion and mythology to tie in with the story. When this is considered, it's actually not very surprising that the game was not given an official English translation by Atlus considering how this was a game released back in 1999 and censorship was much more dominant back then. The story is very smartly done though and uses its logic well. It's definitely something to remember.
While the storytelling in the game is excellent, the actual gameplay is one of the aspects that will receive mixed reactions depending on who is playing it. Old school dungeon crawling fans will absolutely love the dungeons and huge amount of contents in the game whereas newer fans who are used to more linearity and getting straight to the point will just get annoyed with the dungeons and will wish that they could just keep the story going. Innocent Sin is not an easy game. It requires lots of strategy, a large amount of persona planning before tackling a dungeon, and if you want to make the game easier for yourself then there will be a lot of grinding. Serious RPG fans will love this while those who stick to the more mainstream stuff will despise it.
The battle system is very unique but can be frustrating at the same time. The biggest focus of it is, of course, the personas. No matter how much you try to avoid them, personas will always be the biggest part of the battles. They allow you to cast elemental spells, heal your allies, and combine attacks in order to perform powerful and helpful fusion spells. While physical attacks are helpful when you want to conserve SP and when enemies set up magic reflection barriers, the personas are, in the end, much more useful and vital to any battle.
The aspect that makes the battles unique is that when fighting demons, you can actually strike up a conversation and talk to them using any character. Each character has their own set of dialogue options and you can even make two or three characters talk to a demon at once and make their own little performance. Depending on which emotions you stir up in the demon (interest, happiness, fear, anger), they will have different reactions. Some of the results are more obvious like how making demons scared will make them run away and whatnot but the biggest reward you're looking for is for the demons to give you tarot cards which are the items which allow you to summon newer, more powerful personas. Since the contact/talk system directly ties in with the personas, that brings up the issue that you cannot avoid the contact system no matter how hard you try. Sooner or later, you're going to have to go grinding either to rank up your personas, collect tarot cards, or level your characters up since you were too busy doing something else in the battles and missed out on lots of experience points
While this doesn't sound too bad, especially if you're into the whole battle system of Persona 2 and you enjoy it like I did, the contact system is very frustrating because you have a huge amount of contact options (four choices for each character and several combinations) and more likely than not, most of them will anger the demon. Thus it boils down to a test of trial-end-error to see which response pleases the demon that you want to talk with. What if you blow all your chances and infuriate the demon? Well, you'll just have to live with it. This gets out of hand sometimes to the point where you'll just have to look at a strategy guide or a walkthrough just to get your job done and keep moving with the game. It's also more frustrating that sometimes to mix things up, the demons will ask you questions and you pretty much have to guess what response will raise their interest or happiness. It doesn't help that in some cases, their reaction is random so you'll have to rely on luck to make the demon's interest go up instead of angering him. I know that I've been ranting about this problem for a long while now but it just seems like a cheap way for Atlus to extend the game's length and frustrate gamers. The contact system had so much potential but too many elements of it just don't get it working well. It's good that the dialogue in the contacts are actually interesting though (but of course, after seeing the same ones over and over again, it loses its appeal) The battles are still fun when you're actually fighting though, it's just not fun when you're grinding so much for tarot cards to get more powerful personas.
Thankfully, the gameplay is the only aspect that you may have doubts about. Everything else is very appealing and done well. The graphics are one thing. From a technical standpoint, it doesn't look very impressive. It's a post-Final Fantasy VII game that uses unimpressive sprites and only one type of battle background. In fact, if you saw gameplay of this without knowing anything about the game, you'd probably think it's an SNES game (it does some things that would be impossible with the SNES technology but it's still unimpressive for a Playstation game). However, the whole old-school look gives it a unique feel. The sprites still have lots of movements that would have been impossible on earlier generation systems and because the game doesn't use a 3D character models, it instead relies on very beautiful 2D character portraits and art. The full motion videos are also very nice because it takes advantage of its low tech feel by combining computer generated backgrounds and still objects while having the characters as anime stills that occasionally move which creates a nice mix of graphical styles. The special effects in battle are also surprisingly done well as some of the attacks look very cool when the characters get more advanced spells on their Personas.
Together with the story, the sound and audio is also one of the best parts of the game that barely has any flaws in it. The music is some of the best and most fitting that I've heard in an RPG. Major battle themes are particularly intense and many of the characters' defining moments which help develop them are made even more impactful through appropriate music choices. Sound effects are also quite solid. One of the more surprising things that this game succeeds in is the voice acting. It's all in Japanese so nothing gets lost in translation unlike many of the older translated Playstation RPGs. While there actually isn't any voice acting in cutscenes, the characters all show an impressive amount of emotion during short dialogue snippets done before the major battles of the game begin which really sets the tone. Especially in the battles that you start going through after the midway point of the game where the characters are put under heavy stressful situations where the voice actors really let out their emotions and make the battles several times more memorable then they would have been without them.
Persona 2: Innocent Sin is not a perfect game, but it's definitely a great one that deserves to be remembered. Its storytelling is top-notch and although it might seem a bit dated, the presentation of the game is excellent, especially on the audio side. I can't ignore the flaws of the game which will definitely turn off some gamers, but if you don't mind lots of grinding and exploring (or if you have a good strategy guide or walkthrough with you) then you really owe it to yourself to experience this game.
Good Points:
+ ridiculous amount of character development makes the main characters appealing and likable to the point where almost everyone can have someone to relate to
+ story is appropriately dark and interesting
+ old-school RPG fans will love the dungeon crawling and leveling up the Personas
+ music has a modern feel to it and is used fittingly
+ voice acting, though sparse, is well done
+ character portraits look beautiful
Bad Points:
- old school dungeon feel will not appeal to everyone
- graphics are unimpressive from a technical standpoint
- contact system has too many random elements thrown in