Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 14 October 2022
I ended up writing quite an essay. Summary below:
1) Shin Megami Tensei universe game with strong emphasis on characters and plot
2) Demon summoning game with a rich and complex turned based battle system.
3) Dungeon crawling is required with some convoluted dungeons requiring time and patience to fully explore (quality of life improvements have since been made with an update)
4) The game should offer 50 hours or so gameplay
5) I found it a decent challenge on Normal difficulty, with party level similar to that of the bosses
Soul Hackers 2 is Atlus' latest entry into the Megami Tensei (Megaten) universe, after Shin Megami Tensei (SMT) V came out November last year and while fans await the next Persona game.
The plot is set in a future vision of a stagnant society, where a super intelligent entity called Aion sends two agents to Tokyo to try to thwart a potential world ending threat. This involves “Covenants”, seemingly living entities which bestow special powers on those who possess one. In early events, Aions agents try to find Covenant holders, but the first one they come across has already been killed and is revived by the process called a Soul Hack.
It is a turn based jrpg where, for most of the game, you have a party of four demon summoners using a specialised weapon called a COMP. A demon can be equipped to each COMP, giving the summoner the ability to use a range of skills for attacking, healing and buffing, in addition to the basic attacks in the COMP.
The gameplay consists of exploring dungeons, finding enemy parties, which usually appear as an undifferentiated red entity, which you can choose to fight or repel with a sword attack. While it is unwise to avoid all enemies, they spawn at quite a high rate, fighting them all will lead to become over-levelled.
There are two other types of roaming enemy, black ones are what are called risky enemies and are high level challenging battles (items to enable escape should always be carried!) There are also the so-called rare enemies, which can be difficult to kill (high agility) , but drop items that can be sold for a lot of money.
Dungeon exploration was quite user friendly, you can save almost anywhere and there are a variety of teleportation posts that enable you to get to any previously found part of the same dungeon. However, it should be said that as you progress, dungeons become more complex and labyrinthine, I wouldn't rate any of them as being as convoluted as in SMT Nocturne, but they require some effort and patience.
Demon recon was an important feature, rare or valuable items are found by demons rather than in treasure chests. I liked this feature, as it often helped identify parts of the dungeon that hadn't been explored and led to some conversations with demons.
I would rate the game as being reasonably challenging at the normal difficulty setting, with some boss battles requiring some thinking to get the optimal strategy.
Enemies usually consist of parties of up to five, typically demons, but there are boss battles against summoners who can have up to four demons with them at a time.
The key mechanic is attacking enemy weakness in categories such as fire, ice, gunfire and ruin (ailments). Targeting an enemy weakness adds a demon to what is called the Sabbath, a non elemental attack which causes additional damage at the end of the protagonists' turn.
As you progress through the game, special skills can be acquired such as enabling demons to be changed mid battle or adding more demons to the Sabbath.
This creates a fascinating, varied, at times somewhat challenging, and rewarding battle system. Boss battles pose some particularly interesting challenges, often requiring changes to be made to the demons used during the battle.
This game does not have the “press-turn” mechanic of the recent SMT games and in my opinion was better for it, without the lop sided battles that could result in SMT V. The summoner battles in particular required changes of tactics at various stages, depending on which demons were summoned. Manipulating the battle to add multiple demons (sometimes 10 or more) to the Sabbath attack, was highly satisfying and led to some the game's most impressive animations.
While I enjoyed SMT V, some of the bosses were simplistic, requiring little more than the spamming of one attack.
Demon recruitment and fusion are important parts of the game, allowing the acquisition of more powerful demons as you progress and raise levels.
The complete compendium contains over 150 demons familiar to SMT and Persona players.
Upgrades to your characters' equipment and COMPs also give important power ups.
Overall, I very much enjoyed the battle system and played some of the key boss battles several times.
Other feature I liked was the soul matrix, a series of dungeons that enable you to delve into the lives of the summoners and find out about their motivations, which, in addition to the various conversations in a local bar, allows you to know characters.
There is quite a bit of voice acted dialogue in the game. I thought the English voices were okay, but you can switch to Japanese voices in the options if you like.
Though I enjoyed it overall I can understand the criticism the game has received.
The last dungeon had some more imaginative design; but earlier ones had a somewhat dull and repetitive aspect. This game looks like Atlus wanted to spend less time and money on the environments than they did in SMT V.
I love the look of SMT V and its free-roaming exploration, and those who wanted more of that may feel let down by Soul Hackers 2.
I have played beaten several Megaten games including Nocturne, on the Normal difficulty. I found several bosses in this game quite challenging at this game's Normal difficulty, either at the level of the boss, or a couple of levels below, though I did do some of them on hard as well. I would recommend Normal for those who want a fair amount of challenge and Hard for the most experienced players only.
I think the difficulty curve was well managed in this game. So long as you did some fighting of demons in dungeons and got through to the boss at the right level, it felt like there were no difficulty spikes.
I played the PS5 version which loaded quickly and ran smoothly, I noticed no glitches or performance issues. I didn't try any DLC.
I often spend a long time in games like this weighing up options for demon fusion and I try to complete as many dungeons as I can, so my play time can be long, but I think most gamers should be able to get 50 hours out of it.
Despite some negative comments I feel Soul Hackers 2 has many virtues, with a good level of emphasis on story and character development and the very enjoyable battle system.
