Persona 2 Eternal Punishment Review - The Consequences of Sin

the following video will contain spoilers for both persona 2 innocent sin as well as persona 2 eternal punishment i highly suggest that you play innocent sin yourself or watch my video on the game to get extra context from my review of eternal punishment persona 2 innocent sin is a good game overall sure i think that the psp remastered definitely butchered the combat mechanics to a large extent but what kept me going through all that was the game's story and cast of characters innocent sin ended on a very somber note despite our hero's best effort they couldn't stop the world from being destroyed by nyarlathotep the only solution to this problem was to erase the group's memory of meeting each other by doing so a new timeline is created where the events of innocent sin never happened at the end of the day it seems as though the childhood friends were destined to stay apart though this game ended on a cliffhanger because in the new timeline maya and tatsuya bumped into each other by accident at the train station we're not shown what happens next but it's implied that this gave maya some sort of deja vu it was because of this cliffhanger that i went straight into playing eternal punishment after finishing the innocence in review i wanted to see how the story would continue and if any of the problems i had with innocent sin were fixed in this version of eternal punishment i guess i should mention the elephant in the room real quick much like innocent sin eternal punishment was initially released on the ps1 before receiving a remastered version for the psp this version of the game features added content as well as the same battle system that was featured in the innocent sin remaster the problem with the sport is the fact that you're not playing it unless you can read japanese because much like innocent sen on ps1 the game was only released in japan i believe the reasoning this time around was because the psp was already fading out of popularity because of the launch of the ps vita and since persona 4 golden came out the same year as eternal punishment psp i can only imagine that game taking more priority due to the fact that persona 4 was already big at the time since there's no fan translation of eternal punishment psp yet the only way you're playing this game in english is through the ps1 version for the purposes of this review i'll be looking at eternal punishment in the context of someone who's played both parts of the duology as intended so let's get started now shall we maya amano is our protagonist this time around and the game opens up with her being assigned to write a story about the joker rumor just like in persona 2 innocent sin if you call your own cell phone number you'll summon a deity known as the joker the difference this time around is that instead of joker granting dreams to those who seek them he acts as a hitman who will kill anyone who you request maya's roommate and friend ulala accompanies her to seven sisters high school because the two plan on going to a party after the investigation it's here when the two meet a detective that's been investigating the recent murders named katsu yasuo the older brother of tatsuya it's implied that the two have a strained relationship and katsuya is using the joker investigation as an excuse to try to check up on his little brother maya and ulala's investigation doesn't go so smoothly as they eventually find the principle of seven sisters murdered in his own office maya oolala and katsuya chase after a suspect but end up encountering the joker joker apparently knows maya because of his experience with her on the other side as he calls it but maya has no idea what he's talking about joker sends a demon to attack the trio and they all begin to awaken to their personas slowly joker manages to wipe them all out in a single attack and they awaken in the realm of unconsciousness where they meet philemon he warns the group that the rumors in samara city are becoming a reality and that something threatens the very fabric of this side's existence philemon seemingly isn't at full strength because he's barely able to get the message across before the group is sent back to the real world after investigating the school a bit more the trio manages to come across both joker and the suspect behind the principal's murder anna joker tries to remind anna of her life in the other timeline and claims that the world she lives in now is one born from evil the group tries to battle joker again but it's in vain because he casts a spell to put everyone to sleep before he can finish everyone off tatsuya bursts in and fends off joker he hands maya a seven sisters high school emblem claiming that if he heads to the kuzanoha detective agency she can spread a rumor that as long as maya holds the emblem she'll be protected from joker the deja vu boy leaves but not before telling maya not to get herself involved and to forget about their meeting wondering if what tatsuya said was right the three head to kuzanoha and test the waters thanks to the chief's connection they managed to get in contact with a man named baofu a wiretapper who runs an underground website dedicated to collecting and spreading rumors he takes interest in our group because they manage to survive an encounter with the joker baofu believes that the foreign minister tatsuzo sudo is involved with the joker thanks to a wiretap he put on tatsuzo baofu was able to discover that before the public even knew what the joker rumor was tatuzo was already discussing him there's also rumors that tatsuzo has connections to some shady businesses and that his son tatsuya sudo was behind an unsolved arson case thinking that this is too much of a coincidence baufu suggests that the four head to where tatsuzo's son is being held to get some information about the joker it's implied that baofu has some ulterior motives but they are currently unknown one thing is for sure though as long as maya holds onto the emblem given to her she'll no longer be a target for joker which means that there's slim chances she'll run into tatsuya ever again so maya makes the decision to burn the emblem putting herself back on joker's radar but also opening up the opportunity to discover the truth about the deja vu boy jesus christ that is a lot to take in but when summing it all up it's actually very similar to the setup to the plot of innocent sin we have a group of persona users trying to go up against joker but in due time they end up getting involved with the affairs of a cult known as the new world order their plan is the same as the mass circles but replace jabalba with another spaceship called the torafune and replace the grand cross with the ancient earth dragons but the differences are in the details because unlike every other persona game this one focuses on a cast of adults this is the only time in the series where this is a thing and it's something that i want to see tackled again because we're getting to the point where high school students are being overused in this series making the cats a group of adults opens up plenty of opportunities to tell more adult-oriented stories one thing that eternal punishment story focuses on is the mystery surrounding tatsuya it's actually a brilliant plot element because it caters to two types of players if you've played innocent sin then it's not hard to tell that tatsuya has his memories from those events in this new timeline though for reasons that aren't apparent yet he's very adamant about making sure maya and his other friends stay out of his business it makes you ask yourself why is tatsuya acting like this and why does he remember the events of innocent sin if you were a part of that group that played eternal punishment back when it first came out in the west or just skipped innocent sin you get to experience this mystery in the same way that maya does maya has no idea who tatsuya is but he seems to know her and for whatever reason he wants to try to keep her away from trouble paradoxically tatsuya attempting to distance himself from maya makes us the player wants to learn more about him and what his deal is but i'm getting a bit ahead of myself persona 2 eternal punishment came out only one year after the previous installment this means that the game uses the same engine along with repurposing and reusing environmental assets mechanically speaking eternal punishment is the exact same to innocent sin with only a few minor differences so instead of re-explaining the gameplay and the mechanics i'll instead be talking about the differences between playing eternal punishment on the ps1 versus playing innocent sin on the psp i want to start off by saying i haven't really dabbled much in the ps1 era rpgs pardon me was very unsure about the gameplay portion of eternal punishment because i wasn't quite sure if i was spoiled by playing the psp version of innocent sin which featured a completely revamped ui faster battle speed and just quicker travel in general i was expecting something very old school and outdated and i'm not sure if this is a hot take or not but after playing eternal punishment on ps1 i actually ended up enjoying the gameplay a hell of a lot more here the first thought that entered my mind when playing eternal punishment was the game's difficulty the thing that ruined a good majority of my enjoyment of innocent sin on psp was the extreme lack of challenge there was no point to use the game's mechanics for their fullest because you could get away with just using the auto battle feature most of the time this was double issue when you applied buffs to the party your party would receive barely any damage so battling enemies lacked any sort of tension i knew before going into it that persona 2 on ps1 would be far more challenging than the psp remasters but i wasn't sure to what extent the little i read about the game online before starting had me thinking that this game was going to be very difficult people commonly refer to eternal punishment as the most challenging persona games in the series or at the very least one of the hardest which is something that i can't fully agree with if i were to rank the persona series in terms of how much trouble each game gave me it would look a little something like this i'd place eternal punishment just above persona 4 but below persona 3. though i would say that eternal punishment offers a more fun and fair challenge than persona 3 because of the former's difficulty curve overall i would say that eternal punishment is not a super difficult game but i'm not too sure if that's because at this point i'm already used to the mechanics of the persona 2 duology and have played a lot of mega 10 games in the past even though i went into the game blind i didn't have much trouble doing with anything that was thrown my way because i always took my time in between dungeons to make sure my party had useful personas and updated equipment my final playtime was around 52 hours which is almost double the play time i had at the end of innocent sin to be fair innocent sin on psp has better load times and the game just runs faster overall there's even an option to turn off animation so you can speed through the grinding but at the end of the day there were many more times in eternal punishment where i spent a good few hours grinding to keep my characters updated this isn't a complaint towards eternal punishment because at the end of the day this is something that i did to myself on the bright side this allowed me to really absorb the mechanics of eternal punishment and really appreciate the design changes and just the way the game is structured in general i said this earlier in the video but eternal punishment's combat system is almost identical to innocent sins but there are a few changes here that overall improve the experience the contact system has been dramatically simplified when compared to the previous two games persona 1 and persona 2 innocence gave every party member 4 different methods of contact so this typically meant that you had around 20 different contact options to choose from innocence then also introduced team-up conversations as well which expanded your options to an overwhelming degree eternal punishment takes a bit of a different spin with its contact system every character now has a contact method that's unique to themselves and reflects their personalities for example if you choose maya when contacting a demon she'll interview them as if it's for a magazine article baofu has a shady pass and a history of wiretapping so his contact method involves those skills there still is complexity in the contact system because you can get brand new results by pairing up characters with each other much like an innocent sin something that i'm not a fan of personally is that when pairing up the characters for contact the character order is what determines the action the group performs let's say you want katsuya baofu and ulala to interact with the enemy you have to select the characters in a specific order to get the interaction that you want but the game isn't entirely clear on what the result of pairing up the characters would be until you execute it the most you get is a little hint of the current relationships of the characters at the bottom of the screen which influences the outcome at this point you're all probably sick of hearing me talk about the contact system in these games but i personally feel as though this mechanic doesn't need to be as complicated as it is this is why i appreciate that in games like nocturne and smt4 the negotiation system is straightforward i just think in the game where the main challenge comes from the combat system having the negotiations be tough to do without a guide isn't exactly the best design choice that's not to say that i dislike this system however i still think it functions as intended and there weren't any points where i became frustrated but once again i believe that using a guide when contacting demons is pretty much necessary if you don't want to waste a lot of time experimenting if we're going to go into a bit more depth involving difficulty something that i noticed right away was how brutal the start of the game was the first dungeon doesn't really stop you from just waltzing up the clock tower and taking on the first boss but doing this is a huge mistake because you won't be prepared at all for the upcoming demons i got my ass slapped so hard on the first attempt because i wasn't expecting how much damage i'd received from the enemies so i ended up spending some time grinding up my character levels as well as performing fusion spells to trigger mutations to increase my persona's stats in about an hour or so i maxed out the ranks of the starting personas and even got a heal all spell on maya which ended up helping so much boss fights in general are just way more interesting this time around this isn't just due to the fact that you take way more damage and eternal punishment but also because some of the bosses this time around feature some gimmicks for example one of the boss fights near the end of the game will regenerate almost 800 hp after every turn so the main challenge comes from finding a way to deal as much damage as possible so the boss's regeneration won't undo all of your efforts not all bosses are created equal however because there are some bosses that push the envelope just a little too far there's a boss about halfway through the game where their minions keep spamming status ailments this was easily the most frustrating part of the game because there's a chance that the entire party could be put to sleep and you just waste turns trying to recover thankfully i had a persona that could reflect gun damage so i ended up winning due to sheer luck taking this as a sign to things to come i ended up grinding quite a few times throughout the game if you're the type of person that just bum rushes through eternal punishment's main content there will be many points where you may just end up getting stuck due to not having necessary skills or personas to do with the bosses effectively so yes this is one of those games where i really do recommend some sort of grinding make sure you fuse brand new personas so you'll always have the option to change your strategy make sure those personas have their ranks maxed out so you have access to all the skills you need if you're not a fan of taking time to do this then i'm not sure if eternal punishment is the right game for you i personally love this kind of stuff because it actually requires me to use the mechanics at the game's disposal but i understand the argument saying that grinding is tedious here's a tip in case you decide to play eternal punishment yourself in between dungeons the bomb shelter at kasumi yaga high school is going to be your best friend the bomb shelter is a total of 8 areas you can explore to re-fight the enemies from the previous dungeons the further you progress through the game the more areas open up while encountering enemies here give you a decent amount of experience i recommend grinding at the start of the next dungeon rather than here i mostly use the bomb shelter to acquire a lot of tarot cards for fusion what i suggest you do is form a pact with a couple of demons in the furthest area you can explore and continuously make them eager not only will you get a lot of tarot cards for the arcana that demon represents but you will also be able to stockpile a bunch of free cards so you can turn into any arcana that you need this ended up being my primary way of obtaining tarot cards for fusion because it ended up being a lot faster and easier than trying to track down a demon of a specific arcana that i needed for a persona fusion an easy way to rank up a newly fused persona is to make sure they have at least one spell in their skill list that doesn't deal any damage to enemies what you do is enter a battle and set everyone's strategies to use support or ailment magic a persona's rank will increase once you summon it a certain amount of times so just leaving the game on auto you can go do something else while the characters personas get stronger this method isn't exactly quick but it's very easy to do overall i'd say that eternal punishment's gameplay mechanically speaking is slightly better than innocent sins if only because the negotiation system is much easier to understand and execute while i still may not be a fan of making the negotiation a challenge i still can recognize that there are improvements made here that match up with my preference when it comes to my overall enjoyment of the combat system i actually did have a pretty good time at the end of the day which is very weird for me to say because even though the gameplay in innocence sin is almost the exact same i didn't enjoy the gameplay of the former much at all all it took was one small change to make the experience so much better in the case of going from innocent sin psp to eternal punishment ps1 the higher enemy damage made me actually think and strategize instead of using the auto battle feature out of all of the classic persona games eternal punishment is my favorite when looking at it from a pure gameplay department at the time of writing this video i have yet to play the ps1 version of innocent sin so i reserve the right to change my mind whenever i get around to playing that version of the game so yeah the gameplay is good and all but what i was really looking forward to is seeing how the persona 2 story would continue and eternal punishment something that i praised innocent sin a lot for was the relationship that the party members had with each other and the interactions within the party i thought that the group in that game was well established and they all bounced off each other naturally i had some expectations going into eternal punishment and sadly i don't think it quite hits the mark this time around don't get me wrong the cast in eternal punishment is solid these are well-defined characters that go through their own personal developments but in my opinion i feel as though the party lacks a great chemistry as an entire group there are some excellent character moments between a select few members i quite like a lot of the interactions between baufu and katsuya because they work on the opposite ends of the law so hearing them argue about their different points of view is very entertaining and helps flesh out their characters what makes me think this is the fact that the group doesn't really have much in common with each other the pin that held the innocent sin cast together were their memories of their past sins and their relationship with jun i was invested in the story surrounding that group because there were a lot more personal stakes involved with the plot the eternal punishment cast while having their own motivations to go on their journey lacks anything that really binds them together this could very well be intentional to show the complications of being an adult and how a lot of things are out of your control but intentional or not i feel as though one party is far more interesting as a group than another as individual characters this party is mostly strong i don't have the same attachment to this group as i do the group from innocent sin but that's mostly because of my personal preference than weak character development there is one exception to this however and i'll explain more in detail once i get to them first up the bat is maya's best friend ooh lala she's one of the first characters you meet in eternal punishment and while it may not seem like her right away oola allah suffers a lot from self-confidence issues this eventually led her to comparing herself to maya a lot where she ended up developing a deep jealousy of maya oolala was upset that maya had been managing to find success in her career while she struggled to even find a field that she was good at coupled that with bad past experience with men in a drinking problem we have someone who's filled with a lot of negative emotions which makes her a prime candidate for the new world orders plan you see the new world order wants to harness the negative emotions of the people of sumaru city so they can summon the earth dragons to bring about armageddon this energy is called kagerei the way that they obtain kegeray is via a rumor that was spread over the news by a fortune teller a part of the cult if anyone were to use the joker rumor then they would become a joker themselves what this means is that their negative emotions such as sin or jealousy has driven them to the point where they're willing to take a life of another ooh la in a drunken state calls her own phone number to put a hit on maya out of jealousy believing it to be nothing more than a rumor at the time it's the reason as to why she's so protective of maya at the start of the game when she learns that joker is after maya oolala blames herself for the danger she put her friend in ulala eventually becomes a joker herself and the group has to battle her after jokulala is defeated the group takes her back to the velvet room in order to have her joker side suppressed but the truth is there's no way that this curse can ever be lifted entirely from her as negative emotions are just a part of all humans and will be up to oolala to keep herself in check if she were ever to fall in the same trap as she did before then her joker counterpart will resurface ooh la la is a prime example of what happens if you let your negative emotions get the better of you and this is something that her shadow criticizes her for near the end of the game she can't change what she did but she can still better herself by standing by maya's side no matter what something that rubs me the wrong way with ulala's character arc is the fact that the people around her don't exactly question or critique her actions involving the joker fiasco yes she was intoxicated at the time she called joker but i can't help but feel as though maya doesn't exactly have any strong reactions to her best friend putting a hit on her law does try to rectify her past sins by sticking by maya's side but i feel as though it's unrealistic and not believable that maya wouldn't react at all to learning this information about her friend i can't help but feel though this would damage the relationship between these two characters but it's never brought up again until near the end of the game and i think that's a huge missed opportunity i understand that the point of her story is to make sure to keep your emotions in check oola learns not to keep her insecurities bottled up and talk to maya about her problems but i think that the story could have gone far beyond what's presented here although that story is a very unique one in the context of the rest of the persona series because she's the only character that has a considerable focus on the topic of jealousy while yes jun paiyori and yosuke hanamura have some aspects of jealousy on their story it's not the central focus of their characters like it is for oola la so i find it super disappointing that this wraps up far too neatly and too quickly i don't care that ulala was drunk when she called the joker phone number she still had the desire to murder her friend yes she owns up to that mistake and wants to make amends for what happened but this should be the start of a much bigger story involving the friendship between maya and oolala and the trust issues that a situation like this would cause maya is a positive and caring person yes but you mean to tell me that she saw no problem in what ulala did i find it so disappointing that there could have been a much grander story involving repairing any potential trust issues maya may have with ulala but it was just ignored this is the only time oolala is in the spotlight and i wish they did more with her oohlala is probably my least favorite party member in this game but that's because she had a lot of extra potential that went unutilized her actual story is fine but it ends too abruptly to have the impact they were going for maufu is a very interesting character when we first meet him he claims to be from taiwan but strangely enough he's fluent in japanese i mentioned earlier in the video that he joins the party with ulterior motives and we eventually learn what those are about halfway through the game it turns out that baofu isn't exactly who he says he is his real name is karu saga a japanese prosecutor that was presumed dead he and his partner miki were investigating a money laundering scheme involving the minister of justice in the taiwanese mafia that was until tatsuzo sudo marked the two for death so they wouldn't be able to expose the criminal activity kauru managed to survive his encounter with the mafia leader yang pao because he managed to awaken to his persona but his partner miki wasn't as lucky and was killed by young pow kara was filled with regret and despair from then on promising to avenge venture discarding his old identity in favor of the name baofu he vowed to himself to get revenge on both young pao and tatsuzo even if it meant turning to a life of crime lucky for baofu young pause mafia the ten tao len has been reluctantly working with the new world order they'd kidnap the victims of the joker curse so they can be sent to have their kegeray extracted from them so the main reason as to why baofu teamed up with our group was so that he could eventually get his revenge because deep down he was afraid that he would fail on his own but baofu's biggest struggle comes from his inability to forgive himself for what happened to miki it's one of the more subtler aspects about his character because it isn't fully addressed until the final dungeon but his entire identity came from a place of sorrow he wore this metaphorical mask in order to run away from his true feelings but his journey throughout the game helped him learn to have faith in others to help him out when needed and more importantly he is able to gain the strength to forgive himself baofu was able to get closure with miki during a vision that was conjured by a shadow at the end of the game he's able to retire his baofu persona and return to a more honest life as keru it's because of stories like baofu so the fandom wants to see another persona game following adults the plot surrounding him is very mature and deals with the concept of self-loathing and vengeance in a way that isn't tackled in this series again what really won me over to baufu was his interactions with the other characters he's got a very cynical outlook on life and butt's head with every party member at some point or another but it's not in a way that makes him toxic as a teammate the way i see it it's a massively wears to hide away his inner sorrow until he's able to cope with it overall he's a solid character in my eyes katsuyasu is a homicide detective that is assigned to investigate the joker killings he ends up joining maya and ulala after he's suddenly taken off the case katsuya wants to discover the truth behind the joker and the new world order's involvement but this slowly takes a back seat when he learns that his younger brother tatsuya is involved in one way or another despite the strained relationship he has with his brother katsuya is very adamant about keeping his younger brother safe katsu doesn't have much time to spend with his younger brother due to his job so eventually the two grew apart but katsuya still tries his best to care for tatsuya even putting money aside from his paycheck to support him in the future katsuya became a detective for a somewhat personal reason that being the clearly innocence of his father 10 years prior to the events of eternal punishment katsuya's father was also a police officer who was investigating tatsuya sudo the man who would eventually become the first joker tatsuzo would eventually catch wind of the investigation involving his son so he used his power within the police force to falsely charge katsuya's father so he'd be incarcerated this left a stain on the suo family name so katsya decided that it would be up to him to clear the name of his father he would give up his dream of becoming a patissier so he could go to law school and eventually find himself in the same position as his father this choice didn't come without any regret which is something that his shadow reveals to the group deep down katsya resents his brother and father because he had to give up his own dreams in pursuit of clearing the family name while it's true that katsya does have these feelings they don't overpower the love he has for his family which if you ask me is a very realistic aspect of his character it's much like oolala's jealousy towards maya but both are good nature people the difference is that one of them submitted to their negative emotions in a time of weakness while the other was able to stay strong and not give in katsuya's growth isn't as grand as someone like bao foos but that doesn't make him a bad character i've seen people refer to him as a bland character online and i personally disagree with that notion i personally found his origins of a detective exciting and how could you hate a guy who tries as hard as he does to reconnect with his brother if i were to rank these characters i would say i like katsya more than oolala but not as much as i like baofu eternal punishment takes notes from persona 1 in the sense that you get to choose who your fifth party member will be around 10 hours into the game we learned that nanjo and ellie from persona 1 are investigating the new world order and their connections to the joker curse you have to spread a rumor for which character you'd like to meet once you learned of their involvement this choice will determine which character route you'll go through if you pick nanjo you'll journey with him to where the nwo are holding the joker curse victims and discover that takahisa kandori from persona 1 has been revived through the power of rumors he now works alongside the nwo helping develop the joker separation machine they use to collect kagarei if you decide to pick ellie as your partner the group will instead head towards the sumaru tv station and confront a woman named shizuo ishigami shizuru is working with a new world order and is the one responsible for spreading rumors in their favor through her fortune telling no matter who you pick as a party member the team up is only temporary and the route is only a momentary diversion from the main path much like yukino from innocent sin they're more so just a stand-in for the eventual fifth party member but i feel as though yukino had more screen time dedicated to her and the game even tried to evolve her character more for full transparency i've only played through ninja's round at the time of this video so i'll not be making any judgments on ellie's road if i were to compare yukino's inclusion innocent sins to nancho's in eternal punishment i think yukina was more interesting as a party member while i don't think yukino's extra development was perfect in innocent sin there was clearly ideas to expand her character nacho feels more like an extended cameo because there isn't much going on with him in this story they try to say that kandori represents nanjo's shadow but i don't think there's enough time spent with either of them for me to really see what they were going for something nice to see is how much nature has really changed since persona 1. in that game he was a very cruel person that was willing to do terrible things for the greater good in eternal punishment nanjo has matured he's a far more compassionate person who's learned in his own words to not forsake the lesser for the greater it's cool to see how his experiences in persona 1 impacted him in this game but there isn't much new here to really expand his character that's probably just the reason why nanja was in this game for only a few dungeons this once again falls into the same trap that persona 1 did where the optional party members don't leave much of an impact on the game because it was written in a way where it didn't matter which one you chose the stuff that happens in nanja's route doesn't really have much of an effect on the main story at the end of the day other than gaining a new perspective i can only assume that the same applies to ellie's route but at some point i'll have to go through her route to see if that's true or not there is one more character i'd like to talk about before moving on to tatsuya that being our main protagonist maya amano i like maya and innocent sin she wasn't my favorite party member in that game but i liked her upbeat personality and her tendency to be the leader of the party in that game something that i noted in my innocence in video is that while i felt like maya was a realized character she didn't exactly have any sort of character arc like the rest of the cast did so when i learned that she was going to be the protagonist of eternal punishment i was looking forward to see what direction the writers would take her characters and if i'm being honest i think that maya is the most disappointing part about eternal punishment's narrative because in this game she's a silent protagonist before you all go tearing me apart in the comments section allow me to explain my thoughts remember in my innocent sin video where i took some time to discuss tatsuya as a character even though he was a silent protagonist while his personality wasn't as fleshed out as the rest of the cast he still did have aspects to make him feel like a character of his own so for eternal punishment the writers had the opportunity to expand his character further and let him speak his own mind free from player control the reason why this works is because tatsuya innocent sin was initially written as a silent protagonist before being turned into a stand-alone character this doesn't work for maya because she's already an established character what's the point of stripping away the things that people like the most about maya is it to stay with tradition of having a sign of protagonist in a megaten game well that's not a good decision in my eyes tradition or not there are multiple points where something bad has happened in the story or to one of the characters and i'd ask myself what does maya think how does maya feel about this but i never get the answers to these questions this is even more frustrating because i know if the same events were to happen in innocent sin we would get to see maya's reactions to them i understand that this is an alternate timeline but come on there's so much potential for maya's character here even if i were to pretend that maya was always a silent protagonist i just think she doesn't even compare to tatsuya when it comes to expressing herself there are a lot more moments that really show off tatsuya's personality and innocent sin than there are for maya and eternal punishment it's also a lot harder to nail down maya's personality for that matter we just sort of have to take the game's word for that she's a positive person because it isn't really shown off this time around her dialogue options are also a bit more generic than tatsuya's overall so when directly comparing the two his protagonists it doesn't really do maya any favors i'm not going to say that maya is a bad character but i think there could have been a lot more done with her which is doubly disappointing considering innocent sin left me wanting more with her character already the last party member i want to discuss is none other than the deja vu boy himself tatsuyasuo his character is tied very heavily to the overarching plot of eternal punishment so i may as well tackle two birds with one stone here a large aspect of eternal punishment's narrative is the overall feeling of deja vu as i pointed out earlier in the video the setup of eternal punishment is largely similar to innocent sins we have a cult rising to the power accompanied with the mysterious joker rumor that has swept over the city the cult's main goal is to raise a spaceship that's buried under the city so they'll be safe from the destruction of the entire world once the old world is cleansed the new one can be established as you saw in the character review section the differences lie in the finer details but this sense of familiarity is intentional due to the involvement of the previous antagonist nyarlathotep but how exactly does this relate to tatsuya well it turns out that the tatsuya and eternal punishment is the same one from innocent sin encasing a reminder at the end of innocent sin the only way to reverse the damage caused by neolithotep was to create a new timeline where the cast of that game never met but when the time came around for everyone to forget tatsuya was the only one who refused after all that he and his party went through he didn't want to forget about them or the lessons that they learned tatsuya ended up breaking the promise he made to maya and his friends and went into the new timeline with his memories intact however this ended up with coming with more consequences than what tatsuya had expected tatsuya is considered a paradox by near lethotep and his mere existence is the reason as to why the crawling chaos is able to manipulate events once again to lead to the world's destruction if maya ekichi lisa and jon were all to regain their memories of the previous world then the contract binding this timeline's existence will be broken causing the world to revert back to its destroyed state tatsuya in an attempt to atone for his sin decided that it would be up to him and him alone to stop neurolethotep and the nwo he doesn't want to get the people who he cares about involved with this mission because it could result in the total annihilation of their world this is the reason as to why eternal punishment shares a very similar structure to innocent sin nirolothotep is pulling the strings in order for the world to go down the same path that led to its destruction intentionally making it so that the innocent sin casts will be in familiar situations so they can regain their memories tatsuya is always one step ahead of our group and shows up in the nick of time in order to stop the plans of both antagonists tatsuya acts very cold and distant from maya's group in order to keep them from getting involved but that doesn't deter them from their goal of stopping the new world order after much pestering the group manages to convince tatsuyu to tell them why he's been acting so distant but tatsuya's only condition is that after they learned the truth they would have to back off and leave the rest to him it quickly becomes apparent that the group has no intentions of letting tatsuya stuff around his own while the most notable aspect of tatsuya's character is the regret he feels for betraying the promise he made his character goes far beyond this in an attempt to repent for his sin tatsuya forced himself to grow up faster and act like an adult in his own perspective an adult is someone who takes responsibility for their own actions alone if they make a mistake then they alone must face the consequences this mindset is seen as childish by the rest of the adults what tatsuyu doesn't know is that one man can't carry the entire world on their shoulders so his character arc through the rest of the game is learning what it truly means to be an adult tatsuya doesn't have much of a reference for how to be an adult because of what happened with his father so when tatsuya joins the party he finds a role model in bao foo the two are able to connect on some level because they both feel as though they're responsible for the suffering of another one of my favorite scenes in the game is when tatsuya is having a conversation with bao fu about the difficulty of being an adult when baofu gives his cynical answer a deadly silence fills the area none of the characters disagree with what baufu said but at the same time they don't want to admit that there's some sort of truth behind his words tatsuya is without a doubt my favorite character in this game i kind of fairly earlier that tatsuya still had his memories from the innocent sin timeline because of how evasive he was towards the rest of the group but what i wasn't expecting was how depressing his story ended up getting if we take into the accounts of the events of innocent sin we have a man who just after reuniting with his childhood friends has to give it all up for the greater good at first he reluctantly accepts that this is something he has to do but when the time comes around and tatsuya has to say goodbye to his friends he ends up caving into his fears he realizes that he'll never have the same connections ever again so he decides to go against the promise he made and remembers the events of the other timeline what i like most about tatsuya is the fact that he doesn't try to justify what he did he knows he [ __ ] up he knows the consequences for his actions but instead of sitting there and crying about it he wants to stand up on his own two feet and rectify what he did while his goal is admirable the issue comes with how tatsuya went about accomplishing them he thought that this was a burn that he alone had to deal with but in reality it doesn't have to only be himself and that's something he learns throughout his journey tatsuya is a very realistic character he's someone who in a moment of weakness made a selfish decision but at the end of the day he wants to make things right no matter what he has to give up to make that so and that brings us to the finale of the game just like an innocent sin the city has been raised thanks to the torah fune and the end of the world is nai but once the group is able to defeat the nwo's god gosen the earth dragons and the torah fune are sucked in a portal that was formed in the sky it turns out that this is all thanks to nirolithotep who teleported everyone to the collective unconsciousness for one final test he's holding akichi lisa in june captive in his domain if the group is able to overcome their shadows and defeat him then he'll let them go but if they fail near arlothotep will have the three regain their memories which will result in the destruction of the world agreeing to his terms the group sets off to encounter their shadows one by one this is a very cool final dungeon for thematic reasons nyarlathotep represents humanity's shadow as well as the adversity humans need to overcome in order to grow so it's only fitting that the final test of eternal punishment is testing the resolve of our characters at this point they have all overcome their external struggles but have yet to face their internal ones i also enjoy how it's narolathotep himself that's taking the role of everyone's shadow in the party his default appearance is of tatsuyasuo which he wears in order to mock the young man for his mistakes narolithotep's power comes from what he calls the three poisons of humanity anger vengeance and ignorance he uses his knowledge of the party to try to make them give in to their negative emotions as their shadows depending on certain actions made as maya you can influence whether or not the characters will fall for the trap this essentially makes the first phase of the final boss harder depending on how many times you're unable to have the party control their emotions in due time the group makes it to the deepest part of the collective unconsciousness where they have to battle nyarlathotep in its true form when i fought him i apparently got the easiest version of this encounter and in all honesty it's not that hard it's much harder than his boss battle innocent sin don't get me wrong but i think it was just the combination of personas i was using that made some of my characters practically unkillable maya's ultimate persona artemis is surprisingly overpowered because while she's weak to all physical attacks there's no magic in the game that harms her it all just gets reflected which is pretty overpowered if you ask me artemis isn't the only persona that has this sort of ability because i was using odin on tatsuya which pretty much does the same thing but blocks all magic instead of reflecting it the hardest part about this fight is how long it takes to complete you'll be going through a lot of sp items in order to keep up the pace but if you made it this far already you'll most likely be prepared to fight this guy in due time nyarlathotep will eventually fall shocked at his defeat he claims that as long as humans exist he will as well since he's the shadow of all of humanity this is a fact that our characters accept a human can't exist without a shadow what matters is if they let their shadows rule their lives or not with that maya and tatsuya put the crawling chaos down ending his influence over the world though there still is one more thing tatsuya must do he repented for his sin but he still has to hold up his end of the promise as long as tatsuya exists in this timeline the timelines will eventually converge so tatsuya makes the difficult decision of returning to his destroyed world even though there's nothing left except sumaru city he's optimists that he'll rebuild a greater world with the survivors tatsu was borrowing the body of the tatsuya native to the eternal punishment timeline and now that his duty has been fulfilled it's time for him to go home it's ambiguous whether or not tatsuya is successful at rebuilding the world of his own timeline but i like that it isn't explicitly answered in my opinion tatsu used the lessons that he learned while on this side to assist him in the future he learns what it means to be an adult and now it's time to apply that knowledge an unknown amount of time passes and we see that peace has been restored to the world everyone has found new meaning in life the tatsuya from this side was affected by the innocent sin tatsuya as his relationship with his brother is becoming stronger tatsuya even asks katsuya to take him under his wing so he can become a detective but one day maya spots tatsu at a crosswalk and instead of talking to the boy she decides to leave him maya no longer wants to live in the past instead she wants to take the lessons that she learned with her into a brighter future and that's the end of the persona 2 duology i really like the story of eternal punishment and if you ask me it's almost as good as the one from innocent sins the only thing that holds it back from being on par if not better is the cast of characters i've really liked the cast in innocent sin i think that they not only gelled better together as a group but i think that there were more characters that i think were developed better overall that's not me saying something like i think x character is better but more so innocent sin has more characters than i like overall if maya was her own character and not relegated to the role of a silent protagonist i think that the story had the potential of being better than innocent sins eternal punishment would have really benefited from having protagonists that reacts to the events around them i would have liked to see more moments where maya was her own person but sadly we don't get that but thankfully i think that characters like katsuya baofu and tatsuya really pick up the slack tatsuya's specialty holy [ __ ] but when we compare innocent sin to eternal punishment which one do i think is the better game overall innocence has a fantastic story with very real and well-developed characters i think it does a better job in that regard than eternal punishment because there were some characters in this game that i'm not so hot on either due to missed potential or general underutilization but the story is only some of the experience with innocent sin the gameplay is borderline brainless and not enjoyable in the slightest to me eternal punishment does have a few more misses in its cast than innocent sin but i think the narrative that the game is trying to tell about changing fate is very strong and has a lot more subtleties than the other games do and i think eternal punishment is also much much better in a gameplay sense since there's a reason to actually use the mechanics instead of just leaving the game on autopilot so between the two games i would say eternal punishment is better i see a lot of people only really talk about innocent sin when referring to persona 2 and i can't help but feel those people are really missing out i get that not everyone wants to play a ps1 rpg and are waiting for the fan translation of the psp version but eternal punishment on ps1 is more than a playable experience one that i think would be better played on ps1 considering what the psp version did to innocent sin in terms of difficulty so good job eternal punishment you may have been overlooked for now especially in comparison innocent sin but one day you'll get the recognition that you deserve hey everyone thanks for watching sorry about the delay with this video this game was a lot longer than what i was expecting it to be i thought that it would have been around the same length of innocence in but i was dead wrong i would like to give a special thanks to all my lovely patrons for supporting the channel and i'd also like to give a special mention to my friend reuben he edited the voiceover for both this video and the persona 2 innocence and video usually i do this on my own but he was generous enough to help me out which gave me extra time to get a head start on the next video as always you can find my social media links in the description alongside my discord server and a link to my patreon if you like what you saw any donation there really helps out a ton plus you'll gain access to some special goodies including early access to my videos so thank you so much for watching and take care

Channel: Nam’s Compendium

Views: 166,678

Keywords: persona 2 eternal punishment, persona 2 eternal punishment review, persona 2 eternal punishment analysis, nams compendium persona, nams compendium persona 2, nams compendium persona 2 eternal punishment, nams compendium persona 2 innocent sin review, Persona 2 Eternal Punishment Review - The Consequences of Sin, persona 2 review, nams compendium persona 2 review, persona 2 analysis, persona 2 eternal punishment psp, persona 2 is underrated

Id: r5XSKQ7VWfY

Length: 42min 7sec (2527 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 17 2021