One Happy Team...

Completed Persona 2 Innocent Sin.
I haven’t mentioned the dungeons in Persona 2, and that’s because they are horrible. They are ugly mazes that lack any logic and made to be annoying with invisible traps that often impossible to avoid. Xibalba, the final dungeon / alien spaceship, is the epytomy of everything wrong with them. It’s 8 floors of annoyance.

Storywise, it’s a fun concept, though, were all the fears come true. So when one character says that there might be laser traps, and another is afraid to be locked in an oven room: both things happen. And Michele has to face metalic version of his father, because that’s what he’s afraid of.

I managed to beat the final boss with the default personas, and my characters were only around level 57 or so. So I honestly thought there will be another dungeon after that.

The ending is disappointing, and it feels to me that they just decided to split the game in two. After beating Niarhalotep, Crazy Teacher appears and stabs Maya with Longinus spear, so she cannot be healed. Nia says something along the lines, “what did you expect, to beat a god and defy a profecy?” and Philimone offers to “try another time”. This is a common theme in Shin Megami Tensei games, where at the end heroes are offered to either forget everything or continue suffering: Persona 3 and Devil Summoner 2 are two examples I remember, and I didn’t play that many games in the series.

I went to the Aquarius temple first, so I didn’t understand why Longinus said to Jun “you don’t know who this seat is intended for”. The second temple I did was Scorpio, and its boss is Shadow Michele. Turns out Persona 4 just repeats the concept of shadows from Persona 2.
Michele’s plotline is quite touching, though, albeit simple: he was a fat kid, so he liked the only girl that threated him well.
When they grew up, he became fit, and she got fat, so she hid her identity (they are all using nicknames anyway, Michele is Ekichi’s nickname), then sold her soul to Joker in order to be beautiful.

Because the rumors are coming true, we meet the ghost of Maia in the temple, despite her never dying there.
After Nazis appear and all characters (except Yukki, because she’s from the previous game) get upgraded personas, there’s a difficulty spike. But nothing that can’t be resolved by grinding. Tatsuya’s Vulcanus Prime also gets an amazing Fiery Fury skill. As I mentioned, skills in Persona 2 have three target types: single, group and “all”, with “all” being the best. Why wouldn’t you like to hit all your enemies after all? Well, one reason is that some enemies are resistant to fire attacks. But here the second part of this skill comes into play: it doubles as physical attack as well. So it’s basically effective against everything.
Yukki gets a new persona too, but only for a short while, as she leaves the party after her boyfriend is killed by the Nazis. We manage to rescue Jun/Joker from Niarlotep (never expected so much Lovecraft influence). Turns out it’s Jun’s father who has been leading the Masked Circle, not Jun. Jun replaces Yukki as a party member, and all the party members get new personas once again. This time really new, instead of adding “Prime” to the name of the persona.
Now party need to beat 4 temples, one for each element. At the end of the first temple Jun gets persona mutation, first time in the game.

I think this game is easier than most other games in the series, because money solves everything. Items are cheap and you can stock tons of them, so you never run out of SP. And your SP also recovers with every step. Compare that to the stingy mechanics from Persona 4, where SP regen was one of the later skills, and SP recovery items were limited.

It is surprisingly easy to paint yourself into a corner in this game, since you can switch personas for all characters, not just the protagonist, you can end up with no healing personas at all. And you can switch personas back only in Velvet Room outside of the dungeon.
In the Aerospace museum, there’s an interesting heatwave effect from all the fire in the building. Other than that, though, it’s an annoying dungeon with a real-time timer and a goal to find kids in a maze, interrupted by fights. I’m just glad it’s over.
Before the museum, you need to guess 2 out of 4 buildings Leo planted bombs in. If you guess wrong, there’s a video showing a building being blown, but you can still continue the game, unlike of the timer in the museum runs out. I was wondering how they would reconcile that. Turns out, Leo just blows the buildings still, just later.
After the museum, the game dumps a lot of story on you. Tatsuya, Ekichi and Lisa all played together as kids, but they never seen each other faces, because they were wearing Power Rangers bird masks. They called themselves Masked Circle, same as the terrorist organisation, and the fourth kid is the leader of that organisation. They also met Maia while they were playing, although she is a few years their senior. Maia is the one that thaight them the Persona game, and that’s why all four can use personas.
When Maia told them she has to leave with her family, the kids locked her up in a temple for a night, hoping that she would stay. Tatsuya got locked up as well for objecting the plan. But at night, King Leo stabbed Tatsuya and burned the temple. Kids assumed that Maia died in the fire, and that’s the eponimial Innocent Sin the game refers to.

It might be that I played Innocent Sin and not Eternal Punishment all those years ago. Hard to remember after 15 years, and it doesn’t really matter.
The plot of both Innocent Sin revolves around rumors coming true. A topic Persona 4 will go back to with the Midnight Channel. “If you dial your own number, a Joker will appear”. Only the Joker that indeed appears to Tatsuya attempts to exact revenge on him. Frustrated that Tatsuya has no idea revenge for what, Joker disappears.
It’s interesting how battle system has devolved in later games. In Persona 2, there are attacks that are both physical and elemental. Also, Water and Earth elements were removed from later games. And some spells instead of targeting all enemies, only target enemies of the same kind.
The dialogue system is a bit wonky. The way it works is that you can speak to your team members in any order, but sometimes their reply will be to something someone else says later on.

Being an RPG from PSX era, you really need to read into what people tell you if you’re playing without a guide. There are no quest markers there.
As I mentioned, I’m not a big fan of the dialogue system in Persona games. Each character has 4 lines, that work differently for different personas. Yukki has “reason” line, so she can make “wise” persona “eager” to give you cards, with which you purchase more personas. “Foolish” persona reacts the same to Tatauya’s “Dead stare”. If it was only matter of memory, though. Personas can ask you nonsensical questions, like “is school fun?”, and the answer should also depend on the persona type. That’s where I draw the line. Luckily, the old good grind still works