soul hackers 2 [Game Review]

First, despite it being a sequel, you don’t need to know much about the original Soul Hackers to understand Soul Hackers 2. In this sequel, you assume the role of a special agent named Ringo, created by Aeon – a special sentient human to save the world from utter destruction. Ringo and his “sister” Figue are then summoned to the real world and quickly learn that their mission is not going to be easy as their protected targets are not really in the best shape. This prompts Ringo to demonstrate a special technique called soul hacking and saves a young man named Arrow.

We’d love to talk more about the story but there are too many spoilers we can easily run into if we’re not careful if you want to know what soul hacking does for our arrows and what challenges Ringo and Feig face Immediately after being called into the human world, you have to play Soul Hackers 2 for yourself. Still, we’d say that if you’re a fan of the original, you’re going to quickly notice that this isn’t the first-person dungeon RPG you can remember.

Akin to Persona 5- to which we no doubt will compare many to Soul Hackers 2- the game is third person and it’s great, to say the least. Exploration is like a modern Persona game where you’ll open chests, talk to characters, talk to fellow monsters about what they found—a new feature in Soul Hackers 2—and get into battle. Yes, Soul Hackers 2 is quite different from the original, but we won’t deny that it makes for an easy entry for those who might not like the old school dungeon crawling concept.

Now we have no doubt that many of you readers care about the gameplay of Soul Hackers 2 more than anything and we have a lot to say about it. Again, like Persona 5, Soul Hackers 2 is a turn-based system, but with some cool new features. Instead of summoning monsters to battle, Ringo, Arrow, and others who will join your cause, use your comps to perform special attacks using the powers of the monsters you align with. Where you can’t summon monsters to fight along, Soul Hackers 2 is similar to other SMT games. Soul Hackers 2 gives you the ability to equip monsters on your characters through their comps and use their moves. Be careful though, equipping a demon gives you their elemental strengths but also their weaknesses. It’s like every character in Soul Hackers 2 is a wild card user, but it means you need to be smart at equipping the right monsters or else the fight can get bad fast.

Soul Hackers 2 can’t beat Persona 5’s styling and may not be a gorgeous SMT title, but don’t let that fool you. Soul Hackers 2 is radiating with its own visual theme that feels both futuristic and real-world-esque. Each character is charming and oozes individualism, the same can be said for the hub world of Karakucho, which feels like a red-light district in real-world Japan. The graphics may have seemed a little underwhelming from Persona 5 Royale or some games of this current era, but we were honestly never in such confidence that they didn’t live up to the expectations!

Aside from the stylish visuals, Soul Hackers 2 is, of course, an SMT game, and the music has to be incredible for us to give it our seal of approval. Luckily, the tunes in this game are superb. The exploration sections have a nice jazzy techno sound and the battles play out loud with rocking tunes. The OP alone may seem innocent and comfortable at first, but this is what Soul Hackers 2 feels like, let’s dive into it. We already have a list of favorite songs from Soul Hackers 2 and this will show you why you want some cool headphones to enjoy on Beats!

There is very little we can complain about in Soul Hackers 2 but if we did complain, it would be with the camera that is so close to your MC. This is only a big issue when exploring tight dungeon areas, but if you’re trying to look around but find yourself fighting the awkward attachment of the camera to Ringo’s butt, turn to your auto-correcting camera. Constantly rotating it can be annoying. We also honestly make Sabbath attacks often fast forward because they are cool to look at but get really exhausting when you’ve seen them a billion times. This may be considered another minor issue because of the lack of seeing your demons outside of the Sabbath, we rarely feel connected to them as in a personality game. Yes, they move alongside you and you can negotiate them to join your squad – which is extremely easy compared to other SMT games – but the lack of a demon party in lieu of an all-human one is a bit much. It’s a letdown and we have no doubt that it will be a major complaint from fans of the original Soul Hackers.