Before I get started, I want to point out that this was never the plan. I had bounced off the original Persona’s PSP re-release, and thought that a traditional “Let’s Play” thread on a discussion board would motivate me into completing it. I never planned to play both of the Persona 2 games as well, but soon after that first thread was “complete” one or two people started talking about Persona 2 and so it kind of snowballed from there. After Innocent Sin I wanted to take a break from classic Persona Let’s Play activity, but when the traditional summer slowdown arrived – with fewer notable games being released – I saw it as the ideal time to begin my Eternal Punishment; a new “let’s play” of the “other” Persona 2 game. In a way it was both intimidating and exciting: this had become the game in the series that I knew the least about, but it would allow my knowledge of the series to come full circle. Eternal Punishment’s story begins with an urban legend about a “Joker curse” where you can contact an individual named Joker and give them the name of someone you wish to kill. This leads to the central characters pursuing those connected to Joker, but escalates towards talk of “Kegare”, gods and the threat of global destruction in the pursuit of utopia. If I’m being honest, I was more invested in the stories of the other two games because they were more about the nature of humanity, personalities and behaviours… this sometimes slides a bit too close to science madness, but it improves a lot later on.
Understanding my Eternal Punishment
The gameplay itself… well, it’s more classic Persona: negotiate with everyone to make dungeon crawling easier, fuse bigger and better demons to deal with encounters more easily, and maybe deal with some traps or light puzzling in dungeons. Again, negotiating through encounters isn’t quite as snappy as it was in P1… but it’s still quite quick, and experimenting in the Velvet Room can be fun. Notable sticking points throughout the game range from the return of Kandori in an undersea ruin (keep a second set of demons with electrical attacks for the adds, then swap them out when Kandori’s on his own… and don’t waste turns setting up too many fusion skills), a boss unofficially known as the “Metal Trio” (even now I think I got lucky here… but get a persona with the skill “Wall of Air” and just hope that you’re fortunate when it comes to status ailments), an encounter at the end of Sumaru Castle (keep the “Phoenix” persona handy for revival duties) and the final bosses (buy 99 100% healing items, 99 revival items and 99 SP-restoring items, keep everyone alive and wait for the enemy to do a useless turn. No, really.)
Technical difficulties
On top of everything, I had to emulate this, and I had a few technical issues during my Eternal Punishment experience that nearly halted the entire endeavour, but in the end Retroarch (and the PCSX Rearmed core) proved invaluable. Does the game still hold up today? I’m not so sure – the story is engaging and the battles can be satisfying, but the earlier games benefit from more polished English-language PSP updates. I preferred P1’s journey with Maki, Aki and Mai… but P2 has a less fussy battle system than P1… but Innocent Sin has the winning combination of modern presentation, a nice battle system and a somewhat engaging story. If you had to play one of them, I’d recommend Innocent Sin, but even the best of the “old” games isn’t as rewarding as the worst of the “new” games – P3 to P5 have excellent streamlining and fun design that doesn’t sacrifice challenge, so those will always be more memorable experiences.
Well, unless we’re talking about P3: The Answer, which I still can’t bring myself to go back to. Maybe one day…
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