I see no reviews or discussion threads on here, which I find odd since every other SMT/Persona release of late had had at least a little discussion. I'm interested in hearing about people's experience with this game, especially since it's the first time it has been officially released in English.

Yes, it's excellent. It's a more traditional RPG than Persona 3 and 4, with random encounters and no s link or day by day stuff, but if you can make it past it's high encounter rate and other minor problems due to its age it is really worth playing. The gameplay is standard SMT, with tables of elemental weaknesses (though with a larger pool of elements ) and the usual persona skills you would expect. The story is one of the best I've seen, and takes its core plot device ( rumours coming true) to its very darkest extreme, while remaining upbeat and heartwarming in places, andnot becoming overly grim. The story is helped by the great character work you would expect from Atlus. In short if you like JRPGs, you should play Innocent Sin.

The fights got super tedious after a while, since the only incentive to go for elemental weaknesses is increased damage I usually resorted to slapping the auto-battle queue full of the most damaging group spells/skills and watching the animations take their sweet time. There's no shortage of SP recovery items so why not. While the demon negotiation sounds awesome on paper it boils down to farming tarot cards not entirely unlike the draw system in FF8. No fusing demons either.

So other than the whole gameplay part I enjoyed it. Music's excellent, characters feel more like people than anime archetypes and the story is interesting to say the least.

I just started it a few days ago and I am enjoying it so far. I can appreciate old games being a product of their time so the problems of it being an old game don't bother me as much as it would for most people.

Not far enough into it to garner much of an opinion. I like where the story is going, but I haaaate the random encounters and combat, made worse (longer) by the slowdown on the PSP version.

Weirdly enough no one's played this game ever. I'm pretty surprised it got a sequel.

Sounds like more of a straight SMT game mechanics-wise. The insanely high random encounter rate was there in digital devil saga and nocturne as well. Oh, and Strange Journey. I have heard that the story is fantastic though, so glad to hear confirmation on that. I'm really interested in how the this ties into the other persona 2 game. I've heard they take place in the same universe but are like parallel timelines with some crossover?

@AndrewB: How bad is the slowdown?

@AmatureIdiot: So I know that there's no social link system like in the later persona games, but I've heard there is some sort of relationship-building aspect to the game. Is this true?

I've been playing it for a while. All I can say is prepare for grind.

the story's better than anything they've ever done, but yeah it is quite grindy. EP is more grindy though, since in IS you can conceivably use the free personae you get until the end.

I'd like to just read a synopsis of the story or watch a walkthrough of it as I like P3 and love P4. But no i haven't played P2.

I don't own a psp and kind of wanted to play this and the original persona. Anyone know what the best course of action I should take if i wanted to play this? (legally of course, I want to support Atlus)

You think the Vita will have a prie drop or is it available any other way?

@Nottle: The only other version is the PS1 Japan only original, personally I would hold out for a Vita price drop as I didn't get the PSP slowdown on my Vita.

@ashogo: You can form pacts with demons through the conversation system, to get items/rumours from them. I think that's it. I do know the link between the universes but it sort of spoils the end of the game; put simply, yes its an alternate timeline.

I didn't find it too grindy, the random encounters make sure you fight a lot. However, I did stick to one persona per character, compulsively explore every inch of the maps and got lost often in the early game due to the dissonance between the map and camera ( I didn't find out how to get the big map till half way through).

Also, one good piece of advice for beginners, is that once you max out one of the starting personae (I think its Maya's) you can turn it into an accessory that will give you an idea of the fusion spells; this is incredibly useful as fusion spells can be way overpowered, and will speed up the rate your personae levels up and earns bonus spells and stat increases.

Playing this game after Persona 3 Portable was painful.

It has an amazing cast of characters (maybe my favorite out of any game, ever) but painful gameplay, hideous graphics and a storyline that has some great elements in it (namely the parts that focus heavily on character building) but is also about as clear as mud.

It's a game that is simply too old and too full of weird JRPG bullshit for this guy.

Give it a modern combat system, 3D graphics, more and better voice acting and shove all of the Joker/Circle/Demon/Nazi/Lovecraft shit inside a TV world/Tartarus of some kind and you would have a fucking amazing game.

I heard Nyarlathotep shows up. I abide.

I really want to play it but its incredibly expensive on psn for some reason.

@ashogo said:

I see no reviews or discussion threads on here

I HAVE FIXED THIS.

@Video_Game_King said:

@ashogo said:

I see no reviews or discussion threads on here

I HAVE FIXED THIS.

What do you mean? I thought you had written a review but I don't see anything. :(

the fuhrer commands you to play this game

Edit: kidding aside , this definatelyis one of the best persona games, its a hell of a grind but not as much as some others , and alot of that grinding is only really needed if you are a completionist .

story/character design wise , and paired/offset with eternal punishment p2 is fkn amazing :)

@ashogo: as for social links there are some character choices and stuff throught the plot that affect what party members you end up at endgame with etc and the party makeup also applies to the aformentioned demon conversation system with some characters being better at talking to certain demons , and sort of team conversation options that end up pretty insane like the team emo punk band conversation option.

so yeah social links do exist to an extent but p3 is where any of the dating sim elements came in. (not to say there arent romantic options with multiple characters)

I have this game, bought it over a year ago. Haven't touched it.

One of these days! *shakes fist*

@AmatureIdiot said:

@Nottle: The only other version is the PS1 Japan only original, personally I would hold out for a Vita price drop as I didn't get the PSP slowdown on my Vita.

Actually, both Persona 1 (Revelations) and Persona 2: Innocent Sin are both available on the PSP. (And can be downloaded digitally on the PSN; also playable on Vita -- I bought both games as soon as I got my Vita to satiate my Persona hunger before Golden came out and I've had a blast!)

Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, however, is out in Japan for PSP but hasn't been localized (yet?). I really hope we get that localized, but it was the Persona 2 game that got released stateside in the PS1 (there's no Innocent Sin PS1 to my knowledge.) So you can still theoretically get all the early Persona games, but you'll need to dish out about a Benjamin for Eternal Punishment on PS1.

@ashogo said:

Sounds like more of a straight SMT game mechanics-wise. The insanely high random encounter rate was there in digital devil saga and nocturne as well. Oh, and Strange Journey. I have heard that the story is fantastic though, so glad to hear confirmation on that. I'm really interested in how the this ties into the other persona 2 game. I've heard they take place in the same universe but are like parallel timelines with some crossover?

@AndrewB: How bad is the slowdown?

@AmatureIdiot: So I know that there's no social link system like in the later persona games, but I've heard there is some sort of relationship-building aspect to the game. Is this true?

I really liked Nocturne even though it had random encounters, because of its cool turn system and having actual Personas (demons) as your party. Is this as cool (and does it have a Very Easy Mode)? I loved Nocturne, but fuckin never playing a game that hard again. Fuck Matador.

@ashogo said:

@Video_Game_King said:

@ashogo said:

I see no reviews or discussion threads on here

I HAVE FIXED THIS.

What do you mean? I thought you had written a review but I don't see anything. :(

Oh. It's on the PS1 version of the page.