Soul Hackers 2 Review – Enter the Matrix

Many fans of the Persona series saw the success of Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei V and wondered, what’s next? Our answer came in February 2022 with a trailer of Soul Hackers 2. The community was super excited that we saw a new game from Atlus just a few months after Shin Megami Tensei V was released.

Game Name: Soul Hackers 2
Platform(s): Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, PS4, PS5, PC (Reviewed)
Publisher(s): Sega
Developer(s): Atlus
Release Date: August 26th, 2022
Price: $59.99

Soul Hackers 2 looks and sounds amazing. All the little details are fantastic, though the game does start off vague. You take the role of Ringo, one of the two humanoid agents partnered with another agent called Figue. Created by Aion, your sole task is to protect two specific individuals who have the ability to stop the end of the world from occurring. Except, when you finally locate those two individuals, you find them dead.

Not thrilled with the early outcome, Ringo starts off by testing out Soul Hacking on one of the individuals, Arrow. Soul Hacking reassembles the soul, and in some cases, can bring persons back from the dead. Now they have to figure out how Arrow is supposed to be able to stop the end of the world. Every new plot point makes sense and ups the stakes at every turn. Honestly, Soul Hackers 2 is a shorter story than what we are used to in an Atlus game, but it is done so well that I can’t complain about it.

Soul Hacking 

This gameplay loop is pretty simple but has a lot of added features later down the line. You start off in a dungeon or a map, you walk towards the spot you need to find, and usually, you are searching for people or demons. Throughout the dungeon, you will see demons who want to fight you. You can use your saber to slash them on the ground and keep running or initiate combat with the demon. Combat is turn-based, and something I appreciated is that every character can be equipped with a different demon. They can utilize the perks of changing between demons on the fly. Instead of just min-maxing one character, you get the ability to min-max all four party members you have access to. It also helps you stay varied.

Demons under your contract will give you stuff at random locations in dungeons and maps. They’ll also heal you as well at certain places. The demons also play a role in exploration. You will have places you need to find a demon that has the item you need to progress in the story. I love that they get some personality with how they speak to Ringo when she asks them about what they are holding on to. I think it is always a plus to be able to have more moments of personality with the demons. That makes it essential, however, to hit every nook and cranny on the map. If you miss an item by not checking a nook or cranny, even if you find the place you need to be, you won’t be able to access it. Make sure you explore each map thoroughly.

When you hit an enemy’s weakness, you conduct a sabbath at the end of your turn. Depending on how many weaknesses you hit that turn (i.e. arrow used a weakness and Ringo used a weakness that makes 2), then the sabbath will hit that many times. When you level up demons, they can also get Sabbath skills. Some heal you if they help with a Sabbath; others deal damage or put more ailments on the enemies with it. During the later levels, having your Sabbaths also help with healing you, which is a lifesaver!

Your affinity with characters is based on the individual soul levels. When you get dialogue choices or choices to do stuff in general, they affect characters in different ways. If you look at the top right, it will tell you how each choice influences the individual soul levels in your party, so make sure to look at that.  Eventually, in the game, you’ll get access to what’s called the Soul Matrix,  a computer reconstruction of the soul link between Ringo and her Aion-enhanced teammates. The farther you go down the soul matrix of specific party members, the more backstory is revealed through their memories. This also helps Ringo get a better hold of her soul-hacking powers. You go through some pretty windy dungeons, fighting demons to get to the next floor where a guardian demon is protecting the party member’s memory. After defeating the specific demon, you get access to more of that party member’s story and how they reached the point where they needed Ringo to soul hack them. Also, the more you explore and unlock a teammate’s soul matrix, the more powerful they become.

Not only is there combat, but fusion makes an appearance in this game as well. You can fuse demons together to get their skills combined with other demons. This is usually the best way to get demons so you can get enhanced stats and skills. When you level a demon up where he learns all his natural skills, he will have a red gem next to his name, and he will give you a gift. Typically this gift they give you is a mystique. Mystiques are items that enhance your element skills. Whether it is fire, electricity, support, healing, etc. These items boost whatever skills that match. A fire mystique boosts the fire skills you possess, healing boosts your healing ability, and so forth. When you change demons around, it’s also essential to change your mystiques to match that demon. Failing to do so will weaken you, and you don’t want that.

Beautiful

Soul Hackers 2 just looks amazing. The character models, demon models, buildings, enemies, and weapons all look fantastic. This is definitely the best-looking game in the Shin Megami Tensei series. The game has a cell-shaded aesthetic, but the models are highly detailed. For instance, Ringo and Figue,  they have this cool power dynamic going on. Ringo is the feet of the operation who goes and does everything. Her legs have computer-like pixels that get more and more pixelated the further the game goes on, and the story makes her more human-like. The top of her model has a jacket that glows with computer lighting. It almost seems like RGB but only the green bits that match her mood. When she gets depressed, she takes off the jacket itself and is just in her normal outfit, totally vulnerable.

Figue is the opposite. She has a purple RGB setup on her legs, with her arms becoming more pixelated throughout the story. She holds her feelings and never takes off her RGB tights demonstrating her desire to keep her feelings to not hamper the mission. She also is the person in the chair constantly guiding Ringo to her set locations. These little character details just make me gush with how much thought is put into just these two characters. The other characters’ designs are similar to how much thought is put into how these characters look and feel.

These characters were complex and had fantastic arcs. This is shown well by how the soul matrix turns out. It shows more and more of the character’s desires and how they got that way with each floor you explore. This is a fantastic way of seeing the characters and how they fit into the bigger picture.

Mastery of the Craft

If you have heard any game done by Atlus, you know exactly what I am about to say. The Persona series is known for its fantastic soundtracks, which continues with Soul Hackers 2. Seriously, the soundtrack to Soul Hackers 2 sounds amazing. I literally cannot do the music justice in this game with anything I can say. Whenever I started up Soul Hackers 2, I always had to listen to the opening song. Boss music soundtracks are still absolute bangers and deserve some recognition of some kind at the end of the year for best soundtrack. Soul Hackers 2 and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 better be the two games going head to head on that front because they both have fantastic music and continue to show just how much music shapes video games and the atmospheres they give. This is a much more serious title in terms of what it deals with. Soul Hackers 2 is exceptionally well written, and the music makes it seem much more thought out.

Overall

Soul Hackers 2 ultimately is a masterpiece done by Atlus. I did play this on PC and will say I had a few things I was not too happy with. Note that Atlus is working on patches and bug fixes for a day one release. So hopefully, the PC port will be better optimized when released.  First off, if you are in a boss fight and it is taking a while (In your first boss encounter, it will definitely take its time to figure out weaknesses and vulnerabilities), the game’s audio will desync. The attack sound effects and dialogue will all be off by milliseconds. Then, when the turn ends, the game will try to speed run back to sync up with the audio. At first, it wasn’t a significant concern, but when it happens more than once in a single boss fight, having the game attempt to catch up ultimately crashes the game. Causing me to lose all the progress I had on the boss wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Luckily autosave is a feature of this game, and it is a godsend. If I was super confident in my team before a boss fight and this happened, I would probably have lost hours of progress on a crash that was the fault of the game. Autosave usually happens right before boss encounters or when you change maps. It is very helpful. Still, this is a huge concern and needs to be addressed before the PC version is released.

I had an issue with the camera constantly focusing on Ringo’s butt. Sega has specifically let me know that Atlus is working on new camera features, so you can adjust it while you run so that this will not be an issue when the game hits retail. I still thought it was important to note. Running in dungeons, I was hoping to change outfits, but the DLC outfits only change how the characters look during battle, not during cutscenes or traversing the maps. I will probably wait til day one before my new game plus playthrough so I can see the camera changes!

Soul Hackers 2 is amazing, so having some of these technical hiccups takes me out of the experience and puts a black splotch on an otherwise perfect game. I highly recommend picking up this game. I finished my first playthrough in about 40 hours, but I skipped out on most of the side stuff, which could easily add to the game’s hour count.

Soul Hackers 2 releases on August 26, 2022, for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC

Review Disclosure Statement: Soul Hackers 2 was provided to us by Sega for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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