Innocent Sin

Published by: Atlus
Developed by: Atlus
Released: May 31, 1999
Platform: PlayStation
Genre: RPG

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 2 Innocent Sin Review For PSX

The Good
“Innocent Sin” is the second in Persona series, and is in fact the first part of a large game split in two parts. The second part is Eternal Punishment, a game that was translated into English and released in USA. Called Tsumi (“Sin”) and Batsu (“Punishment”) in Japanese, both games bear a common title Tsumi to Batsu, “Crime and Punishment”, just as the famous novel by Dostoyevsky. The first Persona was also released overseas, but the translation was heavily modified to suit the tastes of American audience. “Innocent Sin” itself, along with countless other excellent console RPGs, never left the islands it was created on.

The Persona series is in fact a sub-series, a kind of gaiden (side story) in the huge Megaten universe, the third most popular game series in Japan (after Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy). The games that belong to Megaten universe are, first of all, the main series Shin Megami Tensei, its sub-series Devil Summoner, and the Persona block. With a few exceptions (like in the side-series Last Bible), Megaten games are set in modern or futuristic Japan. What unites all those games is first and foremost the ability of the characters to communicate with your enemies, the demons. Also, with one exception known to me (the excellent action game Maken for Dreamcast and Playstation 2), all Megaten games are RPGs. Most Megaten games were created and inspired by two masterminds, Cozy Okada and the “demon artist”, Kazuma Kaneko.

Of all Megaten games, only the two Persona games mentioned above, two DemiKids games for GameBoy, and “Maken” were ever released outside of Japan. There are several reasons for that. First, Megaten games are usually quite challenging, and some of them are suitable only to hardcore RPGers. Second, they are very “Japanese”, since the events described in them take place in modern Japan, and not in an imaginary fantasy world. Third, their main series, Shin Megami Tensei, might appear “dry” to most Western players, having none of the sentimentality and the “cuteness” of many other Japanese RPGs. Finally, they contain many deep and provocative ideas, among them undisguised anti-religious sentiments, which lead to their censure by Western puritans.

(Note: shortly before I finished writing this review, I read Atlu’s official announcement about releasing the enhanced version of “Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne” and the future “Digital Devil Saga” in the US. It seems there is hope, after all…)

Persona series occupy a unique place in Megaten universe, for several reasons. First, instead of controlling just one nameless hero and one or two supporting characters, you have a full party of five human members. The main gameplay difference is that in Persona you can’t summon demons any more and make them fight by your side. Instead, you “equip” demons (called Personae, hence the name of the series) on your players, using their spells and modifying your characters’ parameters. But the most important difference is in the content. While mainstream Shin Megami Tensei games concentrate on cosmic battles between the minions of Law and Chaos, emphasize moral choice and abstract, global ideas, Persona series tells about inner struggles and conflicts of the people. As a result, Persona games are much warmer and intimate than Shin Megami Tensei. Lacking in grandeur of ideas and the moral ambiguity of Shin Megami Tensei, Persona games conquer the hearts of the players through their piercing insight into the human soul and deep psychology that was unseen in other Megaten games.

Compared to the first “Persona”, “Innocent Sin” is much more “Persona-like”. It departs more from global Megaten ideas and gameplay elements, and goes even deeper into the hearts of the characters and the players alike. The gameplay system has been refined and slightly simplified. Your characters can’t equip two kinds of weapons any more (sword and gun), there are no Moon Phases that would influence demon conversations, and you can’t perform demon fusions. You communicate with the random enemies (demons) the same way as in the first “Persona”, but as a result of a successful conversation, the demon gives you Tarot Cards, which are not exactly the same as personal demon cards in the first games. Tarot Cards are all divided into classes, as are the demons themselves. For example, if you successfully communicate with HERMIT Nekomata, she will give you several HERMIT cards. Once you have a certain amount of those cards, you can go to the Velvet Room and summon a HERMIT-class persona. Naturally, for the best results you should communicate with various classes of demons and obtain various Tarot Cards. This system works remarkably well. Demon communications, the trademark of Megaten games, is a wonderfully refreshing change to constant random battles players have to endure in other RPGs. Tired of fighting? Start talking! You have five characters in your party, each one of which has four way of addressing a demon. You can also team up and perform “conversation combos”. Naturally, different demons respond differently. If you manage to make a demon “happy” three times, it will offer to make a contract with you. Next time you meet this demon in battle and make him “interested” through the conversation, it will not only give you Tarot Cards of its own class, but also some Free Tarots, which you can then turn into any kind of Tarot you like. The game maintains a perfect balance between conversing and fighting. If you talk all the time and don’t fight, you don’t level up your characters and your personae, and have no chance against bosses. If you fight too much, you don’t gather enough cards and have to stick with your weak starting personae for a long time.

The variety of personae, their characteristics and spells is astounding. Each one of the twenty or so persona classes has seven-eight available personae, each one with its own level, statistics, and spells. When you equip a new persona, you should use its spells constantly in order to learn new ones. Once your character equips a persona, his (or her) stats change. For example, some personae are strong against holy-type attacks, but weak against nuclear element, some are strong against magic generally, but are weak physically, etc. Imagine a RPG where you have almost unlimited possibilities of customizing your characters – seek out all magic-absorbing or reflecting personae, experiment with the enormous amount of spells (there are at least five or more elemental spells in addition to the classic Megatenian Agi, Zan, Bufu, and Zio), and so on. When your characters level up, their stats are upgraded, and they get a bonus upgrade on one stat, depending on the persona you chose to equip on that character. As for the game’s protagonist, Tatsuya Suou, you upgrade his stats by yourself.

A nice addition that was unavailable in the first Persona is fusion magic. You can team up to perform a strong spell which is a combination of two or three other spells. In order to find out those fusion spells, you must experiment a lot with various kinds of magic and various order of their casting. Those fusion spells are particularly useful when you are fighting a boss with an elemental affinity.

The difficulty level of “Innocent Sin” is just perfect. It is one game that forces you to learn how to play it in order to win. If you think personae are nothing but a gameplay gimmick, don’t bother experimenting with them, and just attack physically all the time, you’ll die in the very first boss battle. But once you get the hang out of persona-management, the game becomes much more comfortable to play. When I played “Eternal Punishment” (which is almost exactly the same as “Innocent Sin” in terms of gameplay), I remember struggling against certain bosses, and dying quite a few times. In “Innocent Sin”, I didn’t die even once, because I was familiar with the tricky gameplay mechanics of the game. Although certain boss battles can get pretty challenging even if you feel at home with the game’s complex persona/spell system (such as the final, five-part boss), the difficulty level is never over-the-top, and the game is much more “player-friendly” not only than mainstream Megaten games, but also than the first “Persona”. For once, you can save anywhere you like – those who hate save points can rejoice. Like in other Megaten games, you HP and SP (needed to cast magic) gets replenished whenever you gain a level. Leveling up is pretty quick, I reach the end of the game at level 61 with only about 40 hours of gameplay. Many useful items, such as an equivalent of Final Fantasy’s “Life 2″ spell, are sold in stores (although this particular item is quite expensive), and some personae have heal-all magic spells, which you should of course summon as soon as possible.

An interesting innovation is the “rumor system” (which is an integral part of the game’s storyline and which was unknown in the first “Persona”). You can talk to various people around the city (yes, the entire game takes place in one huge city, not on a “world map” with a dozen of tiny towns) and learn rumors from them. Then, you can spread the rumors at Kuzunoha Agency, and see the results for yourself. The rumors can be about a particular shop selling weapons or armor, about a rare monster that lures somewhere in a dungeon, about a casino that opened in a certain part of the city, and so on.

Compared to the first “Persona”, the game world of “Innocent Sin” is larger, with many more locations, and many more characters. Almost the entire cast of the original “Persona” makes cameo appearances in the game, and there are a lot of other characters you can talk to, beside the six characters which will be in your party (four characters stay for the whole game, and the fifth – Yukino – is replaced by another character in the final part).

The differences between “Innocent Sin” and “Eternal Punishment” are slight – after all, those are like one huge game split in two parts, so anyone who has played “Eternal Punishment” will feel right at home in “Innocent Sin”. There are a couple of slight differences in gameplay (in “Innocent Sin”, each character has four ways of communicating with the demons, while in “Eternal Punishment” there is only one; when performing fusion magic, “Eternal Punishment” lines up your characters by itself, while you should do it manually in “Innocent Sin”; there are more rumors and a card registration service in “Eternal Punishment”), but overall the games look and are played in a nearly identical way. On a personal note, although I liked “Eternal Punishment” very much, I somehow enjoyed the story of “Innocent Sin” more. Maybe I felt so because “Innocent Sin” was like a close-up on the tragic and touching story that was only mentioned in “Eternal Punishment” (not that the story of “Eternal Punishment” itself wasn’t touching or tragic, it’s just that I found the one of “Innocent Sin” even deeper and more personal). On the other hand, I found the characters of “Eternal Punishment” cooler (especially Baofu). In “Innocent Sin”, all the characters you control except Maya and Yukino are teenagers, while in “Eternal Punishment” all but Tatsuya are grown-ups. Of course, I should mention that while the two main heroes of the two games are the same (Tatsuya and Maya), in “Innocent Sin” your “silent protagonist” is Tatsuya, and in “Eternal Punishment” it is Maya.

The character cast of “Innocent Sin” is still wonderfully colorful. The character talk a lot, and each one of them has a fantastically detailed personality, even their small habits and interests are mentioned. As far as detaillization and realism go, the characters of “Innocent Sin” leave any Final Fantasy cast behind. The silent protagonist Tatsuya is naturally not very developed, but we get to know him better in “Eternal Punishment”. Same applies to Maya Amano, undoubtedly one of the most wonderful female characters ever to grace a video game – finally, I got a chance to know her in “Innocent Sin”, since she was the silent protagonist of “Eternal Punishment”. Lisa Silverman and Eikichi Mishina bring some comic relief into the otherwise very serious game – although Lisa reveals to be a very deep character once you get to know her more.

The game was designed by the great “Demon Artist” Kazuma Kaneko, and despite its seemingly modern graphics, it comes to life thanks to the fantastic character design. While in-game characters are simple and rather crude 3D sprites walking on a rotatable 3D environment (much like in Xenogears), during dialogues and the (alas, not very numerous and very short) animé cut scenes the characters are drawn in animé style. In conversations, you can see their faces near the dialogue boxes, as it is customary in many Japanese RPGs. The character art is really excellent, each character has several expressions, and most of them are really nicely done and add a lot of warmth and personality to the text-only dialogues. There were unfortunately way too few animé cut scenes, but check out the intro and the ending for some really artistic pieces of work. I especially liked the usage of Heine’s poem “Doppelgänger”, which is of course a reference to the main ideas of the game’s story.

I didn’t like all the music in the game – I’m not a fan of those “metal”, techno-sounding tunes, and I prefer to them the typical melancholy Japanese melodies any time. However, some of the tracks were extremely beautiful, such as the wonderful piano introduction or the quiet, serene, and sad music of Araya Shrine.

The story of “Innocent Sin” lacks the incomparable grandeur, the moral ambiguity, and the sharp criticism of Shin Megami Tensei series, but in its philosophical and psychological depth it surpasses even many of the best Japanese RPGs out there. There are two main story “arcs” in the game: the psychological one, that tells about the past of our heroes and their own personal conflicts, and the philosophical one, that deals with such themes as the origin of mankind and civilization, human life, and the true nature of good and evil. The two stories are connected in a masterful way and lead, though several fantastic plot twists and sudden revelations, to the totally unexpected ending. While “Innocent Sin” still borrows a lot from Japanese RPG clichés, it presents them in a very refined and credible way, with more content than pomp, deep insight, and quite a lot of own original ideas. To tell more about the story would mean to spoil it, but I should just mention such its unusual and original part as the “Hitler sub-story”. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis, is one of the most important characters in the game, and of course he and the threat he represents are treated much more seriously than for example in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.

I also liked very much the way the heroes’ personal relationships were presented. True to Japanese tradition, love and similar strong emotions are only hinted, and the player should guess, or, better to say, decide himself, in what direction will a particular relationship develop. Beside standard themes such as love triangle there is also a more unusual matter, a hint at a homosexual relationship between two main characters. Although I’m not homosexual, I found the psychological background for this relationship very convincing and interesting.

I should also mention the great ending. How many endings you know really give you a feeling of full satisfaction? Even some of the best games I’ve played have totally crappy endings: the designers just pat you on the shoulder and don’t even think of rewarding you with a long cut scene, some additional story development, or even a few intelligent words. Japanese games are, of course, much better than the Western ones in this aspect. One of the reasons I like Final Fantasy games so much is because they give you such a strong feeling of reward when you finish them. The ending of “Innocent Sin” is absolutely unexpected, shocking, touching, and sad in a typically Japanese melancholic way – just the way I like them.

The Bad
No need to say that I’m very angry at those responsible for the fact this game was never translated into English and never released anywhere but in its homeland Japan. This fact appears even more ridiculous when we recall that the second part of the story was translated and released, so what American players got was an immediate, direct sequel to a game they were unable to play. It is possible to enjoy and to understand “Eternal Punishment” without playing “Innocent Sin” before (I also played “Eternal Punishment” first), but of course the enjoyment would be much more complete if non-Japanese players had the chance of playing the first part.

As it often happens with games I particularly like, I don’t feel like criticizing “Innocent Sin”. For the sake of objectivity, I should nevertheless mention some minor flaws.

The animé-style cut scenes are wonderful, but there are too few of them, and they are too short. At the time Squaresoft was bombarding the market with four-disc epics full of videos, “Innocent Sin” looks a bit too modest graphically, along the lines of Xenogears, which also suffered from lack of cinematics.

Although I liked the animé character graphics a lot, I feel that some “comical” expressions were too cartoon-like, and used too much. For example, I found Lisa a very serious and interesting character, and quite beautiful as a girl, too, but I had to see her “I’ve had enough of it!” or “Oh, not again!” kinds of expression too much. The excessive use of those graphical “expressions” just made her too ugly, and that was unnecessary. Also, during cut-scenes made with in-game engines, horror and astonishment was graphically expressed through abnormally large eyes all character suddenly had. While it serves its goal well and is pretty expressive, it was too comical for this serious game. The gestures of in-game character sprites also can get too funny, especially raising their right hand, which looks a lot like a Nazi Heil Hitler! greeting. It is a rather silly coincidence (considering the fact Hitler and the Nazis really appear in the game) and has nothing to do with the game’s story, since the same happened in “Eternal Punishment”, where Hitler wasn’t even mentioned.

There is some fantastic music in the game, but some of the dungeons were accompanies by techno-sounding tunes which were anything but memorable or fitting the atmosphere. Also, the third-person dungeons are certainly easier to navigate, but I found the first-person ones from the first “Persona” (and other Megaten games) more atmospheric.

The popular Japanese cliché of “another self” is slightly overused in the game. Also, it treats a bit light-heartedly the whole idea of “rumors”. Nobody seems too surprised about the fact that it is enough to spread a rumor in order to make it true. And although I welcomed the idea of using real historical characters, I found the Nazis too demonic, like some “cartoony” villains who have nothing to do with real people. To draw attention to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, one should precisely describe them as realistic human beings, and not like some kind of zombie-like creatures and machines who can’t even talk. This way, the entire blame was put on Hitler, and even he was a bit too “global”, too “video game-like” in “Innocent Sin”.

The Bottom Line
Even compared to the best of Japanese RPGs, “Innocent Sin” stands out as a remarkable blend of deep, philosophical storyline, fantastic design, and clever, complex gameplay. This game is a very good answer to the skeptical approach some Western players have towards Japanese RPGs: that they are too “cute”, have simplistic gameplay, and tell banal storylines. Well folks, it seems that some of the very best of the genre was left outside of the Westerners’ reach. But fear not: Eternal Punishment, the second and final part of the story, is there for you to play. And there is also a full translation guide to “Innocent Sin” available online, at Oracle of Maya (see links and trivia sections). Still, it is a shame this game was never released outside Japan. This is the real sin, and it is definitely not innocent…