I guess that financials report that listed Soul Hackers as a series apart from SMT foreshadowed this
I played the first one last year, it was good I suppose. It suffered heavily from simply not having the kind of combat and progression system you had in other SMT games. The combat was super easy, the whole Magnetite management aspect was easily broken. A lot of the dungeons had tons of empty space. However I think the game is still worthwhile and has its fans because it has a lot of qualities that games of its time had. To sum it up, I think the areas had a good sense of purpose. Not only the dungeons had these gimmicks to make them memorable, but in general the game just had this kind of good pacing that the classics of the time had. Basically in that game, on top of the city you have this virtual world that you can explore and right from the start you can visit various facilities. Some of them may end up being involved in the main quest. It gave me Paper Mario vibes surprisingly enough, you know how the game kind of gives you partially access to an area that ends up being fully accessible in the next chapter. I know this is kind of vague and specific at the same time but I think this feeling is what made the game stand out from others in its genre. It’s nice when a game doesn’t follow too much pre-established tropes and structure from its genre, that way it build an identity and you play through it without exactly knowing what to expect. Way too many games nowadays feel too similar to each other when they either follow genre conventions too closely or add “QoL” to the point that it trivializes entire aspects of the game
Now the first one has Devil Summoner in its name because it’s a direct sequel to that game and it heavily references its characters. This one is simply called Soul Hackers 2 and it seems like it’s just a modern spin of this whole concept of having a cyberpunk setting and an in-game virtual world to explore. I guess I won’t ever know what’s the deal with the Kuzunoha if they don’t port/remake those games in the future
Won’t even comment further on the platform choice, it’s pretty known that Atlus doesn’t make the best business decisions
I played the first one last year, it was good I suppose. It suffered heavily from simply not having the kind of combat and progression system you had in other SMT games. The combat was super easy, the whole Magnetite management aspect was easily broken. A lot of the dungeons had tons of empty space. However I think the game is still worthwhile and has its fans because it has a lot of qualities that games of its time had. To sum it up, I think the areas had a good sense of purpose. Not only the dungeons had these gimmicks to make them memorable, but in general the game just had this kind of good pacing that the classics of the time had. Basically in that game, on top of the city you have this virtual world that you can explore and right from the start you can visit various facilities. Some of them may end up being involved in the main quest. It gave me Paper Mario vibes surprisingly enough, you know how the game kind of gives you partially access to an area that ends up being fully accessible in the next chapter. I know this is kind of vague and specific at the same time but I think this feeling is what made the game stand out from others in its genre. It’s nice when a game doesn’t follow too much pre-established tropes and structure from its genre, that way it build an identity and you play through it without exactly knowing what to expect. Way too many games nowadays feel too similar to each other when they either follow genre conventions too closely or add “QoL” to the point that it trivializes entire aspects of the game
Now the first one has Devil Summoner in its name because it’s a direct sequel to that game and it heavily references its characters. This one is simply called Soul Hackers 2 and it seems like it’s just a modern spin of this whole concept of having a cyberpunk setting and an in-game virtual world to explore. I guess I won’t ever know what’s the deal with the Kuzunoha if they don’t port/remake those games in the future
Won’t even comment further on the platform choice, it’s pretty known that Atlus doesn’t make the best business decisions
