YMMV / Persona 2

• Adorkable: Katsuya is a cop who wonders if the penal code applies to demons, and he will even interrogate them as a contact option!
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Philemon isn't like the Abrahamic God, being all-powerful compared to Nyarlathotep's Devil. No, Phil and Nyarly are roughly equal in power and Philemon is actually saving us by making his bet with Nyarlathotep—because if he didn't push Nyarlathotep into accepting a game with rules, using humans as the pieces, then Nyarlathotep would just lash out first and destroy everything. This way, we get a chance and Philemon gives us the power to keep pushing back. He's still kind of a callous jerk about the damage this does to his chosen champions' lives, though.
    • Philemon is the incarnation of humanity's greatest aspects and potential and gives everyone the Personas and motivation they need to stop Nyarlathotep. Does he do this because he genuinely loves humanity, or because he's just as prideful as Nyarlathotep and doesn't want to lose his bet? Are his words of encouragement given because he's benevolent Guardian Entity who wants humanity to flourish, or a Manipulative Bastard who sees humans as pawns to use against Nyarlathotep?
    • That's because both Philemon and Nyarlathotep are morally ambiguous. Philemon represents Neutrality and Nyarlathotep represents Chaos, with Yaldabaoth filling in the Law/Order gap in Persona 5. None of the Law, Chaos and Neutral alignments are considered "good" in the Shin Megami Tensei sense, they are just Cosmic Horrors doing their own thing. In fact, the only thing that makes Philemon "good" is the Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous rule in MegaTen, where he would appear more benevolent than the other representatives.
  • Tatsuya's classmates' fawning over him doesn't make a whole lot of sense, given that he does nothing to warrant any of it. All the rumors swirling around him might play a part of it, though.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • The urban legends peddled by Kashihara-sensei and Ideal-sensei are taken from real conspiracy theorists, mostly Ernst Zündel (made "famous" at the Faurisson trial), who claimed that Hitler fled to Antarctica and has been sending out swaths of UFOs for decades. In fact, pretty much all of the conspiracies in Innocent Sin have been promoted by Zündel at one time or another. (Overlaps with Poe's Law.)
  • All the rumour demons are taken from Japanese urban legends.
• Anticlimax Boss: If you prepare for the bosses, they'll become this trope. It's also possible to kill 'em all with Armageddon.
• Awesome Ego: For most of Innocent Sin Eikichi Mishina would happily talk about how awesome he is, and most of the fans of the game would agree.
• Base-Breaking Character: While the other main characters from Innocent Sin have each garnered their own small but devoted fanbases over the years, for Lisa things are a bit more divisive. Some players come away from the game turned off by her sense of entitlement and dogged Clingy Jealous Girl behavior towards Tatsuya, despite how obviously uncomfortable she makes him. Even as the story progresses and her feelings for him do take on some shade of realness, she never completely lets up on her possessive behavior, and she flat-out refuses to accept being rejected if she becomes his Romantic Runner-Up after her Shadow is defeated. On the other hand, Lisa isn't without her charms with people liking her silly Lovable Alpha Bitch antics with Eikichi which are the source of some of the funniest, most light-hearted moments in an infamously dark game, and someone whose darker hidden depths add a lot to her character.
• Catharsis Factor: In Innocent Sin, Nyarlathotep had caused so much misery for the cast from causing Jun's Start of Darkness to Maya's death. Thus it's satisfying for him to finally get his comeuppance in Eternal Punishment as Maya and Tatsuya cut him down.
• Common Knowledge:
  • No, Adolf Hitler is not the Final Boss of Persona 2. Rather, he's the first form of the Final Boss of Innocent Sin, and even then, he's just an avatar of Nyarlathotep, the actual Final Boss of both games.
  • It is also assumed (Mis-blamed) that Hitler and the Gay Option were why Innocent Sin never saw an international release until the PSP remake. While it would have caused controversy, it was actually left in Japan because Atlus didn't have enough money to localise both. Thus, Eternal Punishment was chosen because it had a more definitive ending.
• Complete Monster:
  • Innocent Sin: Ginji Sasaki, aka Prince Taurus, is a member of the Masked Circle and easily one of the most depraved. A record producer, Ginji became infamous for his sexual advances toward his female artists, especially those underage. Out of a desperate attempt to regain his fame, Ginji made a deal with Joker in exchange joining the Masked Circle and helping them absorb Ideal Energy, using inspiring artists. Working with King Leo, Ginji, using the power of the rumors, started a new music group called MUSES, forcing Lisa to join by using her friends, with the intent of trying to bring her to their side and arrange a giant concert so he could absorb the Ideal Energy of the audience and then blow up the evidence with the bombs he help set up. When his plans were thwarted by Lisa and the party, Ginji tries to kill them, and when's he defeated, he decides to absorb the life energy of Lisa's friends in front of her out of spite before retreating. Ginji would commit atrocities without remorse just so he could keep his fame.
  • Eternal Punishment:
    • Tatsuzō Sudō is the tyrannical Japanese Foreign Minister and leader of the New World Order, a cult planning to reach the world of the Gods. Tatsuzō, however, has more selfish ambitions. Using his own group to conduct crimes, which include framing the father of two of the main characters; unethical experiments resulting in humans turning into monsters; and attempted murder to Baofu, which resulted in his assistant's death, Tatsuzō furthers the ambition of New World Order while hiding it from the public. To this end, Tatsuzō also sends his insane son Tatsuya Sudō to a mental hospital in order to lock him up from the public eye, and when he finds out he escaped sends the Taiwanese Mafia to kill him. Once the New World Order succeeds in their goal in activating Torifune to reach God, this also causes endanger the world outside the spaceship from a natural disaster that can wipe out humanity, something Tatsuzō is aware of. After reaching this far, Tatsuzō betrays his loyal companions by mutating or killing them, while sending out demons to take down the heroes.
    • General Sugawara is the military leader of the New World Order, in charge of its covert operations and experiments. Working with Tatsuzō Sudō, Sugawara helps his plans for godhood in hopes of becoming immortal due to his failing health. Sugawara uses his military might to invade areas, gun down opposition, and lead the group's experiments on Personas, abducting people and turning them into demons by fusing them with Personas, all the while uncaring when his men end up as collateral damage to further his agenda. Ultimately self-serving, nobody felt pity for him when he ends up being turned into a demon by Tatsuzō as his so-called reward of immortality.
• Cry for the Devil: Tatsuya Sudou/King Leo. The man is an unstable lunatic and an arsonist willing to murder children, but once you discover just how horrible his life had been, from being driven into insanity by Nyarlathotep and committed into an asylum by his own father who is a nasty piece of work himself, you can't help but feel a smidgen of pity for the guy. Some felt that a lot of the misery caused by the story could have been avoided if he had gotten proper help.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many fans interpret Katsuya as being on the autism spectrum, due to numerous instances of being incredibly Literal-Minded and fixated on the rules, as well his tendency to frequently miss or misinterpret others' social cues.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The games' story is frequently called one of the best - if not THE best - plot in the Persona series, and even Shin Megami Tensei as a whole. However, many people are extremely put off by the aged gameplay, to they point they confess of being incapable of getting into it and expressing regret that they won't experience the plot for themselves.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • For being the Sixth Ranger of Innocent Sin with the least amount of screentime, Jun Kurosu is beloved for his plot-relevance, depth of character, and for being the first and only male/male same-sex romance option in the entire series. That he's also the only Big Bad in the series to actually atone for his actions has also done its part to bolster his reputation.
  • Bizarrely enough, Hitler gets this treatment simply due to the sheer audacity of making Hitler a villain in a JRPG even if he's actually just Nyarlathotep in disguise. And when the PSP rerelease gave him a pair of Cool Shades and renamed him to "Fuhrer" in a half-hearted censorship attempt, it made fans love him even more. The fact that he actually has a pretty memorable boss theme helps as well.
• Epileptic Trees: Many players noted how Tatsuya Sudou's clothes bear a strong resemblance to the garments of The Reaper from Persona 3 onwards, as well as both of them missing an eye on the same side. This has caused some to speculate that The Reaper is either Sudou's reincarnation or a result of Nyarlathotep cursing him.
• Even Better Sequel: The Persona series has had a rather rough relationship with its Post-Script Season content in the various Updated Re Release's of the games. Tatsuya's Scenario from the PSP version of Eternal Punishment however is seen as some of the best additional content the series has ever produced with a plot that greatly helps to build on the preexisting story and characters while at the same time having new ones that don't feel shoehorned into the plot.
• Franchise Original Sin: While the constantly recurring plot thread of having an embodiment of some kind of human vice have become a tired trope in the series these days, it originally started here. The main difference that made it more acceptable here was that not only was it a new idea at the time, but the entity was more directly involved into the plot rather than being an endgame reveal and even being more personal to the characters, represented a broader concept rather than something specific, had an active opposite and was a fully fleshed out character in its own right.
• Game-Breaker: Some of the Fusion Spells are these. Of note is Dashing Strike (Zio + Tackle), which can be obtained as early as level 15 if you get lucky when mutating Minotaur; going off Michel's huge attack stat, it deals massive amounts of damage to multiple enemies multiple times that can easily carry you throughout the endgame provided the enemy doesn't resist Physical. There's also Armageddon, but it's less practical due to needing to be at least level 94 to even invoke the exclusive personae needed to use it. Level 94, and a new game plus, as you can't get both materials in one run of the game. You need the Accuser's Diary and the Morning Star from the casino, but the Star won't show up unless you clear Nate's Route and the Diary won't show up unless you clear Ellen's route.
• Genius Bonus:
  • There are several small bits of trivia, ranging from Aztec Mythology to the significance of the names Maya and Maia.
  • The publishing company Maya works at, Kismet, is a synonym for "destiny".
  • All the Personae (except Tatsunoshin Suou, Maihime Amano, Junnosuke Kuroda, and Alfred/Yamoaka from Eternal Punishment) are from real mythologies.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In order to sell the game outside of Japan as well as even provide some foreshadowing to the true nature (See Woolseyism), the Swastikas were replaced with Iron crosses. The use of the Iron Cross by neo-nazis proved almost eerily prophetic to The New '10s, where the Iron Cross returned, was mistaken for being a nazi symbol, and even started to be used by actual Neo-nazis.
  • In the middle of the game, the producer of the Muses group has a reputation for taking advantage of the girls he manages. Given that Lisa Silverman is part of the group, it becomes uncomfortable to watch given that her Voice Actress Hiroko Konishi was once in a Casting Couch situation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Tatsuya has high affinity with The World Arcana and his ultimate Persona Apollo can perform Nova Kaiser, which allows him to briefly stop time. This won't be the last time that Takehito Koyasu will voice a character who can summon a spirit that can stop time.
    • The developers seemed to have taken note of this as one of the added Scenarios in the PSP remaster included a one-on-one boss battle between Tatsuya and Kandori whose actor voiced Jotaro Kujo in the past.
  • One of Hitler's special moves in his boss fight is called "Holy Grail". David Lodge, who voices Hitler's English dub, would voice the actual Holy Grail in Persona 5.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many people have heard of Persona 2 or played it solely because Hitler is the first form of the final boss in Innocent Sin. Many of the Persona series LGBT fans have played Innocent Sin because of Jun Kurosu, a canonically gay party member who gets a lot of focus in the story and as well as the only Gay Option in the Persona series.
• Les Yay: Yukino and Anna in Innocent Sin. If you choose to leave Yukino behind at the entrance to Caracol, you encounter Shadow Yukino and Anna instead of the Longinus mechs, at which point Shadow Yukino kisses Anna. After the battle, Shadow Yukino convinces Anna to jump off the bridge at Caracol with her so that they can be Together in Death, effectively inducing a mental shutdown in the real Yukino. If you bring Yukino, she gives up her Persona ability to Jun after you defeat him, and go off into the city to fight Nazis with Anna, who promises to take care of her now that she doesn't have a Persona.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Eternal Punishment: Baofu is an infamous extortionist and rumormonger in the underground who desires justice for those who wronged him. Actually a former prosecutor named Kaoru Saga, when the law system failed to bring to justice Minister Tatsuzou and his lover was killed in retaliation by the Tien Tao Lien, Baofu grew cynical and resorted to illicit means for revenge, faking his death to create an underground network to disrupt their plans, while using his Persona to enact vigilantism towards them. Getting in contact with Maya's group, Baofu worked with them to stop JOKER with ulterior motives to use them to reach Tatsuzuo and Yung Pao. Using his experience as a Persona user and his network, Baofu is able to smoothly guide the group into his personal agenda, achieving the justice he sought for and finding closure to his personal conflict.
  • Takahisa Kandori returns from the original game.
• Memetic Badass: Tatsuya Suou. He punched god in the face. Seriously, each and every time this guy shows up in fanfic he immediately outclasses everyone else.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Let's positive thinking! ^note The most famous and most charming of Maya's Engrish catchphrases.
  • Tatsuya's talent in SFX-imitating, as lampshaded in the drama CD. Fans took it and ran with it.
  • Tatsuya likes raw meat. ^note One of the better-known character facts from the guide books is that blue rare steak is one of Tatsuya's favorite things to eat. Just like with his SFX-imitations, the fans went to town with it.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• Narm:
  • The voice acting in Eternal Punishment leaves much to be desired. "It's self-defense. There's NO problem with that," anyone?
  • Hitler wearing sunglasses in the PSP remake in an attempt to get past the censors. Of course, nobody can deny this makes the fight even better.
  • In the Japanese version of Innocent Sin, Eikichi’s Ultimate Persona, Hades, loses a fair amount of coolness points once you realize he sounds like Kermit the Frog. The remake’s English dub averts this by giving him a far more appropriate Patrick Stewart-esque voice.
• Never Live It Down: Even if Philemon is the personification of humanity's goodness and tries his best to help the heroes against Nyarlathotep with his hands tied, no one's going to forget that he made the bet with Nyarlathotep in the first place any time soon.
• One-Scene Wonder: Hitler (the Fuhrer in the English dub). Despite only appearing in the finale of Innocent Sin as one of Nyarlathotep's disguises, is extremely memorable among the fanbase. This is particularly so for PSP remake, where he's given a pair of Cool Shades that contributed to his appeal.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Innocent Sin is a generally very easy game. The Personas given as the story progresses are enough to carry the player for basically the entire game, and only a handful of bosses are particularly challenging. Eternal Punishment is the polar opposite, and this becomes apparent at about the fourth boss.
• Ship Mates: Fans of Tatsuya/Jun get along with Katsuya/Maya fans.
• Signature Scene: The finale of Innocent Sin, particularly the boss fight with Hitler, which is on the level of fighting YHVH in Shin Megami Tensei II, and to a slightly lesser extent, Okamura killing Maya, resulting in Nyarlathotep destroying the world and the setup for Eternal Punishment.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While still showing its age as a PS1 RPG in many ways, it's generally accepted that Persona 2 is a massive improvement over its predecessor, removing most of the Scrappy Mechanics that bogged down the original game. Its writing is also held in a higher regard, with specific commendation given to its cast, narrative, and atmosphere. It's no wonder that even though Personas 3, 4, and 5 are the more popular, well regarded iterations of the franchise, there is a small portion of the fandom that still considers Innocent Sin and Eternal Punishment to be the amongst if not the best games in the franchise.
• Take That, Scrappy!: According to the game, Tadashi is absent from Eternal Punishment because he's being chased by assassins, but more practically he's gone because the fans didn't want him to come back.
• That One Attack:
  • One of the Bolontiku in Innocent Sin and Metal Jun in Eternal Punishment have an attack in their respective games called "Terror Fortune" which deals moderately high Wind and Dark damage to the entire party, which isn't so bad. The problem is that it ALSO inflicts random ailments on your party, including instant death. Have fun keeping your party alive.
  • Great Father has Master of 18, which delivers a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to one character, hitting them, yes, eighteen times. It's completely non-elemental too, so you can't even defend yourself from it.
  • "Old Maid" in Eternal Punishment is no fun either. It's a spell that turns one of the character's persona into Joker. When this happens, if you don't immediately abort your battle and defend, it will do some decent damage to the party. What makes this spell a real pain in the ass is that Jokers spam the spell repeatedly, dragging the battle out.
  • Kudan's Prophecy (though you'll only see it once per game) completely resets your Persona to rank 1, taking all the mutations and bonus spells it once had with it.
  • Kiyohime's Fire breath in Eternal Punishment. You don't likely have good fire resistance at that point in the game, and taking huge fire damage when you not only have problems resisting it but healing from it can make the dungeon infinitely harder than necessary.
  • Hula of Misfortune. You lose half of your total money in the battle and you don't get it back. Financial setbacks, especially in Eternal Punishment, hurt.
  • Chaos Element, used by Shub Niggurath and Nyralathotep. It's damage is random (specifically it's user's level x random number between 1 and 8), meaning at its most painful it can deal 512 damage when used by Shub Niggurath (and Tatsuya only has around 580 hit points at this point, barring any Old Save Bonus). Nyarlathotep's is even worse, being capable of dealing up to 792 damage - even severely overleveled characters will feel that.
• That One Boss:
  • The Metal Trio in Eternal Punishment. Eikichi uses Mudoon, which can instakill all of your characters, and Bloody Divorce, which inflicts high damage in addition to an instakill chance. Lisa Charms you and buffs the other two, while Jun can use Terror Fortune to inflict every status ailment under the sun. The fight against them can easily be harder than the final boss, and only slightly less hard than Innocent Sin's final boss.
  • Duel Boss fight against Takahisa Kandori in Tatsuya's Scenario. The problem is that Tatsuya is stuck with Apollo, and the boss either resists or reflects anything Apollo can throw at him. Kandori also has several powerful moves at his disposal, including one that halves your HP, no questions asked. And boss can heal himself with Diarama, while Tatsuya can't. Time for some Forced Level-Grinding if you want to get through him.
• That One Sidequest: The cartography (map-making) side quest in Eternal Punishment involves a lot of running around every square inch of a dungeon, probably doing one or two of the dungeon's puzzles (like the Secret Lab's Fuse Box puzzle), walking over all the traps and pitfalls, and generous use of the Estoma spell. It's not fun and it can be draining. And if Salam didn't offer up a King's Ransom for his requests (for an equivalent, think of the rewards on par with Chocobo Hot and Cold) nobody would willingly do them.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: From Eternal Punishment: General Sugawara is surely no saint, having been the one to oversee the development of the X-series robots in exchange for immortality, but his presumed fate of being transformed into a grotesque, undying monster is such high-octane Nightmare Fuel, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.
• Values Dissonance: Tatsuya Sudou's Innocent Sin version is a person who is mentally ill, thrown out by his father instead of getting any help, suffers immensely from hearing voices and continues to lash out at anyone. The kid is very ill before rumors even set in. Make no mistake, he had to be stopped and it can be argued that he's a lost cause by that point in the game. However, 20 years ago, he would've been condemned as a whiny brat who relies on other people to fix his problems as Maya says as much at the top of the Sky Museum. In modern times, he'd be seen as someone who does need actual psychiatric help and can be interpreted as a kid screaming in pain for help that he's clearly not getting. What's worse is that in the additional scenario added in the PSP re-release of Eternal Punishment made 12 years later, Tadashi Satomi uses the new character Saori to bluntly express his disdain for a law in Japan which remits convicted felons who are diagnosed with mental disorders through the portrayal of Sudou with all the grace and subtlety of a large anvil falling at mach 37.
• Values Resonance: Innocent Sin is notable in that Tatsuya is, for all intents and purposes, canonically bisexual, and has amongst his potential love interests Jun, who is canonically gay - in a game that released in 1999, where even the idea of LGBT characters in protagonist roles in games (that don't fulfill that niche) was practically unheard of. This also wouldn't be seen in future games in the series at all, with no Gay Option to speak of despite the future games higher focus on Dating Sim-like aspects, making this one of the rare examples where a much older game in a series resonates more with present values than newer releases.
• Woolseyism: Innocent Sin's international version changing Hitler to "The Fuhrer" and putting sunglasses on him instead comes off as a very poor attempt of Bowdlerization, yet it works - it's not actually Hitler you fight but Nyarlathotep's avatar taking Hitler's form, specifically to take advantage of one of the games' central themes of rumours becoming real. The sunglasses may also serve as a subtle call to Henrich Himmler - the actual high-ranking nazi known for the occult interests associated with Adolf Hitler and nazis. While Himmler did not wear sunglasses, he did wear a large pair of glasses after all - and many people often attribute the occult interests of Himmler to Hitler. This goes to show how many things become Common Knowledge.
  • The *Bleep*-dammit! and Symbol Swearing in the English dub of Eternal Punishment. Some see it as immature, but considering how many times you can clearly tell what they're saying, it allows them to get a lot of crap past the radar.

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