Are persona 1 or 2 worth playing?

[bulldog0890]

no one ever talks about them, except when they meme persona 2 hitler

[King Kilo]

depends. first thing to keep in mind is if you're expecting the games to be anything like persona 3,4 and 5, drop that mentality immediately. P1 and P2 are essentially shin megami tensei games in every way but name. another thing is that they're very VERY dated. dont expect any hand holding or quality of life. they play exactly like shin megami tensei games on the super nintendo.

all that being said, they're very good games as long as you know what you're getting into. if you go in with an open mind and a willingness to try something new, you'll have a great time. if you go in with a P3-P5 mentality, you'll be extremely disappointed.

I'd recommend starting with SMT strange journey tbh. its has the most advanced version of the old school first person dungeon crawler system used in those games. if you like the gameplay in strange journey, you'll guaranteed like P1 and P2. from there i'd also recommend soul hackers 1 and shin megami tensei if, both amazing games.

[mdesaleah]

Yes. But not for the same reasons 3-5 have. No calendars or social links, but they are good in their own way.

Only real challenging part of getting this is that P1 on PSP has all the content but the soundtrack was completely changed for the worse, but there is a fan patch to mostly restore the music.

And P2 is easier, but to get the second game Eternal Punishment PSP in English, you need a fan patch. But that’s easy to do

And if you want to get into SMT, dont do Strange Journey first. Thats how you get instantly shredded by how different it is even compared to the other games. And its a big jump in difficulty.

SMT 4 is a much better choice. Especially with its bigger story/character focus, while its difficulty is generally not that difficulty compared to P3-5.

[Amaterasu]

Killer Basketballs and Toilets. If you know, you know.

[King Kilo]

Originally posted by mdesaleah:

Yes. But not for the same reasons 3-5 have. No calendars or social links, but they are good in their own way.

Only real challenging part of getting this is that P1 on PSP has all the content but the soundtrack was completely changed for the worse, but there is a fan patch to mostly restore the music.

And P2 is easier, but to get the second game Eternal Punishment PSP in English, you need a fan patch. But that’s easy to do

And if you want to get into SMT, dont do Strange Journey first. Thats how you get instantly shredded by how different it is even compared to the other games. And its a big jump in difficulty.

SMT 4 is a much better choice. Especially with its bigger story/character focus, while its difficulty is generally not that difficulty compared to P3-5.

I would recommend strange journey over SMT IV personally. I agree that strange journey is way harder than SMT IV but SMT IV is a 3rd person game. the way to traverse the dungeons is nothing like SMT IV. in terms of dungeon crawling, strange journey is closer to the original personas. IV closer resembles games like SMT III, raidou kuzunoha and digital devil saga.

[Splinter of Chaos]

I haven't played either 1 or 2 in... oh my god I'm old... over 15 years so I can't speak much for the story or gameplay. I do want to go back to Persona 2 some day, though, because I remember being really enamored by it.

I think people know Persona today as an inoffensive, mainstream RPG that tries to appeal to everyone, but Persona 1 and 2 were edgier and established a lot of the philosophical backbone for the series as a whole. Persona 1's intro starts with a poem that is worth knowing, both because it's good and how it relates to the themes in the series. Like modern persona games just say "hey Chosen One, you can somehow house multiple persona! Amazing!" whereas in the originals they make it a bit more obvious how "Persona" relates to Carl Jung's theory by the same name.

[Yürei]

At this point, you should probably wait for the remaster. Its most likely going to be the psp version of both Innocent Sin and Eternal punishment.

[AngryChair]

"Worth playing" depends of what kind of game you enjoy. These games aren't like P3-P4-P5, so if you expect something similar you are gonna be very disappointed.

Story wise 1 is decent and 2 is great imo, but the gameplay is just awful, and since these games don't have social links you are going to be fighting most of the game. I just can't recommend them at all, P1's gameplay is just one of the worst i'd endured in my life. Fusion system sucks, characters only get exp if they participate, the encounter rate is abysmal, first person dungeon crawling, etc.

I get people say to judge it by the standards of it's time, but the truth is they aged like ♥♥♥♥, and playing them today is a chore. If you are really interested you should just watch them on youtube... or wait 5 more years for a remake.

[guzcor]

Not a fan of persona 1, but 2 has a great story, but the gameplay is extremely repetitive.

[NovaExoO]

1 is not too long of a game so definitely check it out. It’s fun to see how the series started out. But 2 is on a whole different level. Imo the duology has the best story and atmosphere in the series.

[bulldog0890]

Originally posted by NovaExoO:

1 is not too long of a game so definitely check it out. It’s fun to see how the series started out. But 2 is on a whole different level. Imo the duology has the best story and atmosphere in the series.

are the ps1 versions of persona 2 fine?

[Someone]

Originally posted by AngryChair:

"Worth playing" depends of what kind of game you enjoy. These games aren't like P3-P4-P5, so if you expect something similar you are gonna be very disappointed.

Story wise 1 is decent and 2 is great imo, but the gameplay is just awful, and since these games don't have social links you are going to be fighting most of the game. I just can't recommend them at all, P1's gameplay is just one of the worst i'd endured in my life. Fusion system sucks, characters only get exp if they participate, the encounter rate is abysmal, first person dungeon crawling, etc.

I get people say to judge it by the standards of it's time, but the truth is they aged like ♥♥♥♥, and playing them today is a chore. If you are really interested you should just watch them on youtube... or wait 5 more years for a remake.

I second this, every battle kind of feels the same since there is barely any variety to them as will just keep spamming the same moves for most of the game, appart from bosses those actually require you to think a little bit

[aurafarmer]

they're better games so yes, just dont play the psp version of innocent sin and you'll be fine.

[aurafarmer]

Originally posted by bulldog0890:

Originally posted by NovaExoO:

1 is not too long of a game so definitely check it out. It’s fun to see how the series started out. But 2 is on a whole different level. Imo the duology has the best story and atmosphere in the series.

are the ps1 versions of persona 2 fine?

ps1 innocent sin is better, with eternal punishment it could go either way, ps1 if you want the (not very well made) dub, and psp if you want some more qol though. at the core they're both the same game