Fusion Speculation + Persona 2 Innocent Sin Impressions
So there are some Famitsu scans floating around that basically confirm some more party members, however what I had been thinking about is how character progression works in this game. In SMT 4 you simply talk to the demon and it joins your party, whereas in P1 & P2 you get tarot cards you can tend combine into demons. From the looks of it this game doesn't contain any sort of negotiation so I'm left wondering if it really has any depth at all. This is what the directors said about it in broken google translate English.
"Q) Please tell me the presence or absence of replacement and training elements of the mirage!
A) Now work in the mirage and the master, since it has the setting with an emphasis on both the buddy feeling, mirage is all fixed.But, there are elements that mirage it's self changes."
Looking into the E3 video it is clear that it does have some sort of fusion/promotion (more likely promotion) system. Comparing the dungeon scenes and the boss scene we see that the skills are different, can't read it so I'm just going off symbols, eg...
Tsubasa Dungeon Lv 5 - Tsubasa Boss Lvl 22
Dia 10EP Dia +1 9EP
Spear 5EP Spear 5EP
Status 10EP Status 10EP
Zan 10EP Zan 14EP
Session 1SP Media 22EP
Bufu 10EP
Session 1SP
Dia has been improved SMT 4 whisper style and zan looks like it's been moved up to Mazan as well two new skills, in one case Itsuki loses one of his skills so it's not an A to B progression. It's pretty obvious this has something to do with Tiki's shire and the bro fist in one of the trailers. When you get to the ding-a-ling exp screen after the battle you can see next to the human exp bar there is a mirage exp bar that is either already full or empty. Just taking a wild stab in the dark but I'm guessing that once the bar is full you can go to the shine and mutate the mirage using items and armour and such to change their skill sets/weaknesses/ +1 to skills.
As for Persona 2 Innocent Sin I'm really enjoying it, almost everything from the original has been changed or improved making it feel very fresh despite going straight from 1 onto 2. Oh and the intro is awesome.
The game still uses the isometric sprite based stuff for overworld but now you can change the camera 8 positions around the character. It's similar to SMT 4 in this respect but I find it disorientating and jerky at times since you don't have that 360 control. With the camera movement you don't have to go into first person for dungeons any more, as a consequence the dungeons have had more effort put into them as they can't just be narrow one space corridors. The map system seems to be ripped exactly from Persona 1 and isn't fit for purpose most of the time since the layouts are more intricate.
As for the battle system the grid based tactical stuff in Persona 1 it has been removed completely and replaced with a system where you are still on a grid but it's basically all for show as you can move anywhere in one turn and have infinite range. It's a shame it lost a layer of depth however it does fix the typical rpg trope of everyone stands around the monster and takes turns to hit it then return back to where they started, the positioning of your members depends on which attacks you are doing and who you are attacking so it really feels like you are doing battle rather than taking turn whacking each other, it's just unfortunate this doesn't factor into gameplay. One of the cool additions to gameplay though is the fusion spells, so the attacking order is not determined by agility but put them, and fusion spells can be activated by 2 or more party members to do a super powerful pair up attack. by doing the right spells in the right order. Initially the game doesn't tell you how to do the spells and you just have to keep trying different combinations. It's kinda like that flash game doodle god and keeps me switching up the party often to try and unlock them preventing battle from getting too stale.
"So what if I try Earth, Fire, then water, ok that makes a super powerful thunder spell, let's move guy 2 and guy 3 and try Earth, Water then Fire, oh that makes a powerful whirlpool spell."
Additionally the negotiation has been fleshed out with a system where you can make pacts with demons, do pair up negotiations with 2 or more party members, and it's been balanced so that you won't ever see the same line of text twice in a conversation.
My issue with the battle system is that it is completely devoid of challenge what so ever, regular enemies do about 0-5 damage and bosses do around 20 if you are lucky. if you have never played an rpg before this would be a good place to start. Where as the first game was too hard, this game is laughably easy.
The real star of the show here though is the dialogue and interaction between npcs and party members, almost everyone has something interesting to say and after every event in the story will refresh their text with something new. As rumored the story is excellent and revolves around rumors, what if rumors were reality and if enough people think it the rumor will become true? This story conceit also factors into the gameplay in that you can talk to npcs and demons to spread your own rumors, for example "I heard Shop X sells weapons, the quality is bad/good/great but the prices are low/medium/high" or "I heard they built a casino in town, I heard it's easy to win at the ... machine". Going through the story I was actually surprised how many call backs there were to the first game that would have gone straight over my head had I not played it, although from the outside the story looks very different I think almost every character from the first game makes a cameo in someway or another. Initially I was thinking of skipping the sequel Eternal Punishment but I think I'm going to have to faff about with PSN since I would want to see the story to it's fullest conclusion.
Goes without saying the music is on point, bit less in your face with the Engrish than the first game but I don't have a preference either way to be honest.