Soul Hackers 2 Review

Reviewing Soul Hackers 2 is tough because there are so many lenses you can review it through.

I could talk about how the version I played is so much more improved than the version that was released originally, and how things like being able to speed up battles improves the game so much that most reviews you see online might not even put that into account.

I could talk about how the game is a commentary on the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole and how it priorities your relationships over a Law/Chaos/Neutral system. It postulates that maybe the only difference between Law and Chaos is how you feel about it.

What I landed on is how this game feels much more of the moment in 2025 than it did in 2021. Soul Hackers 2 is set in a future world that seems ready to die. People have lost their passion, and things have just gotten worse. One group called the Phantom Society is looking to end the world, and they almost have all the macguffins to do it. While the game events have you trying to stop them, a lot of the game's narrative, especially early on, is getting to know your team.

You have mainly 4 characters, Ringo, the super advanced techobiological being born from an AI intelligence to save the world, Arrow, the boy scout tough guy himbo, Milady, the evil assassin cynical lady, and Saizo, the cool jazzy goofus freelancer. Whether you like the game will be mostly based on your interest in seeing these four people, and more, into fully realized people.

That is what surprised me the most, I ended up liking all four of these party members in the end, even Arrow, which I pegged as sort of boring at first, but eventually won me over. That is the trick the game pulls. I even started learning the names of the shopkeepers and became interested in their whole deal. The game is at its best when it fights the premise of a world full of apathy, and fills it with vibrant characters. The game wants you to realize that maybe if you got the whole picture, people would make different decisions.

This is what made it resonate so hard for me. 2025 is a time where the US government is using people’s ignorance and apathy to hurt people and let people suffer in order to gain advantage. It makes you wonder if the Phantom Society is somehow in the right for trying to end it all. The game winds up with an answer I wasn’t expecting to affect me so much. I was expecting a game in which I stop the bad guys and save the day, but this isn’t all about that.Yes, stop the bad people, but make sure you are also building your community. Make sure you know the people closest to you, and if they are hurting, because if you don’t, you may end up with a bigger problem than you were fighting in the first place.

The game does have some issues, like I think the dungeon design and the level progression slows the game to a crawl that I needed to just listen to podcasts instead of the game audio for large swaths of it, but the stuff it does right I think outweighs those moments (also I like listening to podcasts, so I did catch up on a bunch of them while playing). I felt the 50 hours of doing most of the sidequests and the DLC was completely worth it.

If you are looking for a turn-based RPG about building a community to save the world, and making sure it stays saved, then Soul Hackers 2 is worth a play through.