Finished P2 IS a few years ago. I disliked the experience enough that my motivation to play the sequel disappeared entirely.
-Combat was insufferably dull, sluggish, imbalanced. Tactical thinking felt needless. I loathed combat in this game.
-Tarot system was needlessly filled with too many variables spread across your entire party. There was no logic behind the scant few 'correct' options for each demon as well. It's like they took something that wasn't great in P1, and doubled down making it exponentially more irritating.
-Environments were long and tedious to maneuver through while encounter rate was incredibly high.
-Tonally it was one of the silliest jRPGs. Moody, dreary, foreboding with that heavy-handed intro, but it gets silly fast, cartoonishly so. Granted this is a Persona staple I suppose, but I felt this was far less consistent than later titles.
(Although I get the love many have for the cast of characters. They didn't resonate for me, but they are a diverse and interesting group. Mostly goofy,)
I did like the bittersweet and rather melancholy ending though(the one shining point of the journey if you ask me). The rumor system was a novel idea too, but everything else was a miss for me. Innocent Sin may be my least favorite jRPG I have played. I think I enjoyed P1 slightly more, which I played right before.
