Persona 2: Innocent Sin

Persona 2: Innocent Sin is the first half of the two-part Persona 2 series and one of the darkest RPGs Atlus released on the original PlayStation. The story takes place in Sumaru City, where spreading rumors literally begin to become reality - all it takes is for a rumor to spread among enough people, and reality reshapes itself accordingly. A group of high schoolers gets caught up in this phenomenon when their own forgotten childhood promises start to influence the fate of the whole city, and the game gradually uncovers a dark conspiracy tied to the legendary Nyarlathotep, who manipulates events from behind the scenes and tests humanity through its own desires and rumors.

The combat system builds on the series-typical summoning of Personas via Tarot cards and on the Contact system, through which the player communicates with demons instead of simply fighting them - through persuasion, negotiation, or intimidation they can be won over and added to your own team instead of being killed. The game's narrative is much darker and more mature than later entries in the series, dealing with themes like the abuse of power, loss of identity, and manipulation of public opinion, which placed it outside the mainstream of Japanese RPGs at the end of the 90s, when the genre was focused more on classic fantasy stories. The characters also carry real psychological trauma tied to their suppressed childhood memories, which gradually resurface and shape their present-day actions.

Why play it: Innocent Sin is a key work for fans of the Persona series who want to understand the franchise's roots before its transformation into the style of Persona 3 and 4. The original PlayStation version also never released outside Japan, making it a historically important foundation of the story that later entries repeatedly return to, and players willing to get past the language barrier or use a fan translation will get a much darker and more politically raw Persona than they're used to from the newer entries in the series.