I'm rather surprised by the comments made about the gameplay. Yes, the PSP remake of Innocent Sin doesn't get particularly challenging until the late game outside of the boss battles but experimenting with the various spells and effects via fusions is a far more compelling combat core to build a game around rather than the largely tedious and repetitive Press Turn system of 3/4. While the writing is certainly the highlight, boasting some of the funniest writing and exchanges in all the Persona games (hearing the intentional censoring of Ulala swearing still brings a smile to my face), gameplay-wise Persona 2 collectively boasts the best dungeon design in the series, challenging and fun to explore without approaching the borders of frustration while the rumor system makes for a unique bit of worldbuilding as one learns about the various secrets and ways to change the world thanks to the denizens and demons of Japan.
I hate to zero on you, but your justification for why the P2 battle system more compelling is
wack, straight up.
For one, claiming that it's more experimental because of with fusion spells is
complete nonsense. Fusion spells overshadow regular commands, so there's barely a reason to ever use them outside of healing. And they're insanely broken too. Pegasus Strike and the Lightning Tackle skill trivialize every single boss fight in the game (even in the original version) in IS, and while Fusion Spells are significantly nerfed in P2:EP, they're still the most optimal choice.
So it's the total the opposite! The P2 games are even more tedious, shallow and kore repetitive than the newer games, but with the added displeasure of taking forever to complete a battle AND a high encounter rate to go on top of it. But all of that (all of it) could be excused if
P2 had a remotely decent progression system. But it doesn't. It doesn't matter in IS because it's laughably easy, but P2:EP forces you to grind. You want new Personas? Fuck you, you have to grind with the trial and error contact system for Persona cards that are then traded for actual Personas. And the requirements for a given Persona vary so you need to grind against all kinds of enemies.
(The contacts themselves are amazing though)
And praising the dungeon design seems counterproductive when it's such a low bar, especially when the high rate of random encounters completely destroy it (making P1's arguably better).
Honestly, it's one thing to have passion for one of your favorite games, but be reasonable here. There's a reason why people bag on the gameplay of these games. I know I sound arrogant, but i'm being 1000% sincere. As actual RPGs, there's no 2 ways about it:
P2:IS and P2:EP are bad.
