Atlus announces new JRPG: Soul Hackers 2 launches on August 26

The announcement of a sequel to an obscure, yet addicting, JRPG that originally released over 20 years ago is not what I was expecting to wake up to. But that’s what happened, and there are no complaints here. Soul Hackers 2 is an upcoming JRPG from Atlus and a sequel to the original Soul Hackers game that released on the Sega Saturn back in 1997. Now that the game is approaching its 25th anniversary, Atlus decided to dust off the IP and bring it to the modern age.

Granted, this isn’t the first time Atlus has released a Soul Hackers game in the past decade. It ported the original Soul Hackers to the Nintendo 3DS in 2012, which was already a surprise. If you’re still wondering what Soul Hackers even is, it’s a spin-off of the expansive Megami Tensei franchise, a JRPG behemoth that includes beloved classics like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona. Soul Hackers drops the post-apocalyptic nature of some of these games and, instead, brings you into a cyberpunk world filled with technology, hackers, and demons.

Beep boop

The original Soul Hackers was actually a sequel to the Devil Summoner franchise, where a normal human gets the chance to command demons around him. Curiously, this entry seems to have dropped the Devil Summoner moniker, implying Soul Hackers is hacking itself into its own thing. You can really see this in the battle system. It looks like you won’t command demons in battle anymore. If anything, the combat looks more familiar to Persona, as you control human party members in a Press Turn-like manner.

This is still exciting news for the Megaten fans, as Soul Hackers is the first new ‘Megaten-spinoff’ (not including Persona-games) to release since Tokyo Mirage Sessions in 2015, and even that’s a contested topic. We used to get tons of games like Devil Survivor, Digital Devil Saga, Raidou Kuzunoha, but those ideas have been abandoned for years. So, trust me when I say Soul Hackers 2 is some incredibly exciting news.

Soul Hackers 2 will release on August 26 for PC and most other major consoles. The game will also release with English voice acting, although the identities of the major voice actors have not been revealed. Check out the official gameplay trailer below: