I have a lot of opinions about this game, and In general a lot of things I want to say but Im going to preface everything following this with the fact that I am a diehard Megaten fan. Ive been playing these games since the early 'oughts and have played almost every title in the franchise to completion on the hardest difficulty (Sometimes multiple times!), and as such my opinion will definitely be a lot more tinted in the game's favor, since i'm going to be getting little nerd-gasms everytime I see a returning demon I like (Looking at you Futsunshi)
Before I get into the review itself, Im going to specify that I haven't completed everything in the game quite yet, but I've played enough to get a good grasp of the flow of the story and dungeons, and as such Im going to be commenting more on the general concept, rather than go into super detailed specifics how this dungeon or that dungeon was stinky.
For starters, I think the story is pretty damn good. People have definitely agreed with me on this, and generally speaking it seems as though it's the one factor that is unanimously agreed upon. Ringo is great fun to watch, but I also love the entire cast of main characters, with Arrow in particular being a bit of a soft spot for me. Something about his dorky stoicism just speaks to me deeply. In general the game has an unbelievably tight aesthetic that I really like. Shirowa Miwa was on absolute fire when he was making these characters, and I adore every design, and In general I think they all fit the theming of the game's plot perfectly.
Now, to move on to a much more contentous topic. At the time of writing I've played through a solid 55-60% of the game and I have to say that this is probably one of the easiest Megaten games in general. Ive been playing the game on the Very Hard difficulty, whose main gimmick is that it blocks you from using Items in combat. Even with this quite sizeable blockade, the game is extremely easy. My theory as to why that is exactly, is most likely because of the fact that the turn system is a lot more streamlined here than in a traditional SMT game, its predecessor and even Persona. In those games, if you miss or hit a null/drain/repelled element, you lose a turn counter, and as a result you get very heavily punished for playing willy nilly. This game doesn't have this at all. There is virtually no downside to hitting the same enemy over and over, which leads to the situation where demon set-ups that would otherwise require to single-target enemies with a null to an element now can just be done in the same way you would have done them if the demon wasn't there to begin with, which makes the game a lot more forgiving in this aspect.
In general the game is a lot less punishing in a lot of different ways. One good (albeit somewhat minor) example of this, is the fact that you can obtain Estoma Sword within the first 5 hours of play. For those who are not in the clear about this (and why would you be about an obscure skill in the latter halves of 60+ hour games), but essentially, Estoma Sword is a very powerful late game skill that allows you avoid all combat encounters while it is active in the overworld. This skill is usually reserved until much later because every encounter is equally as dangerous in the early game while your health/defense can still be easily outpaced by well placed weakness strikes, and as a result it needs to be a late game obtain as to not be too easy to coast in the early game.
Another noticable factor about the difficulty is the fact that items here are comedically powerful compared to the average megaten game. Don't get me wrong, that's not to say items aren't good in those games, but its to say that Items in this game are ridicilously strong right out of the gate. I had a full stack of Beads within 10 hours, and 2 bead chains (Full heal and full heal for the entire party respectively) within 15 hours, which probably explains why Very Hard limits the use of items altogether.
Now, the difficulty factor is a very subjective thing. As ive already mentioned ive been playing these games religiously for most of my life, so it's inevtiable that I would be able to see these overpowered factors, and I can understand how to an average player these things aren't nearly as prevalent nor important, I just felt it's a good preface to say in general, though the game is a lot easier than the average Megaten game, the combat system is still VERY satisfying and does a lot of things that I like.
There are two main unique factors about the combat that set it apart from the average Megaten game (aside from the lack of turn counters). For starters, the press turn system that most Megaten games use these days is now replaced with the Sabbath system. The Sabbaths are a really clever work-around and actually scale really well, as well as rewarding the same type of good gameplay that the turn press system does. I also REALLY like how all characters have skills later in that increase how many stacks of Sabbath a weakness strike adds to the overall stack. The other major change is something that I think needs to become a staple in every future Megaten title. The way that status effects usually work in those games, is that every enemy has a hidden table of what status effects can be afflicted on them. Usually in older games, its all or nothing, where enemies in the overworld always can take status effects, while bosses never can. In newer titles, its been changed to where every demon has a unique table of weaknesses to status effects, which leads to certain status effects being better in different parts of the game. The way the system works this time around is the ideal balance between the two systems. All status effects are now classified as a unique damage type called "Ruin". Ruin still deals damage as if it is a regular damage type, but if the enemy has neutrality or weakness to the damage, there is a chance to get afflicted by the status effect of the attack (Of course always factoring in skills that specifically make you immune to a status effect).
The final point of major contention people have a problem with are the dungeons. In general, I agree, but I also think people are both misunderstanding and underestimating these dungeons. To be clear, yes, the game's main dungeons that you will be exploring are all very samey visually speaking, however, they are not samey in execution. Something fairly common you'll see with older Megaten games is the fact that dungeons all use the same texture per dungeon, but have a unique gimmick attached to it, and this game is relatively in the same boat. It's not universal, but generally speaking, dungeons still have their own character, even if they are visually samey. The truth is however, that this game has the same dungeon set-up as Persona 3. That is to say, the majority of gameplay takes place in samey looking dungeons (Albeit not randomly generated like P3), with story dungeons having unique designs, akin to Soul Hackers 1. Ultimately I do understand how my opinion on this may be a bit more skewed considering I actually really like the old SMT games that all had dungeons that all look like the windows95 maze screensaver, and ultimately handcrafted dungeons, even if they visually look samey to me isn't as much of a problem. Not to mention the very important distinction here. Soul Hackers 2 is still a SPINOFF of Megaten. That is to say, Atlus' spinoff games tend to be very experimental in nature, and a lot lower budget as a result, which leads to the disparity of these dungeons stacked up to SMT5 or P5
My closing statement basically boils down to this: Soul Hackers 2 is a pretty good game, a solid Megaten game, with a lacking OST and dungeon design, while having a great, if easy, combat system, with a well told and interesting plotline. Doesn't get more succinct than that.