Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II（デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生II）

So minor spoiler here but in the SFC Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei remake, when you beat the first game, it shows you going to save in the first floor of Daedalus except in a new overhead view. Then all of a sudden, it pops up an error message saying your save data was lost and that it will reset. OH noes! TIME FOR CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT!!!

Son of a-! I KNEW I shouldn't have blown the cart!

Kidding aside, the remake seamlessly starts you into the 2nd game right after you beat the first. When you start the sequel, you are actually playing the first game IN THE GAME. In fact, since you lost your save file, you have to beat the first boss again. Fortunately, it's not actually the same game. The overhead map is WAY smaller and you can beat the first boss in a fraction of the time it took in the original game.

Game in a game? Pfft! Wake me when it's in ANOTHER game... on twitch... which is an app on the character's phone.

I thought it was pretty clever how it pretends to reset your save, especially the part where it totally makes the events and all your hard work in the first game irrelevant since it all happened in a game... in this game. So much for all the Megami Tensei books and lore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This looks NOTHING like the first game! LAWSUIT TIME!!

Meanwhile, in the REAL world (in the game), things aren't so rosy as you are actually playing a computer game not in the comfort of a suburban home nestled in the safety of a decadent consumer capitalist economy (ie US). No, in fact, you're actually in a shelter and not the homeless kind but rather well... you can guess.

Anyway, once you leave the shelter, you'll see the biggest change from the first game which is an overhead map you'll need to travel in between the first-person dungeons. This overhead map fortunately gets rid of most of the pain of running out of MAG by dragging around demons as it does not deplete on the overhead map. You can easily grind some more MAG outside the dungeons.

Speaking of mechanics, in the first game, you don't want to spend a single point on INT for Nakajima because he can't do magic and you want to keep him dumb as a brick for optimal male barbarian bashing and smashing. (#gamergate #misandry?) This time around, they addressed this lack of balance not by actually changing the gameplay but by making you give the main character (you) at least 8 INT to beat a certain boss. Of course I didn't know this beforehand, so I had to grind a few levels. Bleh. Near the end of the game, you also have to waste even MORE INT points all the way up to 25 (20 with Masakado helmet) so you can equip Lucifer's sword and armor. The game does nothing to explain this, it just refuses to equip until you have the necessary stats.

Look at all that INT wasted on... being smart n shit. USELESS

Other than that, and the fact that you can equip guns, this game is pretty much the same in terms of lots and lots of dungeon crawling and fighting random encounters (almost always on AUTO). However, there's just a LOT more dungeons as this game is much larger and longer to beat.

The fusion system is also a lot more complicated and I had to do quite a bit of googling to figure out all the rules and various combinations. It was kind of annoying near the end when you have to fuse very specific demons to progress in the game such as Undine or Gnome.

So Seirei is a special type that requires two identical types... blah blah 

Minor plot spoilers to follow, skip to end if you care. And yes, there IS an English fan translation. English, English, English... geesh.






I loved the post apocalyptic vibe as you wander the wasteland with your cool cape and cybernetic arm. Yes, you get a cybernetic arm when a trap rips off your real arm and you have to frantically walk to the cybernetic company with a bleeding stub of a shoulder. You can't fight, see the map, or use the COMP and you lose health every step. Now that's pretty damn hardcore.

For future reference, try NOT sticking your arm in holes with blood stains...

And of course, who can forget the final true boss that would probably give wholesome American Christian soccer moms from the 90s a heart attack especially on the allegedly family friendly Nintendo platform. Thank goodness for ignorance and limited internet back in those days. My advice if you are playing this game is to capture the frog as it makes it easy to see the various endings MUCH later in the game.

I lucked out by keeping the frog without really knowing what I was doing

Score: 3 "Oh our company doesn't deal in evil filth like Nighttrap, senator" out of 5

I personally don't have an animal mask fetish but I won't judge

On the difficulty scale, while most of the game is not too hard except for Zaratan, it kind of gets brutal around the end. Zaratan was garbage because you can't leave unless you clear it and it's filled with damage tiles all OVER the place. I eventually just ended up looking up the map online and going straight to the pillar and exit as soon as possible. I guess you can exchange an item for a Core Shield for the damage traps but it only works till the next full moon. What a pain in the arse!

This was my successful run, barely made it out with almost no MP to heal

While I liked the setting and the story, this game has a lot of cheap deaths and I'm glad I was playing on an emulator. It's not like there's much strategy either as I attacked and healed all through most of the game. However, in the end, I enjoyed this classic or at least this classic remake. It's kind of like a Persona clone that has the difficulty of Dark Souls but with Undertale graphics. NOT! (Sigh... kids these days...)



Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Dragon Knight（ドラゴンナイト）

Dragon Knight is a DRPG where you save the kingdom/town of Strawberry Fields by defeating Dragon Knights. No literally. Dragons that are also knights (spoiler alert?). Personally, I think the game would have been much better if it had SPACE Dragon Knights but I digress.

The knight jumps into the dragon's mind... or something

Because I'm retro old-school, I first played through the original PC version. Not surprising for this type of game, but the kingdom/town is comprised solely of women. Now, I'm not sure how that works since Luna's mother is in the game and hence they must have some way to reproduce. Either they have some secret scissor magic (LOL) or maybe they hire out for some umm... outside help.

Luna, hate to break the news but your dad is... um... a test tube

One of the major problems with the PC88 version were the long load times and significant lag. The game was sluggish even at a blazing FOUR MHz so I dialed up the juice in my emulator all the way up to eight, count em EIGHT MHz!! Maybe the PC98 version is much better but I always have issues with those emulators.

8 MEGA POWER!!!

There's really not much to say about this game except that it's a very, very simple RPG with one attack and one heal spell, no items, and limited equipment. Now, as far I as I could tell, there is no automap feature and while I would love to map stuff out myself (ugh no), I have a life so I looked up the maps on the Suupaa Information Highway.

Nothing like a BACKLER to fend off them monsters

It's essentially a DRPG version of 闘神都市 except without all that sex. In fact, there is no sex whatsoever as you're practically a saint, saving all these women from the goodness of your heart. #WhiteKnight #FriendZone #ClosetSexOffender

What? Clothing? THE NERVE!

Unless you're really insistent on seeing some nipples, it's better to just play the PCE CD remake as it has an expanded story and nothing is cut. In fact, a lot of stuff has been added including bits of fabric or hair in some key strategic spots. I do have to point out that the the PC R-18 version has one image that probably won't be legal today thanks to America's proud work in changing the Japanese sexist laws. Thanks America! I won't put up the image of the match girl here so you'll have to play yourself if you're curious.

Is that one pixel going to make this blog NSFW??

I have to admire the fact that this game has different music for each of the 6 dungeon floors but man, PC88 music is not something you want to jam to for any length of time. I would put a link to one of the songs but nope, here's another screenshot, you horn dog!

There's like 3 other characters that look identical to this one

The PCE CD version is quite a faithful remake as all the dungeon maps are the same EXCEPT oddly enough the 6th floor. In addition to adding SUUPAA CD-ROM POWER voice acting, the game balance was also significantly tweaked. In general, the PCE version is almost TOO easy except for the weird difficulty spike at the black dragon. I grinded for a while there just to discover you only need to survive a few turns to win. MEH

Pretty much the same as PC except for, well try to guess.

Because of the addition of voiced dialogues, you can no longer change the main character's name from Takeru. A fair amount of dialogue was added with some minor plot changes including dialogue lines to hint at a larger story. Another big change is the ability to have a second party member. There's quite a few lines of dialogue in the original version where the main character complains that nobody ever tags around to help. I guess the developers took this to heart and decided to address his complaints. Also, the remake has automap though since I knew where everything was at this point, it was kind of moot (except the 6th floor).

This screenshot makes this look like an actual decent RPG

Score: 2.5  you're probably still googling "match girl" aren't you? out of 5.

I would say this game was a 2.5 including the remake given that it's based on a game from 1989. Yeah, the mechanics are dead simple but sometimes I'm in a mood to play a brain dead RPG without having to think about complicated shit like um... items. I had fun with it even though it's not a great game by any means.

SJWs in a rage right now might want to listen to these lyrics
Some extra screen shots cause, "Hey, I need to make some clickbait revenue too you know!!" I AM a "professional" after all!!

Pretty much the same as PC except for well... what do YOU think?

I tried to go back to the town and NUTHIN

Yeah, I actually finished this shit... TWICE. Don't know why

Next time, I'll probably just stick with the console shit

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei（デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生）

Finally, I finished my first SMT game err, I mean MT? Ugh what a stupid acronym. Anyways, what I actually played was the first half of Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei, the updated SFC remake of Megami Tensei 1+2. This is the DRPG and not the overhead action MSX/PC88/etc Nihon Telenet thing. For those new to this blog, DRPG is what we call 1st person dungeon crawlers since we don't need to waste a stupid letter to identify JRPGs (known to Jhipsters as RPGs).

The first thing you'll notice when you start up the game is all the reasons why this game was never localized. NOA was so busy trying to suck up to Congress saying THEIR games were wholesome family fun and would never have filth like Night Trap, they had to pretend this game didn't exist. Thanks to no internet, that was easy to do back in the day. I doubt this game would have helped their PR image if Shitaku was around back then.

Quick, somebody call Congress, it's time to hold to a hearing!!

I think this is the first game I've played that's actually a sequel to a bunch of books (for the kids, this is that Egyptian papyrus with words printed on it stacked on top of each other). Since the only version of the books available online are English fan-translated pirated stuff (typical), I decided to check out the OVA instead to get caught up on the lore.

Since YT has Content ID, I'm sure this is TOTALLY legal
Unfortunately, the anime only covers the first book and ends in a cliffhanger with a message from Set. However, I didn't really think the anime was so great anyways and I got enough of the gist to play the game. Maybe the books present it better but basically, you play as this asshole Nakajima who decided to make a program to summon devils cause first world problems and now you have to fix your own giant mess. You don't have to worry about how you defeated Loki and Set in the books because lo and behold, Lucifer helpfully resurrected them for you to beat again in the game.

Man Loki, I already beat you. Didn't you watch the OVA??

So the game is pretty much a standard map filler exercise. Thankfully, it does have an auto-map so no pen+paper needed. If you're obsessive compulsive, this is a great game to go fill in all the squares. If you explore every corner, you won't miss anything and should be able to get through the game without getting stuck except for the last sword which you have to go back to a random spot to find. I also looked up the map once to get through the halls on fire. It was really annoying to lose health on every step and I didn't want to wander around aimlessly constantly losing health trying to find Izanami's clothing (it's not what you think).

Umm... that's a very interesting way to decorate your walls.

The fusion stuff was pretty original for its time but man was it really skewed toward fucking Salamanders for some reason. For example, in order to fuse a level 57 Odin, you need a Sphinx and a Hanuman. To make a Sphinx, you need a Salamander and a Yasha. In order to make a Yasha, you need a Tsukuyomi and another fucking Salamander. And in order to make a Hanuman, you need a Zebec and ANOTHER FUCKING Salamander. Of course, it didn't help that I already had just finished fusing a level 55 Ganesha which also requires a Yasha and Hanuma which is TWO MORE Salamanders. So to make 5 Salamanders, I had to basically find 5 Dwarves and Pukas, the former which was annoyingly difficult to encounter.

Odin - mix 3 salamanders and a pinch of lemon for flavor

I also didn't really get the point of the moon phases and the date. There isn't any kind of time limit (thank god) and the only thing I cared about was NEW MOON because that's when you can't recruit any demons. Overall, the gameplay was just the standard attack and use magic to heal affair. You just grind away and eventually, you'll be able to get through with the handy AUTO battle. Though if you walk around with your demon friends, you will lose some MAG on every step so some resource management in necessary. I REALLY hated that enemies can sometimes knock down your level though. It made me save like a paranoid tinfoil hat crazy and if you get leveled down, you might as well restart. And for fuck's sake, could you show the stats for equipment in the equip menu?? I mean, it got so annoying going back to the item menu that it was easier to just look up the equipment list online. Lame.

Ugh, would it kill you to show some numbers here? It's a freakin' SFC remake!!

In terms of the plot, there's really nothing to spoil and it's as simple as can be. You're in there to kill some fucking demons and that's what you're going to do. Oh congrats, you killed em! Game Over. Thanks for playing! There is a floating city though so that's cool. You can fly to the final dungeon halfway through the game and die instantly just for giggles.

Dunno about the original FC version but check out dem SUPER graphics!!

Score: 2.5 Ignorant congressmen unaware kids in Japan were brainwashed into devil worship out of 5.

A dead simple game but still strangely addictive. I played while multitasking a visual novel and it was a perfect distraction while I listened to some imouto dialogue going on about oniichan, oniichan. I wish I was joking here but unfortunately, this is actually totally true.

The music was pretty good but it got far too monotonous after hours and hours of dungeon crawling. Eventually, I just turned it off to listen to my imouto in the other multitask game.

Yeah, might sound good to you now but try listening through 8 floors of Daedalos

A few more totally random screenshots just to highlight the wonderful Nintendo platform.

Ahh, fucking RICK. Man, what a great character and what a great story!!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely