You know, these are complicated times and I don't think I'm alone in thinking everything is going down the shitter in more ways than one. But oh well, life goes on, and there's nothing like a classic DRPG to remind you of the simpler days before hawk tuah crypto scams or trying to make rent in this economy. If you're looking to just explore some dungeons while enjoying some old school art, Dragon Knight II will fit the bill perfectly.
The days when you didn't have to buy no crypto for some hawk tuah
In the second iteration, all the girls from the village have turned into monsters. The cool part of this story setup is as you rescue these girls, the weaker enemies no longer show up in random encounters, which really cuts down on the grind from useless encounters. I played through the PCE-CD version, which features voice acting but cleans up all the nudity. So you can either opt for some pixel boobies on the PC or voice acting and auto-mapping.
Don't expect anything more risqué in the PCE-CD version
For completeness, I took on the burden of also trying out the NSFW PC-98 version. It's pretty much the same except the major difference of what happens when the girls you rescued come visit you at the inn to "thank you". The PC Engine version features more comedic episodes without any actual hanky-panky going on.
Just a friendly village neighbor stopping by for a chat!
The 18+ version, well let's just say that you're probably safe because this village supposedly doesn't have any young men and well, it's a fantasy world anyway right? So no reason to worry about STDs!
I'm always impressed at how good these early PC games look given that it came out in 1990. In fact, I would argue it looks better than a lot of art these days, notwithstanding all the AI shit recently. Putting aside the seggs, this is a fun and simple DRPG you can finish very quickly especially if you follow a guide. You do also get some party members and one can even use magic, which I've mostly just used to escape the dungeon.
Don't remember if the PCE version had panchira but definitely not acceptable "modern standards"
Score: 3 "Does hair color count as DEI?" out of 5
Overall, I just had so much fun, I was tempted to give an above-average 3.5 score but objectively, it's a fun and simple dungeon crawler. It's certainly a good reminder of how people weren't so anal about stupid shit back in the day. I liked it so much, I might even finish the PC-98 version to see the rest of the "action".
Oh, I forgot to mention that there's not a single strong female character in the entire game. Sofia is not nearly obnoxious enough to match up to "modern standards". In fact, the whole premise of the game is literally damsel in distress. Awful game, 0 out of 10! (Courtesy of IGNorant)
If you want to see more boobies, play it yourself
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
I can't believe I wrote about the first Shin Megami Tensei game in 2018. In fact, I can't believe I started this blog in 2015! Jesus, I'm old! Well, it's now 2022 and I finally finished the sequel Shin Megami Tensei II. I've said this before but at this point, I just have to live with the fact that I'll die of old age before I finish every game in my closet. I no longer try to force myself to finish awful games (fuck you Avalon Code) so the fact that I was able to complete this one already means it was enjoyable enough to reach the end.
I'll enjoy SMTV in like 10 years, in the meantime...
Probably my favorite part of the first game was the beginning, talking to your mom and going to the mall. The events in normal Tokyo leading to the apocalypse was fun and pretty much all I remember from the first game.
Remember when everything didn't suck? Oh man, the good ol' days
In this sequel, it's not clear what happened to the first game's characters but apparently they did end up building Tokyo Millenium, which was maybe the Law ending? In any case, you start out as a gladiator with memory loss, which doesn't seem to be the most original start to a story. But no worries, without any spoilers, the story did not disappoint.
Is it amnesia or... something else? No spoilers on this blog!
Even though 95% of the game consists of filling maps, grinding, and going here and there, you'll read some brief dialogue that drop some bombshell revelations. It is a good reminder that you don't need hours and hours of dialogue to tell a good story though I won't complain if it's voiced by Kana or Ayachi.
Fully voiced remake when? Ahh, it'll probably suck cause it won't be the same (huh?)
As for the gameplay, it's a pretty mixed bag, nothing surprising if you've played the previous games. First of all, the Mag consumption really discourages walking around with demons in your party. I almost always played with just two characters. The only time I felt the need to recruit and fuse demons was when you had to go rescue Hiroko all by your lonesome and to beat Abbadon. You really, really need to fuse a demon with Tarukaja because trust me, I tried to beat him whittling away at his HP on auto mode and gave up after a couple HOURS.
Near the end, you run into enemies where neither swords nor guns work but I just ran away from them. Maybe because I pumped all my points into speed, I had no trouble running away from any enemies that were annoying to kill.
Apparently this is Cero A... fine with me?
All in all, it was pretty much auto battle all the way. The enemies in this game are so generous in dropping full health items, I hardly used any magic. Now, you could conceivably go to town, recruiting and fusing, and devising all kinds of clever strategies but I just slashed and shot everything and ran away if that didn't work. Near the end, Hiroko learns a spell that allows you to summon your demon as undead and that seemed almost a cheat because they're pretty much invincible. I just spammed Tarukaja and whittled away at the final boss to reach the neutral route ending where you basically kill everybody... again.
A quick couple things to note if you are interested in playing this game. There are two points in the game where you have to raise both your INT and MAGIC to 10, really annoying for a character that doesn't use magic. Though I suppose INT is supposed to help you recruit demons. Also, the direction your avatar spins no longer shows your alignment. You can check with law/chaos exclusive gear or by trying to heal at either.
It's a classic, you gotta use your imagination, damn kids these days...
Fortunately, I was able to switch my alignment back to neutral even after the game asks you a bunch of questions near the end that swings it pretty hard one way or the other. The final point to decide is when Zain asks you to join him, about 10 hours from the end of the game so you may want to keep a couple saves at that point. For me, I doubt I'll ever come back to replay the other routes.
Score: "Oh, you like Nocturne? Kids these days..." 3 dismissive snorts out of 5 (45 hours to beat)
All in all, this game is tied for my favorite Megaten game so far with Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei 2. I liked that your character has an actual backstory to reveal instead of just some generic kid from the first game. I also really like Beth's character and would totally play a remake with her voiced by some cute voice actress.
The difficulty balance was weird and quirky but at least it wasn't super frustrating and frankly fairly easy to play through even on so called EXPERT mode. Yeah Abbadon was a pain but at least his body wasn't too annoying to navigate again if you didn't have the proper skills to beat him. All in all, not a bad way to spend my ever dwindling life span... I guess?
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
So I got a comment (holy smokes, what are those??) about Phantasy Star that prompted me to pick this game up again. This just goes to show that yes, comments matter here and goddamn I love them little jolts of serotonin. Alistel (thanks for the comments!) prompted me to finally finish the game and I have to say, I had fun with it on the Switch with automap and "Ages Mode" baby difficulty edition.
I played with the scanlines and mapless for all of like 5 minutes
Sure, you could play it without the map OG style but c'mon, the temptation is too hard to resist. If I was in the mood to draw maps, I have a pile of Sekaiju no Meikyuu games somewhere in my hoarder pile (oh god, the never ending backlog...)
For a game that came out in 1987, it looks really, really good. If the Mark III was this capable, it makes you wonder why there weren't more good games on the system (poor Sega). With all the weak arcade ports, and the small library, it's fair to say that this is the best game for the console.
Granted, I was playing with additional helpful features on the Switch, I still got a good fill of that old-school Japanese RPG fun. Like many early RPGs, you start out really, really weak and need to cautiously save, heal, and slowly bring your level up. Once you get over the initial hurdle, you're off doing the usual exploring, dungeon crawling, and recruiting party members. It's all good, filling that weird need I have once in a while for a repetitively simple and somewhat therapeutic RPG.
Aww, so cute. Ok, time to get to work. KILL BOY KILL!
In addition to the automap, the pause menu has a handy explanation of all the equipment, items, and magic that you would have had to look up back in the day. What? Did you expect an explanation of what shit is IN the game? What next? Maybe you should watch some Youtuber play the game for you? Jesus, kids these days!
Do-heal. LOL, hope the person that came up with that got a nice bonus for creativity (not)
The manual even tells you the various spots where you could get permanently stuck. Ouch, that would suck if you saved and had to start over! As these things often go, I eventually put the game down when I got stuck looking for some shit in a pile of garbage. And of course, how could you not have an early RPG without the section where you have to wade through shit that hurts you on every step. Yes, I will admit I eventually resorted to looking up some help from a handy guide.
I guess it's better than the usual lava which in real life would kill you instantly
In particular, finding the Flow Mover is kind of a dick move requiring you to talk to a random NPC twice, replying both yes and no. Speaking of Flow Mover, the naming in this game is so unoriginal (eg light saber), it's actually kind of funny. Flow Mover - 24 hour dry protection for the active woman. 😂
I can't expect too much from a console RPG in the late 80s but the story was pretty much finding your party members and then just fetch quests. It's too bad because the opening intro was great. The last boss especially seems to come out of nowhere without any explanation and was kinda anti-climatic. Fortunately, I was barely able to win on my first try with all the best equipment. Tyron had 1 HP left and the cat... well, sorry but poor Snuggles didn't make it.
See what happens when you hire APRIL FOOL to write the story? Geesh!
Score: 3 WHY IS MY CHARACTER MOVING BY ITSELF? THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS!!! out of 5 (Over 10 hours to beat, fuck Switch's ambiguous time tracking)
I had an average amount of fun with this one. It was pretty easy to play with the various quality of life improvements. I can only imagine how awesome it would have seemed back in 1987 but also probably way more frustrating.
Oh, a real gamer girl? Are you selling your dirty bath water, perchance?
I have no major complaints except of course for the fact that MY FUCKING JOYCON DRIFTS!!! You know, this is where I would go on my usual rant about how Nintendo sucks except now Sony decided to become a Twinkie. If you haven't heard the term before, it means they're fucking white on the inside man! They even have a Karen (Catherine but close enough) to explain why they need to spy on you to protect all the millennial snowflakes. If you really believe they won't store your recording past the last 5 minutes, well, ask Alexa to Google that shit for you.
As much as I would've loved a Vita 2 and the old Sony Japan, looks like I'm going to have to abandon Soyney California and settle for Nintendo, the last Japanese console maker.
I made the switch to PS1 for FF7 and it was a good run before things started going downhill with the PS4. Parasite Eve, Metal Gear, Xenogears, the list of fun goes on and on. Let's pour one out for Playstation Japan. Sigh, why does everything suck now? #2020
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
So I'm finally on the SMT bandwagon even though real Jhipsters refer to the series as Megaten err excuse me, メガテン cause you know, there's no "S" in Megami Tensei I & II. But enough of the Jhipster rant, what I was trying to say is I finished Shin Megami Tensei. The "shin" in this case is not the kanji for "new" but rather "true" aka TRUE Megami Tensei. Does that mean the original books and the first two games are "fake"? Oh well, whatever, it's Atlus' reboot/re-imaging of the series. Blah blah, we all know what SMT is. #mainstream
You have to admit, the OP is pretty cool
Even though I played the PS1 port which was released in 2001, nearly ten years after the original SFC 1992 release, graphically it looks pretty close to the original. In fact, the 1995 SFC Kyuuyaku remake of the previous 2 games looks WAY better, in particular the world map in Megami Tensei II. In that remake, you're walking around a detailed map of Tokyo in your cool cape while in this PS1 port, you're still just a generic spinning shape walking around a boring map of various geometric shapes.
Never been to Sendagaya but pretty sure this is not accurate
Speaking of your spinning avatar, this game introduced the whole Law, Chaos, or Neutral alignment system. I couldn't really figure out how to check your alignment but after reading the manual, I found out that the direction your avatar is spinning shows which alignment you're on. Yeah, this isn't explained in an in-game tutorial so IGN review score -8 right there.
See, it's clearly explained right there! Also, notice the similar SFC graphics
This new system of making choices throughout the game that affects the ending is a great idea on paper and certainly superior to the whole frog branching path thing in the previous game. But in practice, it was annoying how once you end up on Law or Chaos side, a lot of the choices end up being made for you which seems backwards. For example, Chaos bosses immediately attacking you if you're Law or vice-versa. Most of the "choices" I ended up making was tweaking my alignment after the fact by donating to Messiah or Gaia churches for healing or by going to Destiny Tokyo Land. Of course, I went for Neutral cause fuck Church and Gaia sounds kinda hipster. Kill everything in sight!
As for the gameplay, it's pretty much the same deal as MT2. This game retains the option to attack with either guns or sword except this time, the balance was totally off. Yeah, I get that in the real world, a railgun will probably be more effective than a sword or a whip (even if it IS electric). But seriously, bullets that afflict status ailments? Like, you get shot up to hell yet you STILL fall asleep despite the excruciating pain? With the sleeping bullets, then the charm bullets, and later the binding bullets, I used guns pretty much almost for the entire game.
This was one of those odd games where it's much better to concentrate on speed and mostly ignore strength until you get the strongest sword. Especially given how devastating status ailments are, if you get first hit, you can literally beat some bosses with zero damage. And yeah, the boss battles were all kind of a joke even though I played on EXPERT.
The only real highlight for me was the story which is the most interesting so far. The dialogue is pretty minimal but I liked how things started on a very small scale that quickly escalates into some very bad shit. It all begins when you download some shady program on your handy 199X handbelt computer (probably while browsing porn).
Wooooow, SOOO futuristic!
Then there's reports of a gruesome murder in the neighborhood. It turns out to actually be a demon and you get arrested as you were witnessed at the scene. Then a Japanese Steven Hawkins turns up (RIP) and reveals that actually, a whole slew of demons were unleashed from a portal project (ala Doom). This is only the first couple hours of the game and well... let's just say things continue to go downhill from there. #MAGA #ICBM
This guy mysteriously survives through everything and doesn't seem to age. Hmm...
Score: 2.5 Cero A? Really? I'm sure the Christians would beg to differ out of 5 (44 hours to beat)
SMT like the previous 2 games is definitely, totally 100% a multitask affair. It helps that the sword attack is essentially useless until you fuse Hinokagutsuchi so I found myself selecting gun on the first battle after loading up the game and then going auto mode afterwards. In fact, I found it really annoying when a dungeon had one of those rare enemies where guns deal no damage. Sometimes, I was so lazy, I just let them shoot in vain for a while and let my demons handle it in auto mode.
Still, even though the game barely required any strategy, I had fun filling out the maps OCD style. But the encounter rate near the end really just soured the game for me. Especially the consecutive battles where there would be another battle 1 or 2 more times requiring me to select Auto x2 more before taking another single step.
Though not nearly as bad as DQ2, it was also really annoying how often you had to press O to skip through the useless messages of how you won, how much exp each of your party members acquired, mag, and maka. Even though I enjoyed the game overall, the last two dungeons especially the fuck fest at the Tocho made me want to toss the game at times. Still, how can you not enjoy the late 80s shoulder-pad blazer fashion? Kids these days don't know what they're missing.
So salty I missed the bubble no-pan kissa times #metoo #jk
In the end, I decided to not keep this one and it is already purged from my awesome collection and no it has nothing to do with the fact that my copy wasn't CIB...
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
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 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
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
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