Shin Megami Tensei II（真・女神転生II）

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.

Hot springs event / bikini DLC, c'mon Atlus it's free money!!!

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

Otogiriso Soseihen（弟切草 蘇生篇）

A sound novel is a term trademarked by Chunsoft and is really just a fancy word for what some would call visual novels ironically with no voice acting. The sound here is referring to SFX and a novel doesn't really talk to you at least back before Audible became a big thing for busy Millennials. Anyhoo, I figured it was my Jhipster duty to check out Chunsoft's sound novel series starting with Otogirisou. I played the PS1 remake and the intro gives off a really good vibe.

Oh boy, this looks scary!

Unfortunately, the writing doesn't quite live up to the enhanced graphics. You can finish this game in a few hours and is designed to be replayed many times. According to the manual, you should replay at least 10 times to get to the "truly interesting" parts.

Oh man, this DOES look scary!

I thought the idea behind the game was certainly interesting. There are tons of dialogue options (supposedly over 1,000) and while the basic premise of the events are the same, it's slightly different and feels fresh every time. For example, the first playthrough shows a photo of the inside of your car while the next playthrough might have a little animation with trees whizzing by.

I'm a sucker for these old school photos

Unfortunately, the freshness lasts maybe about 4 or 5 playthroughs and you quickly realize it's the same basic scenarios. You're driving in the car with your girlfriend Nami, some accident happens, you happen upon a mansion in the woods, etc. etc. The dialogue options get sillier and sillier as well with tons of cheesy puns and it's clear they don't really reflect on the following dialogue.

Ketchup on your salad eh?

Since these scenes are designed to be stitched together in semi-random order, after the first few playthrough, it was mostly a tedious exercise of holding down circle. No skip option is just such a time sink. One might say it's amazing that the story still holds up together even when it shifts and changes but to me, it just means that the story is not that involved.

The rain moves in the background. It's like a novel but EVOLVED!!

Score: 2 desperately trying to get with your gf no matter how fucked up things get out of 5 (15 playthroughs)

Some of the endings were good and it was interesting somewhat but overall I was underwhelmed. Sometimes it got a bit too silly for me and I just couldn't tell if the game was trying to be scary or funny. It wasn't particularly good at being either.

Unfortunately, the story is just not as scary as this picture suggests

However, being the obsessive compulsive that I am, I couldn't help but find all 10 endings to get the pink bookmark. Due to how the story changes up, there wasn't a clear guide and it wasn't that easy but I soldiered through it. The manual suggests some ecchi fanservice with the pink bookmark but I mean, don't get your hopes up. You're not going to be seeing Corpse Party style low angle shots of a girl hanging in a toilet stall. (You sicko.)

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

Majin Tensei（魔神転生）

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!! I finally, finally finished Majin Tensei after 59 scenarios of tedious fucking hell/makai. I really need to question my own sanity. I guess I'm a glutton for punishment? Unfortunately, I didn't realize the snapshot feature on my emulator overwrites the previous snapshot so I pulled most of these images from other JP bloggers that are almost as crazy as me. I say almost because they stopped updating before finishing the game, which in retrospect was probably the right thing to do.

Ugh, seriously, fuck this game

I'm going to go on a little rant here because this game has a LOT of problems. The biggest problem is all the goddamn waiting for enemies to move and sometimes those fucking yellow neutral demons that take their own turn. It's so bad that the game was pretty much unbearable without a fast-forward emu button. I really, really should have started using the turbo button from the start. Even with that, it was a bear, especially Scenario 56 near the end with the fucking sprawling desert that you can only travel at 2 squares a turn.

Fuck this desert. I'm too fed up to even come up with a funny caption.

Now, I'm not too big into SRPGs so it's not like I have a ton of experience to compare to other games in the genre but I can tell a shitty game when I see one. Not only is the waiting just unbearable but the whole demon fusion part is completely useless. You generally only want to play with just the two main characters because the demons only get a few levels in the form of stars and experience is pretty much wasted on them. On most maps, it's the same spiel, rush to the nearest blue healing pool thingy, kill all the nearby enemies, rinse and repeat.

The other issue is your tiny inventory space which makes items and most of the treasure chests an absolute waste of time. Basically, you just hoard the jewels until you can trade them in for some aura gear or Excalibur.

Thanks for making items essentially useless

If for some crazy reason that I can't fathom, you are interested in playing this game, you might want to look up the conditions to unlock the "best" ending cause why the fuck would you want to play this any longer than necessary? One of the annoying requirements of this ending is to visit Atlas 3 times with 3 floors, essentially extra repeat playthroughs of 9 maps (almost as fun as stabbing yourself with a fork!).

I unfroze you so can you please get out of the fucking cave?

The other tip I would offer before you go down to hell/makai is to recruit both the army guy and the blonde dude by finding Izanami on a random square in a cave. At the very least, I recommend the angels because they can fly around fast to plug up those pesky spawn circles.

She's in a cave somewhere, just google jp it. 

Score: 1.5 "so good I cried in joy when it was finally over" out of 5 (too many hours of my life wasted to beat)

Honestly, besides the boring waiting game Atlus thinks somehow qualifies as "gameplay" and the fact that none of the mechanics are fun or serve any practical purpose, I thought it was a pretty good Megami Tensei game. I can't comment on the music because it was playing at 2x speed pretty much the entire time but the story however minimal it was, has the standard Megaten shenanigans.

If you don't mind fast forwarding after every turn and really, really must play ALL the Megami Tensei spin-off series, I would say give it a go. However, to play the game as it was originally intended without emulation is just a pure exercise in self-flagellation. (I mean if you're into that kind of stuff, I won't judge.)

Thankfully, I'm here to warn the 2 people that read this blog to avoid a game they were never going to play anyway so I'll conclude my contribution to the greater good of society here. Don't say I didn't warn you...
..
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Hello? Is anybody reading this? Bueller? Aww. （◞‸◟）

C'mon, we have boobies on Nintendo here! (Yet another AdSense violation)

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

Final Fantasy IV（ファイナルファンタジーIV）

I probably beat FF4 more times than any other RPG as a kid. I definitely remember grinding all my characters up to level 99. Oh to be a kid again and have all that time to waste! I don't remember if I owned the game or rented it but it would be quite an achievement to grind to level 99 on a weekend. Gotta love them negligent parents! Back in my day, parents didn't need to watch or love their kids. Look at me, I turned out just fine!

Parental neglect has never been more hilarious!

I decided to play the DS version this time because I heard it was the hardest version (cause I'm hardcore gamer). Right away, I could tell the difference in the first battles outside Baron. Each enemy took 2 hits to kill (or 1 jump) and they hit back for around 30 damage. Without using a potion, you wouldn't make it past more than 5 or 6 battles. Still, I felt most of the game was fairly balanced until the last dungeon. Phoenix downs are plentiful for a reason as bosses will kill your party members more often than not.

Yeah, shit is easy here but just wait...

This is the first FF game with the famed ATB (active time battle) system and while I didn't really think much of it at the time playing the easy type for westerners rpg newbs version as a kid, playing the DS version really ups the tension and excitement. For the harder boss battles, it becomes a race against time as you frantically revive your party members and try to time heals so that it happens right after they're revived and before the boss kills them again. In particular, there is one really cheap boss battle that starts with everybody dead except Cecil and someone (wearing green) who joins you last minute under-leveled as fuck.

Even the box art screams "easy type for whiney babies!!!"

The battle system in FF4 is one of the most innovative RPGs for the time which is why I'm really more in the FF camp over DQ because I appreciate when developers try new shit even if it's totally broken at times (*cough FF8 cough*). The ATB isn't the only thing to rave about. I remember being giddy with excitement when I figured out you can bypass reflect by reflecting spells on yourselves (or vice versa for healing). Don't forget about casting float for enemies that spammed quake, and that annoying dungeon where you couldn't use metal equipment. Sure FF3 had similar neat ideas such as casting mini to enter tiny dungeons but here it actually affects the game play and makes it so much fun to play (sometimes annoying too). However, it definitely falls behind other games like FF6 in the story department.

On the DS, the graphics are way shittier than this #PSP-fanboi

Playing as an enlightened Jhipster, I was hoping to be wowed by all the brilliant prose in its pure, unadulterated Japanese form. Unfortunately, there's nothing the English translation really left out in terms of story. Sure, no more "spoony" bards but 「黙れ、貴様！」 isn't exactly Shakespearean prose. It's funny how we used to think as kids that NOA was censoring all these naughty curse words with "spoony" but really Japanese doesn't have much in terms of swearing in the English sense. "Shut up, (derogatory and rude version of) you!" doesn't really translate to any kind of swearing. The "oh we're cool cause we didn't censor the curse words" fake marketing makes Barret from FF7 seem juvenile and sophomoric now.

The one big thing I noticed playing as a Jhipster is that the pub in Toroia is a freakin' hostess club! It never says it outright but there's a Mama on the first floor and the second floor is dedicated to pretty oneechans talking to men. I know a fucking hostess club when I see one (not that I've been to one cause ya know I don't gotta pay to talk to the ladies).

I bet Japanese script is "I'll kill you and fuck your skull!" #CENSORSHIP

I really enjoyed the story as a kid, what with you starting out as a cool black knight and the whole Mist village thing. As an adult, maybe it's because I played this game too many times but I felt that the writing was a bit too juvenile and the voice acting in the DS version was pretty damn generic. I mean c'mon, how many times you gonna let Kain's shit slide? Really?!

I mean seriously, C'MON!!

I really wished they had a hard mode for the PSP version because the graphics are way better and the spell effects look so cool. The DS is the usual pixelated mess of course. Yeah, it had some new mechanics such as the decant thing (shrug) and some token multiplayer feature that I naturally ignored completely having no friends IRL. If it wasn't for the lack of difficulty, I would suggest the PSP version over the DS any day (don't even get me started on the iOS port).

Score: 3.5 get these muthafucking spoony snakes off this airship! out of 5 (53 hours to beat)

Also includes all the time lost dying in the last dungeon #gitgud

FF4 was one of my favorite games of all time for quite a while. The original SNES version was one of the best looking, sounding, and funnest RPG of its time and would easy be a 4 or even 4.5 score. However, playing through the DS version again in modern times, I have to say that it's definitely a fun game to play but also a bit dated in terms of the plot. Still, definitely a classic that I would consider a must-play for RPG aficionados.

Still one of my fav boss themes to this day

Currently, I am enjoying the after years and actually intended to write about it here along with the main game. However, after playing the interlude for about 5 hours and 3 hours on the first scenario, I'm hoping there's enough content to justify a whole post by itself. We'll see.

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

Shin Megami Tensei（真・女神転生）

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!

Snagged from internets cause I played on PSP (no emu cheats)

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

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 Quest III（ドラゴンクエストIII そして伝説へ…）

My first reaction when I started up Dragon Quest III was OH MY GOD, it's SOOOO much better than DQ2!!!! Once again, it paid off to start the series chronologically because the graphical leap over DQ2 was huge. I mean, yeah, I'm comparing two Super Famicon remakes but it's obvious they put way more effort into the remake of the 3rd compared to the 1&2 "bargain" bundle.

Finally feels like I'm playing a SUUPA Famicon game.

Not just the graphics, the entire game feels like a breath of fresh air and restored my faith in the series after the awful previous entry. You walk way faster and the battles are fast and smooth. The killer feature is auto dismiss on the battle dialogues. Instead of having to press a button after EVERY SINGLE action, it'll just fly by based on your dialogue speed setting. Compared to DQ2 where a single turn could require up to 20 button presses, you'll only have 8 if you have four party members (attack+select enemy x4). In addition, the battle music is not absolute crap so I'm glad to be able to play this game with the sound ON this time.

Finally, battle music that's not vomit-inducing
The game starts out with an intro of your dad with some pretty awesome cut scenes and then some deity gives you a personality test and proceeds to give you some profound life tips based on your personality. I was told some deep advice that amazingly completely matched my current situation and basically saved me from a self-destructive path of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. The sex especially was tough cause you know chicks be all up in my biznass 24/7 G.

I'm now convinced that this game has deeply influenced Japanese society for us old fogeys... somebody should research that. Joking aside, it was definitely fresh and exciting to start off playing a short scenario that tests your personality. I got the one about the king but failed at getting the sexy personality. Though near the end, somehow my strongest equipment ended up being bikinis and garter belts so I ended up with a whole party of sexies anyhow. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


To be featured on next BBC documentary: "Shaping the weeb generation"
Speaking of sex, another nice customization is the option to pick the gender of you and your party members. Even though you look pretty much identical in my opinion, the other character classes have more variety. A nice touch is every time somebody mentions you as Ortega's son, they have to correct themselves. I'm sure it's still an sexist and misogynist game per SJW's standards but at least now I can finally create my standard waifu party.

Disgusted by sexist pink female armor, I went with a party of all bunnies and died instantly.

However, it was only later that I found out that there is NO pafu pafu with my all waifu party. Personally, as a gender-fluid sometimes lesbian female, this is EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE toward the LGBTKFCABCDEF community and we should all boycott Nintendo NOW.

ANYWAYS, getting into the gameplay, I can quickly summarize all the changes as "everything broken in DQ2 was fixed". They added the bag that allows you to carry EVERYTHING at all times and a line of text that explains what each spell does. FINALLY! No more having to google what Behoimi and Hyadaruko fucking does. However, being a classic DQ title, the random encounters are still very much a multitask repeatedly press 'A' affair or in my case 'L' for one-handed multitasking, though thankfully not as often as DQ2. I only wish holding down 'A' went faster than mashing it. Unfortunately, it's way faster to just mash. However, to its credit, this is the first DQ game where I had to use buffs and debuffs for boss battles namely Rukani, Sukuruto, Piorimu, and Baikiruto. Yeah, I have no fucking clue what those do either, which is why the in-game descriptions are so nice. It was kinda lame that Orochi has some sort of invisible health regeneration every turn but at least it made me use more than just attack and heal.

Holy shit! Explanations? Who'da thunk it?!

So yeah, on paper, this is the best DQ and probably one of the best RPGs on the FC (based on what I've seen). The SFC version definitely has some great graphics including some awesome spell effects. Yet somehow, I just enjoyed the short and simpler days of the first DQ more. There's a TON of content here and some nice surprises near the end but man, it just got kinda boring after a while. Yeah, you could conceivably play around with more jobs but you'd have to start at level 1 again. Or you could mess about with the board games and arena or hunt all those pesky metals down (meh). For me, besides the bosses, the gameplay and world setting was just too I dunno "Dragon Quest" to keep me interested. The personality stuff was cool but as far as I could tell, it has NO effect on the story or gameplay.

Score: 3 overrated JRPG reddit rant post time! out of 5 (also -10 points for no female on female pafu pafu)

Most of the game is just the standard DQ walking around + random encounter + attack + heal affair. So while technically there is nothing wrong with the game, I thought it was just OK. Also, the short, simple dialogues kind of made the story not as impressionable as it could've been. I mean, I guess it's cool for the kids since they can't read so good. I guess I should've played this like 10 years ago... ok ok 20 years ago.. ok I'm OLD, stop pushing it! There is an optional dungeon you can play after the game but I didn't bother. The sparse dialogue just didn't make the effort worth it for me.

I dunno, maybe I'm just not a big DQ kinda guy. I will however devour a Butterscotch dipped cone ANY day but wrong DQ.

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