@johncalmc Thanks for the update! I was wondering whether you managed to wrestle a list into existence, and it sounds like you had your work cut out for you! Especially when you started to sub-categorise your backlog (mine uses colour-coding, but not to the level of detail you're describing). Good idea to know rough completion time estimates; I'm forever checking HLTB.com to ensure that I'm not biting off more than I can chew at any given moment. At least you might be able to take some of those physical games you'll never play and trade them in against future purchases?
Your backlog is far larger than mine (which currently stands at 99, including planned enjoyment replays and platinum runs). In future, you might wanna contribute to the backlog and wish list topic over in the PS4 forum (which reminds me, I'm overdue an update). Perhaps sharing your intended progress "out loud" will help keep you on track?
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@Thrillho Thanks for the review praise; glad you enjoyed reading! Funnily enough, despite my criticisms and the game's age, Shinobi Striker seems to have packed servers, at all times of the day. Whether that's more evidence to support the "fans will play anything" argument, or whether it's because it was recently £6 in the PSN Summer Sale...? Probably a bit of both.
One thing it does do right, though? Players who are Level 30 or below can access a special Beginner Match lobby, to ensure that they're not decimated by the elite. That was very helpful.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RR529 Great to see you back! I really enjoyed your write-up of Dogfight 1942 back there, especially since I've similarly discovered PC gaming in recent years. Sounds like you found the perfect game to make a start on the platform; it looks good in those screenshots, and you've made it sound pretty decent (historically accurate racial slurs and invisible trees aside). Getting older games to run on modern hardware often causes a couple of issues. I've been forced to run stuff on lower-than-max settings because otherwise, there's all manner of strange lighting glitches and object weirdness going on.
I'm a little disheartened to see you state that Ace Combat 7 is a tough challenge, though, as I recently purchased it in the PSN sale. It came with a port of PS2 classic Ace Combat 5: Squadron Leader which I'm working my way through first, but I'm nervous now!
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@Ralizah Superb stuff, as always... if not moreso than usual, actually, as I think this might be your best piece of writing to date. It's brilliant when a much-anticipated release like this can actually live up to the hype, and doesn't end up disappointing instead. In those opening paragraphs, you paint an evocative picture of how unlikely this all was (especially considering how notoriously litigious the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle usually is; your early mention of Holmes made me utter an "uh-oh" before I even got to the "Herlock Sholmes" bit) and how much this localisation means to you. For my part, the Ace Attorney series is one I've always thought I'd like, but never braved. Seeing mention of the historical context used in these particular games makes me even more curious, as it sounds fascinating.
I'm so pleased you're finally getting to experience these games, and really hope the sequel exceeds the already-impressive score you've awarded its predecessor. You note that sales weren't super-strong in Japan, so for a second game to get made regardless would suggest that there was some sort of plan in place, building to something. Fingers tightly crossed that you continue to enjoy!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
2021 is turning out to be a year full of unlikely localizations, ports, remasters, and sequels (particularly on the Nintendo front). This is most definitely the one that has excited me most, though, because I've just spent so long hoping it'd come over. I'd definitely recommend this collection if you're not averse to a LOT of reading (despite the modern-ish presentation, these games somehow don't have much in the way of voiced lines to date, which is a shame, because the people who did the casting for the english dub did a fantastic job with their choices; there's just not a lot of opportunities for these voice actors to shine).
And yeah, I'm definitely glad that Capcom allowed the second game in the duology to be made, although it unfortunately tanked more than the original did in Japan. Sales of this collection are doing even worse in the land of rising sun. Thankfully, there has been a fairly muscular response from the American fanbase, if Amazon's website is anything to go by, as the physical version of this title has been regularly hovering around the top of the charts for best-selling Nintendo Switch games since it first became available for preorder.
Everything I've heard from importers points to the sequel being significantly more excellent in terms of the plot and writing, so I'm super stoked to return to this collection soon.
@Ralizah It's tempting to point to the pandemic whilst discussing all of these resurrected classics, but I know several of them were planned way in advance of last year's lockdown (like the forthcoming Sonic Colours Ultimate, for example) so it must've been a growing trend regardless. It's great that they've managed to make more than a few dreams a reality for fans, and it's why I try not to get too disappointed if I don't have the right hardware for the software I want. Things have a way of working out eventually. I'm also pleased to see you say that Western audiences are pulling their weight with this collection, as anything that breaks down prohibitive localisation barriers is a positive in my book.
The reading aspect is what usually pulls me up short of getting the other Ace Attorney remasters on PS4, as I gather they're not fully voiced either, so I'm grateful for the warning with regards this specific collection as well. I get why it isn't a thing, and I should get over myself because I've played plenty of primarily text-based games before. It'll happen someday.
Your review calls the Great games an ideal entry point but, if you don't mind me asking for a slightly more personal answer, where do you think I specifically should start?
Really looking forward to your thoughts on the sequel. The joy in your review was infectious!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger You really have two options: this collection, or the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.
If you can look past or even embrace the outdated humor, silly witnesses, and archaic presentation (the sprites are cleaned up quite a bit in the HD trilogy, but there's only so much you can do to make GBA games presentable on modern systems without remaking them, lol), then there's a lot to love in the original trilogy. The first game, in particular, takes a while to get going, but it ends with two really good cases, and the third game is one of the best entries in the entire series (although, knowing your tendency to enjoy games/movies that are underappreciated by their own fanbases, I could see you enjoying the divisive second game more than the darker third game in the trilogy). It probably goes without saying, but the rather passionate fanbase for this series was primarily converted by these older games, and many still think the original trilogy has yet to be surpassed, all these years later.
I could see it going either way. I know you frequently appreciate older games, but then, y'know, you also get FF7 situations where you just can't catch a glimmer of the magic that wowed people years back. But it's just as possible that the modern Great Ace Attorney might not do much for you, either.
Ultimately, one set of games is more modern, set in a historical time period, and more focused on developing a serialized narrative, whereas the other is clearly old, set in something approximating modern society, and tends to feature a more episodic approach to cases.
The music is also old, but I quite like it. Here are a few pieces from the first game in the series:
And yeah, there's limited voice acting in TGAA and no voice acting in the older games, apart from when the characters yell out objections and whatnot. It fits with the older games, but, tbh, the presentation is advanced enough in the most recent games that hearing bleeps and bloops come out of a character's mouth is starting to get a bit odd. Capcom needs to invest a bit in making sure future games are mostly voice-acted.
Thanks! I look forward to discussing the sequel (and playing it, obvs). While I try to remain as objective as possible, I do think there is a certain enthusiasm threshold past which it just leaks out into my writing regardless, so I don't bother fighting it.
@Ralizah Huge thanks for the deets (...yep, okay, never saying "deets" again). I do love the quirky juxtaposition of the older games being set in a contemporary city, whereas the newer games are period pieces; something about that just makes me smile. The music you've embedded is brilliant, as well. I can see myself enjoying the atmosphere it creates, which should help pull me into the narrative. Ultimately, I'm just grateful for the honest appraisal of a series you very obviously adore.
You're right, there's always a danger of another FFVII scenario, but I think Ace Attorney is a bit more of a known quantity. I'd imagine a lot of the specific gameplay issues I had with that won't be present in a point-and-click deduction game. Whether I have more fun than not, I'd certainly like to try them (same as FFVII, I'm curious in a kinda "at least I can have an opinion about it now" way).
Might as well start at the beginning. I've added the trilogy to my watchlist. Thanks again!
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@nessisonett I recognise that as a sentence constructed of English words, but beyond that...?! Kinda gonna have to play the games now, just to understand what you mean!
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
Now I never write reviews. I just don’t have the time, when I could be actually gaming instead of writing… but working to highlight the virtues of playing Just Cause 3 to the uninitiated is a Worthy Ideal 😉. The reason being that in my opinion it’s a bit of an under appreciated gem that most people should have access to either through PS+ or as it is just so inexpensive (it’s always on sale on the PS Store… it’s little over £2.00 as I write this). So, if you’re looking for a fun diversion from your usual gaming tastes or just have nothing to play right now it could be worth the effort of installing it.
Tongue-in-cheek
So pretty much everything about the game is ‘silly’. The story, the abilities of the protagonist (Rico Rodriguez) and the carnage you wreak in the name of maintaining a fair and ‘just’ capitalist hegemony. This is all intentional though, the developers clearly have their tongue firmly planted in their cheek for this and is all in the interest of providing the player with the ultimate ‘playground of destruction’. I use that term intentionally to harken back to the great PlayStation 2 title Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction. The Just Cause series basically fills the void left by that classic game and dials everything up to eleven as it does so. It also adds a few ‘bells-and-whistles’ to the formula which just refine the overall feel and are distinctly Just Cause.
Gameplay Loop
As the anointed ‘Mr. Gameplay-king’ around here, I feel perfectly qualified to extol the virtues of the glory that is Just Cause 3’s moment-to-moment gameplay. Unlike most games based in and around military conflict, there is little to no tactics here. No patience required, no need to play in any other style than all-out offence. I’m not denigrating games that do the opposite here, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is one of my favourite games of all-time… yet is the total antithesis of Just Cause 3.
So why does it work? Well it’s just plain satisfying on a couple of key levels. First and foremost, the way in which you navigate your way around the huge open-world is in my opinion the best traversal system in all of gaming! The grapple-hook and wingsuit combo is just ‘bottled-lightening’. It is not easy to master… and even once you have you can still end up looking stupid if your concentration breaks for a moment but it is oh so much fun. The control and precision you are able to utilise once you have mastered the use of these two tools in combination is a thing to behold. The gaming fraternity have heaped praise on Insomniac’s Spider-man games due to its ‘feel’ as you swing around New York but it pales into comparison to the grapple hook-wingsuit combo for me. Sure there is more room for error with Spider-man but you don’t get satisfaction from a wide margin for error… you get satisfaction from threading the eye of a needle at breakneck speed.
It’s a great ‘world’ to traverse too. Varied terrain, beautiful vistas and it’s filled to the brim with locations. In addition to the traversal, there is the destruction… and in this regard Just Cause 3 is the gaming equivalent of bubble-wrap. There is a lot of ‘physics’ going on within this game-world. Not everything is destructible but a great deal (anything coloured red and grey typically) is… and there are many methods that can be employed to do so. You will have a menagerie of guns and explosives, armed vehicles (which also provide alternate means of world traversal)… but also your tethers. If you are wanting to preserve ammunition, or just like the extra control afforded by the tethers. You can attach them to anything within range… and then once attached, you can contract them with the use of L2. There is a wide variety of uses for these too. I managed to find a particularly cool looking speed boat in a small land-locked lake but couldn’t really get the most out of it in such a small pool of water. So I went and ‘procured’ a particularly strong helicopter from a local military base, hovered over the speedboat that had caught my eye, strategically attached my six tethers between the topside of the boat and the underside of my chopper and then ever so carefully flew her out to sea. So cool!
Gunplay/combat is mediocre. As I’ve alluded to, there is little tactics involved just reaction based action. It does have a major gripe of mine in this regard, that of using L3 to access fine aim rather than L2. In this case I think it’s down to the sheer amount of actions that Rico has at his disposal… and therefore L2 (& L1) were better utilised for other things but it still doesn’t feel quite right to me. You do get used to it though and you’ll be amazed by quite how creative you can be in how you choose to dispatch enemies during the heat of the action.
Missions are pretty run-of-the-mill in all honesty but the main thrust of the game is that the player should make their own fun. There are loads of military bases, occupied towns and cities and also skills-based challenges to complete as and when you like… and that is where the main game lies.
Variety
I was a big fan of Just Cause 2 back on the PlayStation 3 but I have to admit that although it provided a lot of what I described above in the gameplay loop (minus the wingsuit)… it did get a bit samey after a while. In fairness the same can be said about Just Cause 3 as there is just so many bases, conurbations and challenges to get through… but there is definitely more variety in this instalment. That said, I myself took a break (four years!) from playing it before returning to it due to this very fact. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the game but after playing it solidly for around 3 weeks I’d had my fill for a while. I hadn’t intended that ‘while’ to last four years but out of sight, out of mind… and it completely fell off my radar. I’m so glad a friend contacted me and asked if I didn’t mind helping him out with one of the online trophies as if he hadn’t, I might never have returned to it.
Having said all of that, there is variety here though. There are around 150 skills based challenges dotted around the map and are split up into eight disciplines. And if you are a completionist like me, getting a five star rating (or five gear rating to be more precise) is a proper challenge. There were moments where the requirements literally seemed impossible… but with patience and a willingness to learn it is all achievable ‘just’. There were moments when attempting some of these challenges where the combination of focus and adrenaline were almost overwhelming. There is just no room for error… and as a result, success is well earned and of huge satisfaction. Getting five stars (or gears) on some of the wingsuit courses rivals the satisfaction that I have felt from anything else in gaming.
Frame-rate, Loading & Servers
The game generated a lot of negative buzz on release due to frame-rate issues and long load times and they are still a thing sadly, though somewhat less so than originally from what I gather. On returning to the game after playing The Last of Us: Remastered at 60 fps was tough. The dropped frames and frame-pacing issues actually gave me a headache during that first session and as a result I actually considered quitting after helping my friend with that trophy. Something ‘stuck’ though and I returned to it the following day for a proper session. Pretty quickly I knew it was the right choice to stick with it as my vision acclimated to the rate and pacing of frames. It was rarely even noticeable after that.
Loading-wise, there is a lengthy initial ‘load’ as the game connects to the Square Enix servers. Said servers are… ‘dodgy’ at best too. Not only was I kicked out of them semi-regularly causing a further lengthy ‘load’ as it reconnected but also I was initially completely unable to access the servers at all. You see, the game tracks your ‘feats’ (your mastery of the games various skills) and measures them against your friends’ scores in the same category. Thing is, if you have too many friends (in this case, over 99), the servers can’t handle it. So as a result, I had to do a little ‘pruning’ of my friends list in order to even get online with it… but I’ve saved all of my ‘snips’ and I’ll be sending out a load of fresh Friend Requests now that I’ve got the Platinum trophy. Hopefully I’ll manage to get a decent percentage of them back in the fold as it were.
Also, if and when you attempt the challenges, there is a decent load time for each one. So, if like me you want to properly conquer them (ie many attempts at each one) be prepared for many loading screens between each effort.
Verdict
There are some drawbacks in terms of the technical limitations but ultimately it just plays so well from moment-to-moment that in the end I had to look past them. I had already bought the game prior to it being added to PS+ but if I hadn’t this would go down as the best PS+ game ever for me. This is a massive game in terms of both map-size and things-to-do… and as I’ve waxed lyrically about, it is always incredibly fun and satisfying to play while doing so. So fun in fact that I have already checked if there is a separate trophy list for the XXL edition (sadly there isn’t) as I would buy it again and schedule it in for next year or the year after. Oh well I guess I’ll just have to make do with Just Cause 4.
As far as sandbox offerings go there is a lot to choose from these days and there are certainly more polished examples out there. GTAV and Red Dead Redemption 2 have a better story, characters and performances (& straight-up performance for that matter) but in my opinion they are nowhere near as much fun. If you enjoy open-world games, you could definitely do a far sight worse than giving this third instalment of Rico Rodriguez’s exploits a go.
@colonelkilgore Hey, man - fantastic review. Gives me a lot to think about. The game is definitely on my radar now. Seems like it might strike my fancy when the mood for open world destruction hits.
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
Great piece! Despite not being much of a fan of Just Cause 2 on the 360, it is the sort of game I tend to like (one of the reasons I played the older GTA titles so much as a kid was because it was a fun outlet to just do whatever you wanted in that fictional world), I have maintained some level of interest in the property over time, so I'm happy to see you writing about it. The wingsuit sounds like a fantastic addition to the series, frankly. I believe the grapple hook was also in Just Cause 2, but it never really did it for me on its own. Grapple hook + wingsuit sounds like the perfect combo to make you feel just like Batman. It's good to hear there's more design/mission variety in the sequel, which is important for a sandbox title like this.
And I see I'm not the only one who takes absurdly long breaks from games. I took a three year break from Twilight Princess HD when I was playing it, and it'll have taken me 2+ years to get back to Dragon Quest XI S at the rate I'm going (I finished the main, 100 hour story quest in one go, but I just didn't have the energy after that to do the post-game stuff).
The gunplay/action being somewhat mediocre on its own sounds about right, too, based on my experience with the seventh gen game, but it's also true that any action title with decent in-game physics is going to have some fun, stupid ways to kill enemies, and I imagine that's true here as well. Especially with a large arsenal of weapons
I appreciate the warning about the performance on PS4. I looked it up, and the game seems to run pretty well on my graphics card, so if I play this, I'll likely stick with the PC version.
@Ralizah cheers, I’d be surprised if my ‘pen’ is called into action for a while though 😉… hope it is though as it’ll probably mean I’ve enjoyed a game far more than I expected to. If you do end up giving JC3 a go, I’d love to hear your thoughts,
[Note: I'll be discussing the first half of SMT1's story in a bit of depth. So... spoilers.]
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Shin Megami Tensei
Platform: Gameboy Advance (emulated via GBA emulator on Android)
Approximate time to completion: 32 hours
Despite only rather recently becoming popular in western markets, the Megami Tensei franchise has deep roots in the medium. I personally discovered it through Persona 4 Golden on the PS Vita, before branching out to mainline with Shin Megami Tensei IV on the Nintendo 3DS and becoming a rather huge fan of franchise overall. Unfortunately, nearly everything before SMT III (or SMT: Nocturne in the West) on the PS2 never made it to Western shores back in the day, so it has only been in the last two decades or so, as fan translation groups have patched Japanese ROMs of these games, that older entries in the franchise have been made available to us. To understand what Shin ("New") Megami Tensei is, though, it helps to understand, even vaguely, its roots in the older Megami Tensei games.
Curiously, the series finds its origin in a series of Japanese science-fiction/horror novels by writer Aya Nishitani, starting with Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei in 1986. The details of these narratives aren't really relevant beyond the basic premise, which involves a high school student developing a Demon Summoning Program that allows him to bring demons and mythological entities into the modern world. In 1987, a fresh-faced developed called Atlus would be tapped to develop its first video game, a sequel to the first two Nishitani novels, also called Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, as well as an eventual sequel, Megami Tensei II for the Famicom, or what would be known outside of Japan as the Nintendo Entertainment System. Although quite different from later games in many regards, these original games, some of the earliest JRPGs ever made, still adopted certain concepts that persist to this day. Like all subsequent games in the series, Megami Tensei I & II were dungeon crawlers. The sequel did feature some overworld navigation sequences, but the original, I believe, was more like early western dungeon crawlers and fully set in a gigantic labyrinth. More crucially, both games featured two really cool, novel concepts: demon negotiations, which allowed players to add demons they encountered to their party, and demon fusion, which allowed players to take two demons and make a new, stronger demon out of them.
Eventually, Atlus, with more games and experience under their belt, decided to branch out with these concepts while removing themselves from the narrative limitations of the original novels and characters. As such, they created a successor series, Shin Megami Tensei, that would allow them to naturalistically evolve the game design of the original Megami Tensei games while also being able to freely explore new ideas and further expand the range of demons available to the player.
Shin Megami Tensei, then, is a game I've wanted to get into for years, but for a variety of reasons (mostly presentation-related, which I'll get into later in this piece), I've continually bounced off the game time and time again, inevitably opting to play more modern, player-friendly entries in the series on modern devices. That changed recently, though, when someone in this shockingly passionate fan community back-ported the script from that now-defunct iOS localization I mentioned into the Japanese-only GBA version of the game, which, as it turns out, apart from higher quality music, is almost identical to the SNES release. Being someone who tends to prefer waiting for official localizations on official hardware, this was probably the closest I was ever going to come to playing an actual official English language release of the game. As it turns out, the slight changes in the GBA release were exactly what I needed to finally get into the game. And get into it I did, given I completed this roughly 32 hour experience over the course of roughly seven days.
Shin Megami Tensei, something of an epic dark fantasy, begins with the player character having a mysterious dream where they encounter a variety of characters in different situations. One man, who will go on to become the representative of the law faction, is described as a man "devoted to the lord." You also encounter a figure beset by tormenting demons, who is described as a "dried-up soul who is yearning for power." This will go on to become the game's representative for the chaos faction. You also encounter a woman named Yuriko bathing in a lake, who tells you that she is your "eternal partner," although she goes on to become an antagonist. In a second dream that happens later, you encounter another woman who cultists are attempting to sacrifice in order to summon a God. This second woman will become the game's heroine and your player character's partner through most of the game.
In the midst of these strange dreams, it becomes clear to the player character that all is not right in Japan. A mysterious figure named Stephen is sending out emails containing executable code for something called a Demon Summoning Program. As your character runs errands for his mother, he encounters ominous military blockades in the streets, and rumors abound of encounters with demons. Over the course of a couple of days, you eventually discover that the men you met in your dreams were real, and they also share memories of these prophetic dreams. You, law hero, and chaos hero (all player named characters, mind you) band together to survive when it becomes clear what's happening: scientific experiments with teleportation systems have opened a portal to the Expanse, where supernatural entities reside, and demons have begun to invade the physical world. Stephen, the primary architect of these experiments, develops a program capable of summoning demons that people have formed contracts with and sends it out to as an email to as many people as possible in order to stave off a one-sided slaughter (since, presumably, this takes place in a universe without a Doom Slayer who can single-handedly slaughter armies of demons).
Predictably, this situation quickly snowballs. The American military occupies Tokyo and martial law is declared in an attempt to regain some control of the situation as demons run rampant through the streets. Meanwhile, a rogue Japanese general, Gotou, is taking advantage of this chaos to form contracts with demons and leading a militia in an attempt at a coup détat. Your characters use their COMPs, which are basically portable computers attached to their bodies (in more modern entries, COMPs are understandably replaced by smartphones), to take the demon summoning program with them as they fight their way through Tokyo and eventually meet the women in their shared dreams. The heroine (another player-named character) turns out to be the leader of a resistance group that is attempting to keep the war between American forces and Gotou from destroying Japan, and Yuriko is a mysterious, chaotic agent bent on destroying the bond between her and the player character.
As a dungeon crawler, SMT obviously features combat. Unfortunately, it lacks the highly tactical press-turn combat system first introduced in Shin Megami Tensei III, and is fairly generic JRPG combat as a result (if such an old game can be said to have generic anything, considering it was still helping to craft the standards of the genre). Certain characters resist certain elements and attack types, but there's no real penalty for bouncing attacks (aside from just not damaging the enemy, of course) and no rewards for hitting weaknesses. As a result, every battle boils down to a war of attrition and it ultimately doesn't matter too much which demons you have in your party so long as their stats are high and they have access to both physical and magical abilities. Like classic Dragon Quest, battles take place from a first-person perspective, so you never really get to see your demons in battle.
Surprisingly, given the hardcore nature of these games, the difficulty of these combat encounters is typically pretty... balanced. Perhaps accordingly, in these early games, your demons are somewhat gimped in terms of what they can do in comparison to later games. Unlike in SMT III, they don't gain levels or learn new abilities, and fusing demons together doesn't combine abilities from the fused demons, which has become a huge part of modern SMT games. Rather, the new demons have particular abilities, and you learn to deal with whatever they have, as they don't learn anything new. In truth, you can run through most of this game with just the player character and heroine in your party without issue, especially since the heroine gains access to some truly powerful offensive and healing magic.
One of the notable features of this series is how much control it gives you over the growth of your human characters. Taking a page from classic WRPGs, the player is able to totally customize the stat distribution of their characters. Stats themselves are fairly simple: Vitality feeds into HP and defense; Strength feeds into attack power, and, to a much lesser extent, HP and defense; Agility primarily increases evasion; Intelligence taps into magical accuracy, MP, magical defense, and increases your ability to successfully sway demons in negotiations (more on that in a moment); Magic increases magical attack, magical defense, and MP to a lesser extent; and Luck does... something. I'm never quite sure what the heck luck does in any game with a luck mechanic. I ignored it entirely without issue.
If SMT has a claim to fame, it's that it was one of the first monster-collecting JRPGs ever made. Granted, there was something akin to that in the older Megami Tensei games on the NES, but SMT featured a much wider array of demons to negotiate with, demon tamers to battle, specific locations to visit if you wanted to find specific demons, etc. The unique quirk of monster collecting in these games, as I alluded to, is that you have to talk demons into joining your party. Although even getting demons to the point where they're willing to negotiate can be a challenge in the first place. Early on in the game, most players will probably find that they have very little luck with negotiations. Most demons will just get angry at your responses, or, worse, try and bait you into lowering your guard so that they can get the jump on you and attack first. It's pretty miserable, frankly. What the game doesn't tell you, and even what a lot of players don't seem to understand, is that success with negotiations is directly tied to your Intelligence stat. Since your main character is an utterly normal human being with no access to magic, it's often recommended that players pump their early game stats entirely into Strength and Vitality. But this makes it where your ability to negotiate with demons is almost non-existent. Higher intelligence doesn't guarantee success with negotiations, but each point in that stat makes it significantly more likely that the demon will respond favorably to your answers.
So, once you figure this out and pump some points into Intelligence, you can begin to get a sense for the rhythm of conversations and the clever, even humorous, writing that goes into these encounters. Moreover, as the game goes on, your name gains some level of notoriety with the denizens of the Expanse, and oftentimes you can convince them to negotiate with you after telling them who you are. Although even when these negotiations go relatively well, they can still be painful: demons will shamelessly demand multiple infusions of cash, magnetite (more on that in a moment), and often rare items with no guarantee that these gifts will be enough to sway them to your side. Sometimes you'll bleed yourself practically dry trying to woo a demon, only for it to laugh at you and run off with your stuff. Even more offensive is that, despite the sacrifices required to get these greedy jerks to agree to help you in the first place, you also have to pay a fee every time you summon them.
As if all this wasn't enough, demons constantly consume magnetite when they're in your party. What is magnetite, exactly? Well... it's never fully explained in any of the games I've played. The Megami Tensei wiki describes it as "the living, mystical substance that demons' bodies are composed of in the physical world." With that understanding, the mechanic makes sense. You're often awarded with magnetite after battles (and can even negotiate with demons to contribute magnetite to you), and this substance seems to be used to allow demons to remain corporeal in our reality. Thus, they're constantly drawing from it. The problem is that this isn't really viable when you're not actively fighting a boss or exploring a difficult dungeon, so, more often than not, I didn't have my demons with me. It's literally a monster-collecting JRPG where you're punished for having your monsters on you. Wisely, this mechanic was ditched wholesale by the time Shin Megami Tensei III released on the Playstation 2.
SMT games are also known for featuring apocalyptic settings, and while it takes a bit of time, it does eventually get there. Roughly 1/3 of the way through the game, in what must have been a rather surprising twist for Japanese gamers in 1992, Tokyo is bombarded with ICBMs. When you find out about them, a little countdown timer appears on screen. The brilliant thing about this is the way it subverts video game design tropes: timers typically appear to signal how long you have to escape an environment. But there's just no way for your characters to escape from Tokyo by conventional means within the 30 second window you have after finding out about the nukes. I, probably like many people at the time, scrambled to run, only to discover that my effort was pointless. The game doesn't end for you there, though: the heroine and rebel leader you're been rolling with uses her magic to save you and your friends from the atomic flames that quickly engulf modern Japan by transporting you into another dimension.
When you and your friends return to your own dimension, thirty years have passed (since the game takes place in 199X, presumably it takes place some time in our own, newly entered decade), and the world you grew up in is long dead (which the game rubs your nose in when you find out that all of the yen you collected from fights and bosses early on is worthless now, since a new form of currency, macca, is in circulation; don't be like me and grind for money early in the game, or this will be a particularly painful moment). In the radioactive rubble of the modern world, The Order of Messiah, who worship God and seek to create a heavenly kingdom on Earth by purging the world of the unclean and unsaved, engage in a brutal civil war with The Ring of Gaea, whose followers worship Lucifer and seek a radically free, socially darwinian society where the strong rule over the weak. And it's in this new, very dark future where the alignment system starts becoming important.
Alignment systems are another one of those all-important features that define SMT games, as they appear in some form in every title. The basic idea is that the player aligns themselves with with one of the two factions, or against both factions, with their choices in the game. It has always been a very cool idea, especially given how static and linear JRPG plots tend to be. As I alluded to before, your friends will eventually drift toward one faction or the other (although at least it takes disruptive events in their lives to get them to that point, which I won't spoil; the characters don't just randomly become insane like in some later games), so you'll unfortunately become enemies with one or both of your former friends. I won't spoil how, but the heroine from earlier in the game who saved your butt from nukes shows up again and becomes your permanent party member as your friends run off and become important figures in their respective sides of the war.
Unfortunately, the alignment system is also a royal pain in the ass in this game. Atlus chilled out with the alignment stuff in later games, where they mostly impact which ending you get, but you'll feel inconvenienced by the system no matter which side you opt for, because if you commit to either side of the conflict, literally half of the demons in the game won't listen to you. Seriously: if you become law or chaos aligned and have contracted with any demons of the opposite faction, they'll just refuse to come to your aid. There are also healing stations throughout the game associated with one of the three factions, and if they're an opposite-alignment station to you, they'll literally charge you extra money for using their services. Now, if you're neutrally-aligned, none of this necessarily matters, because you can summon both law (Messian-aligned) and chaos (Gaea-aligned) demons. So, if the alignment stuff is a pain, just pick neutral, right?
Well... it's not that simple. While neutral is the best alignment in a variety of ways, it's also one of the hardest to aim for. To understand why, you need to understand that SMT determines your alignment by invisibly adding on or taking off points when you engage in certain actions throughout the game, and if you fall outside of a certain range, you become either chaos or law aligned. And, look: it's not just important choices. It feels like literally everything in this game has an impact on your alignment. Summoning demons of a certain alignment will shift you toward that alignment. Killing demons you already have in your stock will shift your alignment. Using factionally-aligned healing services will shift your alignment. etc. None of which the game tells you, by the way. The game doesn't even have the decency to tell you your alignment score. No, you have to look at the way your cursor bobbles around on the world map to determine your alignment, and it gives you no sense of how deeply into one alignment you are.
But, OK: you're careful and you try to balance out what you do to stay neutral. And this actually works through most of the game. But the game will literally force you into situations where you HAVE to become law or chaos-aligned, because you're given no other options, and then, to go back to being neutrally-aligned, you have to overcorrect by doing stuff that'll net you points from the alignment opposite of yours. If you go online, you find out there's a relatively easy 'trick' for this in the game, but the game doesn't tell you about it. Turns out, if you go to the Gaean headquarters in Tokyo Destiny Land (which is a barely fictionalized version of Tokyo Disneyland; so, yes, the edgy lucifer worshippers make a shuttered Disney theme park their headquarters in the future, which is hilarious), there's a minigame that will shift your alignment. The game barely explains this, though, and you still have to look up what to do to avoid getting even more points for the faction you're already aligned with in the minigame. If this doesn't work (either because you're too deep in the factional hole or it just doesn't work, because the original SMT is buggy af), then you'll have to grind opposite alignment points by deliberately getting hurt and then healing yourself at the opposite-alignment healing centers I previously mentioned where you're charged extra every time you heal your characters. This is all as stupid and irritating as it sounds, by the way. I love that Atlus was so ambitious about trying to make your decisions in this game matter, but it was a terrible idea to not just tie alignment to a few in-game story choices like in certain later games in the series.
I expected a game this old to be rather terrible about telling the player where to go, as it opts for a semi-open world structure later in the game, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there's very little aimless wandering around in this game. The plot is consistently engaging and directed enough that I usually had a sense of where I needed to go and what I needed to do in this game, and the layout of the overworld is such that there's a constant sense of progression to the game, as your journey across post-apocalyptic Tokyo mirrors the movement of the plot overall.
Ditto with dungeons. A lot of the older SMT games are notorious for irritating dungeons full of traps, teleporter tiles, etc. But the dungeon design in this game is... pretty good. There aren't really any puzzles like in SMT III, but there are also far fewer dead ends with nothing to find, and traps/teleporters/etc., while they do show up, aren't much of an issue until late in the game, when you should be well-equipped to handle them. I was shocked by how well the dungeon-crawling held up in such an old game in a series notorious for its difficulty.
Besides wanting access to the official Atlus translation for the first game, I also opted for this GBA version of SMT because, frankly, it's a huge step up visually from the 1992 SNES original. The game is a classic, but the SNES version's presentation is frankly terrible: half of the dungeons feature identical-looking pink or blue hallways and the overworld is an abstract conglomeration of basic geometrical shapes. It also features a super basic user interface. The total effect of the original is that you feel like you're playing a Commodore 64 game from the mid-80s or something. It feels ANCIENT. Thankfully, the GBA port is pretty wildly improved on this front. Dungeon tile sets actually have textures on them! Ditto with the overworld areas, which actually look like environments and less like abstract collections of shapes. The use of color is also improved: you won't be seeing gaudy pink pipes and yellow buildings everywhere in what is supposed to be a dismal wasteland. Character sprites in battles look about the same: even in the SNES original, the sprites were detailed and imaginative, and the same is true here. There are also improved visual effects during battles in the GBA version, though.
While I'm on the subject of improvements in the GBA version of the game, it's also worth mentioning the visionary items you'll find throughout the game. These items, most of which are somewhat hidden, don't have any function in the game proper, but if you exit out to the main menu after finding one, they'll unlock brief cutscenes that flesh out story moments which weren't well-developed in the original game. They're a minor aspect of the game, all things considered, but the added context for certain characters and storylines that are shuffled past somewhat too quickly is welcome.
The music is... less impressive. SMT1 has always featured one of my least favorite soundtracks in the series, and as with many GBA ports, the conversions here are incredibly compressed. I'll say this: I got used to the music. That's about it. It's not necessarily terrible video game music, but when modern Atlus games are famous for their amazing soundtracks, it's difficult to go back to something less impressive. There are still a few fun tracks, though, which I'll link below.
The first Shin Megami Tensei is a hard game to recommend to modern gamers, given its antiquated gameplay, lack of QoL features, bugs, and messy gameplay systems. Nevertheless, the core of the experience shines through: in a time when JRPGs were almost all telling simplistic tales of good vs evil in high fantasy settings, SMT explored adult themes, featured morally nuanced characterizations, and forced players to grapple with their own sense of right and wrong when navigating the nightmarish labyrinths of an occult near-future apocalypse. It also developed and kickstarted the monster-collecting JRPG genre. And, speaking more subjectively as a fan of Japanese RPGs, it laid the outlines for what would go on to become one of the finest gaming properties Japan has ever produced. SMT is a trailblazing classic of the genre, and a damn interesting experience in its own right.
@colonelkilgore It's a shame you don't have more time to write reviews, as your debut is a blinder! A really enjoyable read on an oft-overlooked classic; thank you for sharing your thoughts. And whilst you decry the lack of a separate trophy list for the XXL Edition, the game did receive three DLC packs, each with their own trophies. If you haven't noticed them and succumbed to temptation already, then I highly recommend the lot of 'em. They each add new, ingenious toys to Rico's arsenal, one of which completely reinvents the wingsuit gameplay and makes it even better (if you can believe that).
***
@Ralizah Thank you, not just for another superb review, but for the brief history lesson on the wider Megami Tensei franchise, about which I knew very little beyond surface-level name recognition. It's awesome how the wider world has embraced the more recent Persona games, but that there's this vast legacy behind them, unseen by many. Hats off to the passionate fans for making this particular game playable for you, and others. I'm glad you finally got to experience it, given your interest in the series and the wider genre in general. It's obvious you found it fascinating, despite its basic nature (which shouldn't be a criticism, as you say, given that it was helping to establish so much stuff that we take for granted nowadays... heck, stuff we took for granted four console generations ago) and broken alignment mechanics. That being said, it's still cool that twists like the ICBM apocalypse still managed to sneak in and subvert your expectations. Well done, it.
"We want different things, Crosshair. That doesn't mean that we have to be enemies."
@RogerRoger thank you Rog, as always your far too kind but I do appreciate it. I’ll definitely consider those dlc’s too… as I’m already missing playing it 👍… and no I can’t believe the wingsuit could be anymore fun 😉!
@Ralizah wow, that’s an awesome review there… kinda puts mine to shame a little if I’m honest. I love the context and history you added. I haven’t played any of the series but played a little (like 10 hours) of Persona 5 but am always at the very least interested in series’ that develop such a fervent following.
@colonelkilgore Nah, you did a great job with your first review. Far better than the first several pieces I crafted, for sure. And I'll absolutely tag you if and when I get around to playing JC3! One of the funnest parts of experiencing new games is discussing them with others.
I'm glad the history sections were worth adding. It's a looooooong post, and I didn't want to bore anybody, but there is a ton of fascinating history here, and I wanted to explore it a little bit in order to give a sense of how important and, in many respects, ahead of its time the game was.
Persona 5 has done a good job of attracting eyes in a way that other MegaTen games haven't. Lots of people who've never heard of SMT or even play JRPGs much in general have been checking the game out. Although I imagine that VERY regimented first 10 - 20 hours of the game also put some people off.
Thank you so much for reading!
@RogerRoger Yeah, SMT is gaining wider name recognition now worldwide, but it's still a very... imposingly Japanese name, lol, and most people aren't necessarily going to know much about it beyond it being "that series that Persona 5 spun off from." But the heritage there blows my mind. Anyone who has ever enjoyed a Pokemon game, for example, has been touched by the influence and design of Atlus' classic.
I don't usually go too much into story details when I talk about a game, but the set-up here is so cool and involved. Especially for an older game. Thankfully, there's a TON of cool stuff story-wise I just didn't touch on. And wouldn't, because then the piece would be twice as long as it is.
And yeah, I'm super impressed with the fan community that has made so many older MegaTen games playable. I love Atlus, but, like Nintendo, they don't treat their early catalog with the respect its deserves in the West. The fact that they just never bothered to update the iOS version of SMT1 to work on newer versions of that operating system speaks volumes, I think. If nothing else, that will keep this patched GBA version of the game relevant for years to come, since it's the only piece of software which you can use to experience the only official english localization of the first game in the series.
As always, thank you for reading, as well as for the kind words.
@Ralizah I’m glad you’ve taken the time to put your thoughts about the first SMT into some sort of structured order because I definitely couldn’t! A very very hard game to accurately critique because it’s hard to tell what’s helping create such a foreboding atmosphere and what’s just plain annoying from a gameplay perspective. You’ve covered so many bases though that you’ve done the impossible and actually come through the other end of that rabbit hole relatively unscathed though! It’s definitely an interesting game, just antiquated as hell.
@nessisonett Thanks. It's absolutely antiquated, but the updated presentation in the GBA version helps one to suss out exactly which aspects needed updating, IMO. Dungeon crawling is much more fun when you don't feel like you're crawling around the inside of a bottle of Pepto Bismol every level.
The alignment stuff... I'm glad Nocturne mostly dropped it. The magnetite mechanic as well. Nocturne ensured you weren't overpowered when running around with a full crew of demons by making the actual battles more tactical.
I noticed I didn't mention the moon phases, but, tbh, they don't matter much in this game (unlike Nocturne; I was furious when I discovered I was missing good items by opening chests at any time other than full Kagutsuchi). That's supposed to be a mechanic in this game as well, but I experimented with it via save states and, if it is, it's far less reliable about it.
Two other things I should have mentioned: this version has a system where you can mark points of interest on the map. It's incredibly helpful, and I don't think that feature was in the SNES version. Otherwise, it feels almost identical gameplay-wise.
It's also still buggy as ever. Because I'd defeated some of the four kings before going to the Great Cathedral for the first time, I was denied the opportunity to go for the best neutral armor and weapon set in the game. Still annoyed about that.
I hope somebody (hopefully Atlus; c'mon, man) translates the PS1 version at some point, because I'd absolutely play it a third time in that case.
Never played SMTII, though. You have any experience with it? So far, only the SNES version is still translated.
@Ralizah Yeah, I’ve played the second game through the aforementioned SNES patch and it’s at least easier. It’s also not quite as interesting plot wise and the music’s pretty rubbish. Probably worth checking out though, and with a guide because it’s still incomprehensible.
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