Blaaah… I don’t care any more… The final boss was a bit tricky though, level 60 when my party ranged from 52 to 66. I was a bit overpowered, but better too strong than too weak, I guess. It’s good I spent time in the bonus dungeon because it’s easy to save in such a way that you can’t beat the last boss but can’t backtrack to grind either. Phew.

After all the time I spent making choices and cultivating a relationship with Aoi I thought I would get a character-specific ending once all was said and done, but the ending was basically “It’s over, let’s go home” and then the credits rolled. Bummer. There are some gaiden chapters after that, but I’ve had enough so I’m not going to bother with them.

Random thoughts on Tokyo Majin Kenpuuchou, good and bad:

– Since the story boils down to: there’s this Yellow Dragon and this bad guy who wants to get its power and you’re the Chosen One who can beat him, were all 23 episodes of fluff and nonsense really necessary? 5 episodes to introduce and flesh out the characters, another 5 to get the story really going and a last 5 to wrap things up would have been enough. Tokyo Majin Gakuen reminds me of Persona 2 (Innocent Sin) in a lot of ways. They both have a more-than-decent story at heart, but they take so long to get round to it that I lose interest before they get round to telling it.

– No fair not giving me an Aoi ending! After all we’ve been through in the past 42 hours and 9 minutes!! …But then I checked the Japanese sites and it sounds like I could have gotten an Aoi end if I’d played my cards right in a very specific way. Basically this is one of those games you have to play with a strategy guide in one hand if you want anything good.

– Can’t save during the talking scenes? But the talking scenes put me to sleep!

– There’s no fast forward or scene skip option either. Even worse you either have to tap the screen or press the R button to move text forward. Why not A like any other normal game?

– The ’emotions’ choice gimmick is pretty well-done. It’s always possible to find something to ‘say’ and the other characters respond to your answer in a fairly natural way. The system isn’t perfect but it’s definitely interesting. I had nothing but bad things to say about it when I wrote about Kamiyo Gakuen and Tokyo Mono Hara Shi, but it’s more a case of those games implementing it badly than about the system itself being bad. No wonder games keep copying it even today.

– Why did they introduce new characters in every episode right up to the final one? And why was the last boss a character I had never seen and whose name I had never even heard before?

– After all he put us through we just let Munetaka Yagyuu walk away without making sure he was dead and cutting up his dead body and feeding it to the crows? How desperate are the developers to make a sequel?

– R…reincarnation? We all knew each other in a past life?! GET ME OUT OF HERE! Luckily the game doesn’t focus on that stuff too much.

– Apparently there were things I could have done and options I could have chosen to make the optional characters choose to stick with my party. …whatevs.

– Fun battle system was fun. I like SRPGs where you don’t have to complete everyone’s actions immediately. As long as they have AP anyone can act as often as they like. You can move MC to a spot, move another character elsewhere, have MC attack once, move another character, have MC attack again, etc.

– Loved being able to field up to 10 party members at the same time. SRPGs are better when you get to use more people. But once each person had more than 4 or 5 moves, I just couldn’t remember all their skill effects and ranges. I had to scroll through all of them one by one checking for which one would do the most damage to the enemy every turn. A bit tedious but still good fun.

– The game was so easy I never had to use it, but you can actually select an enemy and simulate their movements to check their range and possible attacks before you move your own party members into range. Used carefully this should make it possible to lure enemies into range just far enough that they can’t hit you with anything but so you only have to move a little bit to hit them with your best shots.

– There should have been a way to auto-skip all battle animations instead of having to press A every time to skip.

– No fair the battle shop not updating its inventory once I’d bought all the overpowered goods. Now I understand why most games dole out the good stuff sparingly even when there’s only one store in the whole game. It’s so boring near the end of the game when every fight drops upwards of 200,000 yen but doesn’t give you anything to do with it.

– Levelling up is no fun if your characters start maxing their ATK and DEF around level 55. Either cap levels at 60 or slow down growth so I feel like I’m still getting somewhere late-game.

– I hear there’s a bug that prevents you from 100%-ing post-game content, so it’s just as well I don’t care to continue.

Final thoughts: would have been better with some hardcore editing. Get if you like easy SRPGs, 90’s anime humor, games that require a FAQ to get everything or games with a lot of occult and folktale lore. Avoid if you want a proper challenge, don’t like visual novels, can’t go for long periods of time without saving or hate missing stuff because you didn’t say X to this one guy at this one point in time.