Devil Survivor, almost done

600full-shin-megami-tensei -devil-survivor-screenshotJust started Day 7 of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, gotta choose my final route and see which ending I get. I really wish I could make an extra save and check out the four endings I have access to, one at a time: Gin, Amane, Atsuro and Yuzu. I hear Yuzu ending is bad end, so no need to check that out. Atsuro ending sounds lame, just controlling the demons and nothing more. Blah. I’m either going with Gin, getting rid of all demons and living happily ever after, or going with Amane and becoming the “Messiah”. It’s just that…I don’t really like Amane. I think I’ll go with Gin.

Before I do that, let me just note what I did to Belial “last night”. First two times I fought him I couldn’t do enough damage to him and he kept killing my MC and raining down the Fires of Sodom on my head. Not pretty. Finally I regrouped and reconsidered my strategy. Here are the essential elements:
1. Magic-based MC. Failing that, Yuzu will do in a pinch.
2. ICE DANCE. Not Bufudyne. Don’t make the same mistake I did, the Dances are always better for single bosses than the -dynes.
3. Ice Rise + Ice Jump. Apparently they stack, I never knew. This doubles your ice attack.
4. Null Fire.
5. Kresnik or some other persona immune to Fire. Ranga repels physical attacks so you can use her if your level is high enough.
6. Optional: crack Phys Repel from a nearby Rangda and put it on. The likelihood of your stats being high enough to do this if you have a mag-based MC are pretty slim, but whatever.
7. Optional, but preferred: Take-Mikazuchi or some other Kishin demon, so you can hit Belial twice in a row.

What I did: First turn, took out the Decarabia in front of me with MC. Moved forward a bit. Second turn, moved forward some more, Atsuro took out the Rangda on the right and cracked Phys Repel, but never got to use it. Third turn, Belial almost in range. Yuzu takes out another enemy and cracks Mabufudyne. Fourth (? not sure) turn. MC in action against Belial. Ice Dance = 400 x 3 damage! Kresnik and Mikazuchi with Mighty Hit, 200~ish each, Mikazuchi gets Dual Shadow and hits him again. Did I get an extra turn? I think I did, another 400 x 3! Then he did some stuff with fire but with my Null Fire I just yawned and shrugged it off. Then, with Mikazuchi’s Double Up, I hit him again! He was out like a light with nary a whimper. That’ll teach you to mess with me, punk! And much fun and excitement was had.

I unlocked Occult Auctions now, so I feel like grinding a bit and fusing more demons, right after I pick a path. It’s not necessary though, I feel pretty overpowered already. Back to my DS!

Rune Factory 3!?

Want! Want! Do want! Do so want!

Let’s see, the article says a monster passes out in front of Shia’s door one night. When she treats it, it suddenly turns into a young boy named Mais, whom she persuades to start cultivating her farm. I guess Shia is going to be another of those weird main Rune Factory girls, since her first reaction to a transforming boy is to make a farmer out of him.

Mais makes an adorable wooly monster, but really…bestiality? In my Harvest Moon? It’s more likely than I thought, eh? :) I’m looking forward to hearing more details on Rune Factory 3. Based on the graphics it looks like a DS game, which is great for me. Speaking of which I’m still working on Devil Survivor, and the rest of that Shining Force Feather review is coming up soon.

Shining Force Feather review

I loved Shining Force I and II on the Genesis all those years ago, so now I sit up and bark whenever I hear the word “Shining” in front of any game. But Shining Wind, Shining Tears, all those games weren’t really “it”. At last another Shining Force is out, is what I thought when Shining Force Feather was announced, so I got it as soon as I could and now I just finished it.

Overall thoughts: It was really short, not more than 15 hours or so, but it was a good 15 hours. The action never stopped and the story moved at a brisk pace so there was never a dull moment. I just might play it again in the near future.

Story: You play Jin, a treasure hunter who comes across a mysterious girl when he’s looting some ruins. The girl’s name is Alfin, and she leads Jin to an ancient airship, which he promptly decides to sell for cash. The earlier parts of the game are taken up by Jin’s attempts to fix the crash-prone ship up so he can flog it for mega-bucks, and then the later parts involve the usual “save the world” stuff. It’s nothing original, and since the game is so short nothing is fully developed, but it’s interesting enough while it lasts.

Characters: A total of 9 playable characters and a few interesting NPCs. Alfin is never able to join you in battle, despite what the cover might lead you to expect. There’s Jin, his best friend Bale (a centaur and the best battle character, period), Miriam the elf, Julius the snooty noble, Tida the half-beast (another excellent fighter), Rush the hotblooded treasure-hunter, Grizeria the magician, …some minotaur whose name I can’t recall and Cocotte, the angel with next-to-no relevance at all.

Their interactions throughout the game tend to be very funny indeed, especially Miriam’s dumb innocent ways. Jin’s airship has a lounge where he can talk to the characters and find out what’s on their mind. Make sure you don’t miss the one where Miriam asks Jin where babies come from ;-) . Unfortunately the endings aren’t character-dependent: there’s only one ending and you get it regardless of how you get along wwith people. I really wish there had been 9 endings and more of a focus on relationships, because the characters were great!

Ooof, I’m tired from typing all this. >_< I’ll continue with the battle system, music and graphics tomorrow.

Devil Survivor: first 4 hours

shin megami tensei devil survivor coverJust a quick update on the Devil Survivor situation: so far, so good. I’ve been fighting a lot of free battles to level up, because my solution to every game I can’t get the hang of is to grind a lot. GameFAQs doesn’t have any proper FAQs for this game yet so I’m on my own, but it’s going great so far. On the second day, no story battle has troubled me so far and everyone’s still alive. The auction’s fun too, and it’s easy to get the persona you need so long as you’re prepared to pay a lot of money. I’d rather overpay than lose a great persona, so I’m free with the macca. Fusion’s good too. If I learned anything from Persona 3 and Persona 4, it’s to never be sentimental about demons. Always get the best you can get for your level. Brilliant advice I’m taking to heart. I’ll miss Waira’s demon speed though, wish I could transfer it. Anyway, back to the game!

Dragon Quest 9 – Sentinels of the Boring Skies

I’ve been playing Dragon Quest 9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies for a while, but after the example of Atelier Lina where I judged it too quickly, I decided to hold off on my opinion till I’d gotten a bit further. Well now I’m way further into it, in the last dungeon to be precise, and my judgment: BORING. (spoilers to follow)

The good things: Being able to control how your main character looks, being able to control skills and weapon growths, being able to change classes eventually, simple gameplay and controls, nice graphics for the Nintendo DS, seeing your equipment changes reflected on the field, nice sound track.

Everything else: I’m not finishing this game because I don’t care about the last boss. That’s because I didn’t care about the whole story. So you’re an angel who lost his powers, so bloody what? That’s the sad thing about having a silent protagonist: the other characters have to pick up the slack to make you care about the story and the game, and in this case they all failed miserably. First off, your other party members are generics so they never talk either. Everyone else is an NPC with minor roles to play in your quest-of-the-day, but nothing major to contribute. Sandy the fairy is a moron, so she’s out. The angels in “heaven” are bland so they’re out. And…nobody else counts.

And it’s not just that the story is plain but that it plays out in a very traditional way with no unexpected twists or turns. If you’ve played more than a few RPGs, you’ll know from the start that making the tree bear fruit will only lead to disaster. After that you have to run around helping people (slay this monster, deliver this item, slay this other monster) in order to regain your angel powers. Then you have another series of fetchquests: find the 7 fruits. And then the last bit of the game is a bit interesting ‘cos first you get to ride on a dragon for a while, and then you get captured by the bad guys and have to break out of jail. That part was fun. And then after you defeat the ‘bad’ guy, ZOMG the real boss was an evil angel. Yeah, I saw that coming a while back as soon as you showed me Elgios in the flashback dudes, thanks a lot. So now you know.

Gameplay, as I said, is nice and simple, but when you have a boring story and weak characters, you need to ramp *something* up to make it worth playing, so this would have been their chance to pour some effort into the battles, or maybe the sidequests. But no, fight-defend-item-special, you just buff, attack, heal, buff, attack, etc. Bleh. And it’s not challenging either, because I avoided a lot of the field battles and still never had any trouble with the bosses except one or two. Well, I guess being able to see the enemies on the field was a nice touch though.

The less said about the sidequests the better, it’s just a series of fetch quests and unreasonable demands thrown at you: go fight enemy X wearing a pink hat and using only attack Y so I can give you this crappy item as your reward. Oh, and forget about getting any good classes unless you do our stupid quests. Zzz…

One thing I was hoping to get into, given my love of Atelier games, was the alchemy system. Unlike in Dragon Quest 8, you don’t have to run around for hours to get the item, the alchemy is instantaneous. BUT! The problem was ingredients. To get good materials to synthesize with, you’ll have to do a bit of grinding, both by fighting and by scrounging around on the world map. And then it seems like you won’t get most of the good raw materials and recipes until after the game is over, because – get this – YOU CAN’T FLY UNTIL AFTER THE GAME! No way. No flying for you, man, you’d better get in that boat and go to the few places the game will allow you. And be grateful for it. So anyway, I was only able to create a few items through alchemy, some of which were useful, many of which were not, so forgive me if I wasn’t exactly enthused by that part of the game.

So you see, it’s not a bad game. I mean, it was enough for me to make it to the end, but it’s not a good game either. The howls and bad reviews from 2chan were definitely exaggerated, but it DEFINITELY  doesn’t deserve that 40/40 Famitsu gave it either. 20/40 (5/10) at most for being technically sound but completely lacking in charm and excitement. Square-Enix has been laying on the bribes thick at Famitsu lately, don’t you think? Anyway, that’s enough Dragon Quest for me, now to eagerly await the release of Tokimemo Girls’ Side 3 next month! Whee!