If I had known it was an SRPG all along I would have played Tokyo Majin much sooner. The only game in the series I’d played was Tokyo Mono Hara Shi, which was a boring visual novel with passable dungeon crawling thrown in, so I wasn’t expecting much when I started the original Tokyo Majin Gakuen game.
On one hand I really should shed this habit going into new games blind and being shocked by what I get, but on the other hand words can’t describe how happy I was when this turned out to be a normal SRPG. For once I can see what all the fuss was about in a particular game.
Of course to get to the battles I have to sit through a minimum of 40 minutes of visual novel ‘action’ each episode but this time it’s actually good. My Japanese is good, but not so good that I can point to this line or that and say exactly what is ‘off’ about it the way I can in English. Nevertheless it’s still easy to tell bad writing from good writing. For one thing the former is a chore to sit through in any language while the latter just flows effortlessly off the page. Or screen. Sure the Tokyo Majin characters are cheesy, sure they repeat the same jokes over and over again, but the characterization is good enough and the dialogue is compelling enough that you really don’t care. It’s like an episode of a sitcom where you already know how the characters are going to behave and you tune in precisely to see them do it. Do please go on, this is most interesting
. And? Still, I’m not going to tell anyone contemplating dropping it to keep playing, but if there’s anyone who wants to soldier on regardless, I’m going to share a few tips that helped me make it through the game.
