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.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Even though I’m 15 hours into Tokyo Majin Gakuen, this is still my first post on the subject so I suppose introductions are in order. Story: You’re a mysterious transfer student who enrolls in Magami Academy (a.k.a. Majin Gakuen). One day you and your new friends stumble into an old building and find yourselves surrounded by a mysterious light that gives you strange new powers. It turns out you guys are not the only high school students in Tokyo with these new powers… and not everyone is determined to use them for good.
For some reason I’d always imagined the Tokyo Majin series to be some grimdark horror worse-than-Shin Megami Tensei kind of story, but while the art style and color palette are rather somber, the actual game is anything but. Oh sure, some very un-cool things have happened to a lot of people, and I just finished a chapter about an incestuous student-teacher relationship that may or may not have been consensual (which might go a long way towards explaining why this game was never localized), but my team takes it all in stride. A little moping, a little sadness, but nothing over the top, and that helps to keep the overall mood upbeat even when the world is going to hell.
The main story is unfolding quite slowly in episodic format. At the start of each chapter you’re introduced to the baddie of the day, then our gang spends some time hanging out but quickly gets drawn into the mystery, all that takes at least 40 minutes (during which you can’t save, urk). Plus talking to people requires you to use an “emotions” system where you ’emote’ at people instead of talking to them, e.g. you indicate that you’re happy instead of picking
I grinded, but not THAT much!
an option that says “I’m happy.” I’m looking forward to seeing how Aksys Games will localize that system when they bring out Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters next month, but IMO it’s a pretty annoying system. Still it works much better here than in half-hearted spin-offs like Kamiyo Gakuen and Mono Hara Shi, which again goes to show how much better the writing is. And, btw, the choices you make do affect how the story turns out, but I’ll talk about that more when I finish the game.
Anyway, back on track. So you spend the first half of the chapter talking blah blah blah, find out what the story is and then you get to fight! At last! Beat the boss, tie up loose ends, learn our lesson for the day. Ending theme plays, credits roll…
And then the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the inter-chapter bonus dungeon! I mean, yeah I like a visual novel that’s fun to read for a change, but what I’m really interested in is SRPG battling! Without the bonus dungeon Tokyo Majin would be like 40 minutes talking, 5 minutes of fighting, but with the bonus dungeon it’s 40 talking: 60 fighting, which suits me just fine. I am… not making too much sense am I? Well, have you played Stella Deus? Or any game that has a bonus dungeon unlocked from the start so you spend all your time playing through the bonus dungeon and making the main game too easy for yourself but it doesn’t really matter ‘cos fighting is fun? Yeah, it’s like that.
Oh uh, gameplay. I knew I was forgetting something. It-it’s not like I’m rushing through this so I can get back to the game or anything! It’s a turn-based SRPG system like in Fire Emblem – your party moves then the enemy moves, then your party moves. Everything you do, from moving to even turning in place takes AP, and the amount taken depends on the action and on the surface. Walking on concrete takes 2AP per step whereas wading through a swamp takes 7AP per step.
In Tokyo Mono Hara Shi it was easy to break the system by synthesizing items that would refill your AP before it ran out, giving you unlimited turns, but you can’t do that in Tokyo Majin. And you wouldn’t want to anyway, because whereas in Hara Shi you only had one party member to deal with, here you can field up to 10 members per battle. Doping each and every one of them would take longer than the battle itself.
If I had to name one flaw, it’s that the game is shockingly easy, even without doping. And I’d be saying that even if I hadn’t leveled up in the bonus dungeon, because the bonus enemies are a joke too. See, what happened is that Tokyo Majin is one of the few games that lets you access the weapon shop’s entire inventory right from the beginning. From your everyday pointy stick to the Holy Ulimate Excalibuster Sword worth half a million golds, it’s all yours for the taking if only you can afford it. And usually you can’t, but if you grind a bit and sell the loot… yeah, I’m kinda sorry I did it now. Not sorry enough to stop, mind you, but a little bit sorry.
Come to think of it Tokyo Majin has several other flaws I’m ignoring right now because it’s been a while since I played an SRPG I actually enjoyed. But I think I’m quite far along in the game now – the main villains are finally starting to come out of the woodwork – so I’ll be done soon. I’ll write something more balanced (and coherent) then.
