Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
Hypotetic situation: if suddenly in some exam you get the question “typical signs of a Japanese video game developer” (well, you never know)-please remember about a small unit in the company Atlus , for a series of games Shin Megami Tensei. Their approach to the creation of games is even more Japanese than sushi, samurai and a fashionable Uniqlo store: twenty -three years ago, these people have invented an excellent, without fools, a role -playing system and have since been busy with the fact that they have been turning it to an absolute ideal, twist it like that , they paint in different colors and try to attach to a variety of genres, ranging from Pinball and ending with dating simulators.
This time the series returns to the roots. Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei , Released in 1987, belonged to the subspecies of role -playing games, almost all the action of which takes place in labyrinth -shaped dungeons. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey differs from it only a little more sophisticated mechanics.
Continuation of the banquet
Games of the Megami Tensei series are usually not directly related to each other, but they have common features (approximately as in Final Fantasy ). One of the main such features is demons. But not horned devils from the underworld, but a variety of creatures from the otherworldly worlds, with which you have to fight and recruit your army. It is not difficult to persuade the demon to join you: you need only instead of smearing my fists right away, chat with another ghoul and try to understand his thin and vulnerable soul. If the conversation went smoothly, the creature will sharply reconsider its political views and turn against former comrades.
The whole role system rests on these same demons. Without them, your hero is nothing and with difficulty even a small fairy with transparent wings will overcome. In Strange Journey, we explore the first person in the first person and the main character always walks alone. But he knows how to call on the battlefield to three demons, and they fight on his side. Each miracle-yud (both union and enemy) has its own strengths and weaknesses, which must be taken into account. For example, if enemies, breathing fire in the next dungeon, will not be very reasonable to make a party from ice creatures.
It sounds elementary in words, but if everything was really so simple, the series would hardly have about forty games. The whole essence of Megami Tensei was concentrated in a single menu called Demon Fusion. Caught demons can be crossed among themselves and receive completely new specimens to which part of the skills of the "parents" passes. For example, you have a demon, very strong, but vulnerable to some kind of attack. We cross it with a damn thing that has immunity to them, and we get a creature deprived of this shameful weakness.
The complexity of the game depends on how reverently you will relate to such procedures. It is worth thinking a little bit and assemble a suitable team, as an impassable seemingly dungeon turns into a amusement walk https://mystake-gb-casino.co.uk/ with songs and dancing. If you are still perplexed how such a concept can exist for two decades, we add that only more than three hundred dissimilar creatures can be recruited into the army. How many hours should you spend to get them all, please calculate yourself.
In the Strange Journey combat system, there was a place for exactly one innovation: if someone from the party finds a weakness of the enemy, other companions of the same elemental affiliation join the attack, and the more there are, the larger the enemy’s cone will turn out. Accordingly, a win -win tactics are immediately emerging: to other strong demons of one element and use them in battle.
Welded, demons
In fact, the only thing that really changes from the game to the game is the circumstances in which demons are trying to destroy the world. In fairness, it must be said that Atlus is regularly managed to tell a non -ingenious, but quite interesting and integral story. The plot of Strange Journey begins as, sorry, combat Russian fantasy. In the near future, an incomprehensible funnel formed on Earth, in the Antarctica area, which also expands and absorbs everything around. A scientific-combat team on gigantic flying armored personnel carriers is sent inside, they are all shot down with demonic lightning, and only our ship miraculously fits away from the attack of demons. Yes, and then exclusively thanks to some mystical forces that gave the main character a program for an on-board computer, with which you can see demons, as well as communicate and fight with them. In a word, an excellent tie for the book "Hell Protuberan".
But the further, the more philosophy. Almost all Strange Journey dungeons, like the circles of hell, remind of the most bad qualities of man and humanity. Then we walk around the city destroyed by the war (smoke, flame, bombers fly in the red sky), we wandering a supermarket in a stunning dimensional dimensions or at all in a huge garbage. And even later it turns out that we landed in the very heart of a flared conflict between angels and demons, and in the end we will have to think which side to accept (as it has been fashionable recently, there are definitely good and bad ones here).
Given that the game has a huge number of classes in addition to the plot (creating equipment and new programs for the on -board computer, collecting demons, searching for secrets in dungeons, etc.D.), Strange Journey really captivates with his head and forces experimenting, developing his character and his otherworldly friends. Even though the individual elements of this designer we saw in the previous parts of the series.
But Megami Tensei has another feature: any role -playing game in the name of which has these words is huge. Sometimes it is justified (see. Persona 3 ), but not in the case of Strange Journey. It is interesting to play for the first forty hours, and at least eighty are required to pass. When the timer exceeds the first mark, it becomes obvious that the game was shameless. The development of the plot practically stops, leaving you one on one with endless dungeons, which become so confusing that even a built -in map does not help.
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Everyone is good at the Atlus role -playing system, but even for so many years it has already been tired of. The developers most likely understand this perfectly, but to do something new, equally interesting, or they cannot, or do not want. Do not understand us wrong: Strange Journey is a very good game, and those who are generally unfamiliar with the series will surely come to indescribable delight. But when one of the main innovations becomes a new feature in a new way, a very big desire appears to think about whether there will be some big steps forward. Especially given that Megami Tensei has not yet moved to the consoles of the current generation, but it is regularly noted on portable consoles and on the PlayStation 2.
Game Formula: 80% Shin Megami Tensei + 15% Pokémon + 5% Dungeons & Dragons
Grade: 7.5