Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (3DS) Review

Shin Megami Tensei is always a series I should play more of, but for whatever reason, have not.  I've played a few hours of several of the titles, but always seem to get distracted.  They are dark and punishing RPGs, with crazy mechanics and monster designs.  Basically, they should be games that I love and plow through them to completion, yet for some reason don't.  The best way to correct this: get a review copy of one.  So, that's what I did.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is a side story to the previously released SMT IV (no subtitle). I do own that, but have only played a few hours of it.  Even so, I had no trouble following the story of Apocalypse and how it connected to the previous game.  It explains any relevant backstory so you can easily jump right into this game.  Just be warned that it will reveal a few plot points from SMT IV if you have interest in playing that first.  The only trouble I had was keeping location names straight.

Like most of the SMT games I have tried, the battles in Apocalypse are turn based, however they are noticeably unique from many other turn-based RPGs.  Each turn you get one action per party member.  If you strike an enemy's weakness, or get a critical, you gain another action for your team.  Meaning, if you know your enemy (or get lucky), you get more turns to destroy them.  It's great because it rewards you for having a balanced team and knowledge of the game.  However, the reverse is also true.  If you miss or the enemy absorbs the attack, you lose an extra turn on top of the one you just spent.  Ouch.  I'm not too fond of that, mostly because missing is sometimes out of your control, but it does make things fair for the monsters.  Thankfully, you can pass the current character's turn at the cost of half a turn, so if their action would cost you extra, you aren't screwed.  If you keep the battle in your favor, you can route a group of enemies with little effort.

Boss fights can be very difficult, though.  They get multiple turns (I guess to keep things fair), jacked stats (to nullify the previous reasoning), and top it off with high critical and smirk chances.  Smirking is a new status that gives you a high critical chance and gives the light and dark spells (Hama and Mudo) their original chance to instantly kill the target.  So basically, bosses have multiple turns, hit hard, and get more turns.  Ouch.  Frequently I would have to grind a few levels before I could take one down, ensuring my game progress was slow.  Thankfully you can save anywhere, so you hopefully won't lose much progress from a team wipe.

Another enemy type that I don't like much are the hordes.  The are represented by a lot of enemies on the screen at once.  They count as one whole unit, sharing HP and weaknesses.  Like bosses, they get several turns when they act.  Thankfully moves that hit all enemies hit them multiple times, which helps even them out.  My biggest gripe is that they usually have multiple waves.  When killing off one group, reinforcements may arrive, which then gives you another group to fight.  At least they give a lot of experience when you defeat them, but I could do with less of them since they are a pain to fight most times.  And if you are wondering, Hama and Mudo can kill the whole group instantly if you are smirking.  It's really satisfying to see that.

Like SMT: Nocturne, your only human party member is the main character.  The rest of the party is filled by demons that you can swap from your reserves.  Demons don't just join your quest out of the goodness of their hearts, they have to be persuaded.  This involves talking to them in combat, and sometimes giving them money, items, or letting them take HP or MP.  It's not an exact science, since there each demon has its own preferences, but it is much more user friendly than it was in SMT IV.  Apocalypse has scouting dialogue that makes more sense, plus if you already had the demon, it will usually join you again if you just ask.  Really great changes considering how vital it is to recruit lots of demons.

The main attack stats in the game are strength, which affects melee attacks and skills; dexterity, which affects ranged attacks and skills; and magic, which affects, well, spells and such.  When the main character gains a level, you can assign the stat points as you see fit, but it pays to specialize, even early on.  You won't have many skills when the game starts, but your demon friends can help you with that.  When a demon levels up and learns all of their skills, they can 'whisper' them to you, and you will learn it.  If it is one you already know, it will power that skill up.  So, the best way to learn strong and useful skills is to recruit demons with them, and put the time and effort into leveling them up and passing them to your main character.  Sadly, the slots available take awhile to open up, and even then don't leave as much room as I would like.  Toward the end of the game is when you can actually have a mage with all the elements, which feels too limiting.

The other use of demons is fusion.  You can select two demons to fuse, and get a third, different one in the process.  You can select which skills are inherited on the new demon.  This is a great system to play around with, since you can have a variety of skills on a demon.  There are also special fusions that use more than two demons.  Sometimes accidents occur while fusing, so make sure to save first if you need reliability.  If you need more demons that you already had, you can pay money to re-summon them, and even overwrite the default ones with their current counterparts that you have raised yourself.  The demons in the game are a very valuable resource that is complex but rewarding to master.

Since you play as a hunter, most story progression is through completing missions.  Unlike most games that do a similar thing, the missions feel really relevant to what's going on and aren't just there to pad out the game length (that's what the boss fights are for).  Get a mission, complete it, move on to the next bit of story, rinse and repeat.  There are also optional side quests, called challenge quests, that are automatically given to you at various points.  One of the many conveniences of getting missions through your smart phone instead of a job board.  Some of the challenge missions are actually pretty hard, and others aren't very clear on your destination.  Even so, they are extra, so I'm fine with them not being perfect.  At least they aren't all fetch or collection quests!

Having a long and storied RPG pedigree, Shin Megami Tensei games are also know for their length.  Apocalypse is no different, offering at least 50 hours of playtime.  Sure, a good chunk of that is grinding for the next boss, but there is also a lot of time you can lose fusing demons and getting powerful skills for you main character.  It's definitely a game for dedicated RPG players, as it is not likely to leave your 3DS until completion.

Being a 3DS title, the game also has some street pass functionality.  You can acquire other hunter's cards, but also randomly fuse or power-up your attached demon.  Both are nice in their own way.  Fusion is good early on, or to use a lower level demon that you don't need, while gaining a random stat point is good for stronger demons or ones that you are going to keep.  Plus, they bring back some items.  I randomly got a pretty strong gun early in the game, which saved me some macca.  You can also connect to the internet for the same boosts, but only every 2 hours of actual game time.  It's still totally worth it to do so once, as you get a big AP boost when you do.  Too bad it does't give you that every time.

Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is a fun and length RPG.  Battles can be a bit punishing and bosses likely require grinding, but the skill system and demon fusion are really fun to play around with.  Fans of SMT IV should definitely check it out, and make sure to import your save file for some bonuses.  It's also a game that most RPG fans should check out, even if they haven't played a Shin Megami Tensei game before.


The Good:
Battles reward the player for being prepared and/or knowledgeable.  Recruiting demons is made a lot easier than the previous entry in the series.  A lot of game for your buck.

The Bad:
Each new area brings with it the need for grinding.  If a battle goes bad, it goes bad.

The SaHD:
I wish I could move the camera with the C-stick and switch the buttons for attacking and menu.  Some of the monster designs are cool, some are creepy, but they are all unique.  As an artist, I really appreciate the enemy design in the SMT games that I've seen.

(Review code for Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocolypse was provided by the publisher)

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell (Xbox One) Review

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell continues the new Saints Row tradition of going over the top.  Playing as either the arguably most well-known character of the franchise, Johnny Gat, or Kinzie, hacker extrordinaire, you must rescue the president (the boss from Saints Row IV) from Satan's clutches.  Yes, this is the real plot.  If you have played Saints Row IV, this shouldn't be a surprise to you.

Anyway, in some ways it plays very much like SR IV.  It is however, a standalone expansion, and does not require the base game to play.  Awesome!  More games should do that for DLC that doesn't affect the main game (looking at you, Dead Rising 3 Arcade Remix).  Gat Out of Hell is definitely a download title, though, as the city and content is noticeably smaller than SR IV.  It is also cheaper, being a $20 standalone expansion.

Both characters share the same weapons and powers.  The powers are reminiscent of SR IV, as are some of the elements, but there are some new additions.  The summon is new and very useful once you power it up.  The three elements are summoning little imps, a big ogre-like creature, and a tower.  At first the tower isn't very good, but once it gets range and damage enhancements, that thing can take down tough hellspawn in two hits!

You still get super speed and super jump, but now get wings to fly instead of the glide.  It took about 20 minutes to get used to how they work, but I like them much more than the SR IV gliding.  It was much easier to move around the city with them versus the glide, and even doing the achievement/trophy for going from one side of the map to the other was much easier than it was in SR IV.  After I got used to them, I really like the wings and don't want to go back to the glide.

There is no real mission structure to the main story, which is a big departure from the norm in this genre.  You do very few actual story missions.  The main goal is to get Satan mad, so you do this by doing the distractions (side missions), or just generally causing mayhem.  It's a nice idea, but not a good substitute for actual missions, which would have given the title more playtime.

The side missions and challenges are more hell themed to fit with the game.  The races are flying races, not running, and there is one game where you have to catch falling souls before they hit the ground.  There are survival ones too, but they are reminiscent of the virus mini-games from SR IV.  They also keep the insurance fraud, and it is still fun.  Though the achievement for hitting 5 cars before touching the ground can fall down a flight of flaming punches.

The biggest knock against the game is the length.  Beating the main story took me about 5 hours.  Taking over all of the districts, having all powers, collectibles, weapons and gold medals in the side quests took me 11.  I also had over half of the challenges done, too.  So, while fun, the game might not be worth the full $20 asking price unless you intend to get all achievements and 100% it.

However, easily the best part of the game are the special weapons.  Modeled after the 7 deadly sins, there is a weapon for each one.  Wrath is a flaming sword, lust is a shotgun that makes enemies amorous and things like that.  My two favorites are greed and sloth.  Greed is a golden chain gun that shoots out jewels as the bullets.  It costs a lot of in-game money, but it is very appropriate.  Sloth is a recliner that has a machine gun and rocket launchers in it.  You don't run around, the chair just slides along the ground as your character sits back and lets the mayhem commence.  It might be a small detail, but these two in particular felt well thought out and just really fun and cool to use.

Saints Row: Gat Out of Hell is very, very fun and not too hard, but might not be worth the asking price.  If you get it with Saints Row IV on the current gen consoles, it is very much worth is and worth playing.  It is a condensed Saints Row experience that I think I prefer to the base game!

Deception IV (PS3) Review

One of the more unique games I played way back on the original Playstation was Deception.  Players were tasked with setting traps in a mansion to kill intruders.  It was a great concept, since you didn't fight them directly, but instead lured your unsuspecting foes into the crazy hazards you placed.  Deception IV: Blood Ties is the latest in that series, and has a similar concept: use your traps to kill foes that you have lured to their doom.

The basics for each battle are the same.  Enemies will enter your area 1 to 3 at a time, and chase you down, trying to kill you.  You can set a few traps in each room to deplete their health and kill them or force them to flee.  The game starts out really fun.  One target at a time allows you time to make combos and easily fulfill the daemon's requests.  Two at a time becomes harder, and three at a time can be downright brutal, especially when one of them is a distance fighter (archer, mage, etc).  Planning your traps and combining them effectively was key, so it's a shame that sometimes they don't seem to work as advertised.  It seemed like any little thing would ensure the whole trap combo would go completely wrong, resulting in frustration and probably a loss of your health.  Combine that with how little you can do to defend yourself while waiting for the traps to recharge or even fleeing to the next room ensures you have to be careful, precise and skillful to even complete the level.

After every few targets, you get a score and a small break.  Then it's back into the lair to do it again.  After every boss/major target, you get a break where you can save and buy skills or traps.  You move to a new location after a few major targets, which keeps the areas fresh, since they have new layouts and hazards to subject your victims to.  The progression can also be a hindrance, since you have to defeat several "waves" of enemies before you can save.  If you've beaten nine out of 10 guys, then finally succumb to their relentless chase, you have to do it all over again.  Very annoying, given how hard it can be to make the trap combo work right.  Also it's silly how lethal these traps look, but how little damage they do.  I can't decide if I'd prefer less targets each stretch between saves, or have more guys, but they each have far less health, so these wonderfully sadistic traps were actually menacing.  I mean, you can push a guy in molten metal, and he just comes out the bottom missing 1/3 of his health.  Not even the Terminator was that tough!

Some enemies also have resistances or immunity to certain types of damage or traps.  Resistance means they can avoid the trap, but will take damage from it if they are hit into it during a combo.  Immunity mean just that, but those enemies are wearing heavy armor, which is breakable.  Actually breaking it is another story, since each one has different traps that will break their armor.  Later ones must have all of the damage types in one combo to successfully break it.  It's rewarding when it is pulled off, but very hard to do without, again, more trial and error.

Besides story, there are a few other modes for you to test or hone your skills.  There is a mission mode that unlocks part way through the story, which tasks you with killing one or more targets while also fulfilling certain requirements.  Requirements range from doing it in a time limit, finishing a target off with a certain trap and even taking no damage.  The best mode is Cross Quest.  You can use stages and characters that you have unlocked to make your own challenge levels.  Levels are able to be uploaded and downloaded, so you can always find more or subject people to your crazy designs.  To round it out, there is also a Free Mode to practice your traps and combos against any opponent (or opponents) that you have encountered in the story.

The game has several chapters and four different endings to obtain.  It is pretty difficult, at least for me, so while it doesn't seem that long, it takes a lot of trial and error and repeating portions to be able to pass each chapter.  The trophies have a good split: some for completion, others for killing enemies, breaking armor, completing missions and playing missions in Cross Quest mode.  A decent spread and a good challenge, considering how hard it can be just to get through the story, let alone the harder missions in Mission mode.

The concept of Deception IV is so great that it's a shame the game gets so frustrating.  Landing a trap combo is so satisfying, but running around trying to get people in them is not.  If you have the time and will to master the game, there is a fun time to be had, and making your own levels and playing other people's will give the game lots of longevity.  Too bad it can be so annoying.