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)

Rive (PS4) Review

RIVE is a hardcore, twin-stick shooting action game.  You move around the various rooms, hallways and ducts of a derelict space ship while battling waves of enemies at various points.  The right stick can be set to aim and fire, or just aim, while firing would be another button.  That's sadly the most control you have over the button configuration.  The jump is set to L2.  This works...but I would like to try it as another button, considering I've hit both R2 and the X Button in a twitched response to jump.  Thanks, muscle memory.

You can use bits from defeated enemies to occasionally purchase upgrades and weapons for your vehicle.  They have a variety of types of special moves, from close range to AoE.  Unfortunately, you only get one shot before you have to replenish.  Not one shot of each, as would make more sense...just one overall.  Therefore, it's probably best to just buy the one you like and forego the rest.  Or, being able to actually upgrade your gun would be nice, too.  To get more ammo for the special attack, you have to hope for a random drop from an enemy.

Thankfully, unreliable special attacks aren't the only thing you have to help you.  You eventually get power-ups that let you hack turrets, nurse drones and other things to help in your mission.  Nurse drones will heal you at the cost of their health, and be destroyed afterwards.  Turret drones shoot when and where you do, effectively doubling your fire power.  Sadly, they are destroyed when they run out of ammo or health.  Considering how much you have to shoot, they don't last long.  So like most things in RIVE, they work okay, but could be much better and more reliable.

Probably my favorite part of the game is the personality it has.  The two talking characters are well voiced, and have some good dialogue.  A fair amount of the dialogue is tongue-in-cheek though.  The game does start off by switching the camera to "side-scrolling shooter" mode after all.  They also make references to video games, memes and tropes.  At one point, the player character even remarks why would someone store fuel in the middle of a molten furnace.  He also wastes the effort and space to have fireworks in his small vehicle so he can shoot them off when he completes a mission.  That's dedication.

The environment is really good looking and the atmosphere is set perfectly in each location as well.  Trouble is, the game is really too linear to take advantage of it.  You run down some hallways, stop, fight enemies, go to another room, stop, fight waves of enemies, rinse and repeat.  Being able to roam around the station, or even use the warp rooms 'correctly' (ie, not only one way to a set destination) would make the game a lot better.  I would really like being able to explore this cool looking desolate place instead of being shuttled off to another place to fight way too many enemies.

While I'm on the subject, the difficulty of the game is its biggest downfall.  It is just unapologetically hard.  Enemies swarm in from off the screen, move quickly and do a lot of damage.  The most prolific enemy is a fast mine that homes in on you with absurdly high accuracy.  It might not be that bad if they didn't routinely throw 5 or more at you at the same time.  Enemies from every side of the screen, plus homing enemies, plus homing shots, plus high damage equals high frustration.  Don't even get me started on the shielded enemies that are only vulnerable when dropping 8 of the homing mines and/or other homing enemies.

Assuming the enemies don't kill you, the environment likely will.  The whole game is filled with areas and traps that either flat out kill you instantly, or do half your max health.  Kind of negates the armor upgrade, huh?  Sometimes they just combine them all to piss you off.  One early section had me on a conveyor belt pushing me toward a high-damage saw and an instant death stomper.  On the other side of me was another instant death stomper.  I had to constantly jump to avoid moving in one direction while not going too far in the other.  Oh, and they also had me fight waves of enemies (those stupid mines) while doing so.  This is a bit much for the end of the second stage.  Sheesh.

At the very least, the game has plenty of checkpoints (although there is no indication of when/where they are) and there is no real penalty for dying, so you can keep trying until you succeed or quit playing.  It also loads really fast from death (yes!).  Sadly, this also has the problem of sometimes putting you in a situation where you might die again instantly, or at least take unnecessary damage.  The game is filled with instant death following the need to make split second decisions, so I guess it is true to itself.

The game isn't overly long...assuming you don't die a lot.  Sadly, that about doubles the play time for mere action game mortals such as myself.  To be fair, the difficulty is apparent when you start the game, since you can only select 'hard mode'.  It is possible to switch to a slightly easier mode in the game.  When/if you do, it places a bear on the screen in an attempt to humiliate anyone trying to make the game more fair.  I get what they are going for, but trying to make fun of a person just trying to have fun playing a video game, or one trying to make the game not so unfairly hard, is just dumb.  Anyway, you can replay the missions if you want, and there are two other modes, speedrun and single-credit mode.  Both speak for themselves, and both are modes I have little interest in.  Single-credit works for shmups, but here?  Yeah, good luck with that.

Overall, RIVE is a fairly average game.  Vehicle movement, attacks and upgrades work okay, but easily could be made much better.  The difficulty is cheap as well.  This is fine for some folks, but it takes the game down a few notches in my book.  I see a lot of potential in how the hacking and other things could have made for a great Metroid-like game, but instead it's just a linear game with hordes of frustrating enemies.  If you like unapologetic tough-as-nails action games, then definitely try out RIVE, but everyone else can easily skip it and not miss much.


The Good:
Lots of personality in the characters, environment, and dialogue.

The Bad:
Cheap, just throw everything at the player at the same time difficulty.

The SaHD:
The shmup-like sections are kind of fun.

(Review code for Rive was provided by the publisher)

PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness (PS Vita) Review

PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness is a visual novel set in a futuristic world where everyone's emotional state and potential is quantified and monitored.  People who are more prone to committing crimes have a clouded "hue" to them, and are watched and medicated accordingly.

To me, it sounds a bit like Minority Report, but without the psychics.  At least in the game, the crime is usually already committed by the time you apprehend the criminal.  Minority Report might actually be like that, I haven't seen the movie, just remembering the trailers from years ago.  The idea is really interesting though, and I do like visual novels, especially on a handheld, so it was definitely a game I wanted to try.

There is a special group of people, the Public Safety Bureau, that deal with the "latent criminals" and try to either subdue them so they can be rehabilitated, or destroy them if they are beyond help.  To do so, they have a special gun called a Dominator, that scans an individual and lets them use the appropriate amount of force.  If a person is beyond help, the gun basically paints the room with half of them.  So when I said destroy the criminals, I meant it.

When you start the game, you get a choice between two characters.  Both of them are in the same division of the mental stability police force, but they have different roles.  One is an investigator, who is like an actual cop, where the other is an enforcer, who is someone that is a borderline latent criminal.  Since they are close to being criminals, they know how a criminal would think, and are also used as front line fighters.  When not in use, they have to be almost constantly supervised by the investigators so they don't go rogue and become what they hunt.  With such diverse freedoms, both characters have different roles, thoughts, reactions and choices in each of the similar scenarios.

Since the game is a visual novel, most of your time is spent reading.  At several points in the story, you will be presented with a choice, and this choice affects how the story progresses.  Some choices might seem trivial, but it becomes apparent early on that they have a lot of weight behind each and every one.  The game is also helpful in that it shows where the story branches off, but showing a pop--up on the right side of the screen.

It actually shows a few things over there, but that's the only one I could really figure out.  The rest just kind of happen, with no explanation what they are or what they mean.  There are ones that show a portrait and fill up what looks like a health bar.  Some show your character with an up arrow.  Any kind of tutorial or information about this would really help, since I'm sure they are somewhat important.  The instruction book isn't any help in that regard either.

So while it does show where the story diverges, I'm not always fully sure why.  Which choices affected it?  I still made it through the game just fine, but I would definitely like to know more about changing the route to see other endings, scenes and get trophies.  There were many times where I stopped and though about my choices, and what it might change.  This was especially true when prompted about taking the supplements to clear your hue.

I enjoyed the story in the game.  It was mostly satisfying, even with the few predictable parts.  It also took me a bit to keep all the characters straight, but I was fine by the middle of my second playthrough.  However, without spoiling anything specific, it seemed like the game was building toward something that just didn't resolve.  Also, one character ending I got (which it said was a 'true end') felt random and abrupt.  I don't know if this ties into the TV show, or maybe is explained in another route.  It's also possible that it's a preview of a sequel.  It didn't ruin the experience, but it also didn't sit right with me.

There's also a mini-game to play where you slide matching number tiles to add them together.  It's surprisingly fun.  It isn't too hard to grasp, which is good because they tell you next to nothing about how to play it.  It can get pretty hard in the later levels, though.  The points you earn in this game are used to purchase the picture still and voice clips from the cast.  You get a lot of points for completing levels of the game, which is good because you need a ton to buy all the extra stuff.

Honestly, I haven't seen the dude on left and I went through the game twice.

PSYCHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness is a visual novel, so it only takes about 5-6 hours to get through.  However, having two selectable characters and many branching routes gives the game a lot of replayability.  There were more changes going through a second time than I thought there would be, which is a welcome surprise.  I haven't seen the show yet, and had no real difficulty following the story, other than sometimes confusing character names.  I am definitely going to watch some episodes, as the game has me interested in it, too.  I would definitely recommend crime drama fans and visual novel fans try out PSYCHO-PASS.


The Good:
Visual novels are always welcome on my Vita, and the story was really good with lots of choices to make.

The Bad:
Even though it plainly shows when a route changes, I have no real idea what decisions affect the path and ending.  Well, except the bad ones, those are pretty apparent.

The SaHD:
There was a company taking pre-orders for an actual Dominator gun, with many LEDs and even motors so it would transform.  It looked almost as awesome as it was expensive.

(Review code for PSCYHO-PASS: Mandatory Happiness was provided by the publisher)

Megadimension Neptunia VII (PC) Review

Megadimension Neptunia VII (V-two, not seven) is a game I reviewed on the PS4, and like many other Idea Factory, Intl. games, has also been ported to PCs and is for sale on Steam.  The game was originally three smaller games that got compiled into one, with each smaller game now becoming a story arc for its full release.

Dungeon and battle controls are largely the same.  You walk and jump around the dungeon areas, and if you make contact with an enemy walking around, you will enter battle.  Battles are turn based, and when it is your turn, you can move around a set area to attack enemies with your combos.  What has changed, though, is one of the attack types.  The break attacks and break meters from previous games have been removed, with a 'standard' attack joining the 'rush' and 'power' ones to form your combo.  For better or worse, the number attacks you can use in a combo is defined by your weapon and not character level or skill.  Personally, I'm not a fan of that particular change, since stronger weapons may not be better at all, or even worse because you are losing out on full attacks for an increase in damage.

Another big change to the game is the overworld map.  Before you just selected the place either from a list or by moving a cursor, but now there are paths that you follow.  Paths are basically connected dots, with a fight possible on most dots.  Towns restore your health just by walking on them, so you don't have to actually enter the town menu to get healed.  The towns also offer shops and other functions that you will need throughout the game.  Sometimes the roads Neptune travels have to be built to connect, allowing you to travel there.

For all of my PC port reviews, I like to see how the game runs on my PC.  I have an Intel Core i7-4790, 3.60 GHz with 16 GB of ram, and the game ran fine for the most part.  It ran smooth, and loaded quickly.  The only area that was suspect was the victory and level up poses after battle.  They seemed a little choppy.  I don't know if that is because of the game, or my system or maybe even intentional, but the framerate was noticeably lower just in these parts.  Other than that, I didn't encounter any problems in the few hours I ran the game, and it looked just as good as the PS4 release.

The three arcs of the game give a good story length, though there will of course be times when you will need to grind.  Still, the game is a fun RPG, and a definite play for fans of the Neptunia franchise.


The Good:
Really mixes things up with the three arc story, and the new characters are pretty cool.  Bosses feel less tedious with the removal of the break meter.

The Bad:
Scouts can increase the difficulty of the enemies in dungeons, with no way to turn it off like the old blueprint system.  Combo length is tied to the weapons, and not the characters.

The SaHD:
The special attacks of the Gold Third characters are all pretty awesome.

(Review code for Megadimension Neptunia VII was provided by the publisher)