Summon Night 2 DS

18.07.10 / Japanese, RPGs, impressions, nintendo ds, video game / Author: admin / Comments: (1)
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I played and finished this long ago, right after I finished Summon Night, but I jumped right into several other games, so I never got round to writing about it. Well, there wasn’t much to write because SN2 is very much a direct sequel to SN1. The storyline is different, but a lot of the characters show up again, the battle system is exactly the same, almost all the summon creatures are carried over from the previous ones, the music sounds the same, etc.

The first thing I noticed when the game started was the improved character designs. Not vastly improved, they’re still rather ugly, but much, much, much better than the horrible things in SN1DS. It’s especially noticeable when you see characters like Mimoza and Gibson from the previous game (they play a big role in this one too but aren’t playable), and even the newer characters are cuter to look at, particularly the girls.

The other thing different, obviously, is the story and the main characters. I chose the girl named Triss. She’s a member of the Blue-something [I keep forgetting the name, but it's the same Gibson & co. belong to] Summoning Guild but they treat her like trash for no good reason. The story starts with Triss qualifying as a full-fledged summoner and then immediately being cast out of the guild to “make a name for herself”, i.e. “GTFO and don’t come back.” But on her way out of town, she gets involved in an attempt to heal a girl with amnesia and finds herself in a village with a girl who can supposedly work miracles. This village is immediately attacked by mysterious Black Knights, and the story begins: Who are they? What do they want? Why does this girl have special powers? Why do Triss & co. throw everything away to protect a girl they only met five seconds ago? And will the girl with amnesia ever get her memory back?! (Shockingly enough, the answer is no.)

And…that was about it. It was pretty boring, to be honest. Fight random people, fight black knights, fight random people, fight black knights, long talking sequence, meet new characters and immediately bench them, etc. I bench every character after the first 8 or so because after every level up you get points to assign to stats. That means your homegrown characters are almost always stronger then new, pre-levelled ones, even if they’re the same level. While we’re at it, I should warn you not to bother trying to boost your MC’s magic. If she’s anything like my Triss, she will always be a crappy summoner in a party with three other better, stronger magicians. Her physical stats will be great through, so if I had to do it again, I’d make her a mighty warrior and call it a day.

The nice thing about SN2 is that the shops are slightly less expensive than those in SN1, or maybe you get more money from battles, I forget which. Either way it was easier to outfit your party properly without too much fuss as long as you didn’t get greedy. I still had to go for every other upgrade in order not to break the bank, but I managed quite well. The new mini-games are also more fun than those in the first one, especially the cake delivery and scratch card games, which I could play all those.

Since I was used to the system already, I blazed through the game with ease. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t really stick in my mind all that much. It’s not a bad game at all, in fact in many ways it’s much better than SN1. So I don’t know why I felt so bleh after finishing it, but somehow it’s put a damper on my Summon Night fever for now. Just for now. One day I’ll get SN3 and 4 for the PS2, and then we’ll talk again.

Shin Megami Tensei – Strange Journey

10.06.10 / RPGs, atlus, nintendo ds, reviews, shin megami tensei, strange journey, video game / Author: admin / Comments: (1)
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I didn’t finish this, I watched the ending on Youtube. But I was going down the neutral route so I was right outside Mem Aleph’s door when I got into Summon Night and forgot all about this. In fact I went in and fought her once, but she kicked my ass hard so I left to regroup and never did come back. IIRC I was level 78, so with a bit of grinding I should have been able to level up a bit and teach her who was who, but somehow the spirit just wasn’t in me.

Did I enjoy the game? Hmm, it’s complicated. Like most SMT games I’ve played, it went up and down regularly. Sometimes the story was fast-paced and the action was cracking and everything was really interesting, couldn’t wait to get back to it. Other times it was so dreary, slow and boring that I literally fell asleep behind the DS. The repetitive “fetch-questy” style of play didn’t help at all: go to this sector, explore it, kill this guy, get this item. Repeat for next sector. Repeat for next sector. I mean the details of who to beat and what the dungeon looked like differed quite a bit, but the core was exactly the same. So the story parts were good, but since each piece of plot progression was surrounded by 10 hours of only fairly-interesting dungeon-crawling it was hard going sometimes.

On the plus side I liked having tons of demons to fuse and summon, I really like the creepy soundtrack, the characters didn’t exactly piss me off (not even Zelenin, who I thought I’d hate), and I enjoyed making new items and weapons out of monster parts, Atelier-style. Not to mention my favorite fiends from Nocturne are back, and the difficulty of the game was just right so I didn’t die too often, and all around it’s a very solid game.

Would I play it again? …Uh…I dunno… Gee… I think i’d have to let some time pass between replays. And it really depends on what you get to carry over and what you don’t. I don’t mind if I don’t carry levels or items over, but I insist on my compedium, etc. etc. Then again I got the only ending worth getting, ‘cos chaos is stupid and law is downright insulting, so I don’t know exactly what I’d be playing for. Short answer, no, I won’t play it again. But it’s not a bad game at all.

Summon Night DS

07.06.10 / Japanese, RPGs, nintendo ds, video game / Author: admin / Comments: (0)
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I’m on a Summon Night roll! Since I liked Tears Crown so much, I went out and downloaded the remake of the first Summon Night for the DS. I like isometric strategy RPGs anyway, so this was right up my alley. But then I loaded it up and UGH! The character designs are FUGLY! Right from the main character you select, everyone in the game looks like they were drawn by a third-grader! And the battles are slow, you spend half the game walking towards the enemy because they’re standing on the other end of the field and usually won’t move unless you come into their range.

And the story is YYY and the music is XXX and this and that…and before I knew it, 26 hours had gone by and I had finished the game. Just like that. Definitely one of the most painless game progressions I’ve ever experienced in my life. Long before I had time to start getting bored or start wondering where the story was going and who did what, it was over. On one hand, that’s called a shallow, simplistic story, on the other hand after several “deep” storylines in a row, it was a real breath of fresh air. If I had to summarize,

Pros:

  • Very easy after the first few battles. Keeping everyone alive is kinda hard in the beginning after that it gets way easier
  • But not too easy: you have to do free battles if you want to keep everyone equipped ‘cos they’re stingy with money.
  • Lots of characters join your party and most of them are pretty useful
  • Characters are automatically healed and revived after battle
  • “Brave” system rewards you for not being overlevelled, by giving you special party abilities.
  • Game isn’t too long and isn’t too short. You can finish a first playthrough in 20-30 hours even if you grind
  • Lots of different beasts to summon, some very powerful, some very useful. Experimenting is fun!

Cons

  • Fugly character designs. The cover art is a lie!
  • Boring, cliched story. The original is over 10 years old, so that explains some things.
  • Music is nothing remarkable
  • Battles are really slow and take forever to finish.
  • Battles are very repetitive, the same thing every single time: kill the boss/kill everyone, game over if your MC dies. Every single story battle, all the time.
  • Trying to get new summons using summon stones is a crapshoot, and virtually useless in battle.
  • No items to refill MP with makes using summons inconvenient in the first half of the game.
  • Too many characters means you’ll be at a loss who to use and who to toss aside in the latter half. I just picked a party and stuck to it, since the game is easy enough.

So anyway, that was actually pretty fun, as far as strategy RPGs go. I was thinking of playing again with a different MC instead of Aya, but since I like it so much the decent thing would be to go out and buy it this time before playing some more. In the meantime I’m playing Summon Night 2 DS!