Here’s the roundup for the remaining Christmas games that didn’t warrant full posts.
Inside: Snake Pass, Environmental Station Alpha, Slime Rancher, Q.U.B.E. 2, Event[0]
Category: Monster Collector
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
This is the first SMT game I’ve reviewed that was made after Devil Survivor, so we’ve finally caught up to my first exposure to the series! Let’s see if the series improves or if DeSu proved to be the high point after all, shall we?
This game was originally planned to be SMT4, but was rebranded as a spinoff due to how different it ended up compared to the mainline games. Instead of an ordinary high school student, you play as an elite soldier tasked with investigating a portal to Hell that’s appeared in Antarctica and threatens to swallow the entire planet.
Misc SMT (Last Bible, Devil Childen, Raidou Kuzunoha)
Rounding up some spinoffs that sounded interesting. I bounced on all of them almost immediately because they are terrible.
Shin Megami Tensei IV & Apocalypse
The series has officially disappeared up its own butthole. SMT4 is an empty, vapid game that only serves to demonstrate how utterly creatively bankrupt these writers are. I couldn’t even be bothered to watch a playthrough, the plot summary was so stupid my eyes glaze over at the thought. I may have disagreed — strongly — with the execution of previous entries’ ideas, but at least they had ideas. This game doesn’t. It is about nothing, it is nothing.
This game is a reboot AU again with the exact same trite moral choices again and the exact same set of cookie-cutter centrist propaganda endings again (now with bonus xenophobia and nationalism!) because the writers are physically incapable of doing anything else. Where the plot isn’t a shameless rehash of SMT2 it’s completely unhinged fantasy nonsense that has given up on anything approaching coherent real-world commentary. “If a city got caught in the crossfire between God and demons in a way that bears no resemblance to real-life holy wars would that be messed up or –” I DON’T CARE TELL A DIFFERENT STORY FOR ONCE YOU HACKS. The only new addition of any significance is a fourth ending where you decide the only way to end suffering is to destroy the universe because the war between God and demons is eternal, which sure is a hilariously meta response to this soulless husk of a cash-cow franchise. The setting’s problems are only intractable because you keep resetting it, writers, if you hate that so much let the franchise die already.
To add insult to injury, the series artist got shafted and replaced by idiots who think they can slap whatever design they feel like onto established mythological figures:
The left is by the previous artist, the right is by the new one. They are both meant to represent the same angel. Yes, really. All of the angels are similarly overdesigned messes with no relation to any real depictions. Also, Lucifer looks like a Roswell alien instead of his established design for some reason. The previous artist may have had his faults, but at least he was trying. (And in case you were hoping something good came out of this mess, no, they still use his softcore porn design for the regular angels.)
And minor aside, but it amused me: The standard and hilariously untrue “Any similarity to real people is coincidental” disclaimer has now been shortened to just “This is a work of fiction.” Methinks some legal consultation happened here.
The game was somehow so successful it spawned a sidequel, Apocalypse, which I was willing to actually play because I saw it had a gameplay feature I found interesting, and also supposedly it ends with you killing God (again), which sounded cathartic if nothing else.
Shin Megami Tensei V
I was planning to give up on the series after the disaster that was SMT4, but then I read some spoilers for this game that actually piqued my interest: The premise is that YHVH is actualfax, for-realsies, and-this-time-we-mean-it, no-take-backsies dead. Thus, no matter how bad the plot is, at the very least it has to be differently bad. The writers have voluntarily relinquished their ability to fall back on their standard plot with its standard cardboard villain. No hijacking by Ganon, no “Somehow, Palpatine returned.” I demanded these hacks write a different story for once and credit to them, they actually did.
Unfortunately, they did so by writing the absolute minimum. To give you an idea: The compilation of all story cutscenes for SMT4A is 18 hours. For SMT5, it’s 6, and that’s including a full recording of the final boss fight. Did they at least use what little time they had to tell a decent story? No, of course not, the plot is even more backloaded than usual and a shameless rehash of SMT3’s premise but now with the standard choice of “Which flavor of fascism do you prefer?” I deeply regret wasting my time on this garbage.
World of Final Fantasy
Having briefly gotten back into Final Fantasy while investigating the modding scene, I was informed that the franchise actually had a mons entry, World of Final Fantasy. That sounded interesting to me, as Final Fantasy has a lot of iconic monster designs that would make for a good mons collector.
It is an offensively dull and soulless game that thoroughly killed any remaining hope I had for this franchise. I trudged through about two-thirds of it before giving up, and honestly I regret not cutting my losses sooner.
Quick Reviews
Inside: Evoland, Evoland 2, Anode Heart, Dragon Spirits, Mind Over Magnet
Cassette Beasts
This is a Pokemon-like I’ve had my eye on since it released in 2023. I was on the fence about buying the full version after playing the demo, but I managed to snap it up for dirt cheap during the summer sale.
I found this game to be very similar to Disc Creatures: Lovely world, presentation, and creature design, but distressingly dull gameplay. The late game is barely any more complex than the battles featured in the demo. The whole thing feels more like a proof of concept than a finished game, which is a shame because it does have a lot of potential.