Monster Crown is a mons game by people who either don’t know or can’t be bothered to construct a functional video game.
Monster Crown
Category: Video Games
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
This was the first main series title to get an international release, I guess because the moral guardians finally quieted down enough for Atlus to feel comfortable floating their screed about the many evils of Christianity to the rest of the world. But did you know it’s actually not the first entry in the overall franchise to get such a privilege? A few spinoff games got American releases earlier, where the series title was localized as Revelations. That’s genuinely such a great title. “Resurrection of the Goddess” may be literally accurate to the Japanese title, but it’s an artifact title with no meaning for most of the games. But “Revelations” so neatly encapsulates what the games are about both literally and symbolically on so many levels, and it’s a Bible reference!
So of course when it came time to finally bring a main series title international they decided to throw that in the garbage so they could not bother translating the title at all instead, because what is localization.
So it’s time to explore Revelations Untranslated Word Salad III: Nocturne, the third numbered entry which is actually the fourth entry, or sixth if you count the pre-reboot Megami Tensei games. The franchisening has truly begun.
Subnautica
Subnautica is perhaps the best survival game I have played, but in the process I’ve come to believe a lot of the things I dislike about survival games are intractable problems with the genre. You play as the sole survivor of a starship that crash-landed on an alien ocean planet. You start with nothing but a crafting bench, and eventually work your way up to elaborate vehicles and bases, including, ultimately, an escape rocket. In the process you have to manage hunger, thirst, and, of course, oxygen as you must dive deeper and deeper to gather better materials.
If you enjoy survival games you’ll enjoy this, but I have a few nuances to discuss.
Disc Creatures
Disc Creatures is a fantastic mons RPG that effectively captures the feeling of old-school Pokemon while bringing plenty of new things to the table. It is also, unfortunately, a very standard jRPG that got boring for me extremely fast, but if that doesn’t bother you there’s a lot here to love.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers
The years preceding Localization Crimes III: Nocturne saw a large number of spinoff releases for the series. One of them was Persona, which Act reviewed way before this, but a lesser-known one was Devil Summoner, which is basically identical to the main series so I’m not entirely sure why it’s a spinoff.
The first Devil Summoner sounds interesting from the Wikipedia article, but it was never even fan-translated, so I instead started at Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. Ah, you know something’s a franchise when it contracts colon cancer!
Abomi Nation
Abomi Nation is a roguelike mons RPG — essentially, an entire game built around a randomizer Nuzlocke. I think this is a pretty smart pairing — the biggest problem in mons games is that it’s infeasible for a single player to use more than a small fraction of the total roster, so by building the game around multiple playthroughs and randomizing your team each run, you get to appreciate a wider variety of mons than you would otherwise.
The Nuzlocke comparison is very apt, however, because the gameplay is otherwise nearly identical to Pokemon’s, with all of its flaws along for the ride.
Titan Souls
This is sort of like a bite-sized 2D version of Shadow of the Colossus. (Despite what the name may lead you to think, it doesn’t actually have much similarity to Dark Souls.) You play as a tiny human fighting massive monsters, with some environmental storytelling hinting at surrounding context.
Here’s the most notable about this game: You only have one hit, but so do the bosses. One hit to their weak point and that’s it, you’re done. This has blown my mind in regards to how I think about game design and game challenges, and I’m going to vomit those thoughts at you now.
Digimon World: Next Order
I despaired of ever getting to play this because it was a PS4 exclusive, but this year it got ported to Switch!
Digimon World: Next Order is the third true Digimon World game, conceived as a throwback to the original PSX game and a followup to Re:Digitize, which I reviewed here. It is a much better game than either of them and does a better job of recapturing the essence of the original Digimon World, but still falls woefully short. Admittedly, at least part of this is definitely that the original Digimon World‘s formula wasn’t very good to begin with, but a big part is definitely the design decisions of this game, particularly a lot of things that are most definitely problems with the current generation of gaming.
Christmas Steam Games (2022)
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]
Quick Reviews 6
Inside: Vision Soft Rest, What Remains of Edith Finch, Dungeons of Dreadrock
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.
Darkest Dungeon 2
Darkest Dungeon 2 is, obviously, the followup to Darkest Dungeon, which I previously reviewed. The developers deliberately wanted to take the sequel in a different direction instead of just making Darkest Dungeon again, which I support. Unfortunately, that direction was completely at odds with it being a roguelike.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
This should have been DLC.
Hi-Fi RUSH
Hi-Fi RUSH is a hybrid of action and rhythm games. I think this is an excellent combination, as most action games are all about timing and rhythm already, so this is honestly a pretty obvious step to take. It’s also remarkably good at accessibility: It has multiple colorblindness filters and subtitle options, and the entire game environment moves with the beat, so you can time yourself visually even if you have a bad sense of rhythm. I enjoyed it a lot, even though the battles did get a bit too frenetic for me to follow at times. In particular, I think its best feature was sharply segregating combat and platforming sections; each combat encounter is a major one-time setpiece instead of you running into enemies all the time. jRPGs, take note.
I don’t want to talk about the gameplay, though. The story and writing are actually much more noteworthy. I believe it to be a very instructive example of Rebellion Chic: Despite being a cyberpunk story about a ragtag resistance fighting an evil corporation, its core messages are actually very conservative and pro-capitalist.
(Spoilers for the ending, but I don’t think they’re particularly ruinous.)
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.