The first game directed by the man who caused not just one, but two revolutions in JRPGs (Persona 3 and Shin Megami Tensei 3) and saved his own company, unfortunately, is a mixed bag.

Sure, being an Atlus game involving Hashino, Okada, Meguro, and Kaneko gives it plenty of vibes, but the game itself is rather weak.

The gameplay idea seems flawed from the start. A first-person game on a console like the Dreamcast and before these types of games were comfortable to play on the console. The camera works extremely poorly, the tracking of the game is quite awkward, and the combat is very tough and simplistic.

The game has a series of one-note enemies, the levels have sections with frustrating enemy placements, and the game never hits a nice rhythm. The brain jack system is a cool idea, but ultimately, the characters you play with are never different enough to justify it.

And of course, this first-person system never really works.

I love the idea of traveling the world; one of my favorite series does it (Shadow Hearts), Atlus has proven several times to be great at representing these real-world locations, and this game is no different, but the strong vibes don't save Maken X from being an extremely mediocre game.

That said, I played the early stages of the PS2 version and found a significant improvement. Of course, it loses some of the novelty of the game, but what it loses in that, it gains in a better experience. Not only in terms of camera and gameplay control (in an early PS2 style that I particularly enjoy) but with better features and quality of life improvements like save points in the stages.

Furthermore, there is also a manga that apparently is an adaptation of the interesting scenario found in this game.

In the end, the potential exists here but is never realized. This is one of the games I most wanted to see Atlus try again, but that must be impossible, unfortunately.

This game took me a good ass time to understand. It kinda throws you in there and explains none of its mechanics, which are not orthodox by any means. HOWEVER once you start engaging with those mechanics, you find an unique, charming experience with absolutely insane music and phenomenal character/world design. Beating this game was a very memorable experience for me. I take away one star for having to replay potentially 15+ minute long levels every time you die.

Also, definitely 10 times better than the PS2 version.

Endings got: Blademaster, Sacrifice
Who knew a random ass megaten adjacent dreamcast game would blow up the way it did huh
This was never on any list of mine, never clocked it as actually being a game. Thankfully Exellocks and Drifter hopped on and spread the word of peak
It's a really fun game with a weirdly in depth first person action sword fighting combat I was not expecting a company like Atlus to do.
The only reason it doesn't get any higher is that I feel like it doesn't delve into its characters enough, anyone outside of the blade masters and hakke just feels left to the side. with only 1 ending where you're able to play as Kay who I wish we got more ability to play since she controls really well and I just really like her character.
Also near the end some areas just feel like you can't get through without taking damage and something you'll just need to tank.
While I adore what true blademaster did with the optional ending FMV, Sacrifice is probably my favourite ending, the reveals as well as the ability to fight the final boss with the true main character just felt like a perfect end to the game.
So True Blade Master has the best story end while Sacrifice has the best playable end

This isn't the only Dreamcast game I've ever beaten, but it's one of the few I have. It's a game I owned back in the States and tried for a bit but never played too much of. I bought a Dreamcast really cheap for the TR this month, and this was a game I also found cheap a few months back. This isn't nearly as much of a second chance as a lot of games I've beaten over the past year, but it was still a long time coming. However, this was certainly a game where finishing it became more of a matter of principle after a point, because the 4-5 hours I spent with the Japanese version of it were notttt the best time of my life XD

Maken X is a first-person sword fighting game as well as one of the few straight-up action games Atlus has developed and published themselves. You play as the spirit of a magical weapon called the Maken (in Japanese the kanji mean literally "magical sword"). Maken has been acquired by a secret research lab who are studying its ability to merge souls with people, and the research director's daughter, Kei, is visiting with her friend on the day that they're attacked by a mysterious organization. The sword master who was going to use Maken is killed while defending Kei, and Kei grabs Maken and chases after the weird robot/gorilla/soviet thing that stole her father after merging with Maken. It only gets weirder from here in a way that is very definitively "Atlus" XD

The story and presentation themselves are interesting and honestly one of the game's stronger points. It shares a main character designer with Shin Megami Tensei 2, and it really shows (particularly with some of the later boss enemies). The story itself has several branching paths with it and you can get an assortment of different endings based on a series of moral questions Kei (to Maken inside her mindscape between stages) and other characters ask you, very much like an SMT game or an earlier Persona game. It's not really anything to write home about, but it's more than serviceable. The presentation and enemy design is also constantly really weird and quirky for no real reason (TONS of not at all secret Nazis in what is supposed to be modern day-ish setting, I think, and that's never narratively addressed at all), and this weird style is definitely one of the most charming parts of the game.

What makes that boss design even more excellent is the game's mechanic of "Bran Jacking", where you can gain experience as you kill enemies to level up Maken's ability to merge souls, and this allows you to hop into the bodies of defeated bosses and gain all new move sets. Granted, these move sets only really consist of different jump, speed, and power stats as well as new basic mash-A combos and charge abilities, but it really does change up the way the game plays in a way that keeps things really interesting. There is a very clear power-creep as the game goes on, and there's very little reason not to hop into the latest boss you've defeated (especially as some stages can only be completed while playing as a certain character) given how much stronger they tend to be than the character you just were, but it keeps the action for the game fresh at the very least.

That action though, and the overall playing of the game, is where the game really falls apart though. At the end of the day, Maken X's biggest problem is that it's a Dreamcast game, and an early Dreamcast game at that (released very close to launch). It's a first-person melee-based action game on a system with only one joystick. While there are other first-person games on the Dreamcast that play much better (a good FPS on DC isn't impossible or anything), the nature of the melee combat makes already less than perfect controls even worse to bear.

Given that there's only one control stick, you can't turn and move at the same time. You can hold R to strafe, and you can press Y to lock on to enemies, but that's it. Bundle that in with how you need to hold backwards to block (like this is Street Fighter II or something) and how overall poor the lock-on system is and you have a recipe for a game that is constantly frustrating to play. You are also very mobile in first-person, not only being able to strafe-hop around targets, but even jump clear over their heads to face them from the back (and you keep "eyes" on them the whole time), so at times Maken X can be downright sickening to play with how bad the head-bob is. I never experienced any problems with that myself, but I've read enough reports online of people having trouble with that that I felt it needed to be mentioned here.

Verdict: Not Recommended. Even though there is such a good deal of "good enough" in Maken X, I believe it is not a game actually worth the time of the staunchest Dreamcast fan. It's a pretty cheap game in either America or Japan, so it's hardly gonna break the bank if you just wanna try it as a curiosity, but it's just such a bad time to play that I can't recommend it in earnest. I think most people would be far better served just watching a playthrough on Youtube instead of playing it themselves, because all of the good things in Maken X can be partaken in without actually playing it yourself (and the VA in the English version is way more campy and fun than the Japanese version's is).