Building from the first's ruins, the second's utopia invites another form of apocalypse
Shin Megami Tensei II is a turn based JRPG with first-person dungeon elements developed by Atlus in 1994 for the Super Famicon being the only version of the game localized at the time of this review with a Game Boy Advance and a PS1 version still not translated. I feel a bit conflicted with this game, I really want to like this game more but it felt like they made more of the experience a bit more tedious and the story and world albeit better than the first game but also not by much in terms of it feeling ruined by the game's structure compared to the first game.
The sequel does improve on gameplay right off the bat with demon fusion that brings skill inheritance to an extent and more of the iconic designs for the demons if you're already a fan of the series before. The guns aren't as broken as they were compared to the first game but they're still great for random encounter auto clears which made the game smoother to traverse through. The story and world pretty much build off a specific ending of SMT 1 and it felt interesting to see how the true aftermath of the previous game. Not to mention there's more to do in terms of general side activities as it is with one of the biggest additions being a casino which lets you play slots, bigger or smaller and keno which I appreciate for a bit since I always dig casinos in JRPGs personally. The soundtrack here is pretty good with a specific area nailing the eerie vibe extremely well with the SNES soundchip.
I think what almost made me drop this game entirely was the first 5 hours of the game where demon negotiation in this game compared to the previous game felt extremely buggy with it not making sense in the slightest compared to the previous game. One of the biggest flaws is probably the way that the world is structured to the point you can expect yourself to do an extreme amount of backtracking over the same areas you've been in multiple times throughout the game even with the teleport spells. The structure is mostly you revisiting old areas constantly at least for the first half with eventually going into new areas just to backtrack through them again with no real way of getting back without having to manually walk there essentially. This game also does something that I felt was pretty egregious is forcing you to put spec points into a useless stat in order to progress through the game and I really didn't like this since it felt like a waste of levels at times that can only be really remedied by finding incenses that you rather use on someone else anyway. Also for some reason, MAG in general seems to be much more of a rarity that you have to go out of your way to grind a specific demon in a specific area to really gather some MAG up that sort of just made the overall experience a bit more of a slog.
Shin Megami Tensei II to me is a game that goes 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. The story, world, characters and the gameplay is enhanced to an extent but the overall experience just felt worse with the backtracking and never really fixed the overall problem with being still to auto-battle every boss until the final two bosses. I can't really find it better than the first game but I find myself still thinking it's on the same echelon in it and really makes you think more than the previous game. Time to wake up, Hawk.
Shin Megami Tensei II is a turn based JRPG with first-person dungeon elements developed by Atlus in 1994 for the Super Famicon being the only version of the game localized at the time of this review with a Game Boy Advance and a PS1 version still not translated. I feel a bit conflicted with this game, I really want to like this game more but it felt like they made more of the experience a bit more tedious and the story and world albeit better than the first game but also not by much in terms of it feeling ruined by the game's structure compared to the first game.
The sequel does improve on gameplay right off the bat with demon fusion that brings skill inheritance to an extent and more of the iconic designs for the demons if you're already a fan of the series before. The guns aren't as broken as they were compared to the first game but they're still great for random encounter auto clears which made the game smoother to traverse through. The story and world pretty much build off a specific ending of SMT 1 and it felt interesting to see how the true aftermath of the previous game. Not to mention there's more to do in terms of general side activities as it is with one of the biggest additions being a casino which lets you play slots, bigger or smaller and keno which I appreciate for a bit since I always dig casinos in JRPGs personally. The soundtrack here is pretty good with a specific area nailing the eerie vibe extremely well with the SNES soundchip.
I think what almost made me drop this game entirely was the first 5 hours of the game where demon negotiation in this game compared to the previous game felt extremely buggy with it not making sense in the slightest compared to the previous game. One of the biggest flaws is probably the way that the world is structured to the point you can expect yourself to do an extreme amount of backtracking over the same areas you've been in multiple times throughout the game even with the teleport spells. The structure is mostly you revisiting old areas constantly at least for the first half with eventually going into new areas just to backtrack through them again with no real way of getting back without having to manually walk there essentially. This game also does something that I felt was pretty egregious is forcing you to put spec points into a useless stat in order to progress through the game and I really didn't like this since it felt like a waste of levels at times that can only be really remedied by finding incenses that you rather use on someone else anyway. Also for some reason, MAG in general seems to be much more of a rarity that you have to go out of your way to grind a specific demon in a specific area to really gather some MAG up that sort of just made the overall experience a bit more of a slog.
Shin Megami Tensei II to me is a game that goes 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. The story, world, characters and the gameplay is enhanced to an extent but the overall experience just felt worse with the backtracking and never really fixed the overall problem with being still to auto-battle every boss until the final two bosses. I can't really find it better than the first game but I find myself still thinking it's on the same echelon in it and really makes you think more than the previous game. Time to wake up, Hawk.