(Reiko's route)
On paper, If should be the best SNES SMT by a landslide victory. A unique setting, themed dungeons, and game changing mechanics definitely make the game stand out, but then you actually play the game and... it actually still is an interesting experience! Yeah, in spite of it's flaws, I enjoyed my time with If. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's great, or that you're guaranteed to have a good time with it, but I think it's definitely worth checking out.
Let's address the Girimekhala in the room... Yes, the world of sloth is one of the dumbest, most boring and lazy things to be implemented into a video game. Made worse by the fact you need to play it in 3 of the 4 routes. It's obviously just a way to pad out the game so no matter what character you choose, the devs can say the game isn't as short as it is. On original hardware, this would absolutely ruin the game... but that's the thing. I KNOW you, and every single person in these reviews aren't playing this on a fucking cartridge, so just use a fucking fast forward hotkey. Don't worry. Nobody with half their sanity that actually goes outside is going to judge you. Your cock will stay the same size.
And besides, the other dungeons are great. Pride is, well, a simple introduction dungeon, Gluttony starts to ask more from exploration in a very memorable way, Envy, aside from the cucking, is super interesting and advanced, like I actually busted out the graph paper for that shit, and Greed and the upper school floor are a great test of your spatial awareness. The usage of pitfalls, and hinting that they can be used to your advantage in Greed, before being on the critical path through the upper school especially strikes me as a great endgame test. It at least lets me know they could've made a 100% great game with no Sloth-induced filler, and I guess that fact should probably make me view the game as a whole worse, but if anything, it just makes me more excited to get into those Devil Summoner/early Persona games.
Also apparently people don't like the guardian system? I barely thought of it until I decided to kill myself once I thought I had a good amount of points. The game isn't nearly as hard, or as broken as SMT1. Among many other gameplay tweaks, Zio and Shibaboo aren't as effective, yet encounter rates are way lower throughout. The game overall is very well balanced, where anything that isn't a properly challenging boss is something you can talk your way out of. But if you do die early and get a shitty guardian, you just gotta learn to roll with the punches. Hell, maybe try dying again to reroll. I do wish the guardians actually mattered more for your protagonist, like maybe giving access to extra-type skills, but I guess that's why we have Persona. In fact, it's actually really cool to see how much influence this game has on Persona. Of course, those games are definitely better with how they actually flesh out their characters, and setting, and themes, but I definitely appreciate the way all those things are implemented here, even though I haven't played every route. But I definitely like this game enough to at least check out Akira's.
If you're at all interested in dungeon crawlers/classic SMT, this isn't a bad game to try out at least. Hell, you might even come out liking it. You'll never know unless you try, right?
On paper, If should be the best SNES SMT by a landslide victory. A unique setting, themed dungeons, and game changing mechanics definitely make the game stand out, but then you actually play the game and... it actually still is an interesting experience! Yeah, in spite of it's flaws, I enjoyed my time with If. I'm not gonna sit here and tell you it's great, or that you're guaranteed to have a good time with it, but I think it's definitely worth checking out.
Let's address the Girimekhala in the room... Yes, the world of sloth is one of the dumbest, most boring and lazy things to be implemented into a video game. Made worse by the fact you need to play it in 3 of the 4 routes. It's obviously just a way to pad out the game so no matter what character you choose, the devs can say the game isn't as short as it is. On original hardware, this would absolutely ruin the game... but that's the thing. I KNOW you, and every single person in these reviews aren't playing this on a fucking cartridge, so just use a fucking fast forward hotkey. Don't worry. Nobody with half their sanity that actually goes outside is going to judge you. Your cock will stay the same size.
And besides, the other dungeons are great. Pride is, well, a simple introduction dungeon, Gluttony starts to ask more from exploration in a very memorable way, Envy, aside from the cucking, is super interesting and advanced, like I actually busted out the graph paper for that shit, and Greed and the upper school floor are a great test of your spatial awareness. The usage of pitfalls, and hinting that they can be used to your advantage in Greed, before being on the critical path through the upper school especially strikes me as a great endgame test. It at least lets me know they could've made a 100% great game with no Sloth-induced filler, and I guess that fact should probably make me view the game as a whole worse, but if anything, it just makes me more excited to get into those Devil Summoner/early Persona games.
Also apparently people don't like the guardian system? I barely thought of it until I decided to kill myself once I thought I had a good amount of points. The game isn't nearly as hard, or as broken as SMT1. Among many other gameplay tweaks, Zio and Shibaboo aren't as effective, yet encounter rates are way lower throughout. The game overall is very well balanced, where anything that isn't a properly challenging boss is something you can talk your way out of. But if you do die early and get a shitty guardian, you just gotta learn to roll with the punches. Hell, maybe try dying again to reroll. I do wish the guardians actually mattered more for your protagonist, like maybe giving access to extra-type skills, but I guess that's why we have Persona. In fact, it's actually really cool to see how much influence this game has on Persona. Of course, those games are definitely better with how they actually flesh out their characters, and setting, and themes, but I definitely appreciate the way all those things are implemented here, even though I haven't played every route. But I definitely like this game enough to at least check out Akira's.
If you're at all interested in dungeon crawlers/classic SMT, this isn't a bad game to try out at least. Hell, you might even come out liking it. You'll never know unless you try, right?