Ophelia
2022
[Played on Steam with all DLC purchased]
This review will be focused on comparing Soul Hackers 2 to previous Devil Summoner games and it’s status as a sequel to Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. I’m not advocating for this to be the only lens people view this game through, it’s just that everything else from the strengths and weaknesses of the game have already been covered in other reviews on this site.
To give some background on the series, Devil Summoner is a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei that departs from the apocalyptic setting in place of urban settings ranging from the 1930s, present day, to the near future, where demons are kept a secret from society. The use of detective elements, the focus on the players relationship with demons, and the connected world and reoccurring organizations is what set this series apart and made it unique.
Loyalty, one of the reoccurring mechanics, is a friendship meter raised from battling with demons. Soul Hackers 1 had a very unique take on this mechanic by giving individual demons personalities and having the player take into consideration what moves they preferred to be give if they didn’t want the demon to disobey them. What made this mechanic so special was that it made the demons feel alive and put the player in the shoes of a summoner who’s training their demons, not unlike having to train a dog. This mechanic is completely absent from Soul Hackers 2.
Demon negotiations, a stable in the Megami Tensei franchise, but more importantly Soul Hackers 1 featuring one of the best iterations of this mechanic. Demons conversations were always a joy, ranging from demons commenting on the current story events, hilarious 4th wall breaks resulting in the demons having an existential crisis, to rhythm minigames. Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon also featured an amazing negotiation system where demons could pitch in to help you during them and certain demons would have conversations with each other like talking about their former master. Negotiations have been reduced to saying yes or no to a request in Soul Hackers 2.
In battles demons don’t even show up. You have 4 human characters fighting with their weapons and then performing all out attacks at the end of each turn if weaknesses were hit. The complete lack of presence of demons and being reduced to mere weapon equipables is a slap in the face compared to the previous games -including the game this is a supposed sequel to-. Instead of managing my demon team and taking into consideration their personalities I’m just shooting down demons with guns.
In the Raidou duology demon investigations were introduced where each demon has special detective skills like reading minds, freezing water, changing the appearance of raidou, and many more. When using skills the player would get to walk around as the demon and help solve puzzles for Raidou and then report back after done exploring. Soul Hackers 2 puts a “spin” on this by having Ringo send out demons at the beginning of a dungeon and then go around finding them for rewards. A few times they are used to find items like keys or a hidden door too. The problem with demon scouting is that the demons feel more like chests (and unrewarding ones at that) than partners. Talking to a NPC with the same 5 lines throughout the game to get some money or an item doesn’t really have the same effect as playing as demons and solving puzzles with them. It would of been nice of demons could follow you around like in Raidou too but even that was too much apparently.
The world doesn’t feel like one with humans and demons coexisting either. Almost all the NPCs are humans, same with the story bosses. The game is entirely focused on the summoners yet forgets about demons being a part of the world. While there are a few neat side quests like the Doppelgänger and Black Frost one, most are fetch quests that entirely ignore the existence of demons.
Devil Summoner was always a series where demons were a core part of it’s identity, to the point that it’s even in the name. While some people may bring up the fact Soul Hackers 2 dropped the name, the original Soul Hackers was no exception so it’s not really an excuse. Every game was focused around investigating the misuse of demons yet this game focuses on summoning an Eldritch monster through colorful worms and organization conflicts. This game could be rebranded where demons are entirely removed from it and not much would change while that would be impossible to do for the previous games.
As far as being a sequel to Soul Hackers goes, it isn’t one. The story takes place over 50 years in the future with none of the main cast returning. Thematically the themes explored are different, gameplay wise literally nothing carried over, and even the style of cyberpunk is very different. Ringo can “Soul Hack” all she wants but Soul Hackers was a name alluding to the concept of the game, it was never once name dropped in the original game. “Vision Quests” are also a completely different thing where they just slapped on the name as a reference. In the original it was playing through the shoes of deceased characters, in this game it’s walking through dungeons to watch cutscenes of the main cast’s past at the end. I don’t see how this is a sequel in any way and why they decided to market it as one.
One point of praise I have is that they stuck with the continuity. Devil Summoner games have reoccurring characters and organizations where each game introduces more to the lore and this one is no exception. While I feel they could of done more with the Devil Summoner world in this one, I still really appreciate that they kept the continuity and it felt really nice revisiting the Devil Summoner world after not getting a new game for 14 years. A new Kuzunoha branch revealed, Yatagarasu being expanded upon which were previously introduced in the Raidou games mostly wrapped in mystery, the return of Madame Ginko and Victor along with Phantom Society and zomas being brought back, the game delivered on this front.
World building wise unfortunately this game isn’t very good :(. Most of the NPCs just give you tips like how buffs are important or that new food is on the menu. It’s very robotic and results in not much being told about the world outside of what the main cast says during hangout events. The previous Devil Summoners had fantastic world building that aided the themes each game focuses on (dangers of the internet, effects of modernization, etc.) on top of fun npc dialogue like being able to check on one of the villains in the world map after they quit being a Dark Summoner in Soul Hackers. It really sucks how bad the NPC dialogue is in this game.
As far as being a Devil Summoner (or Soul Hackers) game goes, it does not really fit in with the series and discarded most of what made it unique. A jarring sequel to a game released 25 years ago, it’s surprising they even went with the name. While the continuity is appreciated, this game feels more like a game that takes place in the Devil Summoner world rather than being a Devil Summoner game itself. While I’m happy Atlus revived one of my favorite series, I can’t help but be disappointed in the way they went about ripping apart a core aspect of it’s identity. While it’s a good but VERY flawed game, it is a bad Devil Summoner/Soul Hackers game.
This review will be focused on comparing Soul Hackers 2 to previous Devil Summoner games and it’s status as a sequel to Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. I’m not advocating for this to be the only lens people view this game through, it’s just that everything else from the strengths and weaknesses of the game have already been covered in other reviews on this site.
To give some background on the series, Devil Summoner is a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei that departs from the apocalyptic setting in place of urban settings ranging from the 1930s, present day, to the near future, where demons are kept a secret from society. The use of detective elements, the focus on the players relationship with demons, and the connected world and reoccurring organizations is what set this series apart and made it unique.
Loyalty, one of the reoccurring mechanics, is a friendship meter raised from battling with demons. Soul Hackers 1 had a very unique take on this mechanic by giving individual demons personalities and having the player take into consideration what moves they preferred to be give if they didn’t want the demon to disobey them. What made this mechanic so special was that it made the demons feel alive and put the player in the shoes of a summoner who’s training their demons, not unlike having to train a dog. This mechanic is completely absent from Soul Hackers 2.
Demon negotiations, a stable in the Megami Tensei franchise, but more importantly Soul Hackers 1 featuring one of the best iterations of this mechanic. Demons conversations were always a joy, ranging from demons commenting on the current story events, hilarious 4th wall breaks resulting in the demons having an existential crisis, to rhythm minigames. Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon also featured an amazing negotiation system where demons could pitch in to help you during them and certain demons would have conversations with each other like talking about their former master. Negotiations have been reduced to saying yes or no to a request in Soul Hackers 2.
In battles demons don’t even show up. You have 4 human characters fighting with their weapons and then performing all out attacks at the end of each turn if weaknesses were hit. The complete lack of presence of demons and being reduced to mere weapon equipables is a slap in the face compared to the previous games -including the game this is a supposed sequel to-. Instead of managing my demon team and taking into consideration their personalities I’m just shooting down demons with guns.
In the Raidou duology demon investigations were introduced where each demon has special detective skills like reading minds, freezing water, changing the appearance of raidou, and many more. When using skills the player would get to walk around as the demon and help solve puzzles for Raidou and then report back after done exploring. Soul Hackers 2 puts a “spin” on this by having Ringo send out demons at the beginning of a dungeon and then go around finding them for rewards. A few times they are used to find items like keys or a hidden door too. The problem with demon scouting is that the demons feel more like chests (and unrewarding ones at that) than partners. Talking to a NPC with the same 5 lines throughout the game to get some money or an item doesn’t really have the same effect as playing as demons and solving puzzles with them. It would of been nice of demons could follow you around like in Raidou too but even that was too much apparently.
The world doesn’t feel like one with humans and demons coexisting either. Almost all the NPCs are humans, same with the story bosses. The game is entirely focused on the summoners yet forgets about demons being a part of the world. While there are a few neat side quests like the Doppelgänger and Black Frost one, most are fetch quests that entirely ignore the existence of demons.
Devil Summoner was always a series where demons were a core part of it’s identity, to the point that it’s even in the name. While some people may bring up the fact Soul Hackers 2 dropped the name, the original Soul Hackers was no exception so it’s not really an excuse. Every game was focused around investigating the misuse of demons yet this game focuses on summoning an Eldritch monster through colorful worms and organization conflicts. This game could be rebranded where demons are entirely removed from it and not much would change while that would be impossible to do for the previous games.
As far as being a sequel to Soul Hackers goes, it isn’t one. The story takes place over 50 years in the future with none of the main cast returning. Thematically the themes explored are different, gameplay wise literally nothing carried over, and even the style of cyberpunk is very different. Ringo can “Soul Hack” all she wants but Soul Hackers was a name alluding to the concept of the game, it was never once name dropped in the original game. “Vision Quests” are also a completely different thing where they just slapped on the name as a reference. In the original it was playing through the shoes of deceased characters, in this game it’s walking through dungeons to watch cutscenes of the main cast’s past at the end. I don’t see how this is a sequel in any way and why they decided to market it as one.
One point of praise I have is that they stuck with the continuity. Devil Summoner games have reoccurring characters and organizations where each game introduces more to the lore and this one is no exception. While I feel they could of done more with the Devil Summoner world in this one, I still really appreciate that they kept the continuity and it felt really nice revisiting the Devil Summoner world after not getting a new game for 14 years. A new Kuzunoha branch revealed, Yatagarasu being expanded upon which were previously introduced in the Raidou games mostly wrapped in mystery, the return of Madame Ginko and Victor along with Phantom Society and zomas being brought back, the game delivered on this front.
World building wise unfortunately this game isn’t very good :(. Most of the NPCs just give you tips like how buffs are important or that new food is on the menu. It’s very robotic and results in not much being told about the world outside of what the main cast says during hangout events. The previous Devil Summoners had fantastic world building that aided the themes each game focuses on (dangers of the internet, effects of modernization, etc.) on top of fun npc dialogue like being able to check on one of the villains in the world map after they quit being a Dark Summoner in Soul Hackers. It really sucks how bad the NPC dialogue is in this game.
As far as being a Devil Summoner (or Soul Hackers) game goes, it does not really fit in with the series and discarded most of what made it unique. A jarring sequel to a game released 25 years ago, it’s surprising they even went with the name. While the continuity is appreciated, this game feels more like a game that takes place in the Devil Summoner world rather than being a Devil Summoner game itself. While I’m happy Atlus revived one of my favorite series, I can’t help but be disappointed in the way they went about ripping apart a core aspect of it’s identity. While it’s a good but VERY flawed game, it is a bad Devil Summoner/Soul Hackers game.
[Emulated on PCSX2]
Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is quite a fascinating game with a lot to digest. First, I’d like to focus on its setting which is the Taisho era of Japan (which ended in our world in 1926 but has been extended to 1931 in this game).
To give some background, in 1853 Japan was forced to end its 200 year isolation and open up trade to the west. This caused a massive change in Japan with rapid advancement in industrialization with the new Western technology, reorganization of government from feudalism to a more centralized government, and a focus on growing the military to become a world power.
So why is all this important to Raidou? By the Taisho era, the effects of westernization could still be felt strongly and is one of the central focuses of the game. From the invading demons that represent Japan’s old world, the clever use of prerendered backgrounds mixing Western and outdated Edo period architecture, beautifully crafted soundtrack incorporating Jazz which was spreading throughout the world at the time, Atlus does an incredible job at capturing this era.
Every character is feeling the effects of modernization from Denpachi who's rickshaw business has come to a standstill due to the introduction of automobiles, Tae embracing the new freedoms of women in this era, and Munakata who desires imperialism using new technology. Other themes can also be seen in the story such as recognizing and cherishing our bonds with others along with passion to do our best in life despite dark times.
The story itself takes a lot of inspiration from detective dramas, with each part of the story fitting into an episode. The light hearted and witty approach to the story telling is very pleasant and the game does not hold back with how ridiculous the story gets. Every episode has something crazy from fighting yakuza in a bathhouse while being naked with nothing but your hat on to time travel and Russian cyborgs. Episodes are also very well paced, never dwelling too long on a plot point to avoid the player getting bored.
Gameplay wise Raidou does something unprecedented for a Megami Tensei title, swapping the standard turn-based combat system with action rpg gameplay. While theres definitely a lot that can be criticized such as the poor implementation of MAG that feels more of a leftover from previous games rather than serving any purpose, loyalty requiring grinding to fuse demons, random encounters in towns, to the clunky movement and lack of melee abilities outside of basic attacks, I still enjoyed the combat a lot and appreciate what it sets out to do.
Rather than feeling like a hack and slash, Raidou finds a way to bridge the gap between action and turn-based by having a focus on managing menus from switching demons, choosing their attacks, circulating through elemental bullets, to picking items to use. I found this approach to be quite unique and appreciated the experience it brought compared to other games in the genre.
Another aspect I loved was how Atlus incorporated the adventure genre into this game to fit the theme of being a detective game. Every demon has certain skills to help Raidou on his cases such as mind reading, fitting into small areas to reach something, using lightning to sense for clues, freezing water to walk on, and many more. Rather than this just being a skill you active from a menu you actually get to control the demons and move around as them which is really really cool.
While not a perfect game, the charming characters and story along with the unique gameplay made me fall in love with this game and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this title, regardless if you’re a Megami Tensei fan or not.
Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is quite a fascinating game with a lot to digest. First, I’d like to focus on its setting which is the Taisho era of Japan (which ended in our world in 1926 but has been extended to 1931 in this game).
To give some background, in 1853 Japan was forced to end its 200 year isolation and open up trade to the west. This caused a massive change in Japan with rapid advancement in industrialization with the new Western technology, reorganization of government from feudalism to a more centralized government, and a focus on growing the military to become a world power.
So why is all this important to Raidou? By the Taisho era, the effects of westernization could still be felt strongly and is one of the central focuses of the game. From the invading demons that represent Japan’s old world, the clever use of prerendered backgrounds mixing Western and outdated Edo period architecture, beautifully crafted soundtrack incorporating Jazz which was spreading throughout the world at the time, Atlus does an incredible job at capturing this era.
Every character is feeling the effects of modernization from Denpachi who's rickshaw business has come to a standstill due to the introduction of automobiles, Tae embracing the new freedoms of women in this era, and Munakata who desires imperialism using new technology. Other themes can also be seen in the story such as recognizing and cherishing our bonds with others along with passion to do our best in life despite dark times.
The story itself takes a lot of inspiration from detective dramas, with each part of the story fitting into an episode. The light hearted and witty approach to the story telling is very pleasant and the game does not hold back with how ridiculous the story gets. Every episode has something crazy from fighting yakuza in a bathhouse while being naked with nothing but your hat on to time travel and Russian cyborgs. Episodes are also very well paced, never dwelling too long on a plot point to avoid the player getting bored.
Gameplay wise Raidou does something unprecedented for a Megami Tensei title, swapping the standard turn-based combat system with action rpg gameplay. While theres definitely a lot that can be criticized such as the poor implementation of MAG that feels more of a leftover from previous games rather than serving any purpose, loyalty requiring grinding to fuse demons, random encounters in towns, to the clunky movement and lack of melee abilities outside of basic attacks, I still enjoyed the combat a lot and appreciate what it sets out to do.
Rather than feeling like a hack and slash, Raidou finds a way to bridge the gap between action and turn-based by having a focus on managing menus from switching demons, choosing their attacks, circulating through elemental bullets, to picking items to use. I found this approach to be quite unique and appreciated the experience it brought compared to other games in the genre.
Another aspect I loved was how Atlus incorporated the adventure genre into this game to fit the theme of being a detective game. Every demon has certain skills to help Raidou on his cases such as mind reading, fitting into small areas to reach something, using lightning to sense for clues, freezing water to walk on, and many more. Rather than this just being a skill you active from a menu you actually get to control the demons and move around as them which is really really cool.
While not a perfect game, the charming characters and story along with the unique gameplay made me fall in love with this game and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this title, regardless if you’re a Megami Tensei fan or not.
[Emulated PS2 version on PCSX2 and achieved Freedom ending]
You either get it or you don’t I guess, this game definitely wasn’t for me. I suppose some people find the dreamy surreal atmosphere formed from the minimal cel shading and Kaneko’s paintings coming to life in 3D for the first time synergizing with Meguro’s score to be something special which I can agree that the game does have its own vibe and is what I’d attribute to its biggest strength.
The first dungeon was my personal favorite part of the game, I really loved the eerie hospital and how the game did a great job at reinforcing to the player that they have turned into a demon through using NPC dialogue to make the ghosts afraid of them while demon NPCs treat the protagonist as one of their kind. Having the world flipped upside down created a nice sense of mystery and confusion which made this part of the game the most memorable for me.
As for the story, really not a fan. The story is so minimal and when the game spends so little time on developing its themes, narrative, and characters it leads me to believe its not the focus of Nocturne at all and definitely not its strength. Maybe Nocturne’s narrative is just something only certain people can appreciate but… yeah this really wasn’t it for me..
Gameplay was alright but some dungeons rely too much on trial and error through the teleportation gimmick like the red temple which throws you in poison mist if you enter the wrong door and that gets old. Not being able to relearn skills is also a bit frustrating and I don’t like how skewed the game is towards a physical build despite giving Demifiend so many magic skills. Hard mode is also completely unbalanced, don’t even bother with it.
Encounter rate gets old when not only dungeons but towns and the world map also have them. If this was a short game it probably wouldn’t bother me but 60+ hours in and it was getting irritating having to deal with them so frequently. One-hit kill skills are a cheap mechanic and its frustrating to lose progress over getting killed by a random encounter. Even if these can be prevented with magatamas I still don’t think its inclusion brings anything to the game other than annoyance which is something I can say about a lot of the game design in Nocturne.
Overall it was certainly a game, just not one for me. A good recommendation for those curious what Shin Megami Tensei is all about or want a gameplay driven turn-based rpg but those looking for characters and story should look elsewhere.
You either get it or you don’t I guess, this game definitely wasn’t for me. I suppose some people find the dreamy surreal atmosphere formed from the minimal cel shading and Kaneko’s paintings coming to life in 3D for the first time synergizing with Meguro’s score to be something special which I can agree that the game does have its own vibe and is what I’d attribute to its biggest strength.
The first dungeon was my personal favorite part of the game, I really loved the eerie hospital and how the game did a great job at reinforcing to the player that they have turned into a demon through using NPC dialogue to make the ghosts afraid of them while demon NPCs treat the protagonist as one of their kind. Having the world flipped upside down created a nice sense of mystery and confusion which made this part of the game the most memorable for me.
As for the story, really not a fan. The story is so minimal and when the game spends so little time on developing its themes, narrative, and characters it leads me to believe its not the focus of Nocturne at all and definitely not its strength. Maybe Nocturne’s narrative is just something only certain people can appreciate but… yeah this really wasn’t it for me..
Gameplay was alright but some dungeons rely too much on trial and error through the teleportation gimmick like the red temple which throws you in poison mist if you enter the wrong door and that gets old. Not being able to relearn skills is also a bit frustrating and I don’t like how skewed the game is towards a physical build despite giving Demifiend so many magic skills. Hard mode is also completely unbalanced, don’t even bother with it.
Encounter rate gets old when not only dungeons but towns and the world map also have them. If this was a short game it probably wouldn’t bother me but 60+ hours in and it was getting irritating having to deal with them so frequently. One-hit kill skills are a cheap mechanic and its frustrating to lose progress over getting killed by a random encounter. Even if these can be prevented with magatamas I still don’t think its inclusion brings anything to the game other than annoyance which is something I can say about a lot of the game design in Nocturne.
Overall it was certainly a game, just not one for me. A good recommendation for those curious what Shin Megami Tensei is all about or want a gameplay driven turn-based rpg but those looking for characters and story should look elsewhere.
This must be what it feels like to play the western release of Ace Combat 3
Pretty cool concept and the character designs are really nice but other than that its just a poorly made horror rpg maker game with unclear instructions and a short underwhelming story.
[Emulated on PCSX2]
Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon is the sequel to the first Raidou game and fourth entry in Devil Summoner series. Despite loving Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army I found this game to be quite disappointing, both as a standalone game and a sequel.
Despite being a sequel, King Abaddon does not respect the original game. Kaya’s gone (apparently moved?), a certain character I won’t name is revived just to be a note-taker which totally defeats their death in the original, the cast from the original game get no more development and it feels like they are there because it being a sequel demands it (some are even reduced to mere comedy relief such as tae’s entire character being fainting since she faints every scene she appears in). King abaddon also tries really hard not to reference the previous game’s plot to the point the shopkeeper doesn’t even remember you which makes me question why they even made a sequel in the first place.
Story-wise I did not like this game at all. Story fell out all over the place without a clear idea of what it wanted to say and would dwell on certain plot points way too long that I was waiting for it to be over. I really do wish they would have brought back the original writer because it really shows that they didn’t work on this one (they probably didn’t even plan for a sequel considering how soulless army wrapped up its story perfectly). One big addition I was not a fan of is “alignments”, a staple of the SMT series that made its first and only appearance in the devil summoner series with this game. While they can be well implemented, king abaddon does a terrible job with it by awkwardly inserting philosophical questions into casual conversations which really took me out of the game. What's even stranger is that none of these choices matter - no matter which alignment you choose the ending will be the same with the only major difference switching the deaths of two characters. Content-wise they’re also almost identical with at most swapping out a mini-boss or two (final dungeon and final boss remain the same). With how poorly they’re implemented along with how they don’t even change anything makes me question why they were even added in the first place, to appeal to SMT fans I guess?
As for the gameplay, I was not a fan of it in this game. While raidou can dodge (which is a great addition), Atlus had no idea how to balance this out and their solution was to make every single enemy constantly teleport across the screen (which makes fights really tedious like a game of whac-a-mole). Guns have also become completely useless with the removal of elemental bullets and just letting the player have access to unlimited bullets. Unlike the first game, fights take an extremely long time to escape from making it more viable to just kill the enemies. Another change I was not a fan of was the MAG rework, giving all your demons a shared MP pool. The biggest issue with this is that, unlike the first game where you were encouraged to swap out demons when they ran out of mp, you can pretty much just use the same two demons the entire fight and when you run out of MAG fights become very frustrating (looking at the final boss). While I suppose it's not too big of a deal some mechanics such as combo attacks and sword fusion are missing from this game which was a bit of a letdown. With that all said, one of my biggest issues with king abaddon is boss reuse, the prime offender being the soldier bugs which are reused and reskinned throughout the entire game even up to the final chapter (appearing a total of 13 times) making the game feel extremely repetitive.
While I’ve said a lot of negatives, King Abaddon does make some changes I like. Gone is the tedious fusion where you had to grind to make loyalty to fuse, gone are the random encounters in towns, gone is having to go all the way back to konnou-ya just to fuse and heal. King abaddon also allows the player to use two demons at once and offers more control options such as hiding them (making them invincible while holding a button but they can not take action during this) and being able to teleport them to you. Fusion is also more robust with nice additions such as demons leaving notes when fused and the ability to pass on passive skills. Negotiations are also great, possibly one of the bests in megaten with demons having their own conversations if they recognize each other and being able to use your demons to help you out when negotiations are not going well. Demons leaving sad notes when fused was also such a wonderful way to make them feel alive and broke my heart every time.
Presentation-wise the game oddly feels a lot lower budget with lower quality prerendered cutscenes and a lot less. One of the funniest scenes is when a cow gets kidnapped by a bug and just flies into the flat background (it looks so bad). The redone models for characters such as raidou and tae also look noticeably worse.
While I personally did not enjoy it and have a lot of complaints about it I still believe it's a good game in its own right and worth giving a shot especially if you’re a fan of the series. I just wish this game wasn’t so disappointing for me because I really wanted to love it.
Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon is the sequel to the first Raidou game and fourth entry in Devil Summoner series. Despite loving Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army I found this game to be quite disappointing, both as a standalone game and a sequel.
Despite being a sequel, King Abaddon does not respect the original game. Kaya’s gone (apparently moved?), a certain character I won’t name is revived just to be a note-taker which totally defeats their death in the original, the cast from the original game get no more development and it feels like they are there because it being a sequel demands it (some are even reduced to mere comedy relief such as tae’s entire character being fainting since she faints every scene she appears in). King abaddon also tries really hard not to reference the previous game’s plot to the point the shopkeeper doesn’t even remember you which makes me question why they even made a sequel in the first place.
Story-wise I did not like this game at all. Story fell out all over the place without a clear idea of what it wanted to say and would dwell on certain plot points way too long that I was waiting for it to be over. I really do wish they would have brought back the original writer because it really shows that they didn’t work on this one (they probably didn’t even plan for a sequel considering how soulless army wrapped up its story perfectly). One big addition I was not a fan of is “alignments”, a staple of the SMT series that made its first and only appearance in the devil summoner series with this game. While they can be well implemented, king abaddon does a terrible job with it by awkwardly inserting philosophical questions into casual conversations which really took me out of the game. What's even stranger is that none of these choices matter - no matter which alignment you choose the ending will be the same with the only major difference switching the deaths of two characters. Content-wise they’re also almost identical with at most swapping out a mini-boss or two (final dungeon and final boss remain the same). With how poorly they’re implemented along with how they don’t even change anything makes me question why they were even added in the first place, to appeal to SMT fans I guess?
As for the gameplay, I was not a fan of it in this game. While raidou can dodge (which is a great addition), Atlus had no idea how to balance this out and their solution was to make every single enemy constantly teleport across the screen (which makes fights really tedious like a game of whac-a-mole). Guns have also become completely useless with the removal of elemental bullets and just letting the player have access to unlimited bullets. Unlike the first game, fights take an extremely long time to escape from making it more viable to just kill the enemies. Another change I was not a fan of was the MAG rework, giving all your demons a shared MP pool. The biggest issue with this is that, unlike the first game where you were encouraged to swap out demons when they ran out of mp, you can pretty much just use the same two demons the entire fight and when you run out of MAG fights become very frustrating (looking at the final boss). While I suppose it's not too big of a deal some mechanics such as combo attacks and sword fusion are missing from this game which was a bit of a letdown. With that all said, one of my biggest issues with king abaddon is boss reuse, the prime offender being the soldier bugs which are reused and reskinned throughout the entire game even up to the final chapter (appearing a total of 13 times) making the game feel extremely repetitive.
While I’ve said a lot of negatives, King Abaddon does make some changes I like. Gone is the tedious fusion where you had to grind to make loyalty to fuse, gone are the random encounters in towns, gone is having to go all the way back to konnou-ya just to fuse and heal. King abaddon also allows the player to use two demons at once and offers more control options such as hiding them (making them invincible while holding a button but they can not take action during this) and being able to teleport them to you. Fusion is also more robust with nice additions such as demons leaving notes when fused and the ability to pass on passive skills. Negotiations are also great, possibly one of the bests in megaten with demons having their own conversations if they recognize each other and being able to use your demons to help you out when negotiations are not going well. Demons leaving sad notes when fused was also such a wonderful way to make them feel alive and broke my heart every time.
Presentation-wise the game oddly feels a lot lower budget with lower quality prerendered cutscenes and a lot less. One of the funniest scenes is when a cow gets kidnapped by a bug and just flies into the flat background (it looks so bad). The redone models for characters such as raidou and tae also look noticeably worse.
While I personally did not enjoy it and have a lot of complaints about it I still believe it's a good game in its own right and worth giving a shot especially if you’re a fan of the series. I just wish this game wasn’t so disappointing for me because I really wanted to love it.
Kamige
1999
Kusoge
2003
I played both the playstation 2 and mobile version of Drakengard and while I have a lot to say about the ps2 game I’ve decided to review the mobile version since no one else has.
Drakengard mobile is a side-scrolling beat ‘em up with a whooping total of 3 stages. Each stage contains one ground level where you fight soldiers until a boss shows up which upon defeating sends you to the second part which is a rail shooter where you shoot down enemies on your dragon. Drakengard mobile also tries to adapt the story of the ps2 game with an emphasis on tries since obviously thats not possible in a 10 minute mobile game.
Ground combat is pretty basic as you’d expect from a java mobile game with your options being attack (which has a finisher that knocks back enemies similar to the ps2 game), defend, lunge (which does nothing?), and calling your dragon (angelus) which will breath fire on your enemies. When calling angelus you use up a summon point which are gained from filling up a blue bar through using finishers.
While it is a fun little game for what it is it is unfortunately held back by the lack of content both in stage amount and enemy variety so overall I’d give it a 2/5. If you’re curious to try it you can hunt down a java mobile emulator and give it a whirl, just beware that there is a bug that can make the music stop playing (reboot the game to fix it).
Drakengard mobile is a side-scrolling beat ‘em up with a whooping total of 3 stages. Each stage contains one ground level where you fight soldiers until a boss shows up which upon defeating sends you to the second part which is a rail shooter where you shoot down enemies on your dragon. Drakengard mobile also tries to adapt the story of the ps2 game with an emphasis on tries since obviously thats not possible in a 10 minute mobile game.
Ground combat is pretty basic as you’d expect from a java mobile game with your options being attack (which has a finisher that knocks back enemies similar to the ps2 game), defend, lunge (which does nothing?), and calling your dragon (angelus) which will breath fire on your enemies. When calling angelus you use up a summon point which are gained from filling up a blue bar through using finishers.
While it is a fun little game for what it is it is unfortunately held back by the lack of content both in stage amount and enemy variety so overall I’d give it a 2/5. If you’re curious to try it you can hunt down a java mobile emulator and give it a whirl, just beware that there is a bug that can make the music stop playing (reboot the game to fix it).
Haha SMT If..., more like If... it was good. This SMT entry was made in less than 6 months and it definitely shows. I’ll start by focusing on the two worst dungeons in the game (World of Sloth and World of Envy) to give a good idea of how bad this game is.
World of Sloth: Oh boy... the main gimmick of this dungeon is walking around in circles and each full moon cycle students dig one block deeper, with the ultimate goal to get to the buried ring. How long does this take? Well it took me like 5 hours even on turbo mode..... yeah.... it’s really really bad...
World of Envy: Can’t get worse than World of Sloth right? Wrong! This dungeon has you running around completely blind with the screen being completely covered in blue... Just use your map right? Wrong! You also lose access to your COMP so that means no map... Sure you can use mapper skill but it isn’t useful at all especially when you get to the last area which has you walking between two areas with identical layouts so you never know which you are in (or the fact that there are two). I had to look up a video guide to get past this dungeon and even then it was hard to follow because I couldn’t tell which area they were in and it is hard to follow a video when the screen is blank.
Gameplay wise it is like classic SMT with the guardian system as a twist. Guardians, which would later go on to inspire personas, are given to the player and their companion after a bar is filled up (or isn’t) once they die. Unfortunately, this means if you die before your bar is filled up to a certain amount then your guardian is downgraded along with your stats. This adds extra tedium to an already tedious and grindy game. Save points are also extremely rare (only appearing once in every other dungeon) so don’t expect reloading your save if you get a bad guardian to be a good strategy unless you’re prepared to lose a lot of progress.
Now onto story! Expecting a good story? Too bad! This was a rushed game developed in less than 6 months and reuses all of smt 1&2s assets including its music so did you really think they’d have the time to add a story? The beginning of the game starts off with the protagonist’s school being transported into the expanse by Ideo Hazama, the main antagonist of the “story”. You, the protagonist, and one of the three companions that you choose to determine the story’s route and go into the expanse collecting rings in order to escape. Do note that Charlie’s and Yumi’s routes are just incomplete versions of Reiko’s so if you want the full story make sure to choose Reiko (you’ll have to look up a guide on how to get her it is complicated). After leaving the school building the story comes to a halt until the ending of the game. The main “plot points” during the story consists of Hazama occasionally poping up to say something and the comic relief minor antagonist, the science teacher Otsuki, coming to fight you. Other than that it is pure dungeon crawling with no dialogue outside of bland npcs (not even your partner speaks majority of the game!!). After completing the game you get access to the second campaign through Akira’s route. I only played a couple hours of Akira’s route before dropping it so I can’t comment on it but from what I played it is slightly better than the main routes (which is a very very very low bar).
All in all, I do not recommend playing this game even for sport. If you want to play a terrible megaten game to put yourself through torture (which is weird, why would you want to do that???) there are worse megaten games than this such as last bible special and megami tensei 1.
World of Sloth: Oh boy... the main gimmick of this dungeon is walking around in circles and each full moon cycle students dig one block deeper, with the ultimate goal to get to the buried ring. How long does this take? Well it took me like 5 hours even on turbo mode..... yeah.... it’s really really bad...
World of Envy: Can’t get worse than World of Sloth right? Wrong! This dungeon has you running around completely blind with the screen being completely covered in blue... Just use your map right? Wrong! You also lose access to your COMP so that means no map... Sure you can use mapper skill but it isn’t useful at all especially when you get to the last area which has you walking between two areas with identical layouts so you never know which you are in (or the fact that there are two). I had to look up a video guide to get past this dungeon and even then it was hard to follow because I couldn’t tell which area they were in and it is hard to follow a video when the screen is blank.
Gameplay wise it is like classic SMT with the guardian system as a twist. Guardians, which would later go on to inspire personas, are given to the player and their companion after a bar is filled up (or isn’t) once they die. Unfortunately, this means if you die before your bar is filled up to a certain amount then your guardian is downgraded along with your stats. This adds extra tedium to an already tedious and grindy game. Save points are also extremely rare (only appearing once in every other dungeon) so don’t expect reloading your save if you get a bad guardian to be a good strategy unless you’re prepared to lose a lot of progress.
Now onto story! Expecting a good story? Too bad! This was a rushed game developed in less than 6 months and reuses all of smt 1&2s assets including its music so did you really think they’d have the time to add a story? The beginning of the game starts off with the protagonist’s school being transported into the expanse by Ideo Hazama, the main antagonist of the “story”. You, the protagonist, and one of the three companions that you choose to determine the story’s route and go into the expanse collecting rings in order to escape. Do note that Charlie’s and Yumi’s routes are just incomplete versions of Reiko’s so if you want the full story make sure to choose Reiko (you’ll have to look up a guide on how to get her it is complicated). After leaving the school building the story comes to a halt until the ending of the game. The main “plot points” during the story consists of Hazama occasionally poping up to say something and the comic relief minor antagonist, the science teacher Otsuki, coming to fight you. Other than that it is pure dungeon crawling with no dialogue outside of bland npcs (not even your partner speaks majority of the game!!). After completing the game you get access to the second campaign through Akira’s route. I only played a couple hours of Akira’s route before dropping it so I can’t comment on it but from what I played it is slightly better than the main routes (which is a very very very low bar).
All in all, I do not recommend playing this game even for sport. If you want to play a terrible megaten game to put yourself through torture (which is weird, why would you want to do that???) there are worse megaten games than this such as last bible special and megami tensei 1.