This review contains spoilers
This game gripped and impressed me in ways few can. While Megami Tensei 1 was a unique and fun twist on the dungeon crawler it's this game which truly breaks the mold. Those familiar with the Shin Megami Tensei games will find that so much of what came to be synonymous with and beloved got its start here. Take out your pencils and graph paper cause this adventure is gonna be a long one.
MT2's visuals are unbelievably striking, the dungeon walls lined with heavily saturated colors that are unique to many maps. Even now, months after I've finished playing the game, the steely green passages of the starting bunker and blood red halls of the Ikebukuro building are burned into my memory. The spritework for enemies and NPCs is no less impressive with large, detailed portraits of various characters to speak with in bars and shops and suitably gruesome and intimidating looking demons to battle and negotiate with. Everything about the designs and art is colorful, bold and eye-catching and playing the game is like seeing the pages of a full-color comic book come to life. The thick black outlines used for characters really accentuate this feeling which follows all the way down to little details like the hilarious "OUCH" graphic that appears when your character bumps into a wall. In addition to this the game has a beautiful manual full of colored illustrations that show off every single monster in the game, plus it has some really good gameplay tips too. It's been faithfully translated by some very dedicated fans too so be sure to check it out if you play!
The music is arguably even more impressive, as the game's cart uses a special sound chip which allows it to produce tracks that are scarcely like anything I've heard on the NES or Famicom before. The music is so catchy and sounds so rich; I still find myself thinking about and humming the dungeon exploration track on a regular basis during my day-to-day walks.
Jumping from visuals into how the game plays I want to talk about an aspect of rpgs that I think is downplayed far too much and that's how good a game feels to control. Often it seems like if a game is turn based any amount of sluggishness and unresponsiveness will be excused on the grounds that it won't effect your success. I think games like Megami Tensei 2 go a long way to show just how much responsive controls can really benefit an rpg. Moving your character across the map and turning them is a nearly instant process, letting you switch directions in a flash. Later titles in the same series would add additional frames of animation for turning around which, while nice to look at, slowed down the action and made the whole process of moving around more tedious. On top of this the game's menus are just as responsive and battles play out in lightning-quick fashion. Once you've queued up your attacks it'll only take a few seconds for a round of combat to play out and if you use the game's auto-battle feature (which you should be, albeit strategically) then battles fly by lighting quick. It's a hell of a thrill to tear right through a weak encounter in a flash or be on the edge of your seat during a tough battle as you and a boss trade hits and spells back and forth in rapid succession.
Though still a dungeon crawler at heart like its predecessor the addition of an overworld adds a real feeling of grand adventure to the gameplay here. If Megami Tensei 1 was a custom dungeon module in a tabletop rpg, then Megami Tensei 2 is the core rulebook with all sorts of cool as hell worldbuilding details and intrigue, plus a giant sandbox campaign to run. A lot of elements of the game really do make it feel like a world the developers wanted the player to be able to get lost in as much as a challenge to be defeated. The nuked-out Tokyo setting here is well-realized and the vivid palette and equally colorful NPCs make it feel more like a post-apocalyptic wild west rather than the typical drab, crumbling dystopia you tend to get in this genre.
Though the game does have its share of progression requirements there are also many occasions where you'll have a fair degree of freedom in what goal or direction you want to tackle next. There was even an entire optional city and questline that I somehow managed to miss in my playthrough! Despite this freedom I felt the game did a great job of guiding my hand and giving hints as to where I needed to be and what I had to do. There was only a single time in the entire game where I felt lost and didn't know how to advance, and in that instance I'd easily argue that it was as much my own mistake as it was the game's lack of direction.
I've neglected talking about the actual dungeons here long enough, but they didn't disappoint at all. While things start out simple with basic corridors and just a couple floors and rooms per dungeon the game escalates more and more until the end. Pitfalls, turnstiles, dark rooms, warp rooms, dungeons full of damage tiles, and just about everything else you'd expect from a game of this kind is here in some way or another and often multiple at once. Exploring dungeons, finding treasure and just barely managing to escape and haul your half-dead team back to a town to heal up is a thrill. All this said there are a few places in the game that can be a tremendous pain if you don't go in already prepared to deal with what they dish out. (A word of advice, make sure to get a Core Shield or two from Rag's Shop when you have the chance, don't make my mistake and ignore them).
On top of this there are some big difficulty spikes, but I never found these to be unmanageable and in fact I would describe them as a feature more than an issue. These were fun to deal with since I typically got hit with a jump in challenge right when me and my current party were getting a little too cocky and the road too easygoing. There was just one occasion where I did feel like the game went a little too far in terms of the increase in challenge from previous content to what I suddenly found myself dealing with. There's no automap in-game which meant I mapped all of the dungeons by hand and had a blast doing so, but this may be a dealbreaker for some (to those I would recommend the SNES remake which does have such a feature).
Speaking of my party, the series' famous demon negotiation is back in this entry, a system in which the majority of your party is composed of enemies that you've successfully bribed and convinced to join your side. From there you can use them to fill out your roster and tackle dungeons with you, but like the hired guns they are, they continually cost resources to keep around and the tougher they are the higher the price. This leads to a fun system of judging just how much you need them around all the time, and which of your teammates you should save for the big boss fights at the end, or to make sure you can make the trip back. Since demons have all sorts of abilities, some of which the two player characters won't get until very late in the game, it's a ton of fun organizing your team to tackle the various challenges the game throws at you. And when your demons are starting to look a little weak you can fuse them together to make new ones. Overall these guys add brilliantly to the game's resource management and are just fun to use!
The actual combat here is swift and deadly. Knowing what sorts of attacks your enemies are weak to, from swords to guns to various brands of sorcery, is paramount here. Hitting even a much more powerful enemy with the right spell can bring them down in an instant. Even status spells can be surprisingly useful when used against the right enemy, and in typical fashion for the series buffs and debuffs are invaluable. But realistically the combat here isn't too complex, but that's fine as the game is more about the resource management aspect than about individual encounters. You might be able to beat the boss of a given dungeon without much trouble with your full team of bruisers, but can you navigate the whole dungeon, get to the end, beat them, and then get back out with your team intact? You'll find yourself rationing spells, items, and picking carefully who to summon and whose hp and mp you need to save as you delve into dungeons.
Since I've mentioned the SNES remake (Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei) a few times in this review I figure it might be worth talking about some differences between the two versions and why I think it's worth considering this older, original release over the newer version. The visuals were completely redone in the remake and while they look good I do think they give the game a very different feeling. In general the color palette used in Kyuuyaku is a whole lot darker and more muted than MT2, which makes the game feel just a bit more drab and run down. Characters lack the thick, defining black outlines they had in the NES version, going for a more natural but less stylish appearance and the detailed character portraits are gone entirely! It's not bad but absolutely lends a very different atmosphere to the journey and I found the original to be more impressive. In addition the music in Kyuuyaku sounds muffled and just can't match the custom chip used in the original game. The last major change that leaves me preferring the original is that, like I alluded to earlier, the later games in the series are a whole lot more sluggish and Kyuuyaku inherits that trait. Turning and moving in dungeons, attacking, and really everything is just a bit slower and less responsive. For a game you're going to probably be playing for many hours I think simply feeling better at a base level is a huge reason you might want to stick to one version over another.
That said the SNES version does have its advantages. Some players will likely prefer the visuals in that version and while the sound is better in the older version there's at least one excellent new music track (and probably more I don't know of off the top of my head) that has no equivalent in the NES game. There's also the big quality of life change that is the inclusion of an automap. For players that simply don't enjoy mapping out dungeons themselves this is going to be a huge one and I think is pretty much the primary reason to play Kyuuyaku over the original if you do. And despite everything I have said here I do not think the remake is a bad game by any means. If it's the only way you can experience this game then you should play it without hesitation. I only hope that some of you that are on the fence or unsure will consider the original game and not simply write it off as the inferior version due to its age.
Beyond this point I'll be getting into more direct spoilers. While I'm not going to give a plot rundown it's impossible to talk about the game completely without at least going into some big, lategame reveals. So if you want to experience the game for yourself I recommend stopping here. Even without reading further I think it should be evident by this point I highly recommend playing this game to anyone checking out this review.
I was really blown away by the ambition and scope of this game overall. The plot itself is told in simple fashion, through a limited amount of dialogue and interactions, yet it does so much with what it has and with the benefit of not getting in the way of the play experience in doing so. In Megami Tensei 1 the mythological aspects of the series were basically window dressing, but MT2 is much more mindful as to the 'source material' from which so many of its creatures originate. It's more clever in its use of Canaanite mythology and how that transitioned into the modern, Abrahamic faith than many of its successors. On top of this the Abyss as it exists in this game is vastly more fleshed out than in any entry in the series, with a massive portion of the game taking place therein. The demonic culture therein was a real blast to experience and it's simply unbelievable cool to suddenly be thrust into a whole new overworld after exploring the previous one.
My impressions have been glowing and I think it's hard to state just how much I really enjoyed this game from beginning to end. While I ran into some tough challenges along the way it was nothing that didn't make me eager to persevere and surmount it. I've frequently found myself drawn back to the game to play for a few hours just to enjoy spending some more time in its world, which I think is one of the marks of an amazing game and something that has been harder and harder for me to find as the years go on. It's become one of my favorite games in this entire series that is rapidly approaching four decades since its first release and is full of stellar titles. However you choose to play it I hope those with even the slightest interest in this sort of game don't miss out on it.
MT2's visuals are unbelievably striking, the dungeon walls lined with heavily saturated colors that are unique to many maps. Even now, months after I've finished playing the game, the steely green passages of the starting bunker and blood red halls of the Ikebukuro building are burned into my memory. The spritework for enemies and NPCs is no less impressive with large, detailed portraits of various characters to speak with in bars and shops and suitably gruesome and intimidating looking demons to battle and negotiate with. Everything about the designs and art is colorful, bold and eye-catching and playing the game is like seeing the pages of a full-color comic book come to life. The thick black outlines used for characters really accentuate this feeling which follows all the way down to little details like the hilarious "OUCH" graphic that appears when your character bumps into a wall. In addition to this the game has a beautiful manual full of colored illustrations that show off every single monster in the game, plus it has some really good gameplay tips too. It's been faithfully translated by some very dedicated fans too so be sure to check it out if you play!
The music is arguably even more impressive, as the game's cart uses a special sound chip which allows it to produce tracks that are scarcely like anything I've heard on the NES or Famicom before. The music is so catchy and sounds so rich; I still find myself thinking about and humming the dungeon exploration track on a regular basis during my day-to-day walks.
Jumping from visuals into how the game plays I want to talk about an aspect of rpgs that I think is downplayed far too much and that's how good a game feels to control. Often it seems like if a game is turn based any amount of sluggishness and unresponsiveness will be excused on the grounds that it won't effect your success. I think games like Megami Tensei 2 go a long way to show just how much responsive controls can really benefit an rpg. Moving your character across the map and turning them is a nearly instant process, letting you switch directions in a flash. Later titles in the same series would add additional frames of animation for turning around which, while nice to look at, slowed down the action and made the whole process of moving around more tedious. On top of this the game's menus are just as responsive and battles play out in lightning-quick fashion. Once you've queued up your attacks it'll only take a few seconds for a round of combat to play out and if you use the game's auto-battle feature (which you should be, albeit strategically) then battles fly by lighting quick. It's a hell of a thrill to tear right through a weak encounter in a flash or be on the edge of your seat during a tough battle as you and a boss trade hits and spells back and forth in rapid succession.
Though still a dungeon crawler at heart like its predecessor the addition of an overworld adds a real feeling of grand adventure to the gameplay here. If Megami Tensei 1 was a custom dungeon module in a tabletop rpg, then Megami Tensei 2 is the core rulebook with all sorts of cool as hell worldbuilding details and intrigue, plus a giant sandbox campaign to run. A lot of elements of the game really do make it feel like a world the developers wanted the player to be able to get lost in as much as a challenge to be defeated. The nuked-out Tokyo setting here is well-realized and the vivid palette and equally colorful NPCs make it feel more like a post-apocalyptic wild west rather than the typical drab, crumbling dystopia you tend to get in this genre.
Though the game does have its share of progression requirements there are also many occasions where you'll have a fair degree of freedom in what goal or direction you want to tackle next. There was even an entire optional city and questline that I somehow managed to miss in my playthrough! Despite this freedom I felt the game did a great job of guiding my hand and giving hints as to where I needed to be and what I had to do. There was only a single time in the entire game where I felt lost and didn't know how to advance, and in that instance I'd easily argue that it was as much my own mistake as it was the game's lack of direction.
I've neglected talking about the actual dungeons here long enough, but they didn't disappoint at all. While things start out simple with basic corridors and just a couple floors and rooms per dungeon the game escalates more and more until the end. Pitfalls, turnstiles, dark rooms, warp rooms, dungeons full of damage tiles, and just about everything else you'd expect from a game of this kind is here in some way or another and often multiple at once. Exploring dungeons, finding treasure and just barely managing to escape and haul your half-dead team back to a town to heal up is a thrill. All this said there are a few places in the game that can be a tremendous pain if you don't go in already prepared to deal with what they dish out. (A word of advice, make sure to get a Core Shield or two from Rag's Shop when you have the chance, don't make my mistake and ignore them).
On top of this there are some big difficulty spikes, but I never found these to be unmanageable and in fact I would describe them as a feature more than an issue. These were fun to deal with since I typically got hit with a jump in challenge right when me and my current party were getting a little too cocky and the road too easygoing. There was just one occasion where I did feel like the game went a little too far in terms of the increase in challenge from previous content to what I suddenly found myself dealing with. There's no automap in-game which meant I mapped all of the dungeons by hand and had a blast doing so, but this may be a dealbreaker for some (to those I would recommend the SNES remake which does have such a feature).
Speaking of my party, the series' famous demon negotiation is back in this entry, a system in which the majority of your party is composed of enemies that you've successfully bribed and convinced to join your side. From there you can use them to fill out your roster and tackle dungeons with you, but like the hired guns they are, they continually cost resources to keep around and the tougher they are the higher the price. This leads to a fun system of judging just how much you need them around all the time, and which of your teammates you should save for the big boss fights at the end, or to make sure you can make the trip back. Since demons have all sorts of abilities, some of which the two player characters won't get until very late in the game, it's a ton of fun organizing your team to tackle the various challenges the game throws at you. And when your demons are starting to look a little weak you can fuse them together to make new ones. Overall these guys add brilliantly to the game's resource management and are just fun to use!
The actual combat here is swift and deadly. Knowing what sorts of attacks your enemies are weak to, from swords to guns to various brands of sorcery, is paramount here. Hitting even a much more powerful enemy with the right spell can bring them down in an instant. Even status spells can be surprisingly useful when used against the right enemy, and in typical fashion for the series buffs and debuffs are invaluable. But realistically the combat here isn't too complex, but that's fine as the game is more about the resource management aspect than about individual encounters. You might be able to beat the boss of a given dungeon without much trouble with your full team of bruisers, but can you navigate the whole dungeon, get to the end, beat them, and then get back out with your team intact? You'll find yourself rationing spells, items, and picking carefully who to summon and whose hp and mp you need to save as you delve into dungeons.
Since I've mentioned the SNES remake (Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei) a few times in this review I figure it might be worth talking about some differences between the two versions and why I think it's worth considering this older, original release over the newer version. The visuals were completely redone in the remake and while they look good I do think they give the game a very different feeling. In general the color palette used in Kyuuyaku is a whole lot darker and more muted than MT2, which makes the game feel just a bit more drab and run down. Characters lack the thick, defining black outlines they had in the NES version, going for a more natural but less stylish appearance and the detailed character portraits are gone entirely! It's not bad but absolutely lends a very different atmosphere to the journey and I found the original to be more impressive. In addition the music in Kyuuyaku sounds muffled and just can't match the custom chip used in the original game. The last major change that leaves me preferring the original is that, like I alluded to earlier, the later games in the series are a whole lot more sluggish and Kyuuyaku inherits that trait. Turning and moving in dungeons, attacking, and really everything is just a bit slower and less responsive. For a game you're going to probably be playing for many hours I think simply feeling better at a base level is a huge reason you might want to stick to one version over another.
That said the SNES version does have its advantages. Some players will likely prefer the visuals in that version and while the sound is better in the older version there's at least one excellent new music track (and probably more I don't know of off the top of my head) that has no equivalent in the NES game. There's also the big quality of life change that is the inclusion of an automap. For players that simply don't enjoy mapping out dungeons themselves this is going to be a huge one and I think is pretty much the primary reason to play Kyuuyaku over the original if you do. And despite everything I have said here I do not think the remake is a bad game by any means. If it's the only way you can experience this game then you should play it without hesitation. I only hope that some of you that are on the fence or unsure will consider the original game and not simply write it off as the inferior version due to its age.
Beyond this point I'll be getting into more direct spoilers. While I'm not going to give a plot rundown it's impossible to talk about the game completely without at least going into some big, lategame reveals. So if you want to experience the game for yourself I recommend stopping here. Even without reading further I think it should be evident by this point I highly recommend playing this game to anyone checking out this review.
I was really blown away by the ambition and scope of this game overall. The plot itself is told in simple fashion, through a limited amount of dialogue and interactions, yet it does so much with what it has and with the benefit of not getting in the way of the play experience in doing so. In Megami Tensei 1 the mythological aspects of the series were basically window dressing, but MT2 is much more mindful as to the 'source material' from which so many of its creatures originate. It's more clever in its use of Canaanite mythology and how that transitioned into the modern, Abrahamic faith than many of its successors. On top of this the Abyss as it exists in this game is vastly more fleshed out than in any entry in the series, with a massive portion of the game taking place therein. The demonic culture therein was a real blast to experience and it's simply unbelievable cool to suddenly be thrust into a whole new overworld after exploring the previous one.
My impressions have been glowing and I think it's hard to state just how much I really enjoyed this game from beginning to end. While I ran into some tough challenges along the way it was nothing that didn't make me eager to persevere and surmount it. I've frequently found myself drawn back to the game to play for a few hours just to enjoy spending some more time in its world, which I think is one of the marks of an amazing game and something that has been harder and harder for me to find as the years go on. It's become one of my favorite games in this entire series that is rapidly approaching four decades since its first release and is full of stellar titles. However you choose to play it I hope those with even the slightest interest in this sort of game don't miss out on it.