Strange Journey is a return to the first-person dungeon crawling roots of the Megami Tensei series. It makes an interesting choice by having the story be set in a military context, completely bucking the trend of high school aged protagonists. It's an RPG on the DS so there are a lot of little tactile upgrade systems to sift through as you explore. There's no open world, instead the entire game's story is told through interfacing with a hub area thats basically just a menu and just like... exploring big ass dungeons. And I mean big. These things are winding, there's every annoying dungeon crawling trick in the book: damage floors, teleports, conveyor belts, one-way doors and invisible walls.
This game is super peculiar as a follow-up to Nocturne, so that makes it all the more shocking that this game actually gets pretty damn close to matching Nocturne's greatness.
All the things I mentioned earlier work really well in this context, and they contribute to an absolutely oppressive tone that makes the dungeons get under your skin as they tell you stories about humanity's failures in their effort to convince you to give it all up. This game is hard, it's actively fighting you the entire time and it feels like a challenge you actually want to overcome. The characters as well as the way this game deals with routes can be a little predictable (and def simplistic compared to Nocturne's stuff with Reasons) but that doesn't make it not compelling. The story events that led into the big route split-off were especially great.
All that being said, the atmosphere being so oppressive can make the game a slog, especially in times when you can feel the dungeon get long in the tooth (looking at you, Eridanus). Also, the Demon Co-Op system is just a straight up downgrade from Press Turn. The fact that it feels so limiting for just an extra little bit of almighty damage really hurt the pacing of the battles for me at times. It's not a wonder why it never stuck around.
Demon passwords were really cool though. What an extremely Nintendo DS feature to have.
This game is super peculiar as a follow-up to Nocturne, so that makes it all the more shocking that this game actually gets pretty damn close to matching Nocturne's greatness.
All the things I mentioned earlier work really well in this context, and they contribute to an absolutely oppressive tone that makes the dungeons get under your skin as they tell you stories about humanity's failures in their effort to convince you to give it all up. This game is hard, it's actively fighting you the entire time and it feels like a challenge you actually want to overcome. The characters as well as the way this game deals with routes can be a little predictable (and def simplistic compared to Nocturne's stuff with Reasons) but that doesn't make it not compelling. The story events that led into the big route split-off were especially great.
All that being said, the atmosphere being so oppressive can make the game a slog, especially in times when you can feel the dungeon get long in the tooth (looking at you, Eridanus). Also, the Demon Co-Op system is just a straight up downgrade from Press Turn. The fact that it feels so limiting for just an extra little bit of almighty damage really hurt the pacing of the battles for me at times. It's not a wonder why it never stuck around.
Demon passwords were really cool though. What an extremely Nintendo DS feature to have.