MMOs are pure grinding, and the least developers can do is help alleviate the grinding madness. I want a battle system that's fun, not just click, click, click, hotkey, another hotkey, click. I promise) and Age of Conan that push the envelopes of MMOs. It's games like Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, Mabinogi, (last one. You can have lower levels taking on much stronger monsters simply because they're skillful. In this sense, while stats matter a lot to how your character develops, the way a person plays can greatly affect the battle outcome. So the game is really forcing the players to learn to mix skills and find strategies that help deal the most damage over the shortest period of time or deal damage without getting hit. As you use more normal ranged attacks, the time it takes to reload the gun and ready up a shot is longer over consecutive attacks. This applies to ranged characters as well. What's extremely interesting about SMT:I is that, the more of the same type of attack you deal, the longer your delay becomes. The main focus of the battle is to either, extend your enemies delay to the point where you can land a solid blow, or deal consistent damage while finding a way to compensate for the building delay. Attacks take priority over rush, rush takes priority over guard, and guard takes priority over attack.
Like Mabinogi, you have attack,guard, spin, counter and rush (instead of strike), but this is the last mabinogi reference I'll make. Then each attack has a specific property that it's strong against and weak against.
Every attack has a charge time, and a delay. What hooked me to this game was the battle system. Each player can go to a specific alignment (Law, Neutral, Chaos) and you move closer and closer to a certain alignment as you make specific decisions in the story.
Once you acquire your demonbuster's license is when the game starts to pick up. Thus, your journey begins.įirst off, I've actually played too little. After a terrible accident and ordeal with a powerful demon, you find yourself awake in Home III under the wing of Snakeman. You play a survivor whose mission was to meet a demonbuster and explore Home II (an underground shelter for the Japanese). People, fearing that this tower and its ominous aura, have begun to take the tower Shinjuku Babel. The Japanese have built a gigantic tower in attempts to restore mankind what what resulted was a stir amongst the demons. SMT:I takes place in a post apocalyptic world in which everyone nuked each other and then nuked some more under the influence and introduction of the "demons." The game takes place in Tokyo when people have begun to rebuild. You have side quests given by NPCs, and mainstream quests given by your tutor known as Snakeman. I know Atlus loves itself, but in all honesty, their narcissism is justified.įrom what I've played so far (up to level 25, when you acquire your Demon Buster License), the story is lackluster and basically a large tutorial. For those of you who aren't sure, Persona is the spinoff the Shin Megami Tensei, and so is the Digital Devil Saga. Shin Megami Tensei:Imagine is a game that follows a pretty linear plot line where the world is based somewhere inbetween SMT and SMT:2. Hell, I wouldn't have reviewed it, I would've made a small side note saying, it's a point and click, gtfo, kthnxbai. Honestly, I wouldn't have played SMT:I for a week if it wasn't that. And, as per request of psychon, I come bearing screenshots.Īs you may or may not know, I've played through a handful of MMOs, too many being point-and-click disasters. It's still gonna have some holes due to parts I may have missed from not progressing far enough, but I'll try to make do. I've dedicated most of my gaming time to this to attempt to give the best review possible. I suggest opening all screenshots in a new tab.