[gambrinus]

I've been playing the SMT: Devil Summoner games which have been sitting on my shelf for some time now.

The first one was a bit clunky in combat, with some strange design choices. No default AI setting for your demons? Constantly watching the MP for all of them was pretty annoying, too, since their default was to spam magic everywhere. Having to max loyalty on demons before you fused was just kind of tedious, and even with a bigger clip, you ran out of ammo pretty fast. Oh, and only having two combat abilities for your demons made them pretty dull. I basically had no inspiration to stick around after the end, when I'm usually the type to try and get some badass demons towards the end. In fact, I think I beat the last boss pretty much just pounding on it with a Rakshasa (mainly because it had high strength and war cry, and the boss didn't have any elemental weaknesses), which isn't a very high level demon at all. Still, despite all this, the game was more fun than I'd been led to believe. The plot was serviceable, and Raidoh was a good character. I liked the setting. It was pretty breezy and fun for a SMT game.

I've started on the second one, and it seems to fix almost every complaint I had with the first one. Combat feels way smoother, the fusion is better, having two demons at once is more interesting. Using one source of MAG for all your demons gives you more inspiration to exploit weaknesses. Demon negotiation is back, although it can get a bit tedious at times. Raidoh not being able to exploit weaknesses directly is a bit annoying, but it's a trade-off from having two demons. So far I'm liking this game a lot. I wonder what Atlus' plans for this series are? I remember hearing at one point that there were going to be 5 Raidoh games total, but who knows?

After this I'm going to have to finish Devil Survivor, and maybe pick up Strange Journey...

[gambrinus]

I enjoyed Nocturne's hard mode quite a bit, but then I played it on a New Game+ which removed the restriction from fused demons being higher level than you. I also had a completed compendium which meant summons were half price. It was sort of annoying being killed by the pretas in the first hallway before I could recruit any demons, though! By the time you got about halfway through, the game really wasn't any harder than normal mode. (But then, normal mode got a lot easier towards the end, too)

[gambrinus]

I remember a particularly dorky friend of mine once told me as he was getting ready to buy WC3, 'You know, the main reason I loved WC2 was because of the plot.' I just kind of stared at him blankly and said, 'WC2 had a plot? I thought the plot was that orcs and humans hated each other and had to kill each other.' I still have no idea what the plot was.