@“captain”#p48696 SMT Strange Journey
Help, I can’t stop playing Strange Journey!
Some thoughts:
- Demon encounters are really compelling: do I want to talk or fight? Talking can get me really useful rewards, but not experience; fighting can get me experience and macca, and sometimes items, but at the presumed cost of health and magic. If I talk, what are my chances of succeeding at negotiation? What’s the demon’s alignment? If I succeed at negotiation, do I want macca, an item, or a new demon? If I want a demon, will it be more useful in battle (skills and demon co-op/alignment) or in fusion? SO many decision forks, all compelling. And you can go from one decision to the next very quickly, there’s no obnoxious loading or flashy animations between e.g. the end of battle and the experience screen. Speaking of which…
- Love the speed of battle. For some reason when I played this eleven years ago I thought it was too slow??? I don’t know what I could have been talking about. This was shortly after I played FFVII for the first time, which certainly is not fast by comparison. Also faster than Devil Survivor, the only other SMT I’d played at the time. Turning on auto battle is crazy fast.
- Love that DS font, dude!
- The UI packs in a lot of information but is also highly legible. I looked at the 3DS version and they changed a few things about the display which I imagine many players thought was for the better, but which to me just seems less economical:
(sorry about the image res on the DS screenshot)
I really like that battle options are just a tight column of options, and despite my comment about economical design I like that Sword and Gun are separate selections. The whole bottom screen is dedicated to showing enemy information, though pressing L or R cycles through your party and reserve demons. ||This is all actually fine and not a condemnation in any way of the 3DS version—just saying I’m definitely playing the version for me.|| I remember when I first played it being bummed out that you couldn’t see your guys while fighting and that animations were so simple. Now I love those very things about it—more screen space for enemy info and simple animations are faster!
- I like how only major players get higher detail character portraits (or “busts” as I only recently found out they’re called), while other characters are head-to-foot illustrations far away from you. It creates an interesting relationship between you and the crew, and a different tone for the story. You see your comrades fight and die at middle distance away from you, you cannot help them. This is not Persona 4. (again I guess they added portraits for more characters in the 3DS verison which I can’t help but feel was a marginally wrong decision)
- The pace of dungeons feels good. I like penetrating an unmapped area and fighting things that are too strong, warping back to HQ where suddenly new items are available, and making it a bit farther the next time thanks to knowledge of the terrain and enemy data.
- cool music
Really liking it, I’m glad I held onto it all these years. :)