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« on: May 10, 2020, 11:36:38 PM »
Daemon X Machina - Switch
I'm a lover of mechs and the target audience for a game like this. I ended up having fun and the game does have a base gameplay that feels good. The graphical style is also really nice, it's stylised in all the right ways and there's a little bit of environmental destruction although not nearly enough. There are plenty of things you could criticise about the game. The main gameplay loop shoots for something like Monster Hunter but it misses the mark, many of the weapons you find look cool but aren't very effective, and there's little rhyme or reason to the pieces of equipment you collect. There's some sort of attachment system I couldn't get the hang of and the pre-misson buffs felt pointless. Most of the skill tree doesn't change how you play.
Add to that the fact that the story is a complete mess. Not even a good mess, the way anime can be sometimes, a bad mess. The game has something like 11 different factions all with their own motivations and politics. It has like 36 named/voiced characters each with their own motivations. The game throws characters at you seemingly at random and some of the important story moments are told to you through text messages. It doesn't attempt to make sense, takes its self too seriously and things just happen. There is a version of this that could have been incredible over the top dumb anime nonsense, but this sadly isn't that. Like I said, boosting around and firing missiles is fun, and the bosses are pretty cool, but you'll only want to play a few missions at a time as the gameplay loop isn't quite there.
Persona Q - 3DS
I'm not a huge fan of Etrian Odyssey and I'm a believer that the SMT series is superior, but I was willing to give this a go. The battle system has some improvements over Etrian Odyssey and the fusion system is a more interesting system for gaining skills than EOs skill tree. I still came away from the game a little sour though. The game has some incredibly annoying puzzles and frustrating dungeon design that had me pulling up gamefaqs. Far more annoying puzzles than I've ever encountered in Etrian Odyssey, the game will want you to go into rooms in a specific order and without a guide I wouldn't have had the patience to finish it. The bosses are annoying and usually have no weakness, and I gave up doing side quests because they offered so little experience. The game gives you a bunch of characters without a way to catch them up in levels and gaining experience is painfully slow. So for the most part you'll be sticking with the same squad with some minor experimentation.
The characters regress into caricatures without the nuance of Persona 3 and 4. I hate Teddy in this game even though I liked him in P4. If you want to see the two casts interact you'll have a better time playing Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, where it at least attempts to add something to the canon, rather than coming off as official fan fiction. The story of Q has approximately two interesting story moments and for a lengthy RPG it's not good enough. Maybe Etrian Odyssey isn't for me, but I would have a hard time recommending Q.
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