J-RPGs and their many short-comings...

No, this is not a "reply" to Yahtzee's latest addition in Zero Punctuation.
Though, that being said, I do agree with most of his points in his review of The World Ends with You.

The reason for this post is that I did something similar to what Yahtzee did. I picked up a J-RPG a day or two ago. In my case, it was Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Demon Saga 2.



The first thing that struck me was that we're seeing a post-apocalyptic world as setting. Apparently, the first game in the series(which I haven't played, for the record) had a more generic setting, but still kinda Mad Max-y in its essence. And you know what? I like that a lot. It is also a decidedly cyber-punk setting, not fantasy or science fantasy (that is what both Star Wars and Final Fantasy is, btw), but decidedly cyber-punky. And Post-apocalyptic. Nice as nice.

Secondly, although the battles are turn based, the system is nicely free of annoying statistics. They work in the background, but don't ever bother the player. Again, very nice.

There is player-guided character development that just isn't a glossy shine with no depth. You can actually decide, as a player, what course the characters will take in their developmment as they level up! Unusual, for J-RPGs. This means that assigning every party member a clear role and devising solid tactics to win battles becomes a must. And random chance is very low in the battles themselves.
Also, this brings us to the leveling system itself:
You get two kinds of experience, essentially: karma and atma. karma is the basic experience, which levels you up. Atma can only be achieved by devouring enemies and collecting their atma. Atma is then used to master various mantras, which in turn decide what path your character will take in their development and what skills they will learn. This sounds very complicated, but is very easy to learn, as there are, as said, very little "Excel-spread-sheet syndrome" in this, very little numbers. You get metres and names to keep track of, names that have a system to them, which means it is easy street keeping track of what is a better attack-version of what and so on.

Add to this a grown-up plotline which is actually compelling and you have a bit of a gem.

All is not well in Nirvana, though, as the game has my pet peeve of healing potions and similar with fixed numbers instead of percentages of HP and MP, which means after a while, say when you hit lvl. 15, certain potions and panaceas become pretty damn useless. FinalFantasy suffers from this too. And has for a long while. Only the "tales of" games have insofar done away with this asinine way of dealing with health potions and their ilk. Sadly, their games have awfully predictable plotlines.

SMT:DDS2 also has the problem of grind, i.e that you need to reach say lvl. 10 before you can honestly do any harm to the bosses around you. Annoying as hell as its only purpose is to lengthen the game with x number of hours of "game play".

It also have random battles... I don't think I even need to say why this is annoying...

Saving points are a double edged sword. On the PS2, it feels superfluous. The machine is tough enough to be able to save anywhere, but it does add to the difficulty level of the game. God of War also has saving points, and it only felt reasonble and not at all like an annoyance, as there in general is a saving point before every major boss battle. Not so in SMT2, though.

So, summing up, I look forward to playing SMT:DDS2 during summer, as there is a lot of promise for a good storyline being played up for me, but a storyline that I can take part in and change the course of, because if I have understood the Shin Megami Tensei mission statement correctly, there are several different endings to this, which makes it a true RPG. Not just a movie in which you fiddle with the controller in the battle-scenes and watch cut-scenes.

--Tallyho!

PS The english dub of this game is not possible to turn off, BUT it is actually done pretty good! Cheers to that, Ghostlight!