After 43 hours and not yet near the end (I guess), I'm putting this title back a bit for the slack season next year. I think I can give you some serious opinions.
Since I'm training myself to analyse games, I won't go too deep into the story or explain specific features, but will instead try to point out SMT:N's biggest design flaw IMHO. It might be a little abstract and hard to follow, but assuming you do, my spoiler-free critique should hopefully do a better job letting you recognize whether you'll be ok with the underlying mechanics or not - in the long term.
So here I go:
SMT:N's battle focuses very much on data - specifically, demon properties. These data are the foundation of your game. All your actions, the actual game-PLAY, what you DO, stand or fall with what you KNOW about your enemy. Your tactic is only as good as your data is appropriate in a given battle.
But since knowing something is not fun unless you are actually utilising the knowledge and benefitting from it, this data-driven approach becomes a problem in SMT:N as data-gathering in this game is not a gameflow-improving but almost a punishing move.
In order to adjust your party to the enemies, the only possibility is to switch your members. The properties of your main hero cannot be adjusted on the fly at all. So it all comes down to preparations, and one often has to make up or even suffer for not knowing things one couldn't have known.
Major instances of this problem are:
- For your main hero, you have to irreversibly decide for or against abilities without necessary knowing them, let along having tried them
- Getting your party right - part of the preparation - can be tedious, too. One important game element in SMT is the demon fusion, but the problem is that the challenge here is less to make the right decision, but rather to struggle long enough with the user interface just to actually get your intended result.
- Switching members in fight results in wasted turns. You see how adjusting your party to your enemy becomes a penalty? Even before any tactical mistakes (those are what should be punished)? Plus, switching is only good if you actually have appropriate members, otherwise get ready to backtrack, reorganise and do some leveling.
- For bossfights, you learn to generally "give up" your first try just to check out the situation - SMT:N literally incorporates "game over"/ "load game" into the play, even though it's a significant break in gameflow.
With all that said, I don't intend to bash the game. I have had quite some fun with this game and also still want to finish it because it's stylistically so well done and the battles can admittedly be very rewarding - if you do it right. It's just that the game forces you to learn it the hard way.
I'd be glad to hear any critique on my critique
Since I'm training myself to analyse games, I won't go too deep into the story or explain specific features, but will instead try to point out SMT:N's biggest design flaw IMHO. It might be a little abstract and hard to follow, but assuming you do, my spoiler-free critique should hopefully do a better job letting you recognize whether you'll be ok with the underlying mechanics or not - in the long term.
So here I go:
SMT:N's battle focuses very much on data - specifically, demon properties. These data are the foundation of your game. All your actions, the actual game-PLAY, what you DO, stand or fall with what you KNOW about your enemy. Your tactic is only as good as your data is appropriate in a given battle.
But since knowing something is not fun unless you are actually utilising the knowledge and benefitting from it, this data-driven approach becomes a problem in SMT:N as data-gathering in this game is not a gameflow-improving but almost a punishing move.
In order to adjust your party to the enemies, the only possibility is to switch your members. The properties of your main hero cannot be adjusted on the fly at all. So it all comes down to preparations, and one often has to make up or even suffer for not knowing things one couldn't have known.
Major instances of this problem are:
- For your main hero, you have to irreversibly decide for or against abilities without necessary knowing them, let along having tried them
- Getting your party right - part of the preparation - can be tedious, too. One important game element in SMT is the demon fusion, but the problem is that the challenge here is less to make the right decision, but rather to struggle long enough with the user interface just to actually get your intended result.
- Switching members in fight results in wasted turns. You see how adjusting your party to your enemy becomes a penalty? Even before any tactical mistakes (those are what should be punished)? Plus, switching is only good if you actually have appropriate members, otherwise get ready to backtrack, reorganise and do some leveling.
- For bossfights, you learn to generally "give up" your first try just to check out the situation - SMT:N literally incorporates "game over"/ "load game" into the play, even though it's a significant break in gameflow.
With all that said, I don't intend to bash the game. I have had quite some fun with this game and also still want to finish it because it's stylistically so well done and the battles can admittedly be very rewarding - if you do it right. It's just that the game forces you to learn it the hard way.
I'd be glad to hear any critique on my critique
Comment