Probably everyone who is familiar with the series Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Devil Summoner \ Soul Hackers And Tokyo Mirage Sessions asked the question: how do these games differ in general? Like a studio Atlus divides them into target audiences?
The answer, it turns out, is quite simple, although it is widened. Shin Megami Tensei -This is the Roader series, a series of a figure made according to the rules of the JRPG classic school-in the center of the narrative there is always a person who is in a difficult situation in the perisive world, in which there are demons in one way or another, of which you need to hire, gather in the army and periodically improve. In appearance, it looks like PokeMon-Demones, except that SMT started long before Ash met Pikachu-its roots go into literature.
And everything would be wonderful, but the games of the SMT series cannot boast of the narrative part and deep plots – they greatly lean on the mechanics of the battle and pumping, often terribly rehearsal, resolutely challenging the player to improve before the white heat.
This business was cheerful to correct, designed for a wider audience of the series Persona , telling stories already about teenage schoolchildren who find themselves in no less unusual circumstances regarding supernatural matters (add more carelessness, problems of youth, mental injuries here), but focusing on dialogs and mixing a mechanic with regular interspersed of the story-and, it should be noted, has gained much more popularity than the tribal leader.
Tokyo Mirage Sessions -This is already spin-off, a modern attempt to shift mechanics SMT\Persona on high part Fire Emblem , Having mixed them, and issuing it as an artistic JRPG-password from young talents, where the main characters and creatures that they command, one way or another concern different forms of art. Each of their battle looks like a musical or artistic session.
Start beautifully – a third of success
The game has a classic, but very pleasant opening, impressing the memories of the anime of the 90s and music, and directing, and presentation
Soul Hackers 2 , Unlike the predecessor who came to Sega Saturn in the nineties, basically takes the concept Persona 5, Strongly leaning on the narrative, but the differences stand out a number of differences: in the focus of attention – communication between adults characters, calls to demons, whose relationships are tightly intertwined and confused by chains of contradictions and historical clues. Against the background, a certain large -scale conflict is necessarily looming, not dominating the player’s consciousness: heroes, until a certain time, are more likely trying to prevent an inevitable catastrophe than they feel oppression from its presence.
All the main plot dialogs are announced, and the quality of the dubbing is at a high level: he never caught rejection or feeling that the actor overwhelmed with expression
The tie at the game, for my taste, is magnificent: throughout the entire existence of mankind, it exponally copied knowledge. At some point, the number of data collected reached such a critical mark that on its basis a certain semblance of the noosphere (information field of the Earth) with self-awareness arose, which set itself the goal of endless collection of information and self-development-it, the noosphere, can be imagined as a kind of metaphysical supercomputers with developed artificial intelligence. They gave themselves the name Aion.
In the current era, being a demon of Laplace, Aion predicts that the vector of the movement of the human race leaned towards imminent death. And since Aion, as a metaphysical information system, is extremely tightly connected with the existence of people (there are no people – no ion), he sets another important task – to embody two copies of his consciousnesses in the analogue of human bodies, entrusting them with a mission: to find and save the owners of supernatural catalysts called "Cystem". Thus, information units that have found the names of the ring and FIGs receive organic bodies capable of calling demons, and go into the world of people.
According to the law of meanness, all three people they needed to protect, are already dead. The whole plan is threatened, and the heroines come to the aid of the complex and risky technology of Soul Hack – the complete dizassemble of all the information from which the body and soul of a person consists of, followed by switching his state from “dead” to “alive”, while still warming up in the brave shell, did not dissolve in infinity.
Thus, they save the three: Errow, Milady and Saiso are also callers, and from different fractions warring among themselves. They, in turn, have no choice but to join Ringo and FIG, since their goals, as it turned out, converge at one point: someone moves revenge, someone wants to understand what is happening, and someone-to restore relations with a loved one.
For reference: calls to the world Soul Hackers 2 They act like hired labor – they use the power and magic of demons, enclosing them in their weapons, and thus solving the problems of citizens or large organizations.
No "you have the same mole too!"
What is immediately clinging https://casinoplaymillion.co.uk/bonus/ to the game – a bunch of the density of events and the originality of the idea. Soul Hackers 2 It simply does not allow you to get bored at the expense of greatly written dialogs, which are simply pleasant to read from a literary point of view, despite the fact that the central plot, in its basis, is quite simple. He regularly tries in “these are twists”, but in his attempts there are not enough stars from the sky in the plan of depth or deceit of expectations built by the player.
For those who are afraid to play in English: the level of required knowledge is low here: the phrases are simple, and for individual words you can open a dictionary once per hour
The narrative part does not have time to gain sufficient complexity, multi-layer, despite the duration of the campaign in almost 30-40 hours. Soul Hackers 2 tells a chamber story – this is felt even in terms of size and number of locations available for travel. However, it is important to say once again: the heroes and interweaving of their relationships among themselves are the main treat for admirers of good stories. Ringo and FIGs are opposed to the rest here: they, in fact, are akin to the newborn, which implanted mature personalities and infinity of human knowledge: they grow up with an emotional range, first encounter serious difficulties and learn to be more human, but this does not fall into teenage throwing and the problems sucked out of the next portion of puberty snot into the screen.
It is difficult to attribute characters to some traditional Japanese anime trap, since they are more like literary heroes. It is well registered, but, it should be noted, without phenomenal study, although, sometimes, with a multi -layer “bottom”, as well as with a greatly presented emotions and experiences inherent in the genre. On this, as in the past of each of the heroes, the main part of the secrets of the local history is held.
A motley team cannot do without conflicts, and the reason for this confrontation is rooted deeply in a number of events of the past of the past Milady itself and one of the important, but spoiler plot characters.
Events develop in a fairly developed technological modern world, where magic is quite everyday business. The callers, as owners of supernatural forces, have even their own hub fenced with magic: the layman is ordered there.
Reach the heart
With friends on command, you can bang beer after another heavy mission and chat heart: either find out something new about the heroes, or see a funny scene.
An audiovisual language on which Atlus through Soul Hackers 2 communicates with the player-if not a masterpiece, then a vivid example of the fact that it is time to write down in some abstract textbook of design and composition. I liked the atmosphere created by the game, due to the aforementioned audio-visual part, created by the game:
neon streets of cities; The bright light of futuristic carpet paths in front of the circus, where different demons are mixed; wonderful bright fountains in the decoration of recreation areas and modern illuminated escalators in shops; Nearby, under the canopy of artificial sakura, there is a cozy bar, where heroes between missions rest under a bottle of beer – this is all, though chamber, it works great for involvement, being emphasized by delightful music.
In public places, it is necessary, as part of the atmosphere, a cozy mixture of electronics seasoned with Dub, or some comfortable jazz will sound. In battle – the ears are caressed by the traditional heavy rhythmic, guitar eclecticism with mandatory melody and hook, so as not to tire the listener for a hundredth or three hundredth time.
Even the plot immersion in the memory of the Sopartians is accompanied by a very interesting mix of futuristic synthesizers in the style of retro and the likeness of the church bell.
However, there are too few combat musical themes, to my taste. The main one you start and almost finish the game is very cool, drunk and very cool, but only two “workshop colleagues” are replaced: one under the bosses and one under strong opponents. There is another couple, already symphony-dramatic-under the plot bosses.
The main combat theme
Compoles are in service
The main gameplay loop consists of traveling on locations in the form of labyrinths and campaigns in shops and various nooks of the city, including shelter, where heroes can relax and eat something that gives a serious buff. Each plot level is decorated in the form of a dungeon, and the Dungen-Kroning itself is organized unpretentiously: before entering the location, Ringo launches demons for reconnaissance and sets off on the way. On the way, randomly generated enemies are found (from which you can run away or defeat them without even starting a fight, except for especially powerful goals), as well as the union demons who have found something: a useful object, a potential recruit into the army or even a first-aid kit.
The battle theme of the battle between the callers
From the first ten minutes Soul Hackers 2 introduces the player to the napulated over the years and a slightly hidden combat system. And in fact it is a classic step -by -step Shin Megami Tensei The confrontation of enemies, who, like the player’s party, have their weaknesses, resistance and other characteristics that affect incoming damage and treatment. The main idea is simple: hit in weak places with the necessary types of magic and cover your own ass so that you do not fly in a sore spot.
The “Sabbat” acts as a feature of the game – a local substitute for “counterattacks when attacking a weak place of the enemy” from Tokyo Mirage Sessions: With each hit on the enemy Weakness, a special counter is accumulated – the number of demons available in the batch, ready with hungry eyes to put on an opponent at the end of the player’s course. The more demons are with yourself and the larger the counter, the greater the damage and the chance to quickly and effectively finish the battle, and this is very stylish.
Accumulating stack of 10 attacks can organize a whole “Walpurga Night”, which will inflict colossal damage to enemies
“Military orders” are also imposed here: Ringo, with pumping, actively participating in the battle, can multiply this counter, strengthen and focus attacks and even reassign once into the battle of equipped demons for all party members – thus can turn off the course of the battle or successfully fight off if the initial “Setap” is too weak under the enemy that has fallen. All this is supplemented by the development of characteristics, upgrades of weapons (it is called comp, and it is the essence of the equipment of the equipment) and many other ways to influence the battle – to purchase first -aid kit and buffs, and even attacking objects.
Those who you learn from a thousand
As for the demons available in the game, on which the entire combat system rests – their devil, take, darkness. Compared to Shin Megami Tensei v They brought up even more new creatures of darkness, and almost without exception, that the old ones, that new ones are wonderful, practically not repeated concepts, scooping out inspiration from various cultures and religions.
No one is perfect, nothing is flawless
But, everything has its shortcomings. The main gaming mechanic is a little boring due to some uniformity, namely because of rather long labyrinths, of which, in fact, each dungeon consists. This is especially true for Soulskice-the metaphysical place where we go to pump the characters through the disclosure of the past of each of the team’s members, where the plot crumbs are interspersed with long races through a large number of modern-nuclear-enforcement agents. In fairness, the designers tried to diversify the dungeon, but, for some reason, not visually: all this looks built from the same thematic, within the framework of the location, spare parts, as if from one set of designer.
And this is additionally tiring. I gave the game, maximum, from 2 to 5 hours a day, after which a break was required. Play binge like Xenoblade 2 and 3, alas, it did not work.
When accumulating stack, stylish flickering silhouettes of our demons appear behind enemies, as if ready to pounce on them at any second
On the other side of the information horizon
At the end of the passage and obtaining the true ending, I still have a little mixed feelings. Against the background of the mass of work perfectly done by developers, the game, to my great regret, the depth of history and the world was not enough to obtain a dick of the “masterpiece”. She did not have enough variety in the formation of the landscape and level design, at least the fraction of the mechanic diluting the main cycle was not enough. And this despite the fact that the battles were built, for the most part, excellent and monitoring what was happening was invariably interesting, not to mention funny dialogues and dramatic scraps between the characters.
And it turns out that you do not regret the passage and the time spent: you have been entertained, you were presented with a bright journey in the company of charismatic friends. And in this way the mission of this jrpg is fulfilled: it knows how to create the feeling “yes, I was there. I was with them, and I created excellent memories ".
Pros:
-The magnificent art director
– delightful polyzhanre soundtrack
– perfectly written, exciting dialogs with bright emotions
– Bright characters with cunningly intertwined relationships
– licked over the years to shine, thoroughbred combat system Shin Megami Tensei
– For XSX \ PS5, 1800P@60FPS and 4K@30FPS were brought
Cons:
– monotonous within the framework of the location in the form of ornate labyrinths from the same elements
– Little by combat musical themes
– The plot lacks the depth
– jambs with optimization (in some scenes even sags on Xbox Series X, despite a simple render).