I think that Digimon Story: Time Stranger Secrets PS2 Shin Megami Tensei. This Very my Taste in RPGSGiven the field given that this is a kind of children's game (well, it has a PEGI 12 rating of “bad language”, “intra -game purchases” and – with puzzles – “sex”), this is a rather big surprise. I came to this conclusion after I plunged good 50 hours in the game, and as a result I went on an amazingly unstable trip. The story is quite a guf, with a large number of anime filler in the SH & OMACR style; Nen, introduced into the meat so that it looks more juicy, but most of my emotional answer is to his philosophy of design, her approach to dungeons and some incredible choice. I can close this game either to love it, or hate it. But over the past two weeks, I could not stop returning to this.
I love the games of Atlus Shin Megami Tensei (or Megaten) for all their shortcomings. I have a special soft place for the PS2 Games – Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga and its continuation, and Person 3 are the main points. You can see the prints of the film by the parent series even in games, as a result of Refantazio metaphors: between demons doomed to Tokyo, cerebral thoughts about the nature of mankind and impossible philosophical elections about the fate of the Universe, all these are quite standard RPG Fodder. But just as the instrumental for the series, there are long and often completely used dungeons, difficulties, spikes and plateau, battles that are felt like masochistic puzzles and combat systems, just as they are furious.
Digimon Story: Time Stranger has all this. Even up to the doomed Tokyo. But instead of demons and creatures from the pantheon of human mythology, the game is filled with the same digimon-pricking and diverse creatures that vary from cute little guys from bubbles to leather dominatrixes with G-huts and a couple of desert eagles. Instead of negotiating with demons, to try to join your business, you defeat Digimon and convert their data into living creatures that may join your team.
From here you can either teach them and add them to your ranks, or ask your other allies to be cannibalize to get their power. This is not entirely sacrificial/mechanics of the merger of Megaten, but this is not far off. And the strange difficulty is how you force your friends to develop and grow is as abstruse as Persona or Megaten merger systems. 'What do you mean, I need digivolve, then from-Digivove my allies to get the desired result? “, I would ask my TV screen, as entertaining as I was inattentive. “What do you mean, I need to socially engineize their personalities in order to get the most sign“ Mon? “, I shouted. 'What do you mean that now my only type of virus another Vaccine type? “, I would despair when I become soft in the battle, I now have very little chance of victory.
The game is often annoying, always amazing and constantly found me by surprise. I would build one of many beautiful biomes, sending Digimon, like some kind of television, absorbing my data to give my team the devils, angels and missile werewolves. But then I came to the boss, who would have an absurd bar for health, dirty and cheap movements, and AI companions, which were as useless as reasonable poop, against which I fought my team over the past half hour.
There is a constant level of amazing stress for a stranger of time, who simply continued to remind me of the games “Too-Edgy-For-You” in which I am fascinated. I can imagine that the young house (who raised NOCTURNE as an adolescence only because they saw Dante from the Devil May Cry series on the cover in the game rental store) will also like this game: disarmament and difficult leaps and distributions affect the most arrhythmic PS2 RPG. This is praise, I think. Digimon speaks with my inner child – who would think?
But every time I begin to fall in love with this special, high-budget realization of the digital world, this would do something to aggravate me. The general template for progression is as follows: go to the concentrator, talk with many digimon, find out that there is a sphere that needs to be preserved, go to the sphere. The main vanity in the game is time: maybe you will go somewhere, and all this is spoiled and apocalyptic. Story Beats sends you back at a time where it is a little nicer, and you find out where the deadlines are located, then you come to correct it. The zone is completed. The next area can be the same, or it can begin in the best state of repair, then you need to find out how to stop it, entangled. This is linear, this is Braindead, it is a RPG -Popkorne. I am satisfied with this.
But while earlier biomes (gear forests, oceans teeming with data, endless real sewers) are quite simple RPG dungeons, the zones of later game are terrible. One area – which looks like something from the Dark Souls anime – you need to convince the frog to teleport you towards Transmission in the castle. Select the wrong dialog parameter, and you returned to the beginning. Yes! Not so badly, but the dialogue is required to complete, the animation is terrible and slow, and there are no real signs of what is the correct answer. Immediately after this you are in the zone that fell between heaven and hell (read: ice and fire), which requires an incredible amount of return, and seems to be filled exclusively with elevators that require 15 years to complete the animation cycle. This absolutely destroys any sense of impulse that you have when you are approaching some critical grains of climax.
Why? Why? I thought we left this type of gaming design in the 00 years. But, despite all my adult impatience, it has some kind of that reminds me of the last dungeons of my favorite megaten games – areas dotted with terrible teleportation devices, permeated by sadistic traps that reduce your party to almost nothing, the bosses that have acquired sudden immunity to the movements during the last 60 hours. Digimon Story Time Stranger is the same. After in some cases they went through the majority of the battles (even if they took some time), later bosses suddenly ambushed you with knocking modifiers: you cannot heal in this battle, you cannot use objects in this.
I play these games as finished: I complete all the side missions and bonus quests when they become affordable. If the game gave me any The testimony that I can not treat or use objects in later battles, I would bake strategies, recognizing it in my style of the game. Instead, I often found myself in situations when the only way to continue is to derive evolution, re-evolution and restart of my best to send one boss. Just as I had to, say, merge and align the whole team of physical repellent demons in Nokthurn, about 20 years ago to overcome one inevitable struggle. Go to the figure.
I am glad that I do not score time. My experience with the game ranged from two -star to five -star, and he could roll over on a penny. Nevertheless, I cannot put it. In these egregious “Gotchas” there is something convincing, which makes me despair as strongly as it stunes me. “You are not going to defeat me so easily, you are a cheap bastard,” I muttered to myself when I reluctantly DGID DIGIDOV two of my best ”in one super -lider (which proves as ineffective as my last installation). Return to the drawing board.
In the battle, in the design of the level, in its seemingly complete disrespect for your time, Time Stranger is felt as the relic of the PS2 era. Nevertheless, I know that there are many people, including me who get a cheap sensation from this kind of anachronic gaming design. When I first saw how Time Stranger announced earlier this year, I suggested that it would be a slight joke, a pleasant, warm hug from the past times, which would remind me of playing Digimon World and puzzle how to improve my meat farm on the first PS. I did not expect this to throw memories of the semi -coordinated injuries from the soft ignition by one of the four riders of the apocalypse in the Nocturne on PS2.
I received what I asked for, I believe, even if it is a little Faustic agreement. I think that I am also going to go to the platinum trophy on this absurd, unpredictable and unexpectedly huge game. Perhaps I was not the same person at the end of this, but inside me there is a stubborn 13-year-old who refuses to let go. And I really did not expect that I would have such a strong reaction to the game Digimon after half -baked experiences in the next order, survive and even slightly (A little) Better passes through the memory of a hakker and a cyber rash.
No matter how illegal developer Catnip Media Vision forces Time Stranger, he has his own hooks, and I just pray Pokemon legends ZAThe field but, frankly, I doubt it will be.
