Devil Survivor 2: Path of the Septentriones beat,
stat topic posted. Pretty good, I liked it! Okay actually I did this a week+ ago but never finished my post, so whatever, belated. Sorry CK, I ended up doing Triumphant Restorer, although Kingmaker is certainly appealing as well. Basically all of Liberator / Restorer / Kingmaker accomplish about a third of what I want... which is why it isn't shocking that the canon ending they went with for Triangulum is basically "those 3 at once," which I was pretty happy with. Anyway since I suspected I wanted to do a stat topic, I figured I'd take the route that means I only have to impute 1 character's damage rather than 2. Also Rank 5 Fate'd everyone (more time on Day 7 than I expected).
Gameplaywise it remained cool until the end, which is an achievement with SMT's usually wonky endgame balance. I didn't feel like it was THAT much of a slog (re Fenrir), I certainly prefer the more boss-centric design toward the end that kept filler to a minimum. Strangely enough (barring my brief attempt at Kingmaker... ow ow ow Shiva vs. 2 characters), Ronaldo & Joe & random rioters posed the biggest difficulty by a lot - I fully expected I was going to wipe, actually, and instead found out that the other rioters run off after you dispense with R&J. Good thing since I was wrecked otherwise, got into a bad position and Joe ruthlessly was sniping me from long range while being inconvenient to get to, but I YOLO dragged him down with my last surviving team and got a surprise win. Otherwise, not so bad. The final boss was suitably epic; probably a little frail in the jaw at times, but overall well designed. My one complaint is that they didn't stick a "hurry up" time limiter on phase 2, so you technically should sit back and restore MP, heal up, etc. during it rather than push forward. Went with Daichi, Yamato, & Otome as the final party, letting Daichi gank forms 1 & 3, form 1 in a single turn. Monkey madness off Wukong, woo 6x Multistrike attacks leaving a mark. (For form 3, Otome stood on top of the demon summoning part and murdered it whenever it respawned, while Yamato eventually got the attacking part after dying once, then Daichi & Hero charged in. Kind of a funny reminder of how glass cannony the lategame is also happened... Daichi's squad murdered an enemy squad before it got a turn, fine, no surprise. Same squad respawns and later gets the drop on Daichi from range, cursing his group (no healing) and reducing their range to 1, then killing one of his demons and reducing him & the surviving demon to nearly dead. Daichi got another turn, and knowing how this goes, walked up to the other squad and murdered them all again with just 2 nearly dead people because I'd go first and could sweep like that, but still has to limp around uselessly for awhile afterward while waiting for curse to wear off.)
Character usage... hrmm.
High usage: Hero, Daichi, Io, Makoto, Otome
Medium usage: Fumi, Yamato*
Low usage: Jungo, Airi, Joe
Nope: Keita, Hinako, Ronaldo
* Well medium for the tiny amount of time you have him, I guess.
I built JC Denton as a straight-up mage a la Fumi which is handy as usual; harder for him to get walled like a straight-phys character can. Daichi got the most use, Multi-Hit/Multi-Strike is awesome, and he's usually pretty amusing with his VA putting in good work (at least when he's not doing vanilla "teenage boy lust" notes). Hinako got 0 usage but she's fine, just identical; I suspect Daichi is slightly better than Hinako early (equip useful Magic support sooner, have relevant backup) and slightly worse later but whatever, they're basically the same character except 1 of them actually wears clothes. Makoto & Io both got a fair amount of use as well; mixed damage to deal with a variety of threats, and the durability problems aren't a big deal as long as they can keep their demons alive and don't get OHKO'd. Fumi & Otome were both fantastic magic nukes and were good Chaos Wave candidates along with the hero; I used Otome more, but Fumi's fine. Yamato's a prick but he did get deployed for the final 2 battles (and pretty much no other ones); having everybody resist Physical in some way is quite useful, and he doesn't have to burn a passive on Anti-Phys while the other 3 characters go Drain/Reflect/Null.
Characterwise, most of the cast was amusing enough. Otome gets a special call-out... how often do single moms show up in such games? Really it was pretty unrealistic that she could juggle both a young child, being a doctor (in the middle of a MASSIVE CRISIS with what should be an endless line of patients to treat without good supplies), AND fighting demons with Our Heroes, but hey whatever, I'm not complaining. Yamato... he SORTA worked for me but not how the writers really intended. To the extent that he's an arrogant 17-year old screw-up who can't handle rejection with some charisma anyway, he's fine. And to the extent he's a villain, he's also fine. The thing is... aside from the whole ludicrousness of a 17-year old leader in the first place... he's got that quasi-fascist "things were AWESOME back in the day, then Japan FELL and became lazy and corrupt and not worth saving (read: the post-WWII pacifism and so on)." This is approximately as sympathetic as, say, a Neo-Confederate in an American setting for me. Now, let me not complain too much: like I said, he's something of a villain, and I'll take that. But he's supposed to be a "gone too far but with a core of nobility" type who can be convinced to sway from his path. And he's supposed to be "cool" in his own dark horse way, and he really does command vast cosmic powers with his Japan-uber-alles nonsense. Yeah no.
Finally, the one part that I already whined about in chat, but what might weirdly be my least favorite part of the game, even more so than some of the lame middle school libido beats in the midgame: the cast is *way* too bootlicking toward Our Silent Hero
for no good reason. Especially on the final days, they simply cannot shut up about it. And all this laying the praise on thick grated on me worse than it would in other games. See, here's the thing: your Hero in DS2 isn't ACTUALLY that important. In games like Zelda or thereabouts, sure, Link doesn't say much, but dang if he doesn't
personally run around and solve everybody's problems. Same with other solo-y type games like Fallout New Vegas, etc. Even without lines, that's a certain achievement, and people thanking you for it is fine. That isn't really the case in DS2. Everybody else has lines and everybody else drives the plot. In the personal scenes, you're often times more a sounding board where characters work out their problems by talking to themselves / others, and you're basically just being a good listener. Your character is, at best, a really badass warrior on the field, but even that isn't sold as well as it could be, and he's just one of many. Since the game wants to let you pick any faction, your character can't actually express any opinions, and usually just endorses whatever the character they're talking to is saying. And yet everybody acts like you're the friggin' bodhisattva. No, if the Anguished One has been overseeing humanity for so long and was playing Prometheus, he's SURELY met other people who can give vague assertions about humanity being awesome from just about any random person on the street. I simply do not believe it that our Shining One is somehow unique in his philosophical wisdom. So yeah, DS2 combines "not actually very relevant Hero" with "half the lines in the end are slathering flattery on him" for some shitty dialog. Shepard is obviously the gold standard for controllable Gary Stu protagonists, but I'm willing to settle for less!
Initial thoughts on the Triangulum arc: This is really, really similar so far. Like... maybe too similar. Remember how MGS2 parroted MGS1 in a lot of ways - at least in the Big Shell scenario - but at least owned it with some crazypants explanation for why we're going to see if we can train others to be like Solid Snake by concocting ninja attackers, helicopters, etc.? I'm wondering if it'll be like that. Same earthquake apocalypse, same creeping void eating everything, stars who speak in funny star speak are attacking towers, etc. Another giant parade of 99% of the population of Earth getting killed means that we're pretty much stuck with another giant reset button, and once you know that one exists, it can kind of kill the tension. Usually better to set your plot up so that whatever bad things might happen it's not worth the risk in invoking it, while the destruction of humanity part 2 practically necessitates it. Anyway, if I'd been in charge, I'd have definitely done something non-post-apocalyptic to mix things up.
Also, the characters have a bit of an unexpected take on Nicea. All the characters are like "why is Saidduq letting anybody get Nicea? Shouldn't he know just to give it to us and not trouble those silly irrelevant other people?" Um. To the extent that this was about giving "power" / "will" to the people (exemplified in the form of, uh, demon control, but whatever), no? Don't you care about the random civilians off-screen having some method to not get murdered by roving demons / stars? Seriously WTF here at going all "see our victory was really Triumph of the Will by a few supermen, giving power to the masses results in trouble." Not that they phrase it this way, of course.
Have thoughts on Miyako vs. Yamato of course, but spoilerz that only Niu would appreciate, so maybe later. Miyako at least has the sense to talk like an actual government official who didn't want to be instantly deposed: we're interested in saving lives, etc. rather than "hahaha the strong will propser and the weak can fend for themselves mwahaha". Probably for the best to keep her evil plans quiet rather than broadcast them to everyone in range!
