DDS2: Beaten!
Final dungeon was long, though not too bad. Until the last section; HATED that puzzle of "Choose the right teleporter! If you fail, you have to redo part of this layer!" Ok, at first, wasn't too bad; just "redo this room!" But...later parts, it was "REDO THE ENTIRE LAYER IF YOU FAIL BWAHAHAHAH!" if you failed any other section, you'd have to guess which was the right way to go on reruns, which...argh. No, that wasn't fun. The other areas were inoffensive, just hated that last one.
The bosses there were cute idea, even if they all failed until the second to last (who got me cause I underestimated him, and he was nailing a weakness with a big move and...yeah. Almost lost the second time until I said "Bah, screw it, Magic Mirror!" and he hit himself with his big attack doing 1200x3 to himself <.<. That fight would have also been a lot easier if I had already gotten Force Resist on Argilla.)...
Then Meganada. That was just a stupid fight. How are you suppose to go about it, really? I ended up just spamming Magic Mirrors, using Elec Drain instead when he went into power up mode, and just prayed the physical form didn't get hax. That's all the fight felt like; one big massive hax fight. Lost several times purely due to that as well. Exactly the kind of fight that's *NOT* fun.
Also didn't help that I was expecting a large Save Point on Layer 6, didn't find one, so I couldn't restock on items like I wanted. This also left me with a bit of a "um, I might run out of resources, crap!" worries for the final, though, that was just paranoia; I had like 4 Soma's, 9 Soma Drops, plenty of Great Chakras, 2 PCs with Mediarama, 6~ Medical Gears, 15 Medical...whatever the 300 MT Healing is...yeah, I was well set, is the point <_<
The final...fun fight. Definitly had some scare moments ("Eternal Zero!" "That looks kind of like Debili..." *reads description, jaw drops in fear*), though, THANK GOD I planned on having a Dekunda combo before hand, and saved my Dekaja Rocks (well, no, Dekaja rocks I had more than enough of, but still happy I had them), as well as Argilla with the Ring that lowers Combo Turns required by 1 (So she could use Dekunda so long as at least one of the other 2 PCs were alive.) Also, THANK GOD I managed to get Elec Resist and Force Resist for Gale and Argilla respectively; with all the weakness hitting attacks in two of those forms...um, yeah...
Much harder than Hari Hara in DDS1, and this one was actually kind of fun, and despite the predictable pattern, they managed to throw in surprises (be it Power Charge on some forms, Mind Charge on others, some on BOTH, no clue what kind of status to predict, etc.)
Other scare moments? Well, I did freak when I saw the Eternal Zero -> Marevertx2 + Revertx2 combo...though thankfully, those hit only Argilla, which I recovered from. Another was when Gates of Hell stoned *2* of my PCs, then they both died from the follow up; managed to get lucky as the following turn (after I revived and such), the attacks were pretty tame (just basic elemental stuff.) Also, this game had some weird hax as after EVERY SINGLE POWER CHARGE, Light would get at least one Crit in...and would never Crit otherwise. Supposedly, Power Charge does not boost crit rate, so I think this is just the game playing games with me, ironically <.<
Anyway, overall thoughts of the game?
Gameplay was still kind of dull honestly. Not a fan of SMT gameplay, and really, this game was no different. However, at least it wasn't quite as sleep inducing as DDS1, since the game DID hurl interesting fights at you and much earlier too (rather than just "Ok, find this guys favorite style of attack, spam that Void/Repel/Absorb each turn, WIN!!!" and less of the "I abuse the hell out of Psycho Rage!" idiocy...oh, and there's less Bat <_<.) Randoms were still kind of dull though most died faster, so that was a plus (and the randoms did generally put up slightly better fights, and hurled less status nonsense, so fights weren't as Hax.) The randoms in the final dungeon were a bit irksome, since so many were paired in such ways that either to hit a weakness, you had to hit a Null/Absorb/Reflect, OR they just were given a million resists. Its no wonder i just ended up doing Gameplay Skip move (aka Reincarnation.) so much on some enemies *waves hi to Cu Chulains*)
Mantra was...much better handled. The game actually encourages variety, and you can get to other Mantras through indirect ways, rather than having to go Fire 1 -> Fire 2 -> Fire 3 -> etc, so thinks were generally picked up, and Secret Mantras further encouraged variety within your team. Rewarding you for actually trying to spread your characters out rather than making multiple clones = good. Also, the game giving 3 PCs unique abilities (even if one of them completely sucks) doesn't hurt!
Plot...ok, this was actually kind of neat. Odd since DDS1's plot failed SO FREAKING MUCH, but guess it was a necessary evil and preliminary nonsense to actually set up for DDS2, as otherwise, you'd just be left hanging out of nowhere. Setting generally worked to. Yeah, did a good job here, though I'm not a total fan of some of the stuff (mainly the NonFred related ending parts; the whole "The World is me, I am the world! God is me, and I am God!" nonsense just made me vomit. Also felt the random "Everyone is back together, yay! Oh, and you just became uber based on some ridiculous nonsense!" right before the final dungeon was tacted on just to supe up a certain character...yeah, it wasn't offensive, just was generally silly), it generally worked.
Characters were a bit better too. Cielo getting more screen time for example made him a slightly better Light Hearted figure in the grand scheme of things (though, he still wasn't great), Gale just continued to work as the primary Rational Thinker of the group, Serph...silent protagonist fail, though they did throw in an interesting back story for him, at least. Heat was still a bit of a lamer though. Sera failed a bit less than her DDS1 self cause she actually DID STUFF besides "Protect me, Serph! Oh wait, I'm kidnapped, SAVE ME! Ok, we're friends, kthnxbye!" plus the fact that they actually gave her back story doesn't hurt. Roland...yeah, decent enough. Can't explain why...he's just one of those "You end up liking him even though you can't really defend it." Just has that kind of charm, I guess.
So yeah, very much an improvement over DDS1, though that isn't hard given my opinion of DDS1 isn't too high. At very least, this game tried something with the Battle System, I felt, while not changing it, and put in a plot so that even though the battle system wasn't much, the plot at least was enough of a hook to keep playing.
Probably getting a 6/10 for me? Its passable enough, and didn't find it nearly as much of a chore to play through as DDS1, but wasn't really that special either, so eh, guess 6/10 works.
