Mary Skelter: Nightmares

Mary Skelter is a game that sometimes surprises you. The exploration is fun, the character design is pretty good, and the plot itself is intriguing. However I can't stand the dialogue. It's awful, it's BORING. So boring I skipped most of it after a while because, unlike other games like this, it lacks humor. Let me count just give you a couple examples. - Character saying the name of another character with the three dots. Jack... Alice... Red Riding Hood... Seriously mr. writer, it's better to not write anything at all instead of wasting time. - Ok guys, we have to do the thing. Are we all ready to do the thing? I'm scared of doing the thing. Don't worry, if we all do the thing, we'll be successful in doing the thing. Gameplay is alright, albeit very breakable. Some combos will trivialize any fight in the whole game. It would be an otherwise interesting combat system, with Jack managing blood, items, etc. I'd say give it a try. For all its flaws, it's an honest game for what it costs.

The plot is interesting enough and the characters are likeable. Neither are groundbreaking, can be questionable at times, mostly serious, has fun with itself often enough, so generally pleasant. The dungeons have varying gimmicks sprinkled, which generally aid to make filling out the maps more interesting. Murder hunt mechanic is interesting but usually not really frantic. Combat is what you can expect, turn order is determined by stats. You have various options for your party members' skill and weapon setups, though it isn't too hard to find something that'll carry you through the game. The combat is enjoyable, but it can feel like the random encounters sort of just blend in, with their frequency and lack of variety. Some aspects of combat can feel underused, though I probably just used others more, heheh. It can feel like encounters in the last areas in particular are a bit too frequent, can make exploring the areas properly a bit of a pain. Balance can also feel slightly off, enemy damage output seems to go up faster than your defences do, so you'll get to the point where your party members get one-shotted more than you'd like, though you can also gear yourself up to bring on the hurt easily enough. The art is 2D anime-style drawings for the VN segments, and animated 3D for the dungeon crawling and combat (though your party is 2D only). Both of these are nice, though I do wish the 2D art had a darker vibe to it. Your party members have questionably revealing outfits for some of their classes, but it is that sort of game I guess. Enemy designs are kinda limited, you'll be seeing plenty of palette swaps, though usually only within the same area. The enemy designs are interesting but non of them feel particularly intimidating, especially not the Nightmares, which are the major bosses for the game. It is flawed but I would recommend it to those willing to overlook its shortcomings, if you're looking for another JRPG dungeon crawler.

Not the best in the genre that I've played, but I still had fun - the nightmares make this game stand apart from others in this genre. I beat it on maximum difficulty and unlocked everything I could. I didn't use a guide until the very end. I played for 140 hours and only had one crash that whole time until I got into the post-game dungeon, which seemed to have some bugs that once figured out, let me minimize the damage of a crash. One of the GOG achievements bugged out for me as well. The characters are interesting and all have their own quirks - which you learn to understand why they're there. Yes there is fan service in the game - which I think for most people interested in this game is a pro. The most egregious of this - the "purging (rubbing)" mini-game, can be mostly skipped if you so wish. The story isn't ground breaking, but kept my interest with a few twists and turns. There is potential for interesting combat because of multiple layers of complexity. It fails though because I wasn't required to engage and use them all to my advantage to win most of my fights. The principle of these having to deal with corruption and blood splatters. The game provides choices to combat, but they're not all necessary. The game didn't make it clear which jobs/moves were better than others through stats etc. I had to manually go out and try them to figure it out. Once I found a winning team setup and strategy, I was able to take the same approach to every single fight in the game and win with no problems. The dungeons are big, with decent diversity and puzzles. You're often rewarded with generic and not very useful loot for your efforts though. Where the game excels, is the nightmare battles. There's a boss that wanders each dungeon and at first is unkillable. You can wound and run away, but you can't see your mini-map, it gets really dark, and I genuinely felt a degree of anxiety during these events. Definitely worth picking up on sale.

I bought this game after playing a lot of Persona 3 Portable, and I was one that really enjoyed the dark atmosphere and dungeon crawling from Persona. So far, I've played about an hour of Mary Skelter and it was enough for me to say that it is an amazing game. I also played Hyperdimension Neptunia from Idea Factory, and sincerely I was expecting a lighthearted game such as Neptunia for Mary Skelter, however I was very pleased to find that it was actually the opposite of a lighthearted game, it is as dark as a Shin Megami Tensei entry! For a few moments I could say that I was playing SMT and not an IF game. The graphics are decent, nothing spectacular, but I wasn't expecting it to be. The artstyle is nice, fits the game in my opinion. The gameplay is what you'd expect from a dungeon crawler. Alice and Jack are awesome main characters. The plot is dark, and it's awesome, at first I thought they were going to skip the backstory, but it is being slowly presented and I'm enjoying it. At last the soundtrack fits perfectly to the plot. I will update this review in the coming days, after I put a few more hours into it, but believe me, this game is so good that I decided to type a recommendation with just a single hour in.

I own the original on PS Vita. This game was there for me when I was going through a hard time and there wasn't anything else going for me. It's sort of standard as far as dungeon crawler JRPG's go, but it has artistic flair that is all its own. The story is pretty good. The characters are the best part. They all feel really unique and will give you the feelz. You can definitely grind out a ton of hours in this game. Even more so if you’re a completionist. If you like dungeon crawling JRPG’s but want 200% more edge than this is for you. I’m super glad this game is on PC now since the micro USB charging port on my Vita is breaking down.