Mary Skelter: Nightmares

Everything about this game is obtuse. There are no in-game tutorials explaining the character stats, despite a variety of tutorials that explain everything else. On normal you will be destroyed by nightmares with no outlets to which you can escape - in this case dropping the difficulty down to dream is the only answer, so you can see where the hell you're going. On normal difficulty nightmares will basically one-shot your characters, thus preventing you from standing a chance of trying to escape them by utilizing the part destruction system. Why would you even program this system if on the default difficulty your characters are destroyed in one hit, generally regardless of level? Everything requires grinding. Literally EVERYTHING. You want to gain affection? Grind money so you can buy items to grind affection. You want to change classes, or upgrade weapons? Grind blood crystals by grinding combats. It's a major time waster and indicative of the terrible JRPG concepts from which the game stems. I shouldn't be surprised though - Idea Factory and Compile Heart. Avoid this at all costs. It's a poorly paced, opaque game with inane dialogue (well, it's a JRPG, what would you expect?) and time wasting mechanics. Should truly be a 0/5, but can only minimally rate a 1.

I know, I'm a fool, but I had an itch for a good dungeon crawler and this game was cheap and had descent reviews. The title of mine, by the way, may be a little misleading since they seemed to have toned down (somewhat) the kind of content that I'm pretty sure is illegal in some countries (for those who have never played a game by Idea Factory, you have a lot of very young looking gals in revealing clothes and who keep making sexual innuendoes and jokes about the size of other characters' boobs). As for the crawling itself, there are some good ideas I suppose: for exemple, in combat, your main character isn't able to fight, but he's the only one who can use objets - others can, but with a special skill - he can protect a fighter so if she's targeted, he's taking the hit for her, or he can spread his blood on her to lower her corruption (1- Yes, it does make some sense in univers, 2- In my first point, I did say they've SOMEWHAT toned down the sexual content, you still have to spread you bodily fluid on some scantily dressed underage girls). On the other hand, I find the level design boring. I know it's probably subjective, but I see no point in going back to that game. So all in all, the game is better than the previous game from that studio (that doesn't say much) but it still looks like I'll have to dust my ds to scratch my itch.

I do understand that the computer games are just pixels on the screen, bits in the memory. I do not experience any moral problems when the computer gives me a five- or six-digit number of casualties in a battle I just won, nor when my spaceships exterminate the population of a whole inhabited planet. I do understand that JRPGs are a product of Japanese culture, and even my limited knowledge lets me know that in many aspects it strongly differs from the cultures I'm more familiar with. I also understand that the computer games are a commercial product addressed to a specific audience. Still, I have a feeling that the authors of this game would immensely profit from a long and productive talk to a patient and carefully listening doctor of psychiatry. Other than that - a really good game. Interesting levels with many secrets to find, interesting mechanics, good graphic and music. You are invited to grind, but not forced to. A quality product.