Hack You!! SMT: Soul Hackers

I just wrapped up Soul Hackers, and I have to say I really quite enjoyed it. I suppose it helps that I went into it with pretty low expectations - it sure isn't a pretty game - but I think the game has several things going for it.

As with any SMT title, the demon fusion and battle system are the main draws, and while this one is a bit more simplistic with regards to raising demons, the game still retains strategy and depth. The demons themselves don't level up, only your two human characters do, so when it comes time to get stronger demons, you fuse the ones you have away. This isn't too different from Persona 3 and 4, really, because since it takes so long to level demons up manually in those games you really shouldn't do it anyway. I do miss the ability of demons to learn new moves via level ups, though, because trying to keep attacks that I want across multiple fusions was quite a pain in Soul Hackers. Zeed, the weird demon that costs no MAG to summon nor keep in your party unlike every other demon in the game, was also interesting, albeit confusing to keep on par with my human characters. When you fuse demons to him, he absorbs some of their attacks, stats, and even levels. He can be leveled down, though, and he sort of evolves into cooler looking forms the higher you get his level. I could not, though, for the life of me figure out how to keep certain moves on him. I would go through long stretches of the game with him vastly underleveled because I wanted to keep Tarukaja on him (this spell boosts the party's attack and is stackable up to four times, meaning if I can get four of them off I am doing TONS of damage with regular attacks).

The other demons weren't used too often, to be honest, because I was scared of the cost of having them in my party. MAG is a resource that you gather as you beat demons, and you can even buy it. It is important because summoning demons into your party costs a significant amount of MAG, and each step you take while a demon is summoned in your party drains MAG at a slow drip. Have four demons summoned, though, and that drip can become a waterfall. Luckily, MAG becomes less and less of a worry as the game goes on, to the point where I wasn't worried about it at all like halfway through the game. I do like MAG, though, in that it makes sense thematically - demons will help you, but there is a cost for their help.

The other reason I didn't run out of MAG very easily is that when you turn the difficulty down via the handy hacks you have, the cost of summoning old demons from the compendium goes down a lot. Those hacks might be my favorite thing about the game - they weren't in the Saturn version as far as I'm aware, and allow you to do several things at any point in the game by touching the touch screen. As I already mentioned, you can turn the difficulty down or up at any time (causing battles to become easier or harder and shop prices to go up or down), make the dungeon maps completely visible at all times or to only become visible when you explore them space by space, turn off alignment for summoning demons into your party (if you have a Law demon in your party, a Chaos demon would refuse to join you if you don't have this off), and allow you to see that HP, stats, movesets, and strengths and weaknesses of any demons you encounter. I played the game with the difficulty set to normal, the maps always visible, alignment off, and without the ability to see the stats of the demons I fought right away. I feel like this is the perfect balance for the game - I spent virtually no time wandering around dungeons any more than I wanted to because I could see the map, but I was still challenged because the battles weren't set to easy. The boss battles became sticking points, although even they weren't too bad because I would usually lose the first fight to them, reload, and then slaughter them (as is the grand ole SMT way). I also found an item that let me save anywhere pretty early on, which I made heavy use of. The nice part was, when I wanted to grind a little bit, I would knock the difficulty down, turn a podcast on, and go to town for some easy level ups.

I really enjoyed the setting and tone of the game in only a slightly ironic way. The game is so 90s it's ridiculous. The setting is like the idea of the future of the internet as seen in the early 90s. There is a company creating a virtual city where you can go to watch movies and shop and bank and chat with other people like some sort of magical place that doesn't exist ye- oh wait it's the internet. But it isn't cheesy on purpose though, nor is it overwrought. It's kind of cute, actually. The plot is alright, it's not really anything to out there as far as generic JRPG plots go, but it's not bad either.

Honestly, the whole thing kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy IV, in a way. A really breezy game if you let it be, with kind of a goofy plot with party members constantly coming and going, I kept thinking of FFIV as I played. It isn't exactly comparable - the battle systems are actually quite different - but I really feel like this game hit a good balance of goofy JRPG melodrama and neat battles while not being stupid hard or too grindy or anything like that. I had a good solid 30 hours of fun with Soul Hackers, and I may even revisit it someday.

That isn't something I thought I'd say about the game after the first thirty minutes, but that's a first impression for you.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is a must play for any 3DS owner. The game was charming and fun as hell for pretty much the entirety of its run (save for one cheap boss, but oh well).

It eclipses it's predecessor by leaps and bounds, which becomes obvious pretty early on. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the mission structure of the game, as I went in expecting to slowly unravel the mysteries of a mansion or two like in the first game. What you end up doing are (not-so-bite-sized as you might think - most missions take about 20 minutes each) missions wherein you have a general goal, and must figure out how to accomplish it.

Dark Moon is way more puzzley than it's predecessor, and is better off for it. You must not only *find* the ghosts, you must figure out how to capture them. It's not just a matter of blinding them with the flashlight than sucking them up with the Poltergust 5000 - you have to figure out how to lure them out of their hiding spots or figure out how to disarm them, etc. The environmental puzzles are fun, too - figuring out how to navigate the sometimes large mansions is a lot of fun. The mission structure also limits a lot of potential backtracking, because as soon as you complete an area, Prof. E. Gadd teleports you back to his lab and then will send you back right where you need to be most of the time.

I find the game is very well-paced, in that it starts with simple puzzles and easy combat and slowly ramps it up as you go along. The bosses got progressively more and more challenging and frankly, aside from one near the end (not the final boss), were excellent little puzzle battles. The team (apparently the same people who made Mario Strikers Charged, a game I was quite fond of back in 2006 or whatever, and also the recent Punch-Out!! for Wii) really took the vacuum suck/blow mechanic and ran with it. They pretty much give you every type of puzzle imaginable for those mechanics, and hide all kind of neat stuff to find. Having just beat the game, there's still plenty for me to go back and do. There is a Boo ghost hidden in every level, and I found not quite half of them while playing through the game. In all five mansions, there are hidden gems that you can find, which do who knows what if you find them all. The game ranks you on how well you beat missions, so at the very least you could always go back and try to beat your previous score. Having just played the single player mode to completion without going back to retry any of those levels or unlock everything, I clocked in at just over 12 hours. I paced myself over the past two weeks to really stretch out how enjoyable it was, and I'm glad I did, as I really didn't want the game to end.

One more thing is how charming Luigi is. I really enjoyed his comments and nervousness throughout the whole game. Charles Martinet really does an excellent job of making Luigi just a lovable guy who is scared yet courageous in his own way, as every time Luigi would quiver in fear he would make me laugh. I don't know exactly how to explain how much I love Luigi in this game, I really recommend playing it to see how well done he is. Next Level Games really knocked it out of the park on pretty much every level here.

It's another one of those games, too, that really uses 3D well - I found I needed it for a few boss fights, and the game felt weird without it turned on, so I played the majority of the game in 3D mode. I guess its this and Mario 3D Land so far for useful 3D games.