What Did We Play Yesterday?

I fired up Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which I actually played a lot more than I blogged about, but it's been long enough I had no idea where I was or what I was doing (I need the mist ability to progress, and hell if I know where to find it). Soooo I decided to try something new instead.

I've been wanting to play a Shin Megami Tensei game but was never sure where to start. Players look favorably on Nocturne, and I understand the somewhat recent remaster wasn't very good, so I got PS2 running on my SteamDeck and gave it a whirl. Until now, I've mostly limited emulation to pre-PSX for the most part, so being able to dig more into PSX and PS2 really opens up my options to explore.

I went into this not knowing what to expect beyond "demons" and it's pretty damn compelling. The graphics have aged well and the atmosphere and mood is awesome. I wanted to set expectations, so I read a little more and according to HLTB this is about a 50-hour game. It has multiple endings, and the dungeon crawling is very crawly, and I think people got annoyed about getting a mediocre ending which, for a game of this length, is very understandable. Definitely not a "put down and come back 2 weeks later and still know where the hell you are" type of game. My gaming threshold tends to be 30 to 40 hours at the very best of times, so we'll see how it goes!

I beat the first boss, a demon hanging around the hospital lobby. I've enjoyed recruiting demons (gotta catch 'em all) also. I'm finding map navigation a little confusing, but I'll figure it out.

The game doesn't explain the orb in the top left corner (or if they did, I missed it). I looked this up on the off-chance it was something important. The Kagutsuchi phase impacts your ability to negotiate with demons, items in chest, and something about fusions. If it's full, it's harder to recruit demons, but chests contain more valuable items.

Figured out the map situation, and I've continued onward, meeting the Lady of the Fount (who is hot) and getting an explanation of the Kagutsuchi. I'm grateful that I have emulator save states because save points have been few and far between, and I might bail otherwise. Also, linking the hotkeys because I keep forgetting them.

Encountered a shop with magatama, and got in on that action. Now I've got fire and support. Also encountered the Amala Network. Immediately got Lost Woods vibes as a wrong-turn sends you back to the beginning of the area. One guide describes this dungeon as tedious, so I took the liberty of sketching out a map for next time.

A guy you meet at the beginning of the game, Hijiri, helps you get through the Amala Network by opening doors, but you have to reach "good connection" points to do that.

Sometimes when you try to negotiate with a demon and there is more than one of the same kind, the other demon will butt in and cut you off. I haven't been able to recruit any demons lately (I tried multiple times with the mop-looking guys but I always manage to answer their questions incorrectly and piss them off).

This dungeon area is kinda boring so I buzzed through it pretty fast. Even the souls don't have much to say. The general weirdness of the game and the atmosphere have kept me engaged, but the encounter rate (which many players complain about) and the boring dungeon aesthetics are definitely a weak point.