トラ爺

I was having a discussion with solidor about this over on Twitter, but I felt the need to rant about it in depth on my journal. Because that is what I have a journal for.

Okay, I love the Shin Megami Tensei JRPG franchise. They regularly provide very interesting and unique games, and nearly every title I've played of the series I've had a lot of fun with. I say nearly because playing Devil Survivor for the DS is a little like dying a slow death of suffocation.

Don't get me wrong. The plot is interesting so far. I like what little I've seen of the characters who aren't Yuzu, who is honestly pretty insufferably whiny. I mostly enjoy everything about the game except for this one thing. Let me explain the gigantic issue I have with it.

The thing about Devil Survivor is that there are no random encounters. You start every half hour with a list of locations you can go to; there are symbols next to the names. A clock indicates that an event will take place there that will consume another half hour of in-game time. A red exclamation point indicates that a battle will occur.

Eventually you get to a point where to progress the plot you have to participate in a battle. If you haven't done any grinding these are ridiculously hard, especially for somebody who sucks at tactics like me. The only way you can grind is by doing "free battles," which are at places that have an exclamation point but no clock (and therefore don't consume any in-game time).

The problem is that there is only one free battle available at a time, and it is always the exact same one. And I mean the exact same one. The exact same monsters are placed in the exact same positions on the game grid, and there is very little (if any) variation between the different "teams." And to get to an appropriate level for the plot battle you have to fight it several times.

So battle progression goes something like this:
Grind battle.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Scripted battle.
New grind battle.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Scripted battle.
Another new grind battle.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Grind battle again.
Scripted battle.

And so on. This is as incredibly monotonous as it sounds. There are a few other things that you can do to make the fighting more interesting but they have limited use and aren't very effective anyway. I'm only on day one and I've had to do this twice and I already want to kill myself. This game takes place over seven days.

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea, that's what I want to know. I don't know how anybody has the patience to progress the plot at all, much less finish the game. I'll keep playing it in the hopes that it gets more interesting (very, very slowly, like maybe for ten minutes every couple of days which is all I can take before I lose patience), but I don't have much faith. Right now I feel like I wasted thirty bucks.

I suppose even Megaten has to fail me once in a while, but...yikes. What happened, guys?