Yes, my package of shinies has arrived, and with it, DDS1 and Persona 2. I've played through the first two hours of the former, so these are initial thoughts (I've also reached the 9th ep of Devil Summoner, but in the interests of keeping spoilers seperate, I'll save it for later). Non-spoiler thoughts: More Final Fantasy-ish than Nocturne, although not to the point where it's irritating. Nocturne and FF's bastard child, I guess. Combat is a slightly slimmed down version of Nocturne's, and less soul-crushingly difficult. It's also utterly gorgeous, and the music is awesome. Plot looks intriguing thus far, and it's only two hours in, which is better than some games *coughFF8cough* Now, for the more spoilery stuff (although, like I said, first two hours, so nothing too big):


Initial character thoughts-

Serph: Atlus's silent hero of this game, so you make him what you want him to be, and thus I can't really have an opinion on him. He does, however, wear very distracting pants. Seriously, it seems like they're designed completely to draw your attention to his ass. It's like Dante's crotch-buckle in Nocturne.

Gale: Robot-boy. Seriously, he's like Data, but less witty - all 'I do not comprehend'. Thus far kind of boring, but he hasn't showed up much.

Cielo: To make a reference only 4channers and cosfu-ers will get: IT'S A TRAP. Seriously, seen art of this guy for a while now (I asked for this game as a Christmas present a year or two ago), and thought, up until the point where he started talking, that he was a chick. I have no opinion on his personality, though, he's had like four lines total so far.

Heat: PSYCHO. And not in the good way. Creepy, totally power-hungry...I hope he gets a smack upside the head or something. Most likely to screw over everybody else to reach his own ends.

Argilla: Favorite character so far ♥ She's hot, has awesome hair, is totally badass, but at the same time isn't nuts like Heat is. I totally feel her reaction to 'We have to _eat_ them?' - she seems the most human of all the characters.

Sera: Also a trap, although less so than Cielo (have nicknamed her 'trap-girl' anyway). Apparently the demifiend has a previously unknown female twin. Who sings. Other than that...not much of an opinion, thus far, really.


Initial plot thoughts - it's like 1984 meets Lord of the Flies meets Hindu mythology. They definately figured out a good plot-hook, though - the staticky flashing 'eat them' all over the screen was particularly creepy. The background art style is really interesting - it's crumbling dystopia shot through with Hindu design elements. I will confess, though, that every time they say 'dissemination machine' I hear 'insemination' instead, because I'm a terrible person.

It's interesting to see the key mythologies in the various games, though. All the SMT games draw on basically every mythology out there for enemies and bosses, but each one has a different core mythology. Nocturne's is Judeo-Christian, Devil Summoner's is Japanese, and this game's is very strongy Hindu. I suspect I'll be turning to Wikipedia a lot, because my Hindu mythology is weak. But right off, all the area names are chakras, and most of the characters' demon-forms are various gods (speaking of, I never realized before that Agni and Rudra were Hindu gods. Given that DMC3 references other mythologies for bosses - Cerberus, Beowulf, etc - it doesn't surprise me, but I didn't catch it before.)

The mantra system is really like the bastard child of the sphere grid in FFX and the magatama in Nocturne. It seems pretty flexible, which is good, because that compensates for the lack of flexibility in party members (compared to Nocturne anyway - crappy party member? Sacrifice it to get a better party member!), but I haven't had a chance to play with it much.