It’s a change for the good, and PAL gamers are finally getting the games we’ve wanted and the publishers are finally receiving the recognition they deserve. To say the least, having the Shin Megami Tensei series here is for the better, breaking-up the genetic RPG crop we receive from the Square Enix want-to-be publishers.
Set during the modern time period of Tokyo, gamers begin their adventure as their user-named character that is off to the hospital to meet-up with some friends to visit a sick teacher. Suspicion rises on your way to the hospital when you learn of a riot between two cults at a nearby park. When entering the park you meet a neatly dressed journalist who tells you about a prophecy telling of a doomsday (also known as The Conception) for the world. You later reach the hospital to only find that it is completely unoccupied.
After finally locating your teacher, she tells you of her important role in the cleansing of the world, and the reshaping of the new one. It isn’t everyday that your teacher will tell you this, even so when she says to do so she has to destroy the current one. It is a refreshing change from the typical ‘Save the world’ adventure, instead the developers drop gamers into a world that is virtually dead of its original state, which presents gamers in a difficult situation that is shaped by how you, ultimately, play the game.
The neatly dressed journalist. Too bad we here at PALGN can’t afford such good clothing.
Not a good way to start the day, is it? Things go from bad to worse when you wake-up in the world that is currently in the state of a rebirth. The world is no longer full of green fields, but replaced with dry desert, and the world no longer has your friendly little Japanese-man, but rather a whole bunch of demons. Worse yet, some pesky little brat and his elderly mistress turns you into a hybrid of half human half demon - complete with unwanted marks and demonic powers - where you’re on a quest to uncover the origin of The Conception and, through progression, your destiny in restoring the world.
Tokyo has now transformed into a sphere where there’s a glowing moon called Kagutsuchi. Throughout the game, there’s a little indicator at the top of the screen showing gamers the phase of the moon’s glow (from 1 to 8). Lucifer's Call relies on this little indicator quite often, in helping you secure new team members as well as finding rare items and having better results when transforming some of your team members. During the game, gamers will fight various demons that stand between you and your goal. These demons are a talkative bunch, in and out of battle, and unlike Pokemon, where the game relies on you virtually taking creatures away from their natural homeland, Lucifer's Call relies on how well you can persuade demons to join your group, and in most cases, during battles.
Lucifer's Call maintains a lot of typical RPG gameplay features (turn-based battles, random encounters, special abilities etc.), however, the game also includes an option to communicate with opposing demons. It isn’t a matter of saying “can you please join?”, no -this is a mature game after all – however, demons will request taking money from you, items, ask you philosophical questions or disregard you altogether because they think you’re gay. These conversations don’t always end successfully either. Some demons will often milk you out of thousands of the game’s currency and then later say they were never interested. Each demon often has his/her own personality, which makes recruiting more interesting. There are big, dumb demons that curse at you for being weak, while there are some very attractive demons who think you’re a hot little fellow and join on that reason alone.
It’s a fairly straightforward system, and playing close attention to the shine of the Kagutsuchi is equally important. Random battles aren’t sparse, so coming across a certain demon isn’t too difficult. It’s a great little system of recruiting and helps establish a well-balance team that has their own special characteristics that help in advancing further in the game. Each demon has his/her own weaknesses and strengths, which play a vital role during combat. Say for instance you have an ice demon on your team. If the opposing demon specializes in fire attacks then that demon in your team can cost you the battle. When being attacked by an attack that you’re weak against the enemy will dish out a critical hit as well as giving the enemy an extra turn in the combat phase. The opposite applies when you attack an enemy with an elemental attack that they’re strong against. Hitting a fire demon with a fire attack will give health to that demon, as well as making you lose a turn in your combat phase. This later becomes extremely important in battles as gamers will have to spend time selecting, and recruiting the correct demons for each battle. Finding out what ability is strong against demons is often only found by trial and error and relies on the gamer’s strategy in approaching each fight. The overall strength and weakness system plays out exceptionally well, setting the difficultly bar up a couple more notches.
Yep, I’m afraid all your teeth will have to come out.
Lucifer's Call also incorporates this elemental feature for the main character also, with a combat tool known as Magatama. There are 25 various Magatama upgrades that can be acquired throughout the game, some easier to find than others, but in the end they help in forming the ultimate you. These Magatama embodiments offer a variety of demonic powers and element alignments for your main character, which allows your character to unlock new abilities impacted within that Magatama once leveling. For instance, consuming a certain Magatama will improve your character’s strength and allows you to unlock physical attacks, meanwhile, another will improve your magical attacks and allows you to unlock magical attacks. Much like your team members, you’ll need to change this often to help accommodate further battles.
Lucifer's Call also allows gamers to fuse two of their demons to form a, hopefully, more powerful demons that includes abilities from both of the original demons. This is done by going that a shop-like altar where a mysterious old man allows you to fuse your demons. You are able to see which demons are capable with one another, what they’ll transform into and what level you need to be to control them, so there’s no unexpected surprises from it. Better yet, the game also includes an evolving feature much like Pokemon, where once one of your demons reaches a certain level you have the option to allow the demonic energy flowing through it to continue and later allowing it to transform into a much more powerful demon. The demons, and the different features that are in the game because of them, are a great and fascinating inclusion that allows gamers to experiment with numerous demons to create more beneficial ones – it is almost like you’re playing god at times.
The game slaps the big difficultly sticker in front of gamers faces earlier on. The battles are extremely tough, and the team members in your party need to be alternated often. There is no easy cruising here, as even the most common random encounter can be a disastrous battle. Once the main character dies, it’s game over. So, this isn’t a game where you’ve got the luxury of choosing any character and whip through the game fairly easy. The game forces you to change your party members often (with some of your party members being useless later in the game), the game doesn’t allow you to cruise through the game with one overpowered member, and it doesn’t allow you to be sloppy with your attack selection (especially when the game penalizes you with one less turn when you miss an attack). Enemies often heal themselves, call in reinforcements, dish-out attacks that leave you with 1HP and the game isn’t so forgiving when needing helpful item (you won’t find a hundred revival items in the first area of the game like some games). Having one demon in your team that is weak against one of your enemies attacks will often be exploited during battles and will result in a quick death. It almost brings a tear of joy to your eyes, especially if you’re an old school gamer who has missed such difficultly.
Grab it by the horns and ride. Ride son!
Speaking of old school, the game brings back those painful memories of those frustrating random encounters. A lot of gamers can often become quickly frustrated with such regularity of battles, and can often destroy the fun of a game because of it. The original Final Fantasy on the NES was hit hard by this, but still managed to be enjoyable, while Skies of Arcadia is another example of how a game can still be fantastic despite the reoccurring random battles. For Skies of Arcadia, though, the battle system was a lot different compare to other RPG titles, and the game’s difficultly wasn’t as strict. This seems to be one of Lucifer's Call shortcomings. The battle system can become repetitive over time, since it plays very similar to most JRPG titles, and the difficultly of each battle can become incredible frustrating since you’ll almost die after each battle. And seeing as though finding helpful items that heal your entire party is rare, or you’d rather keep them for an important boss battle, gamers will be running from a lot of battles in the later half of the game. It doesn’t help when a lot of the game’s dungeons are incredible long and have a lot of different entries and dead-ends either.
Another problem with the game is that it’s tad too linear. There isn’t much to do in terms of side-quest, and gamers will be running from one place to the next in the well thought-out story. This isn’t much of an issue, since depending on whom you fight, who you communicate to, how you answer questions and etc. will alternate your endings – there being six different endings in total. However, thanks to the dark, demonic story, gamers will have no trouble jumping from area to area in the game, although there isn’t enough flexibility when doing so.
The game’s visual are astounding and are particularly the game’s massive attraction. The series has been known for its difference in style, and thanks to the brilliant artistic talent of Kazuma Kaneko (the genius behind the Shin Megami Tensei style and his most recent work on the demon form of Dante in Devil May Cry 3) the game is excellently portrayed. Each character is extremely well designed, from your own character all the way to a skeleton riding a motorcycle. Kazuma Kaneko’s style is spectacular and it just shows how well cel-shading can look when done correctly (which can't be said about The Wind Waker). There are some environments in the game that look outstanding on the PS2, with excellent lighting, huge demonic structures, blood splatter over walls, but there are a lot of environment areas that are a little dry. However, most of these are particularly dry locations to begin with, such as shopping malls and subway tunnels, so it is something that can be easily overlooked.
Zoom-Zoom!
The game’s music is well suited for the context of the game, with a number of rock, jazz, techno, and some J-Pop music fitting into the mix of tunes. These are very well implemented, which do an excellent job of creating an exciting atmosphere for locations and battles. Similar to Pokemon, each demon has his/her own battle cry also. They have certain phrases they say/grunt when making attacks, and similar ones when dying. While the music is bearable, it isn’t anything spectacular, and when using a good surround sound system, it doesn’t offer anything special either.
2005 was a great year for PAL JRPG fans. We received a lot of games we had missed out on in previous years, and we also received a number of long awaited franchisers that were long overdue for a release here. Thankfully, we have finally received one of the most famous RPG franchisers in Japan, and it enters our shores with open arms. The Shin Megami Tensei series is a mature, and very tough, franchise that is well suited for the RPG fans of old, or those who can tolerate them. The dark, gothic story of Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call is captivating, and the equally exciting gameplay is like no other. The game offers a change to the usually predictable genre, and is one of the most refreshing RPGs released for quite some time. If there were to be a problem with this game it would be it’s difficultly, that, and it’s linearity.
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