Video Game Review: Shin Magami Tensei

In my last review of a free MMORPG, Perfect World International, I had several complaints related to the music, the slow gameplay, and the high ratio of childish gamers to adults in the beta test community. This did not make me eager to jump into another free beta-phase MMORPG, but at the recommendations of a friend online, I decided to try out Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online. Created as an online extension to an already successful RPG series on various platforms, this PC-based MMORPG has a lot of potential if the developers can polish out a few of the rough spots, which I will get to later.

First of all, like most free games, there is a huge install file to download, and patches to get you up to the current game version. Once this is out of the way, you will go into character creation to make your first Demon Buster. (Henceforth to be called a DB in the in the review) The options for character creation are limited right now, and I really hope to see this expanded upon as the game platform matures into a final release.

Once the character has been made, players are introduced into the world wiht a series of slides that could have come from any RPG game circa 1995. The story line has a lot of cobbled together themes mixing eastern and biblical references. I find this tends to be common in most of the free MMORPGs, but Shin Megami at least attempts to make the story more interesting. Whether it succeeds will depend a lot on your ability to suspend disbelief. I was just barely able to, so it worked for me. Your mileage may vary.

You start the game by following a DB trainer. In this series of 3D sequences, the trainer is just beginning to show you the basics of moving yourself and the camera when the call comes in from HQ. A demon invasion has hit a local community, and your trainer is the closest DB who can handle the job. In what can only be described as "typical horror movie logic," your trainer takes you to go investigate this invasion alone. No, she even tells you, "Let's split up, and you can go in first, armed with only a knife." Thankully the big demon kills her first for being such an idiotic douchebag. But, bad news for you, the demon nearly kills you as well. Later on, the game tries to convince you that you ache with regret over your dear trainer's death. You won't, and in fact, you might giggle, if you are so inclined.

A complaint: at this point in the game, the demon says something, but the translators didn't bother to translate the dialogue from what I think is Japanese. It happens elsewhere at a few points, but it's never quite so annoying as it is right here, when it felt to me like the demon has said something very important. Then again, for all I know she could have been saying, "You will be tasty, and I shall enjoy you with relish...and perhaps with mustard as well."

From here, you wake up in the DB training center, where you are told that you were found near death. The kindly senior DB trainer guides you through a few levels of basic combat training in a simulator with monsters who are unable to fight back. So you whack on thses wimpy monsters a bit before you are cleared to go topside for your first excursions into the demon-filled and demolished surface cities.

One of the first tasks is to get a handle on capturing pets, and this is hard at first because no one in your training sessions really explains how to do it. They tell you something about negotiating, but that doesn't really explain the process at all. In essence, you have to keep talking to a creature near your level by using a talk button. And, after enough positive responses, the creature turns unto a globe that you collect. It's kinda like Pokemon, but without the nifty ball to throw on the ground at every summoning.

The point is, you have to do it a lot, and sometimes, it doesn't work and the demon attacks you instead. The way the trainer made it sound, all I would have to do is walk up and say, "Yo, ride wit me, dog." I did not expect to have to say it twenty times, and I did not expect that sometimes the dog would try to kill me, just because. Yes, it really is that random.

Afer you've talked a demon into being your pet, you can collect a certain number of these pets into your wrist-comp. I guess dropping the -uter makes it sound cooler. But it looks silly anyway. The upgraded versions are much cooler looking, and of course, you can buy the better wrist-comps to hold more pets too. And another neat feature is the ability to fuse two demons to come up with something new. At this time, there's only 200 possible combinations, but like most things in this review, I expect that to be scaled upward as the game approaches a release candidate.

You can also upgrade your uniforms and improve your pets' loyalty with items. At the time of my review, I didn't see that many options at the market that got me excited. There is a good amount of variety in the styles of the outfits, but the stats on weapons and uniforms felt lackluster. Then again, during the beta, you can probably expect to find the item and weapon stats will change a lot as the developers try to seek a sense of balance.

Once you've collected and summoned your first pet, the combat choreography between pet and owner is surprisingly smooth. You have two sets of floating button toolbars, one for yourself, and one for your pet. It is possible to control the pet directly, so you can scout ahead using the pet without putting yourself at risk.

You can also team up on a monster and create some brutal combinations by altering your attack patterns. Frequently, I was able to tear apart larger opponents because they never had a chance to fight back. As soon as they drew back to swipe at either my pet or my avatar, the other would smack the monster and knock them out of range for their melee attacks. This kind of dual attacking builds up a charge to allow for the casting of spells, all of which differ according to which pet you've summoned. This might sound cool, but for now, it's a guessing game what each pet does.

The music here is acceptable, but after two hours, you'll probably turn it down and slip on your MP3 player. It's not annoying, just really repetitive, and there isn't a whole lot of variety between regions. The sound effects are good, and the graphics are crisp and clear. The controls are simple to understand, and shouldn't take long to become familiar to most casual gamers.

If the game has any flaws, it lies in the lack of documentation, both in-game and on the web site. None of the most important concepts were explained clearly enough for me, resulting in a lot of stumbling around in the game at first. To do anything, I had to guess a lot. This could discourage a lot of potential players very early on, and I think that's a shame, because this is one game that could go somewhere if a big enough community can be enticed into joining.

Of course, every MMORPG has one other vital ingredient to make gameplay fun; the community. Here, Shin Megami is actually stronger than I was expecting. I teamed up with several people during my test runs, and I found most to be extremely friendly. The global chat was filled with the usual requests for team-ups and quest seekers, but there weren't a whole lot of rude players cussing other people out.

Unfortunately, it's very difficult to find anyone who knows much about the game. So very often, you will find the answer to your question is, "I'm sorry, but I don't know." This is still loads better than "L34RN t0 P74Y U F00kin N00b!" (This was an actual response to a question in a previous game, and still my best real world example of juvenile behavior at its finest)

So, my final verdict is, this is a beta with a lot of promise, if the developers can flesh out the character editor, the documentation, and the musical score. In every other way, the game is a satisfying experience. It has a solid premise (even if it is clichéd), an engaging introduction, and a friendly, if somewhat small beta community. So, if you're looking for something with a science fiction/fantasy theme to try out between team missions and alien invasions in Anarchy Online, this MMORPG about a demon invasion might very well be worth your time to download and check out.