I've talked about it before but just in case I'll cover once again what Shin Megami Tensei is before I continue in case a new reader has stumbled across this post. Shin Megami Tensei is a long running series of RPGs that has been going since the old NES days. It has its roots in tile based dungeon crawling but as the series has progressed that style has dropped in and out. The big gimmick of the series is the whole "demon negotiation" thing where you can convince your enemies to join your ranks and use their skills in order to reach the end. The series has seen some massive success recently with it's spinoff series Persona and at some point a Shin Megami Tensei 5 has been cited for release on the Switch. In a VERY basic way just think of it as sort of Grimdark Pokemon.
So I woke up on Sunday with a big fat hangover and grabbed my phone only to find that Dx2 SMT Liberation was on the front page of the Japanese app store and despite my pounding headache I did a little squee and downloaded it. As far as mobile games go it's not all that different from any other RPG where you collect monsters and battle them but if you're a fan of the series, especially the mainline series, the look and feel of the game will have you hooked pretty quickly. EVERYTHING you expect from a tried and true SMT game is present in this title just sort of simplified a little bit because it's on a phone now but presented in a way that makes it perfect for short burst plays on a train, bus or while you take a shit.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about how it all works because there's A LOT going on and I've not levelled up enough to see it all but curiously the game has only 2 out of 5 stars on the app store. Addressing some of these complaints I've seen in the review section will help you to understand something about how the game works though so here I go.
The first big complaint I've seen is that they say (in Japanese) that the demons and the artwork look like crap. The game has opted for the older SMT look as opposed to the more modern art direction that they have used in games like Persona so this is more of a taste thing. I started the series with Lucifer's Call on PS2 when it was still using that sort of older look so it doesn't bother me really, this is just a taste thing but be aware the art style looks a bit "dated" which will be nostalgic for some and hard on the eyes for others.
The one thing I can't forgive though is people complaining about the fucking "gatcha". If you don't play mobile games then a gatcha is the way most games give you new items or characters. You pay a number of whatever currency it may be and the game randomly gives you a character. If you're lucky you'll get a rare thing and if you're not lucky you won't, it's the main way these free to play RPGs make cash by making people pull lots of gatcha for mad rare shit. These are usually a big part of mobile RPGs but in Liberations case it's not such a big thing. The complaints state that the gatcha is too expensive and the rate of rare shit coming out is too low, which is fine I guess but that's not really how your supposed to expand your roster of demons.
As you play levels, occasionally a demon will offer to talk with you and you enter a negotiation. If you complete the negotiation successfully the demon will join you, this is how SMT has worked basically since the beginning. From there, you have you fuse the demons together to make new ones in order to strengthen your ranks and this is the main way that the player in Liberation gets rarer things. For example today I took a 1* demon and a 2* demon and fused them into a 3* demon with some sick fire skills. The gatcha does give you rare shit but the game wants you to focus on negotiation and fusion, you know, the thing where you actually have to understand how the game works, rather than just dumb luck. While paying your way into the rarest demons is an option and probably how Sega plan to make profit, doing it the old fashioned way is preferable and series fans will probably enjoy this more than just "push button, receive demon".
I've never been this hooked by a mobile game before so if you're a SMT fan then absolutely try it out and if you've never played one before then this free outing into the mainline may be a good place to find your feet.
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