So I recently beat Tales of the Abyss. I ended up with something like 2300 Grade at the end of it. The one I didn't care for was how much back-tracking there was. It got pretty out of hand in the latter half of the game but it was pretty enjoyable overall.
I'm nearing the end of Raidou Kuzunoha vs King Abaddon. Currently at Chapter 5. I've been doing mostly side stuff. I haven't found the will to play it some more lately. The combat is an improvement for sure but I don't really like the MAG system and how reliant it is on you hitting weaknesses. If you can't hit a weakness then your MAG runs out pretty quickly and no MAG means no healing or elemental attacks which makes fights harder than they need to be. Luckily almost every boss/enemy has a weakness. It's just a matter of randomly picking except for some obvious ones like Jack Frost and Pyro Jack. They removed the elemental bullets from the last game. Keeping them would've been a reliable way to gain MAG without having to use skills to get some back.But at least you have infinite bullets.
The presentation is kind of lacking compared to Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army; the previous Devil Summoner game I mentioned just before. There's these neat style of cutscenes in Soulless Army that are in-engine which have plenty of character. I didn't really think much about it when I first played through it but when I started playing King Abaddon their absence stuck out to me. One thing that I really don't like is how much music it reuses. I mean I'm not expecting a brand new soundtrack but it seems a bit excessive with how much is re-used. Some themes like for the Nameless Shrine, Detective agency are ok. But they did really need to reuse the final dungeon theme from the last game for alot of the dungeons? Or reusing the same title theme? I didn't care for the remix of the town theme.
Some of the things they removed or added seem kind of strange.
In Soulless Army you could fuse a demon with your sword which would power it up and let you gain resistance to one of several types of damage (Physical, Fire, Ice, Wind , Electric, Death, Mind). And a stat boost. It was a nice way to get rid of a demon you didn't really want without outright getting rid of it. But now you have to get materials and pay money. The materials you get from demons (Pyro Steel, Bronze, Silver, etc) or side quests. There's 3 "kinds" of swords. Axe, Lance and Blade. Demons have some unique skills that'll require one of three types. It seems more complicated than it needs to be. You can do a special attack with them and each type is unique. Blades just hit everything around you, Axes make you leap into the air and slam the ground with the Axe or just stab rapidly with the Lance Unfortunately using these eats up MAG so you can't really use them too much. There's this weird thing with the Lance types where if you hit the button to the special attack once it'll eat up MAG so you have to rapidly press it for the full animation. There's also the lack of sacrificial fusion which is weird (Lances' special attack is the weakest too which is lame)
Case Files are now just side quests whereas they just let you have a brief summary of the previous episode. Alot of them require you to deliver items but some of those require you to go out of your way to do things like take a photo of something or get something that you can only get in a certain place (as opposed to just happening to having the item on you by the time the case and clearing it there.)The other kind just require you to go to some place and typically fight a demon. These are pretty unique usually. Getting Case Files usually requires you to go out of your way to get them in other words talking to everyone. Even demons. You can get some nice stuff from clearing Case Files but they're just sort of there. It's a way to add extra hours to the game I guess.
The last odd thing is the inclusion of alignments. The is the first Devil Summoner game to have them and they're generally stuck in the mainline series. It's not really annoying or good or anything. It's just...there. You know when you're asked an alignment question whenever the control vibrates a little.
So King Abaddon is a good game but I like the previous Devil Summoner game more even though the combat is more clunky
No fancy pictures for you. Bye!
