What I'm Playing - No. 109
Welcome back to another weekly wrap-up of the games I’ve been playing over the past week!
I only played one game again last week: Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. There are minor late game spoilers within, mostly of bosses you fight and characters you meet. I haven’t spoiled anything major, but if you want to remain completely spoiler-free you should still avoid this post.
Click a title to skip to that section. Games contained within this post:
Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse (3DS)
You know what’s cool? When you get to the point in a game where you’re able to fuse demons together to get bosses you fought earlier in the game as allies. Okay, this feeling might be pretty specific to SMT…but it’s awesome. I didn’t use these former boss demons in my party much, but just having them available is cool, it really makes you feel how much you’ve progressed. Speaking of progress, we finally got to take revenge on the demon who killed Nanashi at the beginning of the game, Adramalech. That was a cathartic fight!
Anyway, the story took some intense turns this week, with new characters showing up, new gods, and new mustaches appearing on the faces of friends. That last one was a pretty funny and heartwarming scene, basically the teenagers in the group had to disguise themselves to seem older in order to fool some angels into thinking they were Samurai, since all Samurai are at least 18 due to the Gauntlet Rite taking place at that age.
Not everything was light-hearted though. Some of the darkest twists yet occurred, and I think things could have been even darker if I had made different choices and pursued different endings. I don’t want to spoil those twists though. They were foreshadowed a little in-game, but the specifics of how they played out still surprised and shocked me in wonderful ways.
I think I’m pretty close to the end of the game now. The dungeon I’m currently in has a real “final dungeon” feel to it, and I really don’t know how the plot could continue past this point. I guess I wouldn’t be mad if this wasn’t the end though, because I really love this cast and the gameplay, and the pacing has been great too. I’m definitely curious how many different endings and routes this game has, but as of right now I don’t have plans to do a New Game+ playthrough to get any additional endings. I’ll probably just read about the other endings and routes afterward, at least for now. Long-term though, I’d definitely consider replaying this one!
