What I'm Playing - No. 119
Welcome back to another weekly wrap-up of the games I’ve been playing over the past week!
Spoiler-free post this week, read on without fear!
Click a title to skip to that section. Games contained within this post:
Persona 5 Royal (PS4)
Given the staggering size of my backlog, I should really focus on playing new games instead of replaying ones I’ve already played. So naturally, I started a new playthrough of Persona 5 Royal again. My initial plan was to play through on Merciless difficulty, but I gave up on that because it was probably not possible given the other self-imposed constraint for this playthrough. I’m also letting the AI control all my companions, and leaving them on the “Act Freely” setting, where they do whatever they decide is best in battle rather than being directly controlled. This means they might not guard in battle when the enemy is charging up a powerful attack, and they’ve died a lot so far. I ended up changing the difficulty to Hard instead, and it’s been pretty fun so far!
I’ve also named my character “Yuuki Mishima,” the same name as another character in the game. I’ve enjoyed seeing the name pop up in dialogue, because while it’s usually obvious who they’re talking about, I enjoy the slight ambiguity. My favorite moment so far was when other-Mishima says the player character’s name…it was great!
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked (3DS)
After a bit of grinding and reorganizing my main character’s demon team, I beat Beldr. Being a few levels higher and having the proper demons for this made it really easy actually, so I’m glad I followed the recommendation I saw on a GameFAQs post! After the fight, Yuzu spoke my greatest fear, wondering if another fight like Beldr was waiting for me down the road. I’m pretty sure there will be more tough boss fights, but I haven’t reached them yet!
As my characters level up, I’m able to fuse better demons. One of these is Ishtar, who has no weaknesses and is an excellent healer. Lucifuge is pretty good too. It has Agidyne, which deals a ton of fire damage, and makes a good addition to my main character’s magic-focused team. I was excited to fuse Odin because he’s pretty good in the Persona games I’ve used him in, but he’s kind of underwhelming in Devil Survivor. His stats are good, but he doesn’t have any magic skills. I should have fused him from better demons so I could have had him inherit some magic skills.
The main story is really going places now. For a while, I thought the story was just alright, but the longer the lockdown goes on in-game, the more interesting things become. Riots have broken out, characters have forged pacts with powerful demons via sheer willpower, and characters have died. I’m somewhat certain that I could have prevented a character death, but then I think a different character would have died instead. Maybe there was a way to save both of them…? I’m not sure, but I’m fine with the way things played out because it made the story really interesting. We also finally caught up with the player character’s cousin, Naoya, who knows a lot about what’s going on but keeps most of that to himself. You do get some answers from that meeting though, and it seems to foreshadow some upcoming choices where I imagine I’ll be set on the path to one of the game’s various endings.
That’s about it really. Battles have been as fun than ever, but are still essentially the same as how I described them last week. It’s cool having stronger characters and demons in battle though, that’s always a fun part of RPGs! I’m on the 6th day now. The original game had 7 days, and I know Overclocked adds an 8th day, so I’m getting closer to the end bit by bit.
