It’s October, so I’m legally obligated to play a game with horror elements. This months game is Kyūyaku Megami Tensei: Megami Tensei I - II, the remake of Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei I and II. Will their updated forms be more palatable then their original counterparts? Let’s find out.
Introduction
Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei (デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生) is a book written by Japanese author Nishitani Aya on March 31, 1986. It tells the story of Akemi Nakajima, a brilliant high school student who creates a computer program that summons demons. Logically, a few demons go out of control and attacked him, but he was saved by Yumiko Shirasagi, a student with magical powers. Both them team up to stop the rampaging demons.
The book spawned two sequels, Digital Devil Story 2: Warrior of the Demon City, published on October 31, 1986, and Digital Devil Story 3: Demise of the Reincarnation, published on February 29, 1988. They were never released outside Japan, and are rather difficult to find even on Japanese stores. Fortunately, the first two books were translated by DDSTranslations and can be easily found online. I must confess I’ve never read them, but I plan to do that on a near future.
The books were popular enough that two companies bought the rights for a game adaptation: Telenet Japan and Atlus. Telenet Japan is a defunct company better known for the Valis series and for the Wolf Team, that would create the Tales series after being acquired by Namco.
Atlus was founded in April 1986 and released their first title roughly a year later, on September 11, 1987 – Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei on the Family Computer or Famicom, the Japanese Nintendo Entertainment System. After the events from the first book, Nakajima and Yumiko must again join forces to stop Lucifer, who decided that now was the most convenient time to conquer the human world.
Published by Namco, the game was a run-of-the-mill first-person dungeon crawler, whose particular traits included an enemy recruiting mechanic, huge maps, and a somewhat modern setting. It was also remarkable for its religious themes and for its use of occultism. This unusual combination gave it a more mature, somber tone, unlike most Fantasy RPGs of the time. Famitsu gave it a good coverage on a few editions and a score of 31 out of 40. Very good for a first title.
A sequel called Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II was released in 1990. The sequel follows the events of the first game, having no connection with the books. Later games also took this path, creating their own stories and continuity.
The franchise grew thanks to its many spin-offs and became very profitable for Atlus, but stayed exclusive to Japan for almost ten years. During the eighties companies (specially Nintendo) were very cautious of releasing content that was either related to religion, sex, or drugs (even legalized ones) in the west. As a result, many Japanese titles were heavily modified or simply stayed in Japan, since an international release would require too many changes. At the time, localizing a property like Megami Tensei wouldn’t be profitable.
During the 90s, publishers and developers slowly started to take a few risks with mature content. This slow shift to more adult subjects and imagery allowed the release of Revelations: Persona for the Playstation in 1996. It was the first game in the series to be localized to the west but, unfortunately, it underwent many changes to become more “accessible”. Nowadays, companies are more accepting that games can have mature content and the Megami Tensei series became very successful and well known worldwide due, primarily, to the Persona spin-offs.
And finally, let’s talk about our reviewed game. On March 31, 1995, Kyūyaku Megami Tensei: Megami Tensei I - II (旧約・女神転生 女神転生I・I) was released for the Super Famicom, the Japanese Super Nintendo. It is a remake of the first two Megami Tensei games, but they were only published by Atlus, and were developed by Opera House. Opera House is a very prolific Japanese developer that was funded in 1986 and apparently still active, even if their last released title was in 2013.
There are practically no difference between the remakes and the original titles, except the audio and visual upgrades and some small changes here and there. The game was rereleased on the Wii’s Virtual Shop in 2012, but only in the Japanese storefront.
I played Megami Tensei I and II on the Famicom many years ago, but for this review I played the Super Famicom remakes. This review will focus on the first game, while I will write a follow-up for the second game. On a final note, I played the unofficial translation made by DDSTranslation, as I can’t read Japanese.
The Narrative
Kyuuyaku has it’s own intro intro cutscene. Angels fall from paradise, an ominous tune plays and there is some text about the fall of Lucifer. It looks great and is fitting to the game’s overall thematic.
After selecting Megami Tensei I, the opening scenematic will tell you the game’s entire plot and backstory. As said before, the game takes place after Nakajima and Yumiko defeat Loki and Set. But Lucifer, who wants to conquer the human world, seals off the goddess Izanami and ressurrects Loki and Set. He also brings a demonic palace to Asuka (a real area in the Nara Prefecture), where he keeps the sealed Izanami.
Nakajima and Yumiko must enter the palace, destroy Loki and Set, free Izanami and finally defeat Lucifer. There are no twists, surprises, or deviations to these objectives. It doesn’t bother me, but I admit it’s tiresome to simply follow ahead without anything interesting happening. There are some interactions with NPCs, but nothing noteworthy or more captivating than a fetch quest.
Presentation
The artwork for enemies and NPCs is very good. Demons are mostly from European and Japanese folklore, but there are some obscure, odd, and even humorous choices too. Sadly, most sprites aren’t animated. Maybe the designers couldn’t fit much more on the cartridge, or they just didn’t have enough time to create more complex animations.
The game doesn’t have an impressive soundtrack, with most of its tracks being forgettable. I liked one or two, but even those aren’t very inspiring.
Mechanics
The game is a dungeon crawler, so you explore different mazes in first-person view. There are a few cities where you can save your game, recover health, dissipate status effects and buy and sell items. Unfortunately, movement isn’t smooth and has a jerky look and feel, besides being very slow for my taste.
Every map is divided in squares titles, similar to graph paper, so it’s very easy to locate yourself in the on-screen map and navigate most of the game’s dungeons. There are six locations: Daedalus Tower, Valhalla Corridor, Sky City, Mazurka Corridor, Sea of Flames and Anfini Palace. They are very distinct and easily recognizable, so you never will outstep to harder regions by accident. Most have multiple floors, what makes Megami Tensei I a big game for the time.
Unlike the Famicom title, Kyuuyaku has an automap feature that makes exploration a lot easier. It will mark the location of the Cathedral of Shadows, the elevator, the healer, stairs and the player’s location, but it will leave out stores, teleports, NPCs, holes, traps and save spots.
While exploring, the moon phase is shown on the upper left side of the screen. It impacts the encounter rate and the strength of the demons you will find. At full moon stronger enemies will appear, the encounter rate will increase, and their parties will be bigger. However, a new moon means that enemies will be weaker, there are less random battles and monster parties will have fewer enemies.
Exploring the first dungeons isn’t a big problem. They offer a fair challenge, have a reasonable size and don’t have annoying gimmicks or traps. But as I arrived in Mazurka, the game’s problems became more apparent. From now on dungeons will be huge, with two different sets of maps (for example, Mazurka is composed of two different towers, each with its own maps) and lots of traps or gimmick titles. Characters will spin around, fall through the floor, take damage or teleport somewhere else. Bigger dungeons also mean more enemies to fight, something that isn’t engaging on this game. The enemies that can take levels also make their first appearance in Mazurka.
But the biggest problem with dungeons is that they don’t have anything to stimulate the player. You just fight enemies, recruit a few of them and walk around, until you find the dungeon boss. A few events that expanded the story would be welcome, but there is none since the plot is almost nonexistent.
There are two types of player characters: humans and demons.
Yumiko and Nakajima are the only playable humans in the game. Only them are able to gain levels, wear armors or use weapons and items. In other words, they are your standard RPG characters. She’s the magic user, while he has acces to the Talk and COMP commands. Talk is used to communicate with demons in order to dissuade them from attacking you or to join your party. The COMP command serves to manage the party, summon or unsummon demons and abandoning them.
Demons usually appear as enemies, but some can become allies, what is the most interesting and original feature of Megami Tensei I. Unfortunately, it has a few flaws that hinders it from reaching its full potential.
By using the Talk command, Nakajima can try to recruit an enemy. To convince demons about the working benefits of your ragtag band of fallen beings, you can give them gifts (money or jewels), try to have a healthy discussion or, if everything fails, rely on intimidation. Sometimes the enemy will run away with your gifts, while a treacherous few will do a surprise attack. It’s not possible to recruit demons that are unable to talk, bosses and demons with a level bigger than Nakajima’s, so don’t lose your time with them. It’s possible to recruit up to seven demons, but only five can stay on the active party.
After the recruiting process, a demon can be summoned by spending some money, It can be done while in battle, but it will also cost a turn from Nakajima. Demons consume Magnetite (MAG) to stay summoned, which is a type of currency earned by killing enemies. Each step will consume some MAG, the amount depending on how strong your demons are. Keep an eye on how much there’s left, since demons will start to lose HP if it runs out.
Recruiting enemies is fun, but they won’t gain levels and it’s not possible to increase their attributes, or give them weapons and amour. That’s a huge drawback because eventually they will become too weak to push onward. I think that’s very unfortunante, as some demons look very cool and I would prefer to keep them with me.
The game offers two ways to deal with this. First, to keep recruiting new demons whenever you can, since you don’t lose anything for replacing older ones.
The second method is the Cathedral of Shadows, where you can fuse two demons to create a new, more powerful one. The process is very simple, and the game tells you the compatibility of demons and the fusion results beforehand, so there are no random results to undermine your progress. But don’t think that you can get powerful allies early on by fusing, since the resulting demon must have a level equal or lower to Nakajima’s.
As for NPCs, most of them are on cities, but some can be found in these areas. I think most of their sprites came from discarded enemies that were initially used as placeholders but stuck until the end of development. Some even wear medieval attire, killing any trace of the present time. They usually give useless clues or unnecessary comments. A few will interfere in your adventure, blocking the way or giving quests and items.
Battle System
Megami Tensei I features random encounters and a turn-based combat system. Battles are slow, with lots of text that you continually try to skip by pressing buttons. It’s possible to configure the speed of text, what mitigates this problem a lot. There is little strategy involved besides curing the injured and using your strongest attacks. Even when facing bosses there are no special weakness to exploit, just pure, unadulterated bashing.
Visually combat is uninteresting. Actions are represented by an uninspired visual effect, lights flashing and a simple sound. On a side note, I like how the icons on the upper side of the screen reflect how many enemies are present and if they are injured or affected by some negative status.
Battles can be very hard even with a powered up party since the game randomly assigns an enemy when you attack. As a result, every fight will take a long time to end and your characters will suffer from negative status effects or die because they keep hurting full heath enemies, instead of killing the weaker or most dangerous ones. It can make the short-tempered player lose their patience, however, when enemies that can take a level from Nakajima or Yumiko are introduced, the game becomes infuriating.
Probably knowing how tedious battles are, the game as an auto battle command. Once activated, your characters will use physical attacks until they kill all enemies or die. It’s the source of many headaches and anxiety since you can’t cancel it to heal until the battle ends. Aside this drawback, after some leveling up and recruiting, it’s a fairly safe and time saving command.
After leveling up, you can decide which attribute to increase from Nakajima and Yumiko. Since only one attribute can be increased per level, choose wisely to not end up stuck with underpowered characters.
Final Thoughts
I think Megami Tensei I was acceptable for 1987, but not for modern days. It’s unremarkable, slow, and sometimes boring. The combat system is infuriating thanks to its random enemy assignment. Some dungeons are too big and too empty. It’s fun to recruit enemies and fuse them, but that’s not enough to keep interest until the end.
A modern setting is always a breath of fresh air in the RPG genre, since it’s mostly composed of medieval fantasy and, in a lesser extent, science fiction scenarios. But this game doesn’t take advantage of it, leaving the player inside endless corridors of Lucifer’s hell palace. It seems like any other medieval fantasy RPG.
At first, I found the game passable, but after giving it more thought I changed my mind. There is very little to like or to hate, but that’s enough to stay away in my opinion. As later Megami Tensei installments have more polished mechanics with better stories and characters, you aren’t losing anything by skipping this one.
Final opinion: Not recommended.
On a funny, final side note that I couldn’t put anywhere, Atlus is the developer of The Karate Kid and Friday the 13th for the Nes, both published by LJN and featured on a particular internet comedy show.