A look back at: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II

Stupid work made me take an entire month on an NES game! Oh well, I had a number of other major projects going on, and even then this game could have taken at the very least two and a half weeks overall. And yeah, it's gonna be a Megami Tensei marathon until my 200th game, mostly, and now I'm on the second game of the series. While keeping the major hallmarks of what made the first game what it is, this one essentially crosses over the mythological demons of lore with a setting that predates the Fallout franchise. Yep, nuclear apocalypse, in Japan though. Humans live in bomb shelters or if they're lucky enough, ailing cities. And then there's the demons where the recruiting process has improved somewhat. Not only can you have six members in your party, but can store up to about ten or so demons, and can remove them from the computer as you wish! QoL changes are usually the ones I like. Still a bit of a hassle to heal up party members by doing so individually for each one using the girl's spells.

Oh speaking of, the game's got a male and female lead once again, but this time there's no canon names. There's also this random best friend of yours who, surprise, turns traitor but dies a good guy. Yeah, one of those. And then there's the whole "our demons are different" thing, almost to the point where it looks like every demon is against one another. No wonder certain good-aligned demons consider your party a party of "saviors" and could join. Of course, joining means stopping the malice you inflict and bribing them with goods. Still super annoying when they take your stuff and run. The new overworld mechanics are nice too, but the encounter rate makes going to a simple rest stop a pain to the point where I can easily have up to TEN encounters before even making it there!

You of course want to rely on your demons and keep them in good shape. Being able to use teleportation spells and healing springs and fusion temples much easier is a big QoL change that I enjoy, as is the actual save feature (original game had to have the clunky password system). Having multiple endings could have been nice, but I actually found both endings kinda boring, with the good ending only slightly better. It was definitely an interesting follow-up to the first game and grew the beard for the franchise well. Anyways, I will probably take a few days break before checking out Shin Megami Tensei next.