Mary Skelter: Nightmares

[Kruno]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/837610/Mary_Skelter_Nightmares/

A YT review:


I am on the fence on this one. Thoughts?

 

[AbstractKazzy]

Well, it's Idea Factory.

 

[aweigh]

Dorar said it's good but that mid-game you can unlock OP skills that make the 2nd half of the game too easy. (Or something like that). He can explain it better.

Dorarnae

 

[Dorarnae]

Dorar said it's good but that mid-game you can unlock OP skills that make the 2nd half of the game too easy. (Or something like that). He can explain it better.

Dorarnae

Since I was beta testing, I set the game on easy, didn't want to bother with the difficulty, just wanted to report issue(and since I work in QA already, I didn't want this to be a choir...).

but there are definitly a few skill you'll use that are Op and the rest is pretty much useless, except maybe in the beginning because you don't have much tp at first.

I just watched that youtube review...wtf, how can you not like Dungeon travelers 2 and like mary skelter. what a casual...

 

[LESS T_T]

Out now:

 

[Kruno]

I've been playing it on the hardest difficulty for 5 hours.

It is a raw numbers game. Being lower level than the enemies and beating them is fine, but the moment you get to the boss you have to have upped your levels or you will get smashed.

I find the game quite enjoyable.

 

[ilitarist]

It's cheaper on GOG, at least in some regions. Getting it.

https://af.gog.com/game/mary_skelter_nightmares?as=1649904300

 

[Grauken]

I forgot how annoying the visual novel-like dialogues in jap Dungeon Crawlers can be, also so far its all a bit simplistic

 

[Kruno]

I don't think it becomes any more complex than it is. At least I haven't had to grind the 2nd area to be powerful enough to defeat the boss. This is probably Compile Heart's least grindy game to my knowledge (at least so far in the game, and on Nightmare difficulty which gives you bonus XP and gold).

 

[Jacob]

I forgot how annoying the visual novel-like dialogues in jap Dungeon Crawlers can be, also so far its all a bit simplistic

I find it less annoying than non visual novel-like dialogues, since usually you can always skip it as you see fit by pressing ctrl.

 

[Grauken]

I always worry that I miss some vital clues, but its just endless drivel that drives me up the walls

 

[ilitarist]

Kruno
So max difficulty makes fights harder but also gives bigger rewards? Does it mean that on highest difficulty there's little grind and battles are more meaningful? Do you recommend playing on max difficulty?

 

[newtmonkey]

Will wait for more impressions on this one. Like Grauken I cannot stand the VN style writing in Japanese games, and the second I see a screenshot showing two pieces of character artwork side by side with a dialog box at the bottom, I can tell the game is going to be shitty dialog and low production values all over.

I will say that, straight off the bat, the translation of the game summary is shit, and if that is any indicator there's a lot to worry about the text in the game itself.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Who gives a fuck about text in a dungeon crawler. What about the gameplay and dungeon design? Is the game fun to PLAY?

 

[Grauken]

The main char is Jack, the typical anime young kid hero, beta as fuck, the girls look all like pedobait, the setting could have been interesting, but so far isn't, the dungeon layouts are boring, there are some gimmicky twitch mechanics for dungeon traversing (walking over a rope), there are abilities that open previously closed paths (so there's potential for backtracking), most of the "novel" combat mechanics feel like window dressing that don't make combat more interesting

 

[Kruno]

Kruno
So max difficulty makes fights harder but also gives bigger rewards? Does it mean that on highest difficulty there's little grind and battles are more meaningful? Do you recommend playing on max difficulty?

I wouldn't play it on anything less than max difficulty. You can change difficulty on the fly, so if you come across an area you want to grind you can increase the difficulty. I made the mistake of grinding at the start of the 2nd chapter, but it was idiotic as you get your companions back if you walked through the dungeon a bit more, and because I grinded those 2 characters my others missed out. So grinding seems to be an utter waste. Simply don't do it. I will let you know if I come across an area I have to grind.

The biggest issue with combat is that it is too easy atm. It is also my biggest issue with the game.

 

[ilitarist]

Thanks Kruno . I didn't get deep into any Japanese DRPG so I suspect max difficulty wouldn't be as easy for me.

 

[aweigh]

i been kinda avoiding giving a comment cos i haven't played all that much but i played few hours yesterday and looked up the japanese wiki and well...

lack of full party creation hurts it a lot, and i dislike (strongly) unkillable enemy concept, and i also dislike the weird choice of having "support" characters (wtf? why not just make a proper party?), so it really just comes down to the actual dungeons and that's why i hadn't commented since i haven't explored much yet.

surprisingly enough the anime story and characters are actually slightly better than the usual drivel, and there's a kernel of something slightly interesting in the jail concept, but it all feels too little. in any case, i'll just say it ain't up to elminage/stranger of sword city standards for jap blobbers and leave it at that.

 

[Suicidal]

Pretty big discount right of the bat. So is it worth 12 eurobucks? It seems interesting from that review video but reports of combat being raw numbers-based and too easy are off putting.

 

[aweigh]

depends how starved you are for a turn-based blobber. if you still haven't played/finished the elminage games or stranger of sword city then you 100% should do that instead of buying mary skelter, just to give an example.

if you already played all of the top-tier jap blobbers and are starved for another one then yes, buy it, but if there are still some u haven't played, like say the dark spire, then for god's sake play those instead first.

- my official review

 

[Kruno]

There really aren't enough blobbers in the world.
Despite the flaws I am genuinely enjoying Mary Skelter.

 

[Shackleton]

There really aren't enough blobbers in the world.
Despite the flaws I am genuinely enjoying Mary Skelter.

Hey, I didn't even realise this was a blobber when I saw it in the release list! Bought on GOG as it is a bit cheaper and installing now. I agree, there's not enough blobbers released over here, so as long as it's not complete rubbish I'll buy it to support them.

Cheers for the thread, I'm not sure I'd have known about this otherwise.

 

[Suicidal]

depends how starved you are for a turn-based blobber. if you still haven't played/finished the elminage games or stranger of sword city then you 100% should do that instead of buying mary skelter, just to give an example.

if you already played all of the top-tier jap blobbers and are starved for another one then yes, buy it, but if there are still some u haven't played, like say the dark spire, then for god's sake play those instead first.

- my official review

Wouldn't say I'm starved as there's still a lot of shit I haven't played. I Just like buying games I will play eventually when they're on sale. But as I understand it isn't very good and I shouldn't rush.

 

[Grauken]

There really aren't enough blobbers in the world.
Despite the flaws I am genuinely enjoying Mary Skelter.

Yeah, bought it on Steam and GOG, even an average blobber is better than nothing

 

[Shackleton]

Yeah, around 4 hours in and I'm quite enjoying it as well. Got a party of 4 now and just finishing up exploring the Jail area before proper getting stuck into the graveyard. The VN stuff was very annoying at first, but after all the initial lore dump drivel at the start, it's slowed down a bit.

Playing on hardest as suggested and apart from a couple of fights in the graveyard when I only had 2 chars, it's not been terribly difficult. Got a couple of chars to level 10 which has unlocked the option of class changing for them but not took the option yet. It looks decently involved, with all the skills, classes and item upgrading. Already you can tell some of the skills are going to be dead weight, but that's pretty normal for a blobber so doesn't bother me. Playing Strange Journey alongside this and there's an enormous amount of useless skills in that but it's still a great game. No idea what the 'affection' mechanic does yet, but been pumping Alice full of gifts to raise it anyway.

Map design looks promising imo, even the first dungeon is not just a big corridor. It has stairs to floors hidden away behind breakable walls and multiple entrances to various floors. Traps are a bit of a let down damage-wise, but you'd expect that in the first dungeon.

Easily worth a punt at £10, glad I got it.