Finished Mary Skelter Finale. It was quite a superb ride from beginning to end. Absolutely amazing. Pretty long game, took me around 184 hours to finish.
The gameplay's pretty much the same as in Mary Skelter 2. Good dungeon crawling, using special character abilities to unlock new paths and continue exploring the dungeons and powerful bosses stalking around the place. The maps aren't as gigantic as they were in the original Mary Skelter: Nightmares, but they're definitely much grander than Mary Skelter 2's rather anemic dungeons. Here, see for yourself:
While exploring, you can satisfy the dungeon's desires: Hunger, Libido & Sleep. Fully satisfying a desire brings up a roulette with some rewards. The rewards can be gold, random items, fully healing and restoring mana to 2 party members, damage boosts etc. You can also rig that roulette with special items you find while exploring, so you can end up having a roulette that's composed entirely of that 2 party members heal. My only issue with the dungeons is that there aren't enough of them. They're huge, sure, and you'll spend quite a lot of time in them, but it would've neat to probably have one or two more to diversify things a little bit.
Classes in Mary Skelter are pretty cool. You can combine skills from all the classes a character has unlocked and skills from the current active class become empowered Specialty skills. Lots of room to make whatever builds you want. You can even turn fighter characters into casters.
The big feature that was advertised quite a bit in Finale is the fact that you have three different groups exploring the same dungeon, and you can switch between whenever you want. As you explore, you'll have moments where one group gets blocked either by a gimmick or a locked door, and you have to switch to the others to unlock the way. You can also send items to other groups at special collection points. The only minor issue is that for doors requiring a key, it can be pretty easy to forget which group has the right one, since there's no dedicated key tab in your inventory. It's a pretty neat feature, but Jack's party is so hilariously overpowered (one character has a class with powerful passive skills from every other class) that it makes that other teams seem quite weak in comparison.
The game starts off quite challenging on the highest difficulty, and there are some fights that you really want to plan for and go in prepared with some good equipment. Unfortunately, near the end, the difficulty drops quite a bit. Another issue I have with the game's difficulty is how non-threatening boss chases are. If you get close enough to a boss wandering the dungeon, it'll start chasing you. Until you destroy certain objects present further within the dungeon, you won't be able to defeat it, so your only hope is to leg it. While running away there's a chance to get attacked by normal enemies and while fighting them, the boss will intervene and attack your party. Its attacks are usually devastating. If the boss catches up to your party, you'll have to fight it until it becomes stunned, and you can resume your flight. The problem is that you'll almost always outrun the bosses in no time due to the escape radius being too forgiving. It's not uncommon to end a chase in two seconds. The only times you'll get caught is when you get lost or run into a dead end. Mary Skelter 2 and Nightmares had some real hardcore bosses present in their final dungeons that could easily catch up with your party and ruin your day, but unfortunately you won't find any such scenarios in Finale. While the final fight is pretty tubular, spectacular and so on, it unfortunately is quite easier than the final bosses from Mary Skelter 2 and Nightmares. Thankfully, you can increase the difficulty some more by adding special rules and mutators to the dungeon you're currently exploring. Stuff like not being able to use items, but enemies drop more loot or enemies having their stats boosted by 65%, but you get 40% more XP and so on.
I'd probably be doing the game a disservice by not mentioning the blood and corruption mechanics, so here we go. The heroines can go nuclear and enter Massacre Mode when they're splattered with enough monster blood. When in Massacre Mode they have access to some very powerful abilities that can change the tide of battle. It's not all fun and games though, as the girls become more and more corrupted as they fight enemies and if they enter Massacre Mode while at high corruption, Blood Skelter will trigger. Basically, they chimp out. Big time. You can't control them, they deal a ton of extra damage, have access to completely different abilities, and they can attack anyone multiple times. You can have scenarios where your mage goes loses it and blows up the entire party (herself included) and it's game over or she can wipe out your enemies instantly or she just kills herself. How do you deal with this corruption mechanic? Well, the girls can lick the blood off of each other and thus avoid entering Massacre Mode and triggering Blood Skelter. Licking blood also triggers special abilities depending on who's licked. The best way of dealing with this is definitely having the group's Blood Youth fire their special blood at the girls, thus cleansing them of corruption. Oh, and the heroines all magically discard their clothes and are practically naked during Blood Skelter. God, I love Japs so much.
When it comes to equipping your characters with items, you have the option of planting certain crystals in dungeons that will eventually grow into flowers that can be harvested for items. The items you get depend on what crystals are planted, if the soil is fertile, and if the plants are splattered with enough blood to change their color. The harvested equipment can roll with upgrades up to 99 and have special properties such as giving a chance on attack to turn enemies with their backs towards the party, increasing all damage dealt to them and so on.
As in the previous games, the cast is superb and a lot of fun. Jack finally mans up, Red Riding Hood eventually overcomes her daddy issues, Otsuu's still an obsessed stalker and so on. The new blood maidens, Mary, Charlotte and Pyre (her Jap name is Hiaburibashira, that sounds pretty rad) are great. Whenever Mary's is an event, it's bound to be a good one. The antagonists are also very entertaining and a real joy to have on screen. Just like the previous games, this uses Live2D, so VN events are lively enough.
Visually, the game isn't anything to write home about. The graphics do their job and that's about it. This is an Idea Factory/Compile Heart game, so reused assets are to be expected, but there are more reused enemies than there are new ones in this game. Didn't bother me that much, but I can see how this can turn off some people.
The soundtrack is superb. Great OP, ED and amazing tracks throughout the game. There are some tracks from Mary Skelter 2 and Nightmares that are reused in this, but it's alright, they're great tracks.
Story wise, it's alright. Things escalate quite a bit, the stakes are higher, there are multiple twists and turns and the ending is pretty good and very wholesome.
I'd also like to talk about the amount of content you get with Mary Skelter Finale. It comes with quite a few free DLCs that add new classes, some bonus starting items that you can redeem in stores during the first act (those bonus items aren't unique, they're just normal items that you can acquire on your own, and you can simply choose not to redeem them), and two fully voiced visual novels. Both the good and bad endings in this game lead to one of those novels, and they've got quite a good deal of events. There's also a Before Story menu where you can view all the events from Mary Skelter 2 and Nightmares and access all their bonus content such as CGs, character art, concept art, movies, soundtrack and novels.
So, yea, all in all, this is an amazing game. It has some flaws here and there, but nothing that would ruin the experience too much. You really have to give this a go if you're into DRPGs. Definitely game of the year for me.
, I was able to finish the game:
My next foray into Japanese RPGing will be Wizardry Empire 2 probably. Not delving in just yet, first I'm taking a break from gaming for a few weeks and when I do get back I'm working on stuff I left go during that time, but it will happen soon enough. 
oldschool gameplay meets newshit grapphix
