Finally beat Shin Megami Tense II
I wanted to talk about this first because it really was the only part I'm geniunely just good not having not to go through again, and I want to get the negative out the way so I can get to talking about the stuff I actually want to talk about. Which sucks honestly cause in my opinion the game succeed in so many other places. I found the gameplay to be either dull or just straight up boring. The battles were extremely one note since to get through most encounters you just have to spam your gun which with the right bullets will either stone or put an enemy to sleep. And I found the amount of back tracking to be a bit frustrating but this got way beter when I unlocked Traport. I will admit that these thoughts are definitely informed by having played SMT III before 2 I couldn't get out of my head how 3 would go on to fix a lot of these issues and that's not fair to 2 but it was part of my experience with the game and I have to recognize that. But don't get me wrong I absouluetly recognizethat 2 improved on a lot from 1 I found the demon summoning to be way stronger. Seeing the amount of new demons introduced was one of my favorite parts of the whole experience.
An aspect of the gamplay that works with the narative so well is the conversations with the demons. I believe that the wau these conversations help characterize Aleph is so cool. We know that Aleph has never had the chance to be a person. But through these conversations we see a sid eof Aleph he doesn't get to show not just because he is a silent protag but because the forces around him force him to be a silent tool. He gets flustered when talking to certain demons, he dances and does gun tricks to impress them, he can answer their questions and give his perscpective separate from the center or someone else. And I know this is more to give personality to the game overall rather to to Aleph himself. This is just the humor of SMT the interactions are not all that different from the interactions in 1, but even if it is only a headcannon within the story of 2 the story of Aleph they hit different to me.
I have to talk about the atmosphere and just the world in Shin Megami Tensei II. It genuinely pisses me off that I don't the vocab to really do it justice. One of the parts that I love about Shin Megami as whole but I felt really shined in 2 as oppsed to 1 and 3 was the merging of occult imagery with a Sci-Fi post apocapalypse. Nothing is ever truly magic until you reach the abyss which is the orgin place of the occult demons. A quick example of this is how in the cathedral of shadows yes there is a magic involved but demons need to be dissovled in vats first befor ethey can be fused. It's a small detail but I noticed and I thought it was awesome. Also the sprite work is top snotch. The game captures the energy of ruined bleak world perfectly but I think what makes that energy so poignant is the attitude that the citzens of this bleak have taken toward it. The humor of the game is very matter of a fact it gives the energy of a people that has accepted and adapted to their situation. and jesus christ I almost forgot to talk about the music. Its good.
First of all I need to say how glad I am that I played 1 before this. Actually seeing and playing throough the events that led to the events that led to this world in 2 was extremely satisfying. Especially with the long lasting effects like the mutants these are the decendants of the people I talked to in Tokyo back in SMT 1 being oppresesd it helped really grow attach to them and their mission to just the sun.
I think that for my sake I take on talking about the narrative through the lense of Aleph. Aleph was fabriacted by to serve a purpose of robbed of any freedom, he more of a tool than a person. But throughout the game we see him gain more and more freedom. First he is forced to fight in order to gain access to center to access some sort of luxurary. As soon as he reaches the center is told that he is meant a different purpose as the messiah and has to fufiil of the center. He basically goes from one form slavery to another and he is told that this is what he is meant to do, and that this is what's best for the world. This all leads up to Aleph learning that he was created by the center and not just him buteveryone around him was created by the center to build up his story Daleth was meant to be his rival cause you can't have a hero without a villain, Hiroko's body was used against her will to give birth to him(Hiroko was severly under explored as well as Beth the female protags were under explored here and in SMT 1 c'mon now) , Zayin was not only a tool of the center but once he rebelled against him it turned that he was a tool of god as well leading to them having to clash (in the chaos route which I chose) even though it is shown when they were fighting against the center that they could get along.
Throughout this whole game forces are working to strip Aleph of hsis freedom, which is why I chose the Chaos route for Aleph. The thousand year kingdom represents the idea of giving up your freedom for saftey and this exactly the position where Aleph was at the beginning of the story. So even though the world will be scary without guidance you would no longer have to meet up to the standards of somebody else in order to live, in order to even see the sun.
I have so many more thoughts and I rambled and didn't properly explain in the thoughts I did write down but I loved this game check it.
