Title: Shin Megami Tensei 4
Maker: Atlus
System: 3DS
Cost: $39
A pretty veneer for nonexistent changes
When I began “4”, it was my intention to see the latest Shin Megami Tensei through to the end. And as I’ve come close to completing the game, again I find that my desire to see it through isn’t strong enough. There are definite reasons for this: the characters exist only to serve as mirrors, and the difficulty curve that was captivating at the beginning, starts to fall apart mid-way through (especially if you put in extra time outside the main quest). And yet, those problems exist in many great games. So where does it really stumble? And here again, it goes back to that simple A,B,C choice. Technically, there are more than three endings, but in reality they all fall in the same Law, Neutral, and Chaos silos that have framed many (but not all) of the SMT games before it. So as soon as you realize what path you’re on, the illusion disappears, and it becomes the same old grind.
So where does that leave the game? Well, it’s gorgeous (especially the dungeon perspective), it’s creative, it has a decent degree of freedom, and like most SMT games, it allows you the option to do as much or as little as you want. It’s not a bad game by any means, and considering I spent over 30+ hours in the world, there must be something captivating. However, this is not a side project, not a Persona game, but one of the “4” core games, and it deserves better. The previous game in the main series was Nocturne, which came out nearly a decade ago, and from a technical level “4” is a strong improvement, but from a story and emotional level, it’s a rather large retrograde.
Review: 3 Stars (out of 5)
Memory: The Hunter’s Bar background music
