The Megami Tensei series is one of the longest-running JRPG franchises in the history of video games, yet until very recently it was almost unknown among Western audiences. As a JRPG hipster I've played most of the modern games, but unlike a JRPG hipster I want as many people as possible to play them. To encourage this, I'll do a retrospective of recent games in the MegaTen franchise, in reverse chronological order.
Series Overview
To begin with, I thought it prudent to mention properties that almost all games in the series have in common. There are exceptions, and I'll mention them when it's relevant. MegaTen is a truly massive franchise, with multiple side stories that have become franchises themselves. Despite this, they are all descended from dungeon crawlers, being some of the unconditional titles in that genre. To begin with, the games are time sinks, typically taking between 60-80 hours to complete the basic story. Very difficult turn-based combat is the mechanic of choice, and the MegaTen franchise was one of the first to have a mechanic popularized by Pokémon: the ability to convince enemies to join your party and fight for you. In addition, you can also fuse these demons (it's usually demons, but even when it's not the fusion mechanic is still there). Fusion is vital, as you can't recruit all enemies and the skills you've grafted to your new demon may not be learned normally. The stories of MegaTen games are also significantly darker than the stereotype of the happy-go-lucky JRPGS, often featuring apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings. With all that said, let's get to the games!
Persona 4: The Popular, Mainstream One
This game is very yellow, color-wise
This is the one most people have heard of, if they've heard of it at all. Persona 4 is incredibly popular in America and Japan, with huge merchandising, and animated adaptation, a updated re-release for the PS Vita (Persona 4: The Golden), and a spin-off fighting game bridging the stories of Persona 3 and Persona 4 (Person 4: Arena). The story focusing on the unnamed main character moving to a small country town in Japan, where a strange fog rolls in to town followed by a serial killer. The protagonist teams up with his high school friends to solve the mystery, which (due to the protagonist's ridiculous power to climb inside a television) leads them to the Midnight Channel, to fight the dark side of man's collective unconscious. The story is very character focused, each level being generated by the dark side of whatever particular character is trapped in the Midnight Channel. This brings a lot of character development to the game, while the murder mystery overplot is well paced and gives you a constant goal to focus on.
It's got naughty pix abounding, and on the surface seems like your average sleazy Japanese game. But the developers insisted it was a deep exploration of sexuality and adulthood, so I remained interested.
Since Catherine was released in North America last month, plenty has been written about its elegant handling of sexual identities and mature themes. Something fewer people have touched on is the context of all this arty stuff.
It's not an RPG. It's a puzzle game.
You read that correctly. Catherine's gameplay is split into three parts: lengthy anime cutscenes, RPG-style nights hanging out at the local pub, and the core of the game--Q*bert-style block-climbing puzzles.
But how can a puzzle game have a deep storyline?
We're stuck in the idea that puzzle games have to be simple. All the most iconic puzzle titles are incredibly minimalist: Tetris, Bejeweled, and Lumines don't really have anything at all resembling a story. In fact, they don't even really have a "fiction"; they're just abstract images used to convey gameplay.
There are a few popular puzzle games with slightly deeper fictions. Puzzle Quest features some fantasy RPG elements, and the Professor Layton games feature Studio Ghibli-style art. But in both of these games, the stories are only superficial packaging for the core gameplay, which is still simple puzzle fare at heart.
So does Catherine do anything different than Professor Layton? At the end of the day, the protagonistVincent could be replaced with a generic stick figure, and the gameplay would still succeed. But the puzzles themselves serve a purpose in the story: they're allegory for Vincent dealing with the emotional consequences of his infidelity towards his girlfriend, and his anxiety towards maturation and adulthood.
Yes, this is still superficial. The puzzles would work without the story. But through their connection to the fiction, they made me feel more invested in Vincent as a character during the non-puzzle sections. We understand the puzzles as explorations of Vincent's psyche, and that immerses us more in the story. As great as Puzzle Quest and Professor Layton are, neither are able to accomplish this, and as a result their stories come off as much more unnecessary. With Catherine, I loved the puzzles, but I can honestly say I wouldn't have enjoyed them nearly as much if it weren't for their deeply-bedded connection to the storyline.
Series Overview
