Forgot to post this a week ago.
Finally beat Apocalypse. Clocked in at around 64 hours, or 13 more hours than IV.
Overall a great game, though I think I did have a number of mixed feelings with it. The story is an absolute mess and the characters are just mediocre. I almost wanted to go for Anarachy to kill them off, but Dagda was honestly more insufferable to me than the other characters. Most of the companions are tolerable at best. Navarre and Gaston are the best of them, although Gaston is a terrible companion gameplay-wise. Toki is by far the worst of them. I actually liked her in the beginning, but she turns into such a creep all of a sudden with that Master bullshit. I started to dislike Nozomi after she ratted our Nanashi and Asahi, but then I realized I didn’t actually care. Asahi was whatever. Hallelujah was forgettable. I totally hated the Nanashi circlejerk btw. Everyone obsessing over a protagonist is one of my most hated tropes in anything, and it’s done excessively in this game. That sh
it reminded me of Sword Art Online.
They really did amp up the anime in this game. I hated
everything about that Mephisto DLC, except for Mephisto himself. And the idea of a bunch of annoying anime teenagers lecturing god on the power of friendship was hilarious to me.
Speaking of the DLC, I only fought Mephisto and Cleopatra. I fused Cleopatra who ended up becoming probably my best demon in a Megaten game period. Thanks to her I defeated Mephisto in a few turns. Cleopatra as a boss herself was difficult though, probably because I didn't have an equivalent to her as when I fought Mephisto. Regardless, I ended the game with Cleopatra, Krishna, and Xi Wangmu. Inanna, Shiva, and Alice also helped out a bit.
Didn’t bother with Stephen’s DLC. I don’t have the patience for that. The game loves throwing obnoxious boss rushes at you, and I didn't want to do another one. The most egregious example was the Merkabah-Lucifer fights in Camp Ichigaya. This is basically where I learned to set my party’s experience to just before they all level up, just so I could get my MP back before the next boss. This whole segment was definitely the worst part of the game for me, and I contemplated taking an extensive break. Things quickly improved when I reached the Cosmic Egg though. Nearly every boss from then onwards was super fun.
There are a lot of things they certainly improved upon. They reworked Smirk and turned light and dark skills into actual elements, which was a huge bonus. I also liked that Tokyo’s map wasn’t a total clusterfuck like it was in IV. The dungeons had more going on than IV's. I caved and used a guide for the final dungeon because it looked like a disaster to me.
I did not like the app progression much in this game. Limiting my demons’ number of skills until I reached 75 dulled the fun I had with fusing. I don’t know, maybe this was a way to balance the game‘a difficulty, but I didn’t like it. Fusing didn’t really become that fun for me until after I finally had all 8 slots available. Kind of felt like I was wasting points getting basic features I had in 4 and Nocturne, like fully healing HP and MP after leveling up.
I don’t know how to compare this game’s difficulty with IV, because I played IV on Normal and Apocalypse on War. IV gave me a ton of trouble in Naraku, and then it kind of just stopped being hard after I beat Medusa. The difficulty curve in Apocalypse's War mode felt very appropriate throughout. There weren’t really any moments where I felt the game was too easy, and aside from the aforementioned boss rushes, I did not feel that the game was difficult to the point of being obnoxious. It was a pretty reasonable challenge throughout.
Few nitpicks, uhh the traps were
really stupid and annoying, and I still don’t understand their reasoning for putting them in the game. I wish more bosses had close-ups when you fight them. Those felt more intense. The Navarre sword puzzles were lame. I think that’s it.
Overall it’s a great game even though all I did was whine in this post.
