Devil Survivor: Overclocked

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is an excellent strategy RPG for the Nintendo DS. It combines the usual strategy RPG tactics-ness with more traditional turn-based combat - whenever you attack an enemy, the game switches to turn-based combat where you can select your moves and try to exploit your enemies' weaknesses, in classic Shin Megami Tensei style. I'm personally a huge fan of the game - the unique take on strategy rpg, the many different demons and the ability to customize them, and overall fairly good pacing and pretty solid game balance. But today, I'm going to be talking more about the new features of the remake than the game itself.

As I said, the original Devil Survivor was for the Nintendo DS, but the remake, Devil Survivor Overclocked, is for the 3ds, and it adds a number of features. It enhances the graphics, adds demons and skills to further refine the game balance, adds achievements which track the various things you have accomplished, and perhaps most importantly, adds additional content in the form of an extra day (the first game consisted of seven days of story) for three of the five endings.

Remakes, ultimately, serve a few different purposes. Commercially, they target two groups - people who never saw the game the first time around, and people who played the game the first time and enjoyed it enough to buy it again with enhanced features. To target the first market, the game has to make a splash, and most certainly have current gen features and graphics. Thus, the graphical overhaul which Overclocked received. Sadly, Overclocked did not make good use of the 3d effects on the 3ds - most of action takes place on the bottom screen, limiting the 3d to the intro and a brief, generic demon fusion animation. In that way, I think it was somewhat of a failure - it is unlikely to draw too many new players in if they know that it doesn't even take advantage of one of the 3ds's main draws.

In terms of improving the game experience, however, the game performs quite well. The rebalanced demons and abilities are fairly well done, with only a few mild exceptions. The biggest draw, the eighth day, is a bit disappointing in that only three of the five endings have it - in a game where the morality is supposed to be somewhat subjective and no path is the right or wrong path (mostly), adding bonus content to some of the paths and not others effectively punishes you in the gameplay for perfectly fine story decisions. This, obviously, isn't ideal, and while the problem existed in the first game as well to a lesser extent, it's exacerbated here. With that said, the choices in which you get no bonus content still wrap up their storylines effectively, and the lack of bonus content isn't too bad, but it's nevertheless fairly annoying. Additionally, the 8th day content that does exist is quite fun and well-made, and doesn't feel simply tacked-on.

All in all, this is certainly the definitive version of Devil Survivor, and I enjoyed it very much and strongly recommend it to anyone who has a 3ds and enjoys strategy RPG's. Here's what I garnered from the experience of the remake:

-While not updating the game's assets to match the current generation for a remake does not take away from the game itself, it makes it less likely that a new player will be interested in the game. Ideally, you want to make the game physically match the current gen.
-New content added in a remake shouldn't feel simply tacked on and should integrate naturally with the existing game.

Magic: The Gathering: Innistrad!

The latest set of Magic: The Gathering just had its prerelease tournaments last weekend, which I attended, and I thought I'd say a few words about the set.

First of all, the flavor of the set (gothic horror), is shown in the cards quite well. Vampires, werewolves, zombies, and spirits (along with humans) are the major players in Innistrad. They each have their own schticks - werewolves transform between human and wolf forms, humans get boosts from various types of equipment and generally for interacting with other humans, vampires suck blood in various ways (gaining power from hurting players, healing the player whenever they deal damage) along with occasionally touching the other archetypal vampire powers (turning into a bat, hypnosis and vampiric conversion), and zombies come in both the garden variety and the frankenstein's monster variant. The frankenstein's monster zombies are portrayed cleverly, and use the graveyard (the mechanical focus of the set) in a clever way - consuming the creatures within it as a requirement to play them (IE, stitching the monster together from the dead creatures).

One thing that I would particularly like to say is that the transformation mechanic for werewolves turned out to be lots of fun. At first, when I saw it, it seemed to be fairly odd and not particularly logical, but after having played with the cards, I enjoyed it quite a bit. They go from human to wolf form when no player casts a spell in a turn, and go from wolf to human when a single player casts two or more spells in a turn. On paper, it seemed to be quite arbitrary, to me, but after having played with them and seen their power, the limitation and interaction of the triggers with the players' actions works quite well. In order to transform your werewolves to wolf form, you have to hold back (most of the time, anyway - you may get lucky and have your opponent play no spells, which is a nice bonus), and in order to force your opponents wolves back to human form, you have to play lots of things, potentially storing up spells to retransform your opponents cards.

All in all, I really liked what I saw of the set. Admittedly, I didn't see that much of it in one night, but I definitely intend to look at it more closely in the coming months. Regardless, the thing I most took out of the prerelease was the following:

-Sometimes, game mechanics that seem clunky at first glance actually work well in practice. Playtesting these mechanics is especially critical - if they don't feel fairly natural to the players in practice, then the players will quickly form negative opinions of them.
-Allowing the players to directly manipulate states of the game by doing things that they would already do, but in slightly different ways than usual, can be quite fun for them.