Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call

8.9
Great

Gameplay	8.0	"This the kind of game you either love or hate."
Graphics	9.0
Sound	9.0
Value	9.0

By Sherrin English

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It's been a long time between PS2 RPGs. In fact the last good one was Shadow Hearts: Covenant at the beginning of the year, but the drought has finally been broken, and very dramatically so. Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call has arrived and, I would imagine, a whole new bunch of NZ fans will soon be joining the already buzzing international forums clambering for more games, more posters, more t-shirts, more hints, more help, in fact, more anything megaten. Megaten? Yes, megaten. Megaten is the endearingly shortened form of Shin Megami Tensei, which I admit is rather a mouthful - even when pronounced correctly; "shin MEH-gah-mee TEN-say."

As well as being a long time coming, SMT: Lucifer's Call has undergone some major changes before it graced our favourite game shop's shelves. It originally came to life at Atlus, Japan, under the name Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. The third in the already extremely popular Shin Megami Tensei series to be released for the PS2 was such an overwhelming success that another version quickly followed. SMT: Nocturne Maniacs contained extra FMVs, a bonus optional dungeon, a hard mode that was no longer hidden, several power-ups and an additional ending to the four already on offer. But the most talked about, and surprising, was the inclusion of Capcom’s demon hunter, Dante, from the Devil May Cry series. It was this Maniacs, or Director’s Cut, version that Atlus released in the US late last year, under the simplified name of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. And now, 9 months later, it’s been brought to PAL by Ghostlight, UbiSoft, under the name of Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer’s Call.

If you played either of the two Persona games on PS1 a number of years ago you’ll immediately recognise the style and the look, but this is no mere Persona, oh no! Persona is a megaten-lite compared to this beauty. There is no asking nicely for items or dancing for demons in this game, although if you do ask a demon in the right way, and never at a full Kagutsuchi (moon), he, or she, might just join your party. In fact this is how you build up your party numbers as you start the game quite alone.

The game begins with a first-person, out-of-focus, dream sequence in which you see a beautiful woman telling you that a momentously catastrophic event, called ‘The Conception,’ is about to occur which requires the world to completely die out in order to be reborn again, and in which you will play a major part. Bizarre? Yes. Exciting? Very. Someone blows up the world and you get to put it back together again! Sounds like fun to me, as well as being a bit of a challenge. And a challenge it is indeed with 5 different endings that are reached not so much KOTOR II or Fable-like where your answers to various NPCs questions govern the outcome, rather it’s the philosophy, or ‘Reason’ you hold to that shapes the rebuilding. And just as in life, there are no simple, black or white, answers, but several shades of grey. There are, however, a few times where you will be forced to make black-and-white choices, but the answers you give are never ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ and you’ll end up in a fight no matter how you answer. But hey, that’s what makes it such a fun game.

After the dream sequence - in which you name your character - you find that you fell asleep on the train as you go to meet a couple of school friends on their way to visit your teacher in hospital. On leaving the train you learn that a local park has been closed because of violent fights between two opposing cults, and curious to know more you make your way there. However it’s deserted except for a journalist who hands you the latest copy of a cult magazine, which details a doomsday prophecy for Tokyo. From there you make your way to the hospital, and your friends, only to find that the entire hospital is eerily deserted - except for a strange young man and his elderly aide, but they disappear before your eyes. After a brief look around you stumble across a man sitting in front of a strange drum-like machine, and just as he proposes to kill you your teacher – the one from the dream – intervenes, takes responsibility for you and invites you to the roof to view the destruction of everything but the hospital you stand on. And as you watch Tokyo implode - more with a whimper than and bang - she says that you must find her later, that she will explain and help you. And then she, like everyone else, is gone. Afterwards, the mysterious young man and his elderly aide appear to you again and while some force holds you down the ‘Young Master’ drops a strange looking creature into you which turns you into a demon form of yourself, complete with patterned skin and new powers. And thus your adventures in demon-ridden post-apocalyptic Tokyo begin.

Until this time you are unable to access your main menu to issue commands, view your stats or use items, not that you will need to, but once your main menu is accessible the ‘grid’ where your one active magatama is glowing is worth a visit. Magatama is the source of all your demonic powers, and by ingesting – rather than equipping – magatama you learn different skills and boost your stats. Magatama may be purchased, won as the spoils of combat, by completing side quests, or they can even be found in unusual places. Each of the 25 magatama impart different physical, elemental, magical or status attacks and offer support magic or skills, so it is vital in combat that you use magatama to your advantage and ingest the correct magatama prior to battle so that you can exploit your enemy’s weaknesses.

SMT: Lucifer’s Call uses ‘Press Turns’ in combat. Which means that each party member’s turn is signified by a blue stylised demonic face on the upper right of the screen - red for the enemy. By exploiting an enemy’s weakness, not only do you deal more damage, but you also only use half a turn icon. So by continually hitting your enemy with attacks that take advantage of his weakness it is possible to destroy him before he gets a turn at you. If, however, the enemy is immune to your attack two turn icons will be used. Of course it is slightly more difficult to predict what your enemy’s weakness will be in a random encounter, but a Boss fight can be heavily weighted your way with the right magatama and well thought out party composition.

When you stumble into one of the many random encounters, aside from the usual physical, magic and special attacks you also have a ‘talk’ option, which allows you to attempt to recruit one of the enemies facing you. Some may join you outright, but many of the demons will ask for items; some for money, others for some of your health and still others ask your opinion on certain matters. Some will take everything you have to offer and then run away while some cannot be approached at all. And in some instances a demon may stop the battle to plead for his life and ask to join you. But however you acquire your allies this is how you increase your party numbers. While the number you can have is capped you can keep within the limit by ‘fusing’ two demons together to make another, separate, one.

Just like your character, your demon allies level up and learn new skills too. But unlike you, as they get stronger they ‘transform’ into a higher rank of the same class. This new demon will usually carry over the skills it had before as well as acquiring new ones ready for levelling up. At the Cathedral of Shadows, you can ‘fuse’ two separate demons together to create another that is more powerful than one of the same race that you could recruit. There is more to ‘fusion’ that just combining Demon A with Demon B to produce Demon C, however, but the beauty of SMT: Lucifer’s Call, is that you can make it as simple, or as complicated, as you wish. Once you have fought some of the higher level Bosses it is possible to create them by fusion for inclusion in your party. Dante is one ally, however, that can neither be fused nor created by fusion. Also at the Cathedral of Shadows is the Demonic Compendium in which you should record every demon you have recruited, created or fused for future use.

Like all other megatens before it, SMT: Lucifer’s Call has a distinctive look and feel about it. If you like your games staged in verdant forests, shadowy brick dungeons or rustic fantasy villages with NPCs milling about you’re in for a large shock. The settings of shopping malls, high-rise buildings and crumbling office blocks all have the same gothic-inspired starkness and finality about them, where nothing unnecessary is included. If there is an NPC you need to talk to him/her, if a door, you need to go through it, a ladder, you need to climb it. If it is there, it is there for a reason. There is very little ‘decoration’ and everything has the same eerie, starkly final look. The cell-shaded characters are all the work of Kazuma Kaneko and although the bright colours and swaying motion seems, at first, an odd combination you soon realise that they fit in so very well. And without doubt many of the myriad demons, deities, entities, gods and angels you face, and maybe eventually fight alongside, you will recognise.

SMT: Lucifer’s Call is a work of art in itself, but it doesn’t end there. The soundtrack is as oddly juxtaposed as the visuals. Techno-funk booms out in perfect accord with traditional Japanese music, heavy-metal combos well with light jazz, and the bass-heavy riff that announces combat puts you instantly in the mood for some biff. The demons too, have their own voice during battle; pixies airily sigh, blobs hoot, unicorns neigh, loans roar, dogs bark, birds caw and giants grunt, giving them distinctive personalities. In fact, these are the only sounds the characters make, as there is no voice acting at all. But the up side for a fair amount of reading means there are no badly chosen voice actors.

Yes, SMT: Lucifer’s Call is as distinctly different as it is engrossing. If the same old ‘save the world’ RPG fare is beginning to look and feel a little jaded, then SMT: Lucifer’s Call is just what you have been searching for. A refreshing change of pace, an experience unlike anything you have faced before and a plot that is as challenging as it is interesting awaits you in this exciting new game from Ghostlight and UbiSoft.

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