HASVERS'S PROFILE

Well, I leveled for two full hours (you should really give more exp with those monsters) but I finally got him. Then I saved. Then I beat "The End". Then I got on the boat. Then I opened the menu to save, and the game crashed. Twice. Admit it, secretly you don't want me to see the end of this game :p I will though, I definitely will.

It's the first time that the menu crashing bug has happened to me twice in the same situation, so maybe there's something with that map (each time I waited a bit before trying to open the menu).

I'm sorry but, as much as I liked this game in the beginning, I find it really awfully frustrating by moments. I appreciate the principle of having some challenge, but when my strategy is as optimized as can be and the only thing I can do is repeat the same procedure again and again praying for the random number generator not to one-hit-kill me from full-health-full-buff-full-debuff state after twenty turns of painstaking progress, I'm not having fun anymore.
It would appear I'm badly underlevelled (lvl 22 against The Dream), then again level progression was not fast enough for me to imagine that I was that far from the normal level, and I managed to beat The Slaughterer with just the right amount of challenge (and even went as high as ~8000 dmg against The Dream once). I overwrote my save after having delivered Astra, therefore I'm basically stuck, unless I redo the whole dream section. I think by now I have spent more time trying to beat the boss than going through this whole section, actually, but it also makes the idea of backtracking somewhat unappealing. I suppose if I can't beat it anytime soon I'll just quit the game. It pains me after more than 10 hours, but pleasure is really losing terrain to frustration. It already had with some earlier boss fights, and I really dislike grinding but I did put up with it just for the sake of seeing more of the game.

Anyway, sorry if I sound bitter, I guess I'm just not the best target for this kind of unforgiving gameplay (you can probably tell I'm not too fond of most Shin Megami Tensei !). I seem to be the only one to have become this frustrated, so it is more probable that the problem comes from me. Don't let my comment get you down - but perhaps do include a switchable easy mode in a future version, or something like that, just to avoid getting eternally stuck.

Other than that, it is a very lovely and endearing game, and I had a great time with most of it. I loved the parts where the atmosphere evoked a slightly eerie and dissonant fairytale, with beautiful scenes and subtle contrasts of childish happiness and cruelty everywhere - and was a bit less convinced whenever the tone became a tad more standard-fantasyish and straightforward, for instance in some dialogues with the bad guys. I'm not sure how to clarify this remark and render it more constructive, but lots and lots of things fit perfectly in the bittersweet atmosphere (starting with the smallest details like the scarecrows or the whole lumps of clay business), while others were slightly off-key, such as the villains coming off as more fantasy-evil than fairytale-evil in their dialogues, if you get my (admittedly vague) meaning.

But the charming setting and sheer likeability of the main cast, as well as some poetic or emotional scenes, largely made up for it all. And even the gameplay was much better than a whole lot of standard RPGs, and I would have liked it without most of my current reservations if not for the really unfair combos.

Boy did it get kicked. I appreciate having some harder fights, but the times when the bird just one-shotted everyone were a bit discouraging. Still, after 10 tries or so I managed to beat it, mostly thanks to Poison !

Haha thanks, but Kara is now stuck after her second dialogue. She simply ignores me whenever I try to speak with her. She really doesn't like us, does she ?

Also, the expert mode is indeed more challenging and fun with the new feature (and I'll keep looking for the way to access the masochist level), although as of now I only tried fights on random maps which are somewhat lacking in hard enemies (still poor Luke's become real cannon fodder, he is killed before he can do anything in most battles). I'll start the chapter once again, at least to see how hard the bounty hunts become in this mode.

By the way I'm very happy since the fragment frequency has increased, fragments are so much better than loot !

author=calunio
Well, I'll admit I'm kinda surprised that no one disagree or said anything about my views on Surrealism.

Well it's quite hard to disagree on what defines surrealism as an historical movement. As most movements, it's basically a group of people who knew each other, had more or less common influences and themes and more or less divergent goals, from the political views of André Breton to the pure ego-cult of Dali.

However, trying to categorize something as surrealist outside of this time period and the people who actually called themselves and each other surrealists is quite difficult, as it existed largely in its opposition to the "mainstream" movements, before becoming one of them. Nowadays any japanese videoclip employs what could have been described as a particularly heavy brand of surrealism a few decades ago - it has become part of classical culture, at least in the visual and narrative arts, and as such it cannot still be a living movement. An artist can choose it as an influence, but there's not much to add to it.

However I agree that surrealism still has to be introduced in the game mechanics themselves : Mario is visually surreal, but it's just a matter of skinning, and with appropriate graphics the whole game could be, if not realistic, at least less shocking to common sense (well, jumping on the ennemies' heads to kill them is still a bit weird).
Which is why, as I said, I would like to know how you would have implemented your views on surrealism in an actual game.