Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
 

Short Version: Play it motherfuckers.

Really, really liking this game. I was worried I would be annoyed by a lot of stuff like I was with Persona PSP, but this is great. It's got a first person battle view like in Dragon Quest, though the sprites aren't as pretty. The music is great, and a lot of the characters stand out to me more than they did in Nocturne, particularly the demon ones. I'm not talking crap on Nocturne, just that this game feels a little heavier on story and character stuff than that one was.

One thing I was worried about was that them trying to make a sci-fi story would actually end up pretty dumb, but this is good. You've got some stuff that feels very much like an American sci-fi flick, though you get some bad with the good. ( The black guy dies first :/) You also have a similar idea to stuff from Gunbuster or Eureka Seven.

The gameplay isn't as good as Nocturne, but there's some experimentation going on, and you gotta appreciate that. Rather than the turn system in Nocturne, hitting an enemy with a weakness triggers any of your party members of the same alignment to do a follow up attack. It's very minimal damage at first, but it grows. As a result, I find myself trying to make everyone in my party the same alignment, and using the system that way is definitely cool. Oh, and you can fuse or register demons whenever you want. That's pretty boss.

Last but not least: Mastema may be an even more badass angel than Metatron.

Sounds cool. I'll have to look into getting. Probably won't be played anytime soon, Pokemon has me extremely occupied right now, but at least I'll have it.

My DS is broken, so I am sad.

Atlus aren't interested in selling it to me, so fuck them.

Bought it, but I won't be able to play it until after A: finals are over and B: I play (and beat) SMT: Devil Survivor.

Okay, I get that you live in Europe, and that a lot of games don't get ported over there. Bitterness, yeah I get it.

But seriously? ATLUS is a pathetically small company and they DON'T HAVE A EUROPEAN WING, just import the damn game.

It's not like the DS is region locked.

One thing I'm starting to suspect is that this is actually going to be fairly short compared with other Atlus jRPGs. Unless it pulls a "Nope you're only halfway through!" bit fairly soon, the game is looking to be about twenty-five hours long. I'm thinking a lot of the focus is probably being put on replay because of the alignments. Why anyone would choose an alignment other than hanging out with Mastema boggles my mind, though. I'm not complaining about the length, because it's actually kinda convenient for me, just pointing it out.

If it follows Etrian Odyssey's stratum deal, oh man, you're screwed.

Minor Length-Only Related Spoilers Herein:

According to IGN, a single playthrough's supposed to take 70-80 hours long, assuming you do all additional sidequests / optional content.