Giten Megami Tensei NSFWW (not safe for work or women!!)

I just plopped Giten into my portable and had a play at it. The complex you begin in is unnecessarily large. However this time I managed to stumble across a VR trainer and try out the battle system. I actually gotta say this could be the most sophisticated traditional Megaten gameplay ever achieved. It's really good actually. I tried to take screenshots but something about the game playing in fullscreen mode or directx wouldn't accept the print screen event.

The fonts are generated by Windows, and with the game being so old the fonts get messed up a lot. And almost every character has extra pixels along the bottom. Probably like in those screenshots you found (the one that showed game text seemed to be having the same issues)

I think sprites use a directx texture filter, so even though they're low resolution the pixels are blurred into one another. This makes the sprites really ugly. They'd probably look better in a low resolution on a smaller display. This might be intentional on the games part, but on a modern display in fullscreen mode its so blurry when closest to the sprite it's like they're etheral beings.

My guess is the PC-98 game would be much better. It shouldn't have any filtering hardware support or font issues, and should be designed to play at a lower resolution.

If I could just figure out a way to force it to play in a window and figure out how to save my game I'd give it a serious play. Then probably wait for PC-98 version to finish it.

The game play itself is pretty cool. The dungeons are actual 3D. On a grid like virtually all Megaten. The rooms however are pretty much just cube mazes with six sided textures which save for doors and stairs are always the same as far as I can tell.

I'm not so sure the demon sprites used in the PC version are the same as the PC-98 version. The PC version look more drawn, while the PC-98 sprites as I recall from that sprite library were more pixel art Famicom style. My memory could just be foggy. Edited: I think actually the PC version is probably just a quick hack to try to make some money off the Windows market back then.

You have a lot of equip, and more stats to pump pts into than ever. Interesting ones at that. I'd list them if that screenshot had worked out. The stats are generally more practical than the old five abstract stat system. You get to assign 1pt per level but also get a fixed set of points. I think those might be distributed based on a choose-your-own-adventure style exam at the beginning of the game (along with your starting stats)

What's really interesting is the gameplay though. It looks like Devil Summoner sort of. But you can see the Devils in the rooms you're in. You can shoot them with a gun from 3 squares away if they're in your line of sight. As you probably could with magic as well. I used a mahajio stone I got from somewhere in the VR game and it cleared out a whole room of Devils. So magic/explosions hit around the squares too. You have a traditional party of six. And plenty of room to store devils. I only got to fight alone however. From two squares away you can do a melee attack. And from one square (facing the Devil) you can attack as well -- being closer might make the attack stronger, or might be required for some attacks. At this closest range the bottom half of the Devil is cutoff by the 6 slot party area on the bottom of the screen. I wish that somehow wasn't the case.

I can't say how totally balanced the gameplay is, but the basic system might be better than any traditional Megaten title honestly. Every piece of equip has a visual graphic, and there are at least as many equip types as in Megaten2, probably more.

I don't really mind the art style or theme, but the NPCs heads often come out pretty messed up. And you get the same NPC graphic no matter how close you get. All the sprites always face you. I'm not positive if DS1 worked that way, but it's easier to keep track of things at least. Also you can see NPC sprites from a distance.

The general thrust of hte character design is acceptable as far as I'm concerned.

Truthfully I think it's kind of interesting. I could program something like this in less than a week in my free time technically. It might even be fun to make a fan game based on it as a demo line. It kind of combines Megaten with King's Field, my too favs... only puts it on rails (I think that is the way the new PSP KF games work anyways) ...but it might even be fun to take it off the rails. Another funny coincidence is I think the company responsible, ASCII, even used to handle NA localization of early Fromsoftware titles including King's Field II.