The New Classics #54: Mary Skelter Finale

 

The Backstory: Despite not liking the series’ second instalment, I never questioned the logic of buying that (supposedly) final one. For one, it’s much more affordable than its predecessor; for another, it’s a first-person dungeon crawler, and I’ll be damned if I don’t give every single game belonging to the genre its fair chance to shine. 

 

 

The Game: I knew right away that my tolerance and perseverance would be rewarded big time. Not only are cutscenes nicely skippable, but the yuckiness that bothered me in the second entry is entirely absent. No more decaying and sickly hues, no more repulsive body horror displays: in lieu of all that grossness come dungeons choke-full of light and bright colours and a cute cast from the whole series.

 

 

Even better is a feature that I cannot remember encountering in any FPDC: namely, the possibility to switch between teams of characters — and get some crawling and story progression under your belt as you do so. MSF is obviously meant to be a choral game, in which every character gets to be handled and to shine; and while the switching feels a bit jerky and not entirely natural, it works great nonetheless, and really brings something new and fresh to the FPDC formula.

 

 

Last but not least is the fighting system. I didn’t fight enough to witness the game’s specific features in that department— blood splatter, Licking, Massacre and Blood Skelter states — but I sure fought enough to notice that combat is impossibly fast-paced and enthralling, and that I very much wanna get more of it. Mary Skelter being Mary Skelter, I had to encounter a Nightmare — i.e. the local version of F.O.E.S. from Etrian Odyssey — in the first fifteen minutes of play; but I managed to escape the thing without breaking a sweat. Either I grew desensitized to such monstrosities in FPDCs, or Compile Heart toned down the stress factor — either way, it only makes things better.

 

 

The Verdict: I very much wanna get more of Mary Skelter Finale — New Classic, yes please! Cherry on the cake, I can also let go of the second entry without a second thought, and explore the first without worrying.