2017 has been an interesting year for video games. We’ve had a number of excellent new releases this year, the PS4 and Xbox One have been churning on with another successful year and Nintendo rolled out the Switch, a console that many people are gushing over but I’m still 50/50 on.
Among all of this however the humble PlayStation Vita, now over 5 years old is still very much alive and kicking with new games still coming out for it.
While 2017 hasn’t been anywhere near as active in terms of vita games as 2016 had been we have still seen some very solid releases this year. Out of the 2017 line up however there has been one game that I have had my eye on since the announcement trailer. That game is Mary Skelter, a DRPG developed by Compile Heart and published by Idea Factory.
The first thing that caught my eye about the game was how much of a drastic departure it was from what Compile Heart usually does. The company is more known for it’s Neptunia series so when I saw that Mary Skelter was going to be a game with a much darker theme to it with a much heavier focus on plot I was rather surprised. Granted at the time I never thought it would actually get localized so imagine my surprise when an official localization was announced by Idea Factory.
I’ve been looking forward to playing and reviewing this game for quite a while so without any further fanfare lets begin exploring the jail.
Story:
Right off the bat Mary Skelter provides a very interesting setting and premise. The opening details that the world of Mary Skelter takes place in a sort of post apocalyptic unamed city in Japan that many years ago was taken over by a race known as Marchins while the land around them transformed in a living, breathing jail.
Our two main characters, Jack and Alice, are one of many people trapped in this living jail, forced to live their days undergoing various types of torture in order to appease the living jail they are trapped inside. Things change for the pair one day though when they are suddenly broken out of their cell by a girl who calls herself Red Riding Hood (yes, really).
They escape and join a group known as DAWN whose main goal is to escape this living jail that they’re inside. Naturally this involves Alice and Jack working with the other members of the DAWN to fight their way through various dungeons with a hope of escaping.
In terms of actual story, while not groundbreaking or anything Mary Skelter does manage to provide an interesting and rather unique premise with a decent amount of mystery and character interactions.
Overall while Mary Skelter doesn’t exactly sport a groundbreaking story what it has is certainly enjoyable and unique. It does feel like Compile Heart put a lot more effort into the premise, character interactions and the overall plot than they have in other titles which is really nice to see. It’s not going to win any awards any time soon but it’s certainly above average.
Gameplay:
Mary Skelter, as I mentioned earlier is a Dungeon Crawler RPG. DRPG’s have always been a bit of a mixed bag with me. Some of them I enjoy but some of them I just... don’t.
It doesn’t help that the last dungeon crawler title I actually reviewed was MeiQ Labyrinth of Death, a relatively mediocre DRPG also by Compile Heart. With that in mind the gameplay would really be what would make or break Mary Skelter and in this case I think Compile Heart hit the ball out of the park.
Mary Skelter plays like your traditional DRPG. Walk around dungeons in a first person perspective going between floors, solving the odd puzzle here and there and fighting enemies in turn based random encounter battles. The base DRPG formula remains relatively unchanged however that isn’t to say that Mary Skelter is just another bare bones DRPG, in fact it’s quite the opposite.
Where the gameplay in Mary Skelter starts to shine is in the smaller things that they have added or tweaked. The game adds a surprising number of unique mechanics which I haven’t seen before in other DRPG’s and they really work in the games favour.
The first and most often utilized of these mechanics is the Blood system. Alice and the various other characters you’ll run into throughout the game are known as Blood Maidens. Blood Maidens have the special power to wield what are called Blood Weapons as well as the ability to actually effectively fight the Marchins. Marchin blood also helps extend the powers of a Blood Maiden in battle allowing for higher damage output and other such goodies.
This is where the blood mechanic comes in. How this works is that each Blood Maiden has what is called a “Blood Splat Meter”. There are a few ways to fill up this meter. The first way is by exploiting enemy weak spots by using the correct elemental weakness. The second way is by performing what is called an Overkill which is usually triggered when a character deals a blow to an enemy that is more than enough to kill them (for example if I dealt 100 damage to an enemy with only 10 HP left).
Performing either of these actions fills the Blood Splat Meter which the player can then use to perform a few actions. Firstly if the meter fills up to the top then on their next turn the Blood Maiden will enter massacre mode which significantly boosts damage output as well as applying a minor HP and SP regen effect.
There is a downside though. As Blood Maidens are dealt more and more damage or get K.O’d the colour of the blood in the splat meter will start to grow darker. The darker the colour the higher the chance a Blood Maiden has of entering Blood Skelter mode.
Blood Skelter mode is something you REALLY want to avoid. Upon activation a maiden receives the buffs of massacre mode but will attack both enemies and party members without any rhyme or reason. It’s something you need to be constantly aware of while playing since if you end up overlooking it then it can come back to bite you fast.
Now there is a way to prevent and counteract blood skelter but I’ll touch on that later.
The second use of blood in the Splat Meter is through the act of Licking. Yes, you read that right, Licking.
The Lick option in the command menu lets you Lick the splattered blood off of a party member. Outside of being a bit weird this does actually have a use to it since the act of licking blood off a maiden actually applies a buff or boost to either one member or the whole party. This could be an HP regen effect, SP regen effect, stat boost etc.
The act of licking also empties the Blood Splat Meter so it can be a good way of buying yourself time if you have a maiden on the verge of entering blood skelter since it resets the meter.
Jack is also a member in the party but he plays a bit differently to the rest of the members. For starters he can’t attack, instead he has the ability to use items, guard a blood maiden to block them from damage and most importantly use his special weapon called a Mary Gun.
I say weapon but you use it more like a supporting item. The Mary Gun is the main way you prevent blood maidens from entering Blood Skelter.
In a nutshell, Jacks blood has the unique trait of being able to purge corruption from a blood maiden as well as completely reverse the effects of blood skelter. This does come at a cost though since you are literally using Jacks blood as ammunition. This means you can’t just go around spamming the thing willy nilly since you have to keep a close eye on your own blood supply.
The less blood you have remaining, the higher your chances of getting stunned and being unable to move after performing an action with the Mary Gun. You do have an option to generate blood when Jacks turn rolls around and most of the time if you play your cards right Jack’s blood supply will rarely drop below halfway (this is where strategic use of licking comes into play since it can buy you time to generate more blood to purge the corruption).
It’s a very well implemented system which adds a new layer of strategy to the gameplay while not coming off as a half assed addition they threw in at the last minute.
I’d like to also commend the games pacing in terms of how it introduces new gameplay elements. The Mary gun and the whole corruption gameplay element doesn’t even come into play until the second dungeon giving the player time to learn the ins and outs of licking and massacre mode.
It’s one of the few DRPG games I know of where gameplay mechanics are sensibly introduced at a good pace so they don’t overwhelm the player with a bunch of stuff they need to get their head around right from the first dungeon.
Outside of the battle system there are a few unique gameplay elements as well, the first of these being blood abilities.
Blood abilities basically function as ways that you can interact with the dungeon in various ways to open up new paths and solve puzzles. Each maiden has their own unique ability and they all get used pretty equally. It’s a simple system but it works.
By far the most useful ability though is Alice’s rabbit hole ability. This essentially lets you create a save point anywhere you want in a dungeon as well as being able to use this point to escape from the dungeon back to the town if you need to. You have no idea how much of a godsend this has been at times. It essentially lets you save anywhere and provides a convenient way to warp back to town in an emergency if you need to.
Another element is the jail bonus system. This is basically made up of three meters consisting of Hunger, Libido and Sleep.
Filling any of these meters up starts a roulette which will grant a bonus to the party. I found that hunger was usually the easiest one to fill up with the next being libido and finally sleep. Really outside of a bonus here and there it doesn’t do much else and it’s really the only system I consider to be half baked in terms of execution.
Finally we have Murder Hunts. This is basically a chase mechanic. How this works is that each dungeon has their own boss enemy called a Nightmare. During your exploring at random intervals the dungeon may begin to grow dark. This is the sign of a nightmare being nearby. If it stays dark long enough then the dungeons Nightmare will appear and trigger a Murder Hunt.
When a Murder Hunt is triggered the minimap will disappear and some text will pop up showing how close/far you are from the nightmare. In order to complete the sequence you have to escape from said nightmare which is easier said than done especially when you’ve lost your minimap.
If you happen to run into a random encounter during a Murder Hunt then you’ll trigger a Booked Battle. This is the same as a normal battle except the Nightmare will continue attempting to find you and if he does will start attacking you as well. Basically you want to get out of a booked battle as soon as possible. Winning a booked battle does have an advantage though as the resulting blood splatter on the walls of the dungeon will actually light up the surrounding area.
Now you might be thinking, “why can’t I just fight the nightmare?”. Simple answer. For the vast majority of the dungeon the nightmare is invincible. There is nothing you can do but run from him.
This whole Murder Hunt system is pretty well implimented and actually adds a pretty effective element of horror to the game since these murder hunts happen at complete random so as you explore the dungeon you’re constantly aware that you could run into a Nightmare at any moment.
The darkening of the environment and complete removal of your minimap during a murder hunt only extenuates this fear since now you have no way of actually planning where you’re going to go, how you’re going to get there etc. You have to go off what you know about the dungeon layout and just leg it and it’s incredibly effective.
My only gripe is I can’t really find a pattern in what the game actually counts as “escaping” the nightmare. I assumed it would just be distance but no patterns were popping up there. Then again you could argue that this works in the games favour since it means you don’t actually know how far you’ll have to run or for how long until you actually escape the nightmare so your mileage may vary.
What is interesting is that Murder Hunts and nightmare appearances in general only start to happen from the second floor of a dungeon onwards which is a design choice I can totally get behind since it helps compensate for the lack of a mini map in the Murder Hunts by giving the player a decent amount of time to get to grips with the overall structure of the dungeon they are in so they can do a bit of planning ahead when escaping the nightmare since they know a bit about the types of designs seen in this particular dungeon. It’s a small thing but it works incredibly well.
Speaking of Dungeons...
Graphics and Sound:
The dungeons in Mary Skelter are very well designed and this statement extends to the rest of the presentation in general. Each dungeon has a surprising amount of graphical detail put into it with its presentation. The first dungeon has a very obvious Alice in Wonderland motif going on with spinning clocks and playing cards and framed pictures on the wall shaking about on their own.
In stark contrast the second dungeon, a graveyard, has a lot of coffin looking objects which have their lids fall off when you walk past (something which actually caught me off guard the first few times) along with garden gnome looking things sitting in the background which every now and then shake and pulsate as if they were still just a little bit alive.
Every now and then though the game likes to go a bit uncanny valley with its visuals by mixing in something like an eyeball inside a wall or a red intestine like thing which stands in stark contrast to the rest of the area but really pushes home the fact that this place you’re exploring is indeed alive.
It’s this kind of attention to detail which I really like and Mary Skelter is full of stuff like this. It’s clear a lot of work and effort went into the presentation and graphic design and that has really paid off. Mary Skelter is an incredibly unique looking game which sticks out in amongst the growing pool of Vita DRPG’s. It gives the game a lot of personality and charm which makes the world of the game memorable.
Character art is very nicely drawn and each character has their own unique look. Since the majority of the characters in the game are based off characters from fairy tales a lot of the respective fairy tales are reflected in the designs of the character.
Cutscenes also use that trademark sort of pseudo 3D type look that Compile Heart games commonly have in their cutscenes and like always it looks really nice.
Sound wise it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The game has a superb opening theme and some other tracks that really stick out but some of the tracks do sound a little generic at times. On the bright side I haven’t really had any music tracks which have got on my nerves so that’s a plus.
The game has dual voice track support. The English dub is a pretty standard Idea Factory affair, not bad but not outstanding either. The Japanese dub is pretty well done though.
Sound design in dungeons is also relatively standard although there are some sound cues and use of spacial sound and stuff like that here and there so there is that.
Overall sound wise the game is fine but not groundbreaking. The visuals on the other hand are very well designed and have a lot of detail put into them and they truly help make the game stand out.
Verdict:
After MeiQ Labyrinth Of Death last year I will admit I was worried that this was going to be more of the same. Thankfully I was very wrong. Mary Skelter provides the player with an interesting and unique DRPG with well fleshed out mechanics, an interesting story and some utterly gorgeous presentation.
Mary Skelter is also commendable in that it provides a game that is accessible to players new to the DRPG genre while having more than enough in it to keep genre veterans happy. If you’ve never played a DRPG before and are looking for a good place to start then I highly recommend picking up Mary Skelter.
If you’ve played a load of DRPG’s before then I’d still recommend Mary Skelter to you. There’s a lot of unique stuff here which mixes up the DRPG formula which alone I feel makes it a worthwhile title to play.
Mary Skelter Nightmares gets a Highly Recommended
I know I haven’t been very active this year in terms of reviews. The vita might be starting to slow down release wise but there still are quality titles coming out for it and I’ll be sure to keep covering them. Until my next review this is BDVR Author Nathan Green signing off.
Mary Skelter Nightmares will be releasing September 19th in North America and September 22nd in Europe and Australia for PlayStation Vita.
Review Code Provided by Idea Factory International.
PEGI: 16
ESRB: M
CERO: D
OFLC: Er... Let’s just get onto that.
While Mary Skelter Nightmare will be seeing a release in Australia with an R-18 rating (mostly due to how the game has been released unmodified from its Japanese counterpart so it retains all the... awkward screen rubbing mini games which can thankfully be skipped after you’ve played them once) the game will NOT be getting a release in New Zealand due to the game not being submit to the NZ OFLC for classification.
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