Preliminary: This seems like a very complex game, but I think it might be worth fully learning. Hopefully the Look Sound and Play are decent enough to warrant learning its complexities. (side note: I am so excited for Final Fantasy Legend which comes out this year, if i recall correctly that was like a simpler monster recruiting RPG with heavy tower/dungeon mechanics too haha)

A couple days after writing above, without having a chance to play this, I started back at school full-time and it was a long day. As I pulled up at home, the garage door broke heh. Point being I haven't had the chance to play. Now I'm hoping to at least get a taste of it to see if the controls or complexity or NES datedness get in the way of it. I usually don't care for very complex RPGs, but I'm thinkkkkking that might actually help with the NES datedness in this case, and get me excited for the more complex 90s RPGs and the Final Fantasy Legend types where I don't just grind, next village, grind, next village.

Wow the music and Look of the intro screen are making me think a horror game?

(Well, duh this is the English version, but I bet the font was still evil and epic in the original version haha. This is a fan translation.) Bahahaha and suddenly it shifts to a super upbeat Mother-esque tune for the name entering, right after it warned you about how you are now a Devil Buster and things will be hard. I'm surprised how much I'm loving this intro so far. I'll shut up now and just enjoy the game.

Early Game

The Look isn't great, very just classic NES, but the music keeps being so varied and so good and the gameplay has been oddly engaging so far. I am much preferring this overhead perspective over the original's first-person. I'm not sure if this is like a hacked version or something (I checked, it isn't), but this initial grind is surprisingly fast so far in terms of exp gain.

I got my first demon! A Carbuncle. The music is still great now that I'm in the real world and it's first-person, but not thrilled it's first-person now.

The "real world" is much more brutal than Devil Busters! This shelter is harsh and it was hell to find where to heal :-p I swear my characters got wayyyyy weaker, so I couldn't even go in the overworld, had to stick to the shelter for a long grind.

As always i prefer that rpg enemies are cleverly constructed to make battles more interesting (or even better just let me mash the button lol), but anything over the "there's 7 of the same enemy and that's the challenge". Unfortunately they used a lot of that esp now that I'm in the real world with this weak side character. I want the "female character" back! Haha. But I must say, I haven't had such a drive to figure out maps on my own (cuz I couldn't find several places' maps online) and quirks on my own, since the HTML guide I'm looking at is very barebones (probly cuz this is officially only released in Japanese, so English resources will be sparing)--point being, it's giving me that feeling I've been excited for in the 90s where games are actually manageable enough with basic info, a manual, and some sites to reference when really needed. It's probly the music that's keeping me going since I usually would cave and just give a 3 star in some of these frustrations, but so far I'm pushing through--and that says something!

I was getting a little burned out during this first shelter and town segment cuz the enemy encounters seem entirely dependent on the number of enemies. 7 Orcs killed me every darn time, and the grind was taking too long to make those easy. Seemed my only option was to run from those too-many-enemies situations because for the most part, ,my level 9ish was fine. But I got rejuvenated when I started fusing the Demons together! And I finally got a Demon that can heal which is critical cuz I can't seem to find any healing items and this replacement for the "female character" is trash and still hasn't learned any healing spells.

Welp, unfortunately, despite its many good features, the usual NES RPG issues arose and I burned out. The earlier grinds were fun, this grind with such little exp from even the harder enemies that swarm me with 7+ of them and kill me time and time again despite the boss being quite easy/reasonable, just feels so unbalanced and well not fun. So much potential, an amazing concept with a cyberpunk vibe (tho not able to be fully realized due to NES limitations). With the rise of Turbografx CD and other more powerful machines, I just couldn't justify pushing through. The music wasn't staying quite as phenomenal as that initial wave and the momentum in general just sorta died out (I had just crossed the docks to the next city, Shinegawa, and was exploring the Hotel there to find the Weapon shop when I burned out. I had a Dwarf and an Alraune tho which was a cool feature, making new demons by fusing others!

Look: 7/10 Run of the mill NES Look for the most part, but some real nice cyberpunk and pagan imagery

Sound: 8/10 Some real good tunes, tho when considering that Mother came out before this and had phenomenal tunes even on the NES, it slightly pales. This still rocks.

Play: 7/10 Overall, a great RPG vibe with a really neat idea of fusing demons you capture. But overall a bit too tedious, and the dated NES RPG mechanics got old quickly.

Feel: 7.5/10 Good music and great ideas make for a better Feel than the actual Play turned out to be.

Attachment: 7.5/10 A series I wont forget, and that initial drive was really powerful. Maybe I was missing something obvious (after all, I was about to get an Uzi, which I guess can hit multiple enemies at once, and my biggest complaint was the DQ-style swarms of enemies), or it was just that I needed to grind more, but I love me some grinds and even did a fast forward grind and the swarms of enemies still were either 2 and easy to kill, or 7 and killed both my characters. Meh.

Overall: 7.4/10

Completion: To Shinegawa Princess Hotel

Playtime: 2 hours