Been replaying DDS. I forgot how much I love this game. It's been well over a decade.
Replaying ps2 SMT reminds me that I still like random battles. Random battles shouldn't be a default for all rpgs but they have a place. It's like the equivalent of color vs black and white and is a legitimate design decision. The great thing about random battles is their random element: you have no idea what's coming and in a game like SMTIII that means a lot and lends to a "prepare for anything" variety that visible encounters simply doesn't offer. There's a thrill to randomly fighting a group of monsters that have the upside and can fuck you up. I find this design decision more in line with the traditions of the genre and its pen and paper rpg roots, where you can end up fighting an enemy at any time depending on the game. I've always felt that SMT did random encounters better than most other franchises in the post NES era. Shout out to FF1 as well. The NES version is still legit.
Without random battles there's less feeling of oppression in today's RPGs, and especially dungeon crawlers. Random battles haven't been a thing in the genre since the ps2 days but I think I can count only two RPGs that have made the most of non random encounters being used to an advantage: Etrian games with FOE monsters and FFXII.
There's a massive case for random battles still depending on what your rpg is trying to accomplish. For hardcore rpgs, I think it's still perfectly valid. Shame it's not a common opinion.
The game is fairly easy going so far but that's not a problem for me because it's not entirely brain dead in terms of build, dungeon crawling, resource management.
The atmosphere, story, music of DDS1 still makes it one of my favorite games of all time.
I still watch the intro any time I load the game:
Horror RPGs
Metal soundtrack
The epitome of Japan cool that doesn't even exist anymore. Japan no longer makes cool sci-fi anime shit, much less cool sci-fi game shit.
Godlike.
Atlus R&D1 truly made Final Fantasy games look cheesy and totally not cool literally overnight back in the day. I still hold that opinion. I can't say the same for now. It feels like I'm playing a relic of a company that no longer exists anymore. The iconic Kaneko designs
Atlus used to be cool. Now they make RPGs for people that want visual novels and want to be cock blocked by cats telling them what to do in-game.
Remember when MegaTen was about horror? Atlus is a shell of its self. Time to make another dancing game. Sell outs. My resent should be obvious.
My final observation is that the theory I've had for years, that Toriyama ripped off the base parts of DDS' story for FFXIII seems to be as strong as ever, maybe even stronger.
