The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

Well, you can stop imagining, because it already kinda does.

Upon hearing about it from John Davidson on 1up Yours, I just had to try SMT: Imagine for myself. Could it be that great? Could it draw me in with a property I have come to love this past year or so? So I bothered all the people on Talking Time who had codes to the closed beta they weren’t going to use, and got in on it. It’s pretty good, and certainly one of the best free straight-up MMOs I’ve played. (Straight-up meaning, you know, the normal combat, leveling stuff, and not something like Albatross 18, which is a great free arcade-style golf game, you know? Which reminds me, it’s been a long time since I played that. I bet they have a lot of new courses I should try.) When it gets into open beta later this month, I would suggest giving it a try if you like the series and aren’t allergic to MMOs.

First off, the feel is spot on. The game looks pretty damn close to the PS2 Megaten games in feeling, and they’ve certainly matched all the demon animations and models exactly. I keep seeing new people in town with demons I haven’t found yet, and going “Ooh, wonder where you get that one.” The music is not Meguro-quality, but pretty good. Still, I mean, it’s an MMO, you turn that shit off. But yeah, they’ve nailed the “feel” of Megaten that I’ve come to expect.
The combat is sort of an advanced PSO-style combat with pets. It’s all about timing. I’ve been playing a melee attacker with heal spells, like I do in everything, so I don’t know how other people play? But it feels really solid doing melee. You hit combos until you knock an enemy back, and then you can guard, or prepare a counter-attack or cast a spell or whatever. Everything has a charge time involved, so you actually have to plan when you’re going to counter-attack and block, because you don’t throw those up instantly. Meanwhile, you have a summoned demon partner. They work via a customizable AI like most MMO “pets” do, and it works pretty well, but they were damn smart in letting you be able to give specific commands, if you want. If you really want your Pixie to cast Dia RIGHT NOW on this random person, you can use your Pixie’s Dia just like your own. The thing that worries me about the combat, though, is that it’s extremely tough to switch targets. Granted, your demon is normally smart enough to try to draw attention, but if I’m using a caster-style demon, that just means they get dead quickly. I haven’t found a keyboard shortcut to switch targets. You have to click with the mouse. This is just… not good. Tab should switch between close targets, right? Maybe I’m just missing something.

In all, though, the game is really getting me with the Pokemon vibe. You have to be high enough in level to convince demons to join you, and you do it just like in other SMT games, where you talk to them and negotiate or threaten or whatever. Every time I see a new demon about in the world, I start thinking about how I can get it. They have the fusion too, just like the other games, so you might want to recruit even more than just one. The main problem I have, though, is that you can only carry six demons. I’m fine with only being able to take that many into battle, but when I tried to use the “Demon Storage” to store a couple I had that I was going to keep for fusion fodder, I couldn’t. It told me I had to buy some sort of pass and didn’t tell me where to do it. Perhaps that’s their business model, and the demon storage is a premium feature. If so, that kind of sucks, because that means you can’t go all Pokemon without paying. Still, though, even with six slots, I’m sure you could play fine overall. I just like collecting creatures.

The game tries to have a story, too, which I’m barely into. So far I haven’t been impressed, but that’s because the story has mostly been tutorial so far. If the story is halfway interesting and you could play through it with a friend, this free MMO could be a great way to waste some time with an online friend or three. Hell, the whole thing has promise. So much so that I went back to play for several hours again today, because I was wanting to. That’s a good sign. We’ll see how it goes, but either way, it seems a cut above most of these free MMOs, even others by this same company, and I’m glad it’s about.