Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor
I picked this game up recently. I've only been playing it for about a week, and have already developed a severe love/hate relationship with it. I absolutely adore both the plot and the characters, especially how the game makes you care about the members of the ensemble cast. I love that you have different dialogue options that determine how they feel about you, who you fight, who joins your party, and how the story progresses. I love that these side characters will rotate in and out of your fourth party member position, giving you an opportunity to feel like you're accomplishing something with everyone. That stuff is all wonderful.
What I'm really beginning to hate, though, is the fact that this game practically makes level grinding mandatory. By the very nature of some of the battles you get into, it's impossible to have your characters or their demons at a high enough level to handle the challenge just by virtue of going through the storyline battles and proceeding in a linear fashion. Instead, you have to keep detouring every so often to these things called "Free Battles" that don't consume any of your limited interaction time in the game day so that you can build up your stats. I spent the entire weekend leveling up to beat this one particular boss battle, and after progressing another day and a half into the story, it seems I need to embark on a similar effort to pass the part of the game I'm stuck on now.
At this rate, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to put up with this game for long enough to actually finish it - which is a shame, because I'm really enjoying the characters and the plot. But it's a big turn-off that I keep running into these patently impossible battles and challenges and can only get through them by way of mindless grinding and leveling. I like to have the option of leveling, but making it a necessity gets tedious after a while. I suppose it's possible that I'm just bad at this game, but I think I'm far enough in that that isn't really the issue. I'm going to keep slogging through in an effort to actually finish, but I'm not sure how fastidiously I'll continue pursuing individual character paths (especially since one of the NPCs died at the beginning of the current battle, and I'm pretty sure another one will be killed tomorrow as a result of how the previous one turned out).
EDIT: Yup, I was right. However, I am a glutton for punishment, so I'm going to start the game over entirely and make use of a walkthrough that shows me how to complete all the character paths on one play-through without spoiling the particulars of the actual plot. Hopefully I'll do a little better the second time through, as I probably made some dumb mistakes early on that affected my ability to be an effective combatant in the parts that are giving me trouble.
What I'm really beginning to hate, though, is the fact that this game practically makes level grinding mandatory. By the very nature of some of the battles you get into, it's impossible to have your characters or their demons at a high enough level to handle the challenge just by virtue of going through the storyline battles and proceeding in a linear fashion. Instead, you have to keep detouring every so often to these things called "Free Battles" that don't consume any of your limited interaction time in the game day so that you can build up your stats. I spent the entire weekend leveling up to beat this one particular boss battle, and after progressing another day and a half into the story, it seems I need to embark on a similar effort to pass the part of the game I'm stuck on now.
At this rate, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to put up with this game for long enough to actually finish it - which is a shame, because I'm really enjoying the characters and the plot. But it's a big turn-off that I keep running into these patently impossible battles and challenges and can only get through them by way of mindless grinding and leveling. I like to have the option of leveling, but making it a necessity gets tedious after a while. I suppose it's possible that I'm just bad at this game, but I think I'm far enough in that that isn't really the issue. I'm going to keep slogging through in an effort to actually finish, but I'm not sure how fastidiously I'll continue pursuing individual character paths (especially since one of the NPCs died at the beginning of the current battle, and I'm pretty sure another one will be killed tomorrow as a result of how the previous one turned out).
EDIT: Yup, I was right. However, I am a glutton for punishment, so I'm going to start the game over entirely and make use of a walkthrough that shows me how to complete all the character paths on one play-through without spoiling the particulars of the actual plot. Hopefully I'll do a little better the second time through, as I probably made some dumb mistakes early on that affected my ability to be an effective combatant in the parts that are giving me trouble.