・Story
☑ Great Story
☑ Gretel

・Artwork
☑ Awesome graphics
☑ Gretel

・Voice Acting
☑ Both Japanese and English are nice
☑ Gretel

・Character
☑ Lovely characters
☑ Gretel

+ Fun gameplay
+ Great story
+ Awesome graphics
+ Lovely characters
+ Nice voice acting
+ Gretel
- Some bugs may make game crash, Save your game frequently

The Good
+ Intriguing storyline that maintains the player's curiousity (sort of)
+ Extensive class system allows for both casual play and hardcore minmaxing
+ Adjustable difficulty during gameplay
+ Music is nice and sets the atmosphere well
+ Combat has some neat gimmicks and skills
+ Large cast of characters lets you play favorites
+ Has waifus you can rub down for bonus stats (if you're into that sort of thing)

The Bad
- If you're really paying attention, the story "twist" becomes transparent
- Exploring every inch of a map isn't rewarding at all
- Party composition can stagnate quickly since there's little reason to ever swap
- Collecting blood points quickly becomes tedious
- A certain character's teleport ability trivializes deep dungeon crawling
- More anime tropes than you can shake a useless average male protagonist at

All in all, I feel that it's at least worth a playthough. If you've never played a first-person dungeon crawler, it may be a great introduction for you. If you're a bit of a veteran, there are ways to challenge yourself in the game. Plus, the port turned out pretty good.

Bad news first- the port quality kind of sucks; the only graphics option is the screen resolution. It does however, run extremely well and at high framerates.

The game itself is arguably one of the Vita's best RPGs and it's great that more people can give it a shot. It's not perfect, mind (there's some real issues with the game's difficulty curve and the characters and plot are standard anime cheese) but the combat is mechanically interesting and the dungeons are very well thought-out. It's still a ton of fun and it's really easy to recommend at the launch price.

This is a good dungeon crawler but I can't recommended it for 2 reasons:

1. Buy Mary Skelter 2 instead because it includes the full game "Mary Skelter: Nightmares Remake" (it unlocks on clearing game that game). This is the original MSN & there ARE differences compared to the remake but still this title is kinda redundant. The remake also includes a bonus ending that is NOT included in this game.

2. This game has bugs that never got fixed 5+ years after release. For me the game runs silky smooth but I have serious issues with random DXFAIL errors that crashes the game & it's pretty clear this is due to a resource leak within the game. It runs perfectly for about 45-60 mins and after that it crashes. This is the ONLY game in my entire library of 200+ titles I have on Steam that I had issues with. Another minor bug that the dev is aware of (check the known issues thread) but never bothered fixing is that sometimes the graphic for chests, collection points & encounters stay on the map after completing them (until you reload). 5 years & going strong they never bothered to fix it and I find it sad they don't care for their product or their players more...

Bottom line: Check out the difference between this title & the remake then decide for yourself if you feel this title is worth it. Personally I would recommend MS2, Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk or Labyrinth of Galleria: The Moon Society instead. The last 2 are excellent dungeon crawlers & have 0 issues.

Quick note:
I'm familiar with IF and Compa's work (Neptunia RB 1,2,3 and Megadimension VIII). I've also played Dragon Quest XI and VIII, Final Fantasy IV, X, XIII and Resonance of Fate (also the Tales series)

Story
+ Mysterious and carefully made
+ Great VN style cutscenes
+ Great slice of life moments
+ Decent endings
+ Writing tries to match characters true to their fairytale/fantasy origin (e.g. Jack has an urge to climb stuff, due to.. reasons)
+/- A lot of boob jokes
- Didn't get emotionally destroyed with the bad ending
- Some obvious foreshadowing that fell a little flat
- Idea Factory still has yet to learn to add more English voices during cutscenes; there's plenty of Japanese though.

Characters
Probably the strongest part of the game.
Alice is best girl.

+ Distinct personalities from the Blood Maidens you encounter and befriend
+ Affection options which create slice-of-life events which are both adorable and quite effective
+ Main characters and side characters have good displays of emotion and hint at backstory which is quite nice
- Repeated dialog notifs from characters which become annoying and redundant rather than pleasant (e.g. "I suppose I can do this so I can be lazy at home" - Motivations stated a bit too frequently)
- Some character development is too rushed in an effort to display it (e.g. character may state a lesson they've learnt in a very overly obvious way which is not needed. Show-don't-tell strategy may have worked better.
-/+ Fan service purge and slice-of-life events

Graphics
The weakest aspect of the game. May be due to the PS Vita port method (?)

+ General ideas / objects in the dungeon designs are quite clever
+ The bosses of every dungeon are quite unique and nightmarish looking at times.
+ Characters during cutscenes are really well designed and look gorgeous thanks to the slightly animated style (including all costumes!!)
- Enemy models all are visually lackluster
- Dungeons are visually lackluster (anti aliasing plz)
- Lack of variety across the basic enemies

Soundtrack
- Some annoying tracks
+ Some memorable tracks
+ Evokes a nice mood to the game. Cryptic and gothic.

Gameplay
+ Engaging battle system (+ SKIP FEATURE!!)
+ Upgrade systems and new 'job roles' (aka classes) which add strategy and variety
+ Sub-plots and extra events can help with the slightly tiring job of exploring the dungeon floors - it's an incentive to actually bother
- Progressing can be difficult due to no objective reminders
- You can really rush this game if you just pick some clearly overpowered classes
- Some design flaws revolving around XP earned and difficulty to match create a strange battle feel.
- Attempting to reduce the encounter rate doesn't really do much. Your encounters are very frequent

Post-Game / Replay Value
Game might take you 40-60 hours depending on if you care about the story, skip events etc.

+ Good opportunity for post game
- Dungeon crawling and essentially doing the same thing with little variety (exploration with hard-to-avoid encounters) doesn't leave a lot of room for replay value.

While this game has a few good ideas and does some things a little differently than other RPG's or dungeon crawlers, these ideas ultimately don't stop it from being a very repetitive and, ultimately, boring and unrewarding game.

The backstory of the game is honestly kind of interesting; Jack and a group of girls called the blood maidens are locked in an underground prison called the jail. They manage to escape and now want to try to find a way to get out of the jail as a whole, back to the surface. As the story progresses, it becomes VERY clear what plot twist will await you, and so when it happens, you just shake your head and laugh, because the game tries to sell it as a mysterious thing when, in reality, you knew it since the game started because the game gives you a million hints. Well, the story is alright I suppose. Voice acting is pretty good, too, with the odd line here and there. The ending is also pretty interesting.

Where the game fails, though, is the gameplay. To find a way out, you will explore a total of 8 (9 if you count the post game dungeon) areas with 5 or 6 floors each. Each and every single one of these areas is a maze with a million dead ends, random encounters every few steps, tons of forced encounters and insulting "puzzles" that are never hard. Fine, it IS a dungeon crawler. That's the point. At least the loot is good, right? No, it's not; and that is the issue.

I can deal with running into a million dead ends on my way to the next floor. I can deal with the boring combat that devolves into just spamming your strongest AOE skills over and over, because every other skill is pointless. What I can't deal with is how incredibly unrewarding the game is. Any treasure chest you find will be absolutely worthless because the loot in this game is, for some reason, random. That means you can find a really strong weapon that you'll never change in one of the first areas, or a weak long bow in the final dungeon that was already old 30 levels ago. It is never ever rewarding; especially since the merchant you sometimes encounter sells JUST THESE weapons anyway, and gold is abundant. Same goes for armor and accessories.

You will never feel rewarded for finding anything in this game, which in turn makes exploration pointless. There are quests, too, which for example ask you to explore 60 % of a floor, kill enemies or find emotion points (that give bonuses). My favourite quest was one where I had to find 10 emotion points in an area that only had two, so I had to go back and forth to refresh them. The reward? 600 gold. That same area had a chest with 8000 gold in it, and at that point I already had well over 100k gold anyway.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, in this game is rewarding, and that is it's biggest problem. Exploring isn't rewarding, because finding treasure isn't rewarding. Leveling up isn't rewarding, because the monsters never really seem to die easier on your current floor anyway, even if you leveled up 5 times already. Changing classes isn't rewarding, because your blood maidens are instantly able to learn any skill from that class anyway, provided they have enough CP you get from leveling up; which again ties into the fact that leveling up isn't rewarding because you don't get new skills anyway and CP is abundant as well. Quests aren't rewarding because no quest reward is ever good or needed.

The game has a few interesting systems that do make combat a bit better though; at least in boss fights. Your blood maidens can accumulate blood splatters by hitting a weak point or making criticial hits, as well as overkilling enemies. Once you have enough, they go into massacre form, which makes them stronger and also gives them a bunch of special attacks. It's a cool system, made even cooler by the fact that enemies can turn those blood splatters dark by hitting your maidens, which sometimes makes them go into Skelter mode, which results into them confusedly attacking friend and foe. Jack can purge those dark spots with his gun, which needs blood you have to refill by walking or using the action in battle. It's a cool cycle system that, while never used to it's full potential, does make battles occasionally more interesting.

Overall though, the game fails. A passable story with an extremely obvious "twist" and way too much unneeded flirting between Jack and the maidens, blood maidens with a paper towel personality (but hey, at least you can give them gifts to get questionable "cutscenes") and unrewarding exploration in giant, frustrating mazes. Even the cool blood splatter system and the jail reward system (which in itself is also unrewarding, which is why I haven't even touched on that) don't make up for the weak gameplay that just devolves into AOE spamming before the tenth hour is over - and the game is THIRTY HOURS LONG.

Personal rating: 3/10. (not good)

The appeal of “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland” shall never cease to amaze me. Literary nonsense with enough hidden meaning to leave room for interpretation, if you will. The game I’m reviewing today is Mary Skelter: Nightmares and its many topics all seem to converge towards a very similar theme and feel I experienced while either reading Lewis Carrol or watching any film adaptations for his well known writings bordering creative absurdity. If you were only expecting another JRPG/Visual Novel hybrid with cheesy bits “gluing” it in a single formulaic piece, you’re in for a very pleasant surprise. As a project developed by industry veterans Idea Factory (24 years of experience) and published by the equally prolific Ghostlight LTD, Mary Skelter brings something new to the table in terms of both complexity and narrative novelty.

Indeed, one of the game’s main characters is named Alice. A very interesting feature, players shall unravel this tale from the perspective of Jack, which can be regarded as a glorified sidekick more than anything else. It’s a storyline filled with supernatural elements but I shall do my best to summarize it without spoiling anything. It all starts like yet another post-apocalyptic scenario in which civilization has crumbled to pieces and in its wake, humanity is still determined to scrape off a living of sorts. The corruption which derailed the natural order of things, seems to be of organic nature. I could compare it to a Zerg infestation, only that we’re referring to these creatures as “Marchens” now. Humans who weren’t “lucky” enough enough to perish in the initial struggle, have been enslaved and constantly tortured by the corrupted entities which never releaved their plans or motivations. The prologue finds Alice and Jack within a Marchen prison from a City of many unsolved mysteries refusing to reveal themselves.

An escape plan eventually succeeds with the help of a Blood Maiden which reveals that Alice is also in possession of secret powers, crucial in defeating the creeping corruption. The story is not convoluted and it does become somewhat clearer once you’ll familiarize yourself with the large cast of characters. Factions play an important role in Mary Skelter and it’s obvious that each party has its own agenda which they’ll seldomly share, if at all. Just keep in mind that you’re helping out in humanity’s last ditch effort of saving the last settlement that’s untainted. As in any decent JRPG, morality bares many more shades than just black or white. Not all battles shall be against Marchens, in the same manner in which combat itself will sometimes revolve around ideas and perceived truths instead of actually striking established foes. Appearances are always deceiving, but you knew that, right?
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1569801395
I couldn’t find intel about the graphics engine used by Mary Skelter, so I’ll default to my assumption that it’s proprietary to Idea Factory. It certainly isn’t Unity, since I actually had to fiddle with this title’s files before I had a smooth experience and could finally play it on my terms. Initially, I noticed severe frame rate issues and crashes to desktop which were somehow cause by the antivirus. We’re not talking of another case of “dear” Denuvo here, but regardless of the actual culprit, the gameplay was sorted out with the publisher’s assistance through the official Community thread containing fixes & tips. After the “dust had settled”, Mary Skelter: Nightmares ran as expected to maxed out details and 4K@60fps.

Most of the in-game songs are curiously uplifting and add an extra layer of sinisterness which I guess it’s pretty much what I’d expect given the topics. For the most part, the voice acting hit the right target even if some characters seem to lack enthusiasm. It always slightly bothers me that Visual Novels only have spoken lines of dialogue for roughly half the size of the “endless” amounts of text. And no, I don’t mind reading at all, but I’d rather hear the characters since that’s what ultimately separates video games from interactive books. The soundtrack fully compensates for the lackluster diversity of various other sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-yhvbgoaCk
If you were somehow still convinced that you’re going to play some lighthearted version of Wonderland, let me make it very clear that you’re more likely to experience something more attuned to American McGee's Alice, without nearly as much insanity thrown into the mix. But there will be plenty of blood and violence. Sanguinary action which literally fuels the Blood Maidens in their frantic struggles against the numerically superior Marchens and the true threats to your continued existence: Nightmares. Consider these as boss fights from which you’d best turn around and flee from an otherwise predictable outcome. There’s a very interesting chase mechanic in this title as it adds further pressure since you’re already randomly attacked from low-tier mobs. The last thing you want is to get pinned down by a seemingly invincible creature which revels in endless bloodshed.

It mirrors the proclivity of the Blood Maidens themselves in more ways than you’d imagine. Once a heroine enters the Blood Skelter mode, she’s a potential threat to both the party and any opposition. Two dangerous sides of a single coin. “Regular” power build-up results in the more manageable Massacre mode, even if its name doesn’t really imply any more control over the situation than in the case of the Skelter. All of this adds much needed flavor to a turn-based combat that would otherwise become stale fairly fast, given the frequency of the attacks you’ll be subjected to. If you’re even remotely familiar to JRPGs, you know that defense is far more important than a ceaseless offensive. Jack specializes in this field, so to speak. Basically, he acts as a damage sponge for the Blood Maidens which resemble proverbial glass cannons more often than I’d like to admit.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570322242
It’s not an easy game and you’ll be truly grateful for the peaceful segments in which you can focus on socializing with either factions or individual characters. A form of base building is present, same as an economy and the “inescapable” romance subplots featuring auxiliary mechanics which constantly remind you of what you’re actually fighting for. Let’s just say that you’ll have to gain the trust of the Blood Maidens before they’ll unlock their full potential. The City is separated by Districts, each with its own distinct look and challenges. While you can return to your HQ at will, you may find the saving system to be a poor implementation of sparsely located points which translate into far too much backtracking. For this high risk, high reward scenario, you’ll have to adapt and weather the incoming Marchen storm.

Once you understand what you’re up against and also come to terms with the somewhat ambiguous narrative threads, you’ll certainly enjoy Mary Skelter: Nightmares as much as I have. Just take everything you see in this game with a large grain of salt. Keep an open mind and have the necessary patience for exploration in not the most welcoming of conditions. Eventually, you may notice that even “nonsense” has a hidden purpose in tow with an important lesson or two.

+ Pleasant graphics and sounds.
+ Interesting storyline & characters.
+ Challenging and diversified gameplay.
+ Steam Trading Cards & Achievements.

- Lots of grinding & backtracking.
- Annoying saving system.
- Not enough voice acting.

Rating 85/100

This review was submitted for Fun Fab Game Reviews through the Steam Curator Connect program.

Still waiting for the 2nd game to get ported to PC




Akazukin best girl

★Story 9.5/10
-Concept
What if there is an alien that can mimicked anything even something that not real like character from fairy tales and myths? why i really enjoy the story because it's dark and full of mystery makes me curious what gonna happen next

-Characters
9 heroines from 9 differents stories, each character has their on speciality,jobs,uniqueness and their own events you dont want to miss it psst there is secret character too!
well Jack (Main Hero) is ok though i like how his persoanlity become more mature and wise as the story progress

-Characters Development
I'm quite satisfied about how the writer do character development as the story progress you don't know who should you trust and reason why we even fight with those monsters

-Events
Each chapter of this game you will met various events,some of it have multiple choices that will affect ending, each time you finish a chapter your perspective of the story will change

★Gameplay Mechanics 9/10
Each character has their own speciality,Skills and Exploration Skills ✓
Job Changes ✓
Random Encounters ✓
Horror + Dungeon Crawler don't play this at night XD ✓
Large Dungeon Maps ✓
Repetitive ✗
Hardcore Grinding ✗
It's hard if you don't understand how this game works ✗

★Art 9/10
To be honest my main reason to play this game because their character design and CG's are pretty good, its cute and with this dark gothic theme makes it event more interesting

★Music 8/10
Main istrument were used in this game is Violin, it's arrangement is really suitable for this game try this, and yes i never thought violin can be used for intense battle music

OP and ED song were good too, and it's quite popular on OSU

In Conclusion:
Iffy and Compa once again i really enjoy your game, i never been so excited since first time i play neptunia back in 2015, and thanks to Ghostlight for porting this game to pc its one of my favorite JRPG now

I'm looking forward for Mary Skelter 2 PC port!