Mary Skelter: Nightmares
The "Jail" suddenly appeared a number of years ago, sinking the city deep into the ground. There, this impenetrable living prison 666 metres beneath the surface, held power over eerie creatures called "Marchens." Within the prison was a boy named Jack – living a life of suffering, tortured day in and day out, in a world where all dreams, hopes, peace, and humanity had been lost for as long as the people could remember. Then one day, amidst the darkness that prevailed, a girl who called herself a member of the Blood Team appeared before Jack, holding giant scissors dripping in blood! This marked the beginning of fate – of Jack's and the Blood Maidens' escape from the Jail… Jack and the Blood Team will face countless perils in regaining all that has been lost, to finally escape once and for all!
Steam User 2
Characters licking each other is somehow a gameplay mechanic that makes sense.
Steam User 2
- IMPORTANT NOTE: Mary Skelter 2 includes a remake of this game.
- Good game in general.
- Turn based combat with a corruption mechanic you need to stay on top of.
- Dungeon crawling is straightforward with a few gimmicks to change things up. Nightmares are invincible and are an obstacle to avoid and run away from.
- Didn't like how skills were tied to jobs and can't be upgraded. If you want to replace a minor damage skill with a regular/heavy skill you will have to unlock different jobs and hope you get what you want.
- In the post game area I found a shortcut that would freeze the game when I tried to use it.
Steam User 2
It's a decent dungeon crawling game with some promising ideas, but is greatly hindered by it's many flaws, preventing it from becoming a truly great game.
For me, the standout feature of the game is the the overworld boss system, keeping me on my toes while navigating new dungeons. Unlike a certain other dungeon crawling JRPG I like, these overworld bosses chase you in real time and spawn randomly.
It may sound annoying, but they're actually not too bad when you get used to them. It also rewards using the character abilities, though they went too far with one of the character. This girl has the ability to teleport around the map (with some setup), trivializing overworld bosses chases even further.
The dungeons have nice music, and certain ones, like the first two, the downtown and the school, have great aesthetics. The aesthetics of the other dungeons are hit-or-miss, though. Another issue with this game is the excessively huge maps, its actually a detriment to it. For example, I mentioned overworld bosses before, well in certain maps they become inconsequential due to their spawning far away from the your location. This leads me to finishing some dungeon without encountering bosses excluding mandatory events or the final fight.
The combat is too simple, unfortunately. There's little reason not to just spam AoE attack against random encounter and multi-attack against bosses. Ailments might as well not exist. It's disappointing compared to Etrian Odyssey, really. On the plus side, managing the blood and corruption system is pretty fun, corrupted girls actually wiped me a few times.
As for the story, it manages keep me interested, at the very least, especially after the teleporting girl is recruited. The main "twist" is as subtle as a sledgehammer, but it's not a detective game, so its good enough. Actually, there is another twist involving all the playable characters mid-late game I didn't see coming, despite the setup, so kudos to them.