When you think of the Goddess Rebirth series, what comes to mind. A companion to Persona? Pokémon in Hades? Or is it that Kaneko Ichima has many grotesque and devious images of gods and demons? In fact, since the birth of the first generation of "Goddess Rebirth", this less social JRPG has been doomed to its own fate of not being popular. 2022 is approaching, in this whole year, "Final Fantasy", "Dragon Quest" have no new works on sale, "Pokémon" daily stretch, and Falcom's Isu series, trajectory series have come to an end, watching the best RPG is about to fall into the hands of "True Goddess Rebirth 5", who knows that the legend series of Bandai suddenly rose up, took out the highest quality of this generation of "Dawn Breaking Legend", the royal road plot, eating sugar to expand, so that the uncrowned king of the goddess series once again lost the honor.
Don't ask the gods
"True Goddess Rebirth 5" continues the plot tone of the series, and some of the classic bridges in the new work have been reinterpreted, such as rising from diplomatic events to the Great War of the Gods; the wreckage of Tokyo after the destruction of the end of the world; the heroine sacrificed early to protect the world, the plot is familiar, but the story is completely different, quite the meaning of reincarnation.
The setting of the game is easily reminiscent of an ancient poem "Poor night half empty front seat, do not ask the cangsheng to ask the ghost god", the original sentence means that it is a pity that he left a seat for Emperor Wen of Han in his dream, but he still just came to ask the gods to worship the ghosts, and did not ask the world. Of course, Li Shangyin did not wait for Emperor Wen of Han, and in reality there was never any immortal emperor, nor did he rely on any savior, but under the worldview of the rebirth of the goddess, all kinds of gods, Buddhas, demons, and charms and rays were truly related to the life and death of mortals.
The game features myths and legends from all over the world, divided into various forces, such as the Japanese gods, the angels of the gods, the Buddhist kings, the Taoist beasts, the heroes of Celtic legends, the demons of solomons, and even the female ghosts in supernatural stories and the foreign paths of urban legends... There are more than ten species competing under the same sky. The game borrows from the faction division in the DND setting, but is slightly different. It is divided into two major alliances, divine and evil, each of which is divided into LAW (orderly), NEUTRAL (neutral) and CHAOS (chaos) by personality. Among the good gods there are happy people who seek pleasure and do nothing, and among the demons there are big brothers who respect order and will repay kindness. The alliance is not monolithic, and the protagonist must find his own way to survive in it.
Under the story of this work, all things in the world are gods, until a creator god overwhelms the worlds, reduces all gods to DEMONS (demons), seals their souls in apples for creation, and human beings are seduced by poisonous snakes, and eating apples has the wisdom of the gods. This passage is a clear blend of creation legends from all over the world, such as the successful ascension of the Asa gods to the throne in Norse mythology after the defeat of other brother gods, the original sin theory of the golden apple of Eden, and the eight million gods of Japan. Human beings produce and create in this world, gods and demons are isolated in the other world, but there are always exceptions to everything, and demons who covet human wisdom always have a way to disturb the human world, intending to find their lost souls and human halfs. In one meta-accident after another, the protagonist accidentally encounters an amnesiac god who is compatible with himself, and in order to survive, he fuses into a complete divinity and has the power equivalent to that of the creator god.
Male and female phase Waterfall long hair
Series tradition, the protagonist has a hidden value of good and evil, each plot option will make corrections to it, different good and evil lead to different endings and pass rewards, and the true ending of the game is often a neutral range between good and evil, reflected in the protagonist's cunning of "seeing people talking about people, seeing ghosts and saying ghosts", and jokingly showing a delicate posture. Of course, it can also be understood as the "middle" way in Eastern philosophy, the collective norm of good order is very important, and the passionate personal pursuit is also worth affirming, and in the end, where the human wisdom and subjective initiative are reflected, and what kind of plan is used to convince the gods, the player needs to choose in the story.
There is often a very routine narrative method in jrPG in the game, that is, through multiple side stories, showing the positive and negative dialectics of the same theme, and then constantly asking questions at each stage of the plot, repeatedly questioning the protagonist and the player, to see if the player has awakened his thinking and changed his view of things in the adventure. A well-structured RPG story will make people feel the central relationship between each small story. There are also frequent soul tortures in this work that make people's hearts tighten, and find resonance in this heavy story.
The theme of the god and demon chaos war has also attracted a lot of unnecessary trouble, the Hindu Association attacked the concept of DEMO in the game after the release of the game, calling Shiva, auspicious heaven and ganesha in Hinduism the demon, which is really a big rebellion, and it is also used as a "middle demon" to drive the battle, which seriously affects the cognition of young people. This is not the first time, "Overwatch", "Dragon Ball", and FGO have all been touched by India. However, Sega and ATLUS will probably not respond, but in my opinion, this matter is not innocent, after all, the Tsukiyomi, Susanoo, and Genyoshi From Japan in this game are all the images of the protagonist group Wei Guangzheng, fortunately, the president of the Education Association did not fully experience this work, otherwise it might be more angry.
Cute and charming villain character
The Goddess Rebirth series is based on the 1986 novel Digimon: Goddess Rebirth, which tells the story of a teenager who is a high school student who suddenly gets a "demon summoning program" in an email. At that time, Tokuma Shoten already had the foresight of IP operation, and the works were gamified and adapted on the popular FC console, giving birth to the first generation of the game of the same name. The demon summoning and speaking system has become the most iconic gameplay in the series. After seeing the numerous monster skills and attribute restraints in the rebirth of the goddess, most players will think of the Pocket Monster Pokémon series, but in fact, the goddess appeared in history as a JRPG, a little earlier than the PM. In the later works, the goddess reincarnated can even summon all the bosses to be our side, and the soaring demon of the player team makes the villain ashamed of himself.
Enemies in the game can be transformed into our army, the concept of "enemy and me homology" is not common in early games, often the attack power of the brave is extremely high, and the health of monsters and player characters is not on an order of magnitude. In the rebirth of the goddess, the player can kill a wild monster with a few knives, then our summon beast must be equally vulnerable, which is inherited in many JRPG captured by the main monsters later, and the rigor of the value makes the series have a difficult to cultivate gameplay.
Combat retains the classic Turn Press gameplay of the series, that is, each attack weakness attribute can get new action opportunities, on the contrary, if the attack is blocked, it will deduct the action points behind, intelligence work is particularly important, Yu attack can play a series of flaws, Yu Shou can instantly make the opponent dumb, empty a full round.
The way to get the demon brother is not to beat it into a drop of blood and then throw the elf ball, the game proposes a very interesting demon negotiation system, actively abandon the round in battle, try to talk to the enemy, during which a series of questions will be thrown according to the personality of the monster, there will be some interesting interactions, even if it is the same kind of monster, it is difficult to encounter the same problems and options, it can be said that the complexity of the "mouth cannon" gameplay is more than turn-based. Dialogue is an opportunity to directly express the monster's personality, and after combining it, it is transformed into a friendly army, which is actually an idea for describing optional characters on the side.
Most of the demons are cunning and changeable, some will propose to shake hands with the protagonist, in fact, they are testing the player's "strength" value, if the enemy will ask us for heavy money, if it is too high, it will hit the grass and snake, quickly flee; some demons will take advantage of the treasure offering, take the opportunity to sneak attack us; some female demons prefer to listen to flattery, but too enthusiastic will be recognized; finally the monster will ask the protagonist to offer sacrifices, here you can bargain, some monsters are impatient, and finally you can symbolically lose some rags and fool through. Skilled players can be greeted by the cow, ghost and snake gods, tongues like springs, mouth can be lotus, beginners are eager to download a "National Anti-Fraud Center".
The world's first and "Reiwa the world's first"
As the saying goes, "P5 is the first in the world", but players who come to the sequel to "Persona" and "Megaten" may be disappointed, "Persona" and "Megaten" are basically two parallel game series. Because the first generation of Chinese personnel did not understand that persona came from the psychological term "personality mask", the realism of the game was associated with ATLUS's RPG masterpiece "Goddess Rebirth", which was translated as "Persona Anecdote".
The True Goddess Rebirth series is the canonical reboot sequel to Goddess Rebirth. Inheriting its original class of people and strange styles, by the famous designer and occultist Kaneko Kazuma as the art, the three-headed and six-armed demons, fundamentalist gods, and many scantily dressed female goblins, in the 90s attracted many middle and second teenagers to worship, known as one of the three major painters in Japan, and was awarded the title of "Demon Painter", the degree of fanaticism is no less than the "P5 World First" in the previous two years.
The game daily challenges the red line of the platform side, it is difficult to imagine, in the early days of the FC machine era, ATLUS intends to develop a dark plot, children's inappropriate hardcore RPG. To this day, it is still the most "colored" login work on the NS platform, and perhaps only the meat strips in the same agency's "Catherine" and "Dragon Quest" can compete with each other, and it can be imagined how much pressure Sega's distributors have to face and negotiate with the old ren - "can't be bigger".
Full of cult atmosphere of the monster original painting, adding more fashionable design and graphic technology, this game for the first time introduced UE4 engine, the demon shape 3D presentation, the male protagonist's waterfall long hair triggered the game's two-creation boom, before the release of the new work "Persona", there is a trend of "Reiwa world first".
Dream from a different angle
In our article on Trailblazers: Wrath of Justice, we discussed crPG's need for a work that brings new blood. On the JRPG side, this has already happened, that is, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of ATLUS, "Persona 5" was released, becoming the "first JRPG for young people", with a funky UI design, anime mirrors and human settings, and a unique combat system, all of which are more in line with the tastes of the new generation of gamers. After playing True Goddess Rebirth 5, I realized that maybe JRPGs need more diverse voices, in that era of blossoming flowers, "Kakabu Trilogy", "Time warrior", "Alien Armor", "Double Star Story", "Libertine Adventure Tan", "Creation of Heaven and Earth"... I can say that all day long, they had the same gameplay, but they had completely different dreams.
Games are just forms, experiencing a different life, visiting a different world, meeting different partners. The game is passed, as if saying goodbye to many old friends, forgetting a period of time, and turning into a pearl in the sea. The disc ejects, and the dream dissipates, swinging into a starlight.