Independent publishers are something of a rarity these days, what with them generally either going under or being absorbed into one of the big guys, and some are better than others. This is a love letter to one in particular, which has constantly impressed me over the last few years and doesn’t seem to get nearly enough credit.

I’ve steadily built up a library of RPGs from Atlus over the past couple of generations, mainly in the Shin Megami Tensei series, and they’re universally excellent, challenging and fun, and the publisher is one of the best in the world when it comes to quality of its translations. Taking the very Japanese Persona series as an example, they were lovingly translated while keeping the original spirit without being obtrusive (1UP has a good interview on the methodology behind the localisation of Persona 4 here) and given great dubs, which could only really have been improved by the inclusion of the original voiceovers.

Also, special editions, limited editions, whatever you call them, most publishers’ are usually neither. Atlus’s, on the other hand, are frequently both. A soundtrack CD is the least that can be expected, up to lavish art books, guides, slipcases, and the rest. It’s a good reason to be cynical about £10 extra for a tin and download code, and it takes something special from anyone else for me to care any more. Only the late Working Designs was better for its treatment of obscure games.

And given that these editions are actually limited, they’re invariably good investments. The Demon’s Souls Deluxe Edition only came out in October and is already comfortably topping £150 on eBay. And while I might suspect certain studios of holding back copies of their out-of-print games and leaking them onto auction websites when they’re selling for hundreds – I have no evidence to support that accusation, I hasten to add – Atlus isn’t averse to running normal-price reprints of its rarest games. It might disappoint the hawks on eBay, but it’s a nice feeling to get a brand new sealed copy of a rare game like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne or Digital Devil Saga – both superb, by the way – without paying over the odds for them.

The brilliant Demon’s Souls currently has me in thrall – seriously, either import it or hope for a European release – and I’ll be rekindling my relationship with the Persona series now that Persona 3 Portable is confirmed for an English-language bow. I make no secret of the fact that prefer RPGs on a portable system and so that represents my best chance to actually put in the 100-odd hours required to finish it. Port the superior Persona 4 and I’ll be yours forever.

Atlus is part of a rare breed these days, not only as a Japanese company that’s successfully doing its thing on the current generation but as a studio that treats its games and its fans right. How many of those are there? Valve maybe? This is one endangered species that I’d love to keep around.

After a year dominated by good games, but games that didn’t really push the envelope any further than the number of guns featured in that particular first-person shooter, I’ve changed things up by having a good time with a couple of recent releases that have really taken me back.

Bayonetta was first, and I loved it from the moment it accompanied a drive in a red sports car with Magical Sound Shower on the radio. It’s loaded with references to classic Sega games and revels in the Capcom connection as well – many of the developers worked on Devil May Cry, most notably director Hideki Kamiya – with nods to everything from the obvious Devil May Cry through to Viewtiful Joe and Resident Evil 4. It’s far more entertaining in its homages than something like Matt Hazard, which uses them as an excuse for uninspired design – ironically bad.

It’s also mind-bendingly gorgeous, outrageously silly on occasions, and unashamedly hardcore in its design. Lower difficulty levels make cool-looking combos easy and accessible through button-mashing, but play it on normal or higher and it takes skill without requiring the third hand that certain similar games can do. The combo system in particular is superb, letting you flick between two different weapon loadouts mid-combo and cancel in and out of them as you go, dodging with a tap of the right trigger. It’s less prescriptive and more spectacular than Ninja Gaiden, while also less daunting than Devil May Cry 4.

Essentially, it’s just a lot of fun to play, whether you’re out for a challenge or some classic gameplay of a sort that seems to be in decline. Just don’t play it for the story, because that’s utter bollocks.

I’m not convinced that it’s a 10/10, though. Although there’s nothing that I’d pick out as a glaring flaw, it’s very much standing on the shoulders of giants rather than forging its own path, and I like to think of perfect scores as being reserved for the few games that do the latter.

Demon’s Souls is the other game, and although it’s been out in the US for a few months, I only recently took the opportunity to import it. Its buzz has been hard to ignore and it’s even picked up a few awards along the way, and I’m surprised by how easily it seems to have found an audience considering its difficulty and plain old-fashioned bloody-mindedness. Ganged up on by a couple of basic zombies? Dead. Killed again before you manage to resurrect yourself? Dead. Oh, and you’ve lost all your collected souls as well. Brilliant…

Both games are different sides of the same coin. Bayonetta is brash, loud, and intent on having fun with its audience but also accessible, whereas Demon’s Souls wants to trip you up and is only playable by someone who can play through the frustration. It’s not fun, per se, but it’s a very compelling challenge, and the enjoyment is in getting through it and finally beating that boss who reduced you to a broken pile of bones within seconds of your first meeting.

But regardless of their wildly divergent approaches, I’m just happy to see that games like this – ‘proper’ games, as I’ll hesitantly call them – can still succeed. As much as I love Modern Warfare 2, I like to see games hewn of the bedrock of gaming history still getting out there and doing good business. Hack-and-slash action games and roguelikes – admittedly, Demon’s Souls isn’t quite that bad – were once staples of gaming, and Bayonetta and Demon’s Souls represent their modern equivalents, doing a great job of keeping the old-school flag flying. We should appreciate them for that.

But now, Atlus, how about pulling your finger out and giving Demon’s Souls a European release? This is 2010, not 1995.

Considering that this was the second Persona game that I played in 2008 and that it had to live up to the high standards of its predecessor, the standard that Persona 4 manages to hit is all the more remarkable.

I was pretty much guaranteed to like this one as soon as I saw the small-town Japan setting – I like another game with a similar setting, in case you didn’t know – and although I do indeed like that better than the more anonymous city of Persona 3, there are other reasons why I like this one better. There’s no more shooting oneself in the head to summon demons, but you can’t have everything.

It’s not far removed from P3 in terms of gameplay and structure, but all of its changes are for the better. As well as finally letting me see what a spell does from the menu, finally removing the need to memorise the functions of moves with such descriptive names as Pulinpa or Marakukaja to avoid the potentially harsh punishments for using the wrong one, there’s more variety to the dungeons, better characters, and a fantastic translation.

I mean, somehow the translation team managed to take a cute bear-thing called Teddie, who’s with you throughout and talks in frequent bear puns, and not make the whole thing un-bear-able. Sorry… but it’s still an impressive feat of translation in an already genuinely funny script.

So a round of applause for Atlus, sending out the PS2 with one of its best RPGs and what will surely be – I’m sure that I said this about God of War II and Persona 3, but I actually think it’s true this time – the console’s last truly great game.

Much as I’d like to, I can’t spend all my time playing GTA IV (16 hours over the long weekend was quite enough), and with the rest of the development world going into hiding until everyone gets bored, I’ve had to turn over a few rocks for something else to play.

So I came to this: the expanded edition of last year’s well-received Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3. This is where I put a rant about how it’ll never come out here, but I only just found out that the original game did, in fact, come out in the UK. Still, that doesn’t improve our chances of getting a remix of a game that probably didn’t make it out of four figures in sales. Import is the only way to go if you want FES (pronounced ‘fess’, as it’s short for ‘festival’).

Right, here comes the synopsis. I’ve played some weird games in my time, but this one takes the biscuit. The premise is that there’s a 25th hour to every day called the Dark Hour. Most people are completely unaware of it, as they transmogrify into coffins (seriously) for the duration and return to normal at 12:01 as if nothing has happened. But a select few are able to retain their form and must spend their nights fighting ‘shadows’, demons that emerge from a mysterious labyrinth called Tartarus, which only appears during the Dark Hour. Someone dies or inexplicably becomes catatonic during the night? That’s the shadows getting up to no good with them.

Naturally, your protagonist and some of his school friends are among those with the ability to roam the Dark Hour. They also have the handy ability to control personas – personal demons called forth from their psyche by shooting themselves in the head. Yes, really. Strengthen your personality by day by making friends, having relationships and joining clubs, and it makes your personas and their spells stronger for when you roam the randomly generated 200+ floors of Tartarus, grinding and fighting occasional bosses to build yourself up for monthly story events that occur during the full moon. (more…)

Things are improving already. I don’t know if I was just in a bad mood yesterday (very possible) but even by animosity towards Mac OS 9.2 seems to have cooled, thanks in part to the fact that it didn’t crash. I withdraw my statement that I’d prefer Windows 95 – I’d put it more on the level of Windows 98 – but maintain that Internet Explorer is a shitty piece of shit.

The first half of the day was spent choosing the best nine news stories that I found yesterday and writing them into little 100 word stories to fill in the gaps around the big ones in the magazine. I spent about three hours doing that (should have taken less time, but I had to fill a morning with it and kept checking various websites for news as I went along), and then about an hour or so just procrastinating until lunch. I was fairly happy with the stories so hopefully at least some of them will make the cut.

After lunch I was sat down in the games room with a debug PS2 and a PAL copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga which it looks like I’m going to be reviewing. I played about four hours of it and my first impressions are very good. I liked the story and the demon designs are suitably odd (breasts with teeth?), the battle system is good, and the characters are likeable. I do have complaints – the music is sometimes cheesy, the voice acting isn’t brilliant, the settings are generic (the map is invaluable because so much looks alike), and I have a horrible feeling that the difficulty is about to spike – but it seems like a high seven or low eight at this point.

Much of tomorrow is probably going to be spent playing onwards with it because apparently you have to play “fucking loads” of an RPG before you even think about reviewing it.