Mary Skelter: Nightmares

very fun game

ok

fun game

I adore this game! It's the first game I've ever felt really motivated to 100% (almost there, just need to clear underground jail) and the story is really fun. Sure, it's a bit fan service-y, but most games are in this genre tbh.
Just to note! The steam and switch versions are really different in their maps. I spent ages looking through guides for where certain affection events were just for the guides to be for switch instead. LOL!!
But I recommend this game, it's so fun and my first dungeon crawler. Whenever i play MS2 I always compare it to this one (which I prefer SO FAR in terms of game mechanics and it also seems less glitchy, but maybe I'm biased or my MS2 is broken)
Apparently you're supposed to play MS2 first. After playing this one first instead, yeah, probably play MS2 first.

The game will often turn into a "survival terror" (although calling it this is a compliment) where bosses chase you around the maze. If they find you, you get attacked over and over, and you can't see the map while running from them. This has to be the dumbest idea ever implemented in a dungeon crawler game. My theory is that the devs wanted the "scared video game streamers" to scream over this game so it would go viral or something? It's trash.

Everything about this game is about wasting your time. Lengthy hallways with no reasoning, huge maps with nothing in them, and a level up system that is unrewarding.
There's no reward for doing all the things you can do in the game; it's almost possible to 100% Achievement this game with minimum efforts.
The most fun parts are the bosses and they happen only rarely and when you get there, they're over in a minute or two
I love the setting and atmosphere, but it fails as an RPG and it fails as a Dungeon Crawler
And it's sad, because Etrian Odyssey I through V were already released by then and it could learn so much from it...
Really wish this was the usual Compile Heart slop, and I never thought I'd say it... but I am disappointed it wasn't.

Yet again we have the same old story of another of their games delivering The Quintessential IF/CH Experience™. Sadly, that's not a good thing; rather, it is a sad tale of disappointment. I have a reasonably lengthy history with trying to truly appreciate any games Idea Factory/Compile Heart make, and, regardless of in what specific ways each game fails me, IF/CH games have fallen short of greatness every single time, regardless of genre or sub-genre.

You see, they have a long and storied habit of making games that have really nice HUDs, a compelling narrative, reasonable character development, good voice work, and a roster comprised largely or entirely of various female characters (of whom the main protagonist is usually flat-chested or close enough for some reason), but - importantly - coming up distinctly short on actually balancing their progression or systems well. Like the Laptop Gun in Perfect Dark, IF/CH games only pass on cursory glance, and fall apart the moment they're exposed to even the most remote of scrutiny; you often find yourself going "I can SEE how this could have actually been good if they'd just put some more effort into it, but they just didn't."

In the case of Mary Skelter: Nightmares, it has a laundry list of issues:
* Overall, the job system works poorly. First of all, some jobs are just clearly the right choice because they're totally busted in their own ways, such as Alice/Paladin, Cinderella/Destroyer, or Snow White/Item Meister, and/or the only remotely reasonable choice in a sea of otherwise generally-garbage choices, like Red Riding Hood or Rapunzel as either a Pierrot or Leech. Secondly, job spec passives (which you only have as long as you stick with that job) generally are not compelling whatsoever and are usually inconsequential, with few exceptions (such as Item Meister); I rarely felt hugely compelled to learn them or level them up.
* Massacre Mode falls flat on its face for me. (And trust me, it's not lost on me that this is supposed to be the game's focal special battle mechanic, also being the reason the Splatter Gauge exists.) It doesn't seem to actually increase your stats all that notably, and even the girls' special Massacre Mode skills suck. As a result, I have never found myself actively shooting to get any girls into Massacre Mode, nor did I ever bother leveling up Massacre skills. (Just so others are satisfied that I've mentioned it, certainly the risk of a corrupted girl going Skelter instead of Massacre is every bit as bad as the game says, so you do actually want to watch your corruption levels. Congrats, that's one of the few gameplay elements they actually did reasonably well with.)
* Partners proc seldom (the chance doesn't seem nearly high enough), so the Partner system seems mostly useless as well.
* Some dungeons or situations have harsh or outright unfair difficulty spikes. This is very highly notable in the Temple Nightmare fight, but happens in the middle of some dungeons to a lesser degree as well - you'll go up a floor and instead of mopping the floor slightly less, you'll suddenly have a significantly rougher time for no real reason.
* Once your playthrough really gets off the ground, Jack gradually becomes overall more and more useless for anything other than keeping corruption/Skelter in check, and rarely tossing an SP restoration item during a boss battle; corruption management becomes his sole notable function. It becomes largely unnecessary for him to act as a meat-shield for the girls (who can defend for themselves anyway, and the Paladin job's Cover skill can be super-busted on top of that), he almost never needs to toss items around despite being the only character who is always able to use them in battle (I've already mentioned the Item Meister job, which can partially eclipse his functions), and attack items cause basically no damage, so most of his time not spent reducing the girls' corruption ends up spent hitting the Create Blood command over and over and listening to him do his best impression of Goku charging a Spirit Bomb.
* The Temple Nightmare boss scenario is easily the worst-designed boss encounter I've seen in remotely recent memory. It deserves special, specific mention because it's actually that bad. I've made a whole forum post about this scenario, all the ways it's abysmally bad, and the many things that'd need done to make it remotely reasonable.
* You get some characters way too late in the game for them to be a major consideration for placement on the primary battle party. My playthrough, for example, recruited Gretel last, and she was never considered for a main-party position; she was immediately relegated to being a Partner, and never even got her job changed. Even when I got Rapunzel before her, I was quick to notice Cinderella already had way better skills for obliterating monsters than Rappy ended up with, and Cindy was better-established, so Rappy spent less than an hour on my main party.
* Jack is constantly accused of attempting to seduce some girl or other when he obviously isn't. This happens at least once every chapter once chapter 3 or so hits, often enough that it actually gets tiring to see it harped on over and over.
* Like most other IF/CH games, this game very definitely suffers "if you want anything remotely resembling a reasonable ending, you will need to jump through a million hoops" syndrome. If you don't do this, the game ends VERY abruptly after defeating the final boss and you receive ZERO closure, which I take major umbrage with.
* Last but not least, despite my owning a very solid computer, this game actually crashed on me regularly. It appears to have a memory leak issue. I tried multiple things to rectify this, to no avail.

Mary Skelter: Nightmares simply goes on my long list of IF/CH games I have tried - very, very hard - to truly enjoy and appreciate, because I can see what they're trying to achieve, but as per usual for them, they've yet again come up short in almost exclusively the ways most important to a video game experience.

Sorry, but I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anybody seeking a reasonable, fun, or occasionally even fair gameplay experience.

I gave it a try for a few minutes, but a nonsensical plot in some weird world that isn't ours but also is not given any time and place in the universe, licking blood off walls, licking blood off people, a main character named "Red Riding Hood" who is not THE Red Riding Hood but just happens to have that name, characters who talk about game mechanics, lots of random encounters in gigantic generic dungeons, plus endless dialogue to click through without having a chance to save -- I'm now at 40 consecutive minutes of rapid clicking through mandatory dialogue screens and want to go to bed, but can't quit until I click through a bunch more and THEN find a save point -- turned me off.

The art is good even if the level design is not, the characters are cute and charming, and the dialogue is well written and voiced for what it is. If you're tolerant of very non-western fantasy / horror / sci-fi hybrid storytelling and into JRPGs you'll probably do OK.

I don't know why Steam said that I spend 23 hours on the game when I actually spend more than 100 hours.
I love Mary Skelter a lot. I played all games for 100+ hours, read the Prequel Novels, collected some merch like artbooks and did everything that the games has to offer. Out of all the games, I love this version of MSN the most. The story is great with a loveable cast. The world is wonderful to explore and aesthetically pleasing. The huge amount of references to fairytales in this game is beautiful and well done. I love the usual anime hijinks found in the game and how it works with the setting. Since the story takes place in a literal Wonderland. The Gameplay is quite balanced with a few spikes every now and then. Sure you can break the game in half like every IF/CH game if you know what to do. But the game is not unforgiving and gives you a lot of wiggle room for error. I do suggest to save often as I was told that the PC version will crash sometimes. THE MUSIC IS LEGIT GOD TIER! Great use of Rock and Violin. It fits the tone and mood of the world. I tend listen to the soundtrack almost every day. I recommend this game to anyone who is either an IF/CH fan or a dungeon Crawler fan. The game will provide some scares, excitement, solid gameplay and nice fanservice.

I was recommended this game, and while it seems like you'd be into this if you enjoyed other IF and Compile Heart games (such as the neptunia series), I'm gonna be honest: the premise is kinda gross. You've got main characters that are drawn like children who then transform into wearing skimpy bikinis. And then they lick blood off of each other. I didn't play very much of the game, because that was a pretty immediate turn off for me.

Great dungeon crawler with an awesome world and story

I like it! Dungeon crawler, a bit creepy, good story!

as the first dungeon crawler game ive played, i had a good time with it
i think the nightmare mechanic is a fun twist on the format and it has some neat stuff in it
id recommend it for the story too, its the type of thing i vibe with
only real complaint is it being a bit buggy sometimes, had a couple crashes when trying to use the rabbit hole ability that makes a save point

Gretel best girl 100%

I love Mary Skelter Nightmares but the steam version is super buggy and basically unplayable, get the GOG version instead, that version doesn't crash or have any bugs.

Not really a review and perhaps I'll write one in the future, but suffice to say that I already played the heck out of this on the Vita and have every intention of playing it again here despite my ridiculous backlog. It's sometimes lewd, but mostly just an excellent contemporary DRPG that has some fun systems to play with.

An important note, however, is that if you run Malwarebytes real-time protection (malware and ransomware), it will stop this game dead cold every 30 seconds or so for just under a second. It's irritating as hell, and I tried many things to resolve it including futzing with the display settings, throwing it onto an SSD instead of an HDD, etc, but nothing worked until I disabled both real-time protection options in MWB. After that, the game was silky smooth. Small risk if you don't do anything in the background while playing, but worth noting as it took pretty much my entire playtime to figre out. Be advised.

I have mixed feelings about that one :

Pros :

- enjoyable battles ;
- solid dungeon crawler with a dynamic way to customise characters (that's what I liked the most, actually) ;
- creative content with a specific horror underworld and rebranded girls from fairy tales.

Cons :

- something feels off about the story, like something's missing to make it truly enjoyable. I don't know... Was I told this tale already ?
- veeeery linear : explore, fight, liberate area, rinse, repeat. Okay, new characters appear every once in a while, making this a bit more interesting, but it essentially is always the same ;
- claustrophobic : okay, since there are horror components, you'll want it that way, but exploring mazes in a 1st person game for hours can really drive you sick sometimes. But if you're a fan... there will be no issue.

Good luck escaping that Jail... I feel I've done it for ages.