I am, if it were not already clear, really enjoying Mary Skelter 2. It’s a really solid dungeon crawler with some great characters, well-designed dungeons and some absolutely magnificent use of the concept of “risk versus reward”.
It is long, as modern dungeon crawlers tend to be, but what I have found with it is that once I sit down and play, time absolutely flies by. It’s not uncommon for me to play what feels like a little bit, only to save my game and discover that several hours have passed.
This is good, because it means that I can make solid progress in it without it feeling like a drag. And this is partly the reason why I wanted to set some specific time aside for it each week.
At the time of writing, I’ve just finished the “Station Grounds” dungeon, which puts me on Chapter 9 out of 11. I am just shy of 70 hours into the game. I could have probably gotten here quicker, but I have been doing all the game’s optional objectives, where they exist, and those can, in some cases, be more time-consuming than the main goal of making progress through each dungeon.
Typically, the structure of a Mary Skelter 2 chapter in the middle of the game runs thus:
- Story introduction
- Various story events around the main base according to story progress, optional quests and relationship values with the main cast
- Series of sidequests, usually based in the dungeon you just “cleared”
- Opportunity to unlock a “secret” floor in the dungeon you just “cleared”
- Explore “secret” floor
- Take opportunity to review everyone’s equipment and skills
- Start new dungeon (typically 4-5 floors)
- Throughout new dungeon, teased with new character who will join the party next (will likely have to fight them several times)
- Fight boss to destroy dungeon’s “core”
- Fight dungeon’s Nightmare, now vulnerable after core’s destruction
- Chapter outro story, usually involving rescuing aforementioned new character
The game has followed this fairly predictable structure throughout its entirety, but rather than making the game dull, it means that you always have a good idea of how far through each section you are. Each dungeon is varied enough from the last to make it stand out, and despite Mary Skelter 2 being a bit more narrative-heavy than some other dungeon crawlers (to a daunting degree if you haven’t yet jumped in!) the emphasis is still firmly on the mechanical side of things.
Like most modern dungeon crawlers, Mary Skelter’s mechanics focus on careful preparation rather than necessarily making each battle a complicated strategic challenge. It’s all about getting a good party setup and making good use of it to achieve your objectives, and the characters you get over the course of the game’s duration mean that you gradually get more and more flexibility to set things up according to your preferences.
There are pros and cons to this approach. By the end of the game, your complete squad will have several sets of two characters who each have the same possible jobs available to them, meaning you can “double up” on roles if desired, or, as I’ve gone for, have pretty much one of each. But what I have found is that once I filled that party roster for the first time, I’ve felt relatively little incentive to use the characters who were subsequently added.
That said, I did double-up on characters with the “Item Meister” job (who can increase the treasure drop rate) in order to more easily complete a sidequest that relied on random monster drops, and it seemed to work, so I think there’s probably some value in shifting things around a bit every so often. I just like my standard party line-up too much to want to change at this point!
Having more characters in the squad who can fit in the party also theoretically means that you can swap out characters who become exhausted or incapacitated if required — though to be honest, my team is so badass at this point (and I’m so well stocked with healing items) that this rarely becomes an issue. This is something I often find with all RPGs, so it’s not exclusive to Mary Skelter 2 by any means.
What I have started doing a bit more with in recent hours is the game’s “combo” system. Mary Skelter 2 actually doesn’t explicitly explain this at any point — there are a number of mechanics in the game that are deliberately left for you to figure out for yourselves — but it’s pretty simple: repeatedly hit enemies’ weaknesses, and your combo increases.
I don’t think just increasing your combo really does anything by itself, but several characters have passive abilities that cause them to beef themselves up in various ways according to the combo count. As such, it’s in your interest to try and use elemental attacks as much as you can — and in the case of characters who don’t have elemental attacks as part of their job’s lineup of abilities, equip them with appropriate items and Blood Packs in order to give them those abilities. I need to go through and review this more thoroughly for several characters if I really want to optimise them.
It’s interesting that I feel like I’m still learning things about this game as I progress. Not necessarily brand new mechanics, but better ways to approach the game. It’s overall quite a flexible experience that you can tailor somewhat to your own preferred playstyle (assuming you’re on board with the base turn-based dungeon crawler format, of course) and thus I suspect the way I’m playing might be a tad different to how someone else might approach it.
Perhaps the best thing is that I always feel like I’m making forward progress, with the exception of one sidequest about 30 hours ago that demanded I defeat a large number of a rarely spawning enemy. That was a bit of a grind, but I got there in the end; since then, nothing has really caused me to come to a standstill — and the sidequests are all optional anyway. I’m just doing them because… well, list of things to do, and I’ve done all the others!
I feel like I got some good time in with the game last night, and outside of anything I “have” to do on Saturday, I’ll likely spend some more time with it then. I reckon a few more sessions like that and I could have the whole thing done and dusted. There may well be quite a bit left to go — but I do think the end is in sight now, and that’s always exciting when it comes to long games like this! I’m excited to see how it concludes — and discover how (if) it connects to the original Mary Skelter, which, if you’re unfamiliar, it’s suggested you play after Mary Skelter 2.
So yeah. Thumbs up on the first of two scheduled “Big Game” sessions for the week!
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