http://megaten.aeriagames.com/
This game is currently in closed beta.

Well, this is my first MMORPG in a long time. The only other MMORPG I’ve played extensively is Ragnarok Online on private servers.
So really I’m not a big MMORPG fan, but this one caught my attention for a simple reason: Shin Megami Tensei, and when I looked up some info it made me think of Nocturne… a little bit. Though I’m not big on MMORPGs, I’ll do my best to describe this.

So here are my first impressions on the game. I only played around 2-3 hours, so I know it’s not exactly enough to go very deep in the game and to get a 100% precise impression, but at least I went through the basics of the game.

Read on for moar.

In usual MMORPG fashion, you start off having to create your character. Relatively simple. You choose between a few faces, body types (very little difference), haircuts, basic clothes, and hair/eye color. For now the options are pretty limited, with not many pieces of clothes, the body types look almost exactly the same and only 6 faces isn’t much.

Of course, I made a character that looks as much like a schoolgirl as I could with the limited options

Then you are treated to a kinda boring story sequence, explaining… pretty much nothing.
After you’re in Home II, a place where Demon Busters such as you live, but something has gone terribly wrong and you’re going to investigate, even though you’re just a novice with a knife.

Making my way through Home II

 After a short conversation, you make your way to the interior of Home II and are treated to your first battle. 

Fighting against lame Slimes that barely do anything.

Battle
Battle works, like in most MMORPGs I’ve seen, by targeting an enemy and either clicking on it or using shortcuts to use normal and special attacks. You can set multiple shortcuts to the keys from 1 to =, and all the Fs. There are some taming shortcuts, some attack shortcuts, some defensive skills and more to come, and you can put items in there too. Also, F1 to F8 are reserved for monster commands. Now for the actual fighting.
When using normal attacks, 3 hits in a row(counting extra hits from monsters if it’s attacking at the same time as you) knock the enemy back (same if you’re hit 3 times in a row).
A rush attack needs time to charge. When it’s charged, you have some sort of dash attack(probably depends on the weapon) which breaks through defense if the enemy is guarding, and you can link it to a normal attack at the end of the rush.
A spin attack hits multiple enemies around you, in a small range.
For defensive techniques, you can guard, which takes a second or two to active but protects you from at attack. There’s also a counter moves, which guards you and makes you hit the enemy when you get attacked. 

Leveling up

Putting in some stat points

There’s a variety of characters you can make. Close-range, Magician, Long-range, mix, you have lots of personalisation… from what I’ve seen. As per usual, you get experience for killing enemies. After you get enough you level up, and you get Attribute Points. Each stat does… just about what it would do in other MMORPG(“Speed” is the equivalent to “Dexterity” in other games…kinda). As you boost your stats, each will take more and more Attribute Points as you reach certain thresholds. When you get to 10 of a stat, for example, boosting it from one point will take 2 attribute points instead of one, and it goes on.

Other than usual leveling, you have what will make your character unique: Expertise. In the Expertise window, you can choose different Expertise you want to make better, and as you use actions from that expertise the points will go higher. As you use them, you will level up the rank of the expertise. When you get to rank 10, your expertise will go up a class, giving further access to special attacks of said expertise. Each time you use an action in an expertise, it adds points to that expertise. You have a limit of 1750 points (or somewhere around that), so you must choose wisely, as you definitely can’t master everything.
There are multiple expertise to choose from: normal attack, spin attack, rush attack, destructive magic, support magic, guarding, countering, and some other stuff. This really gives you the possibility of making a unique character.

Negotiating
Sorry, no screenshots for that. 
As in SMT:Nocturne, you can negotiate with monsters to make them join your team. At the beginning there are 2 negotiating actions: Threatening and Talking. Talking is the calmer type and threatening is the more aggressive type. I’m not 100% sure how negotiating works. Sometimes it works when the monster is weakened, sometimes when it’s full health. I’m guessing some monsters are “weak” to certain types of negotiating techniques. And it doesn’t work on enemies who are stronger than you(they’ll call you weak, even if they are 1 hit away from dying).
When you “capture” a monster, you can summon him to your side and it will  help you in battle. You can decide if it will fight the same monsters as you or others that are around. You can control what he does with the keys from F1 to F8. Just like normal characters, they can have various types of skills, from support to destructive magic and various attacks. Using monsters in battle really helps make the battles a lot more dynamic.
Finally, like in Nocturne, you can combine monsters to make stronger, or at least different, monsters, in the Cathedral of Shadows. As long as the result isn’t higher level than you, you can combine just about anything. There are probably some restrictions, but I didn’t get that far yet.

Other stuff
After 2 tutorial sequences (why 2, I don’t know, but whatever), you get to do some quests. The first teaches you about negotiation, and then it goes a bit deeper.
From what I’ve seen there’s various fetch quests like in most MMORPGs. Some of the quests require you to go to  dungeons, which are in instances, so you can either do them alone or in parties. At the end of the dungeons, or at least the one I did, bosses await.

Ugly little monster here.

Otherwise, your appearance changes depending on what you’re wearing, so unless there’s a bunch of ultimate items everyone will have, you can have pretty original looks.

Overall
There’s pretty much all I can say right now, since I didn’t play that long. From what I’ve played it looks quite interesting. The monster designs are cool, the gameplay is fun, the battles are fast-paced and challenging. I also quite like the world of Shin Megami Tensei, so this is a plus.
Overall, lots of customizing, fun battles, though other than battles it’s a bit on the slow side. I’m having quite some fun with this, and if it’s still free after the beta I might actually continue playing this if I’m not bored of it already(I refuse to pay monthly fees for anything game related).

If you had the change to sign up for the closed beta, check it out, otherwise wait for the open beta which will probably be free of bugs. It’s well worth checking out.

jobocan Games, Preview