I?ve got to say, 2017 has been quite the banner year for games, and we?ve still got a little over three months to go. In addition to a number of titles that could very well go down in the history books as all-time greats, I can?t count the number of pleasant surprises I?ve had while reviewing games this year. It?s really nice to be proven wrong when your expectations are low! The pleasant surprises continue this week with the latest from Compile Heart, a developer whose work I haven?t historically held in the highest regard. And looking at the website for Mary Skelter: Nightmares, that familiar feeling of dread started to creep up on me ? a cast of 80 percent girls with mysterious powers that cause their clothes to occasionally rip right off" Here we go again, I thought. But, happily, I can report that Mary Skelter subverts some of the uglier trends that usually fuel pulpy JRPGs like this one. It?s by no means a masterpiece, but then again, it wasn?t striving to be one. As pulpy entertainment goes, it?s quite a lot of fun.
Pulp Fiction
The premise of Mary Skelter is a good one, which was my first surprise. An unnamed city in Tokyo has become a crater in the ground, swallowed up by a mysterious living prison known only as the Jail. The human occupants are now the victims of torture at the hands of the Marchens, mysterious creatures that seem to exist only for the purpose of spreading misery. A pair of these humans, Jack and Alice, are rescued by a ?Blood Maiden? named...