If you haven’t heard of Mary Skelter by now, you’re probably not alone. This niche series from Compile Heart and Idea Factory and published domestically by NIS America takes the first person dungeon crawler genre in new and interesting directions but it’s not exactly part of the mainstream. The original English release was on the Playstation Vita and met with marginal success. The sequel (which we reviewed here) was actually more of a refined reimagining of the first game (which was also included with Mary Skelter 2) and was released on Switch and PS4. Now, the final installment of the series is here and the question on anyone’s mind that has played the previous games is whether Mary Skelter Finale reaches the high bar that Mary Skelter 2 set.
It’s hard to explain a game like Mary Skelter Finale. If you’re new to the series, this is a challenging jumping-on point, because the game just picks up pretty much where the last one left off. Compile Heart is aware of this and they’ve included all the cut scenes from Mary Skelter 2 in a bonus section of the game. It’s great that the entire backstory is included as a bonus with Mary Skelter Finale, but it is definitely a fair amount of content to wade through before even starting a game. It’s important to remember that Mary Skelter is as much a visual novel as it is a first person dungeon crawler here too, because the game is definitely a slow starter.
Turns out that the crew from Mary Skelter 2 have finally emerged from the dungeon only to find that a team of beings called Massacre Pink have slaughtered pretty much every human around and left an epic pile of carnage everywhere. Massacre Pink are powerful female creatures, heavily armed and far too strong for Otsuu, Red Riding Hood, Mary, Jack, and the rest of the crew. Unfortunately, they’re defeated across the board and forced into new dungeon towers and the real game begins. However, unless you skip the dialogue, you’re looking at a couple of hours (no, that’s not a typo) before you even manage to start exploring the various towers in the game. This is definitely going to frustrate some players, especially since it’s really unclear who Massacre Pink are, what they’re doing, and generally what’s happening at all. Unlike the tighter dungeon scenario in Mary Skelter 2, the narrative here is spread more thinly across several groups of people and remains that way for quite some time. You’re slowly piecing together information to try and unify the plot but it’s a struggle at best.
The whole plot of Mary Skelter Finale develops piecemeal like this, leaving the vast majority of what you’re doing feeling a bit pointless. It’s hard to pay attention to a long, meandering dialogue that doesn’t really have any dramatic focus and then skips to an entirely separate group of people. Sure, it kind of settles down eventually, but by the time that happens, most players will have detached somewhat from the characters rather than identifying with them, a critical failure in a character-based narrative. When you finally get to start exploring the towers in earnest, this feeling carries over into the gameplay as well. Gameplay is surprisingly complex and poorly integrated in terms of flow, something that really stalls the feeling of progression that Mary Skelter 2 had.
Within the towers, your group of characters is broken up into six teams eventually. As you play, you can only progress so far with a given team before you end up at an impasse. This is where the new Zapping system comes into play. On the Switch, pressing the ZR button pops up the Zapping menu and a gallery of available characters appears. Selecting a different character drops you into their position in the dungeon and you explore from a new perspective with separate dialogue. Eventually you’ll discover that these dungeon segments are intertwined and your actions in one area will connect with actions in another, allowing other parties to progress jointly with each other. It’s a complex process that feels a bit alien because while the game says that help notations will pop up to show which characters to select, but it’s still unclear who to choose some of the time.
Now that might seem a little complex, but that’s actually the tip of the iceberg with Mary Skelter Finale, because you’ll be going through game mechanics tutorials literally for hours after you start the game. Every so often another mechanic will pop up, including Nightmares from last game, Blood Flower harvesting, and the Lick mechanic, or new ones like the Dust boxes which allow you to transfer keys and items between groups and the rather bizarre Insectmares. The Mary Skelter series already had a lot of complexities, up to and including living dungeons that you have to please to unlock bonuses and special dungeon abilities for each character. Adding even more information to an already cluttered interface makes for a remarkably complex game. In Finale, you’re never quite sure if you’re managing all the aspects correctly, especially in the first couple of chapters. That feeling is magnified by the fact that almost ever battle is remarkably easy, especially early on. Even the Nightmares have somewhat lost their teeth and while you might get KOed occasionally, the overall challenge level has definitely dropped in the dungeons, leaving the gameplay feeling secondary, an especially odd choice considering the weird plot.
As you move through the game, assuming that it’s not so overly convoluted that you get frustrated, you’ll quickly find that there’s not much variation in the game. The flow of Mary Skelter 2 has been lost here, sacrificing strong plot writing for a bit too much back and forth. On top of that, the erotic undertones have been shifted to erotic overtones for this final segment of the series. There are plenty of blatant sexual commentaries and it honestly feels a bit out of place. Sure, the characters were provocative in their designs previously, but this entry actually got banned in Australia. Of course, the Aussies are known for banning lots of stuff that’s allowed most other places, but it still gives an indication of how much further Compile Heart has taken Mary Skelter Finale, as both previous entries were released there.
On top of the long and rather meandering main game that lacks a fair bit of cohesive direction, there’s a ton of extra content here as well. As mentioned, the Before Story section of the Bonus menu contains the entirety of Mary Skelter: Nightmares and Mary Skelter 2, allowing you to view not only the main story from each game but all of the sub-scenarios as well, broken down in well-organized ranks. It’s a heck of a lot of content, but if you want to get caught up and didn’t play the last game, it’s absolutely necessary. Don’t expect any voiceovers though as those have been axed. In addition to the cut scenes, a vast reservoir of digital novels based in the Mary Skelter universe have been included as extras here as well. If all that wasn’t enough for you, NIS has thoughtfully included a huge swath of DLC for free, including the Grand Finale bundle which includes Mary Skelter: Locked Up in Love, a romance visual novel featuring the main characters of the game. Locked Up in Love only unlocks once the game is completed though, so don’t think you can just skip to it.
Interestingly enough, the included DLC and Bonus content is overall more entertaining than the main game itself. The digital stories are captivating and there are an absolute ton of them, Locked Up in Love is the free side story we had to buy separately when Mages put out Steins;Gate – My Darling’s Embrace, and the cut scene games included for the first two parts of the series are an absolute chef’s kiss of content. There are even galleries and music to explore, plus a ton of extra free DLC! It’s weird that the entire surrounding periphery for Mary Skelter Finale is utterly fantastic but the game itself feels unbalanced and almost clunky. When you compare this release to the NIS release of Saviors of Sapphire Wings for example (our review is here), it’s clear that Compile Heart dropped the ball on this one, eschewing gameplay for gimmickry. Sapphire Wings is a noticeably more focused first person dungeon experience that really maximized its narrative potential and enjoyable gameplay. Granted it’s from Experience, not Compile Heart, but it’s hard not to compare and contrast major titles in the a genre as small as this one, especially ones from the same publisher.
The simple fact is that even if you’re a fan of the series, Mary Skelter Finale is somewhat of a disappointment. All the elements are there, but this time around, they just don’t mesh the same. When you’re spending full AAA prices on a title like this one, there’s an expectation that the core gameplay is going to be solid and anyone who played the previous titles had every indication that this one would be as well. Sadly, that’s not the case and while there’s plenty good here, the main game is simply acceptable. At $60, that’s not a great thing. If you’re a huge fan of the universe however, the extra content is so good that it legitimately almost makes up for the failures of the main game and there’s really a lot to enjoy here. You’ll just have to slog through the main title to get to some of it.
This review was based on a digital copy of Mary Skelter Finale provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well in both. Mary Skelter Finale is also available for Playstation 4.