As the human in the party with no special powers but a nifty demonica suit, you must rely on guns and elemental attacks. There are apps that you'll come across--which are like key items--to help you find components for crafting or unlocking specific doors. Sub apps are special items that can increase the chances of getting an item after battle, but these apps take up space--sometimes more than one slot and you have 10 slots. Your demonica suit is what you'll use to access your mission logs, side quests, and tutorials. A forma search app is inherently in the suit, which can detect and track down stuff to trade later.
Demon fusion returns, and you'll be able to create all kinds of combinations; you'll even be able to throw an item into the mix to create a special demon. We didn't have time to go into all the details of this process, but we will once we receive a build of the game. The turn-based battles are self-explanatory if you're familiar with any kind of turn-based Japanese role-playing games. As you get to know the demons you encounter better, an analyze bar will fill up so that you can eventually determine their weakness and use it against them. If you're grinding away and don't particularly want to pay attention to an easy fight, you can hit the X button to have the battle play out for you. It won't make any special adjustments, though, so you have to be sure you'll win if you choose the option to have the battle play for you.
Our demo ended with a boss battle against a giant minotaur-like creature that had an extremely low opinion of humans and decided to tell us all about it. It took awhile to take it down because it had the ability to scare and confuse our demon party members. But it was nice that the target reticle changed to red if the enemy was near death because it allowed us to plan accordingly, which was a helpful feature.
Like all the SMT games before it, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey has a lot more to it, and it can take several hours to really get a handle on it all. We only had 20 minutes with it, but once we get our build of the game, we'll be sure to post updated impressions. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is scheduled to be released in March 2010.
