Mary Skelter: Nightmares

Mary Skelter Nightmares is a dungeon crawler with good combat system, good story and decent dating sim. The characters are likeable especially our main heroines. Combat mechanics are very good and pretty well balanced. Exploring dungeons is fun with a little challenge in each new one with nightmares chasing you until you find the core of dungeon. There is not a lot of ginding for levels needed. Even if there are some parts of the game where you want to grind its made so that you can just explore the dungeon to the end and when you're done with it, you have high level enough to go to the next one. Story is pretty decent for Idea Factory and Compile Heart game. Dungeons are immersive and well designed with good theme atmosphere in every each one of them. The dating sim part isn't bad but it isn't extremely good either. It just comes down to gaining affection by spamming girls with gifts and then finding their events in dungeons and/or town.

This game offers a lot of hours of gameplay and some extra content including secrets and different endings. In conclusion it's a very good game for PS Vita console and a must have for drpg and jrpg fans.

Mechanically, this is a solid dungeon crawler with each character being able to eventually learn skills from 5 jobs unique to that character, with additional strategic and tactical choices in the form of allocation of resources, weapon selection, party formation, a tag-team system reminiscent of modern fighting games, and a main character who can't fight directly but supports the rest of the team with his own unique mechanics.

But, as interesting as the mechanics are, where Mary Skelter really shines is atmosphere. The dungeon's appearance is bizarre, littered with cards and dice giving an Alice in Wonderland feeling. But, as you learn more about your situation, it starts to make sense (but still feels bizarre). The invincible Nightmares that wander the dungeon in real-time and chase you if you get too close do a good job of raising the tension at times, as well.