Gamer reviews for Devil Maker: Tokyo
Become a Contractor. Get devil girls for free!
Devil Maker Tokyo is an RPG card game from Palmple and Ncrew. Set in a dark,futuristic Tokyo where devils from another dimension has sweeped in an taken over the city streets, the player plays as a "contractor" – a person that has the capability to form contracts with devils to use them in a journey to bring light to the world. DMT started was released a year earlier in South Korea and has earned quite a fanbase. The English version (which is what we're reviewing right now in Appgamer) was just released on July, 2014.
The game starts with you, the contractor as you recall your memories 10 years ago. After making contract with the sun goddess Ameterasu, you've gone into battle against the legendary serpent, Yamatano Orochi. Orochi has been defeated, with Amaterasu absorbing Orochi's darkness. The game will return to the present, with your character waking up for the impossibly realistic dream. Your character sets off to meet a client – a devil in this matter. After meeting with Yuki, the scenario will be complete and you'll get your reward.
One of the main aspects in the game is exploring various zones in the city enveloped by darkness. To enter these zones, you need to spend a certain amount of Light. Exploring zones can help you obtain experience, silver and devil cards. You'll encounter different devils – ranging from ordinary ones, to powerful and boss devils. You have to engage them to battle and defeat them in order to proceed.
When exploring, you'll see your current party of devils, your progress in the specific portion of the zone, your potions and your experience. Once you've reached the necessary amount of experience, your character will level up. Leveling up increases your Light Limit, Card Limit, Light Recovery and Total Cost.Exploration involves selecting three facedown cards, with random effects that constitutes to your progress. Selecting a blank card will let you proceed with any effects. A card with an item will give you experience while a devil card will trigger an encounter. A recovery card will heal your party. You'll also encounter other players while exploring. You'll earn Friend Points from the encounter and you'll also have the option to send a Friend Request or ignore them. Friends are valuable assets in the game as they can be useful during boss battles.
The actual battle itself is automatic and your victory relies on your devil cards' level, rank, skills and a bit of luck as well. Winning a devil encounter may award you with devil cards. These devils become automatically contracted to you and you can use them immediately in your party if you want to. Your party's HP doesn't recover after every battle so you have to either use a red potion to heal them individually or a purple potion to recover your entire partys' HP. If a devil's HP becomes zero, it will be incapacitated. If all your party members are incapacitated, the exploration of the area will be terminated. You can use a revive potion to restore an incapacitated devil back to fighting condition. Your devils health will be restored after completing the dungeon. Completing dungeons repeatedly will also give you various rewards per milestone.
While exploring, you can encounter Boss Devils as well. These are very powerful and you can make your life easier by summoning your friends' leader devils in exchange for Friend Points. If no friends are available, you can hire Mercenaries by spending gold coins. Defeating bosses will give you more experience and the chance to get powerful cards.
The game has an Auto-Play or Semi Auto Play features during exploration. The first one allows the game to explore autonomously. If you encounter a core, the battle will be avoided automatically but boss battles will start immediately without giving you the option to select support devils from your friends or mercenaries. Semi Auto-Play will pause the game if you encounter a core so you can start the battle or not and will pause the game as well before a boss battle so you can select your supports. You'll still earn experience normally as if you would have by playing normally.
Summoning is another way of getting new, powerful devils to your party. You can summon higher rank cards through Premium Summon by spending coins or Friend Points (FP). You can do this for free by using a Summon Ticket which can be acquired as rewards in game. Devils are ranked by the number of stars they have. Obviously, 5-star devils are more powerful compared to 2 or 3-starred devils. Another thing that sets them apart are the rarity. There are Common, Uncommon and Rare cards. Higher rarity cards possess more powerful options so it's tough to find them and make contracts with them.
Another thing you should note is the devil's grade. Devils in the same rank or rarity don't have the same power. Their power increases as the grade improves starting from D up to S grade. You only have a limited number of cards you can carry at a time but you can store up to 30 of them in your Storage Box. These limitations can be increased by spending Gold Coins.
Arena is another main tab in the game where you can fight other contractors/ players. This becomes available at LV10 where you'll get an introduction about it. In exchange for silver, you can fight up to 3 users automatically for 15 minutes or 12 users in an hour. While waiting, you can touch the Battle button or freely navigate other menus. You can come back and retry every 15/60 minutes. Participating (regardless of wininng or losing a round) counts and restores bit of Light that you can use to Explore. There are also events where players can get rewards for participating and reaching various ranks.
Managing your party of devils must be done at the Shrine. This is accessed through the second tab by swiping the screen in the main menu. You can swap your party members, upgrade, sell or access the in-game store. You can have up to 5 different parties, where you can have up to 6 devils per party. The number of devils you can take in your party is determined by the Cost Limit. Each card has a certain cost, depending on how strong or unique they are. Party composition can also enable Party Bonus effects. These are beneficial effects and boosts triggered by the type of devils you have in your current party.
Also in the Shrine menu, you can select individual cards to see their stats, equip items to them and to view their backstories. Devil cards can also be strengthened by merging (sacrificing unwanted/extra devil cards to increase another card's level), recontracting (increasing the card's Grade), and evolving (Increasing the Stars). You can even transfer skills from one card to another. You'll get the tutorial for these Upgrade options once you've reached LV5.
Players will also get gifts by logging in daily. The game also offers attractive discounts for new players, targeting those who has the capability to avail these premium services. The game's in-game shop has three options: Premium allows players to spend gold coins to instantly various premium packages, potions, and even temporary experience, silver, and boss drop boosts. Free players can spend silver coins to get a random prize through Fortune Draws. These draws gives them the chance to win various potions and summoning tickets. Fate is the premium version of Fortune draws where players can spend gold coins to get random prizes, ranging from a lot of silver coins to summoning tickets.
DMT's strong RPG elements sets this game from the rest of the game in the genre. The game's lore has a strong resemblance to Japan's Shin Megami Tensei series of games where players have the capability to summon devils, which includes basic mythical / fantasy creatures up to gods, goddesses, legends, heroes and other powerful characters from different folklores around the world. The game has over 700 unique, beautifully illustrated cards which varying grades, rarity and power. The story is interesting enough and will keep players glued in as they liberate each area and gradually fight over the darkness enveloping the city.
The game's visual details are stunning. The user interface is simple and un-cluttered. The game's vertical orientation also helps maximizing the details, and allows bigger font, buttons and options to be employed compared to the usual horizontal orientation of some games. Because of this, auto-rotate is disabled. The game's effects are also excellent, especially during battles. Even if you don't see actual battle animations between cards, the skill activation effects are great and immerses players to the action to a good degree. Even the summoning, merging and other transition animations are great as well. The cards and character illustrations are drawn beautifully, anime-style which gives the game a more attractive appeal to most gamers.
The game's audio suits the environment really well. Upbeat background music fills the main menu and changes accordingly as you view different screens. Slow and light music immerses players in the dark zones they're exploring while approriate battle music and sound effects are triggered perfectly during encounters and battles.
For a free game, DMT is superb and outstanding. There are no ads in the game which keeps the game's "standalone" feel intact. Constant internet connection is required to sync changes and updates regularly with the servers. The game's story mode will keep players entertained for hours. The developers also hold regular events with limited rewards which keeps the game's content fresh, as well as maintaining its replayability.
As a free-to-play game, expect paying players to gain an edge over Free, casual players. The game's premium content sets the bar between the two groups of players clearly but that shouldn't discourage casual players from playing the game unless they're competing or vying for the Arena top ranks. DMT is enjoyable in its own right with the game's full features unlocked and accessible whether you're a free or paying player. Players who prefer to work hard for progress and rewards will enjoy the challenges the game has to offer.
DMT overall is one of the promising titles this year and probably one that will definitely hook fans of CCG, RPG, games with attractive anime-style visuals, or a mix of all of them. The game has a lot of strong points and I've yet to find any immediate faults as of the time this review is written. If you the game's features feel somewhat appealing to you and if you want something worthwhile to play, you should try this out and see if you want to become a contractor of attractive devil girls.