Mary Skelter Finale, despite all its flaws, is a great dungeon crawler game, with a not so great conclusion to the Mary Skelter Finale
Before I talked about the game itself, I just want to say that the PC port is surprisingly good, which is natural since I play the game 3 years after its launch. My spec is really old, and bad, yet I can play this game in 1080p/60fps quite well with Hardware Accelerated GPU Schedule setting on. There are some stutters but it's not that bad, but I have to keep HAGS on; otherwise, the performance would be terrible. I did encountered some issue like when HAGS is turned off, the stutter become unbearable and it also affect my controller, like the game did not reading inputs properly. Another issue I've found is that despite not having game rumble setting in the game, sometimes when I overkilled an enemy, my controller will vibrate, which is weird. I had to turn it off manually in DS4Window. Other than that, the game is pretty good technical wise.
If you are new to Mary Skelter, I suggest you to play the first 2 games, they are a fun-but-rough-at-times dungeon crawler games. Finale do include all the cutscene of Nightmares and 2 in the bonus section, but unless you really love visual novel, it's not a good way to experience the series.
Aside from some changes and new additions, Finale's gameplay is mostly intact compare to Mary Skelter 2. You explore the Jail Towers, solving puzzles, finding keys, turning switch along the way while avoiding Nightmares, who is kinda like the boss of the area. If you reach their aggro zone, a chase sequence will start and you have to run out of their aggro zone (indicated by a dark area with red outline). The chase sequences are usually really short, shorter than previous games, I remember most of the time when I initiate a chase sequence, it would only takes me 3 steps to get out of it. You can fight the Nightmares to stun them, giving you more time to escape. Due to lore reason, they will keep regenerate until you destroy the core, located somewhere inside each Jail Towers.
New to Finale is the zapping system. Now, instead of exploring Jail Towers as one big team, the casts is divided into 3 smaller teams. You will switch them in between section to unlock doors and find keys. Most of the time, you will encounter a locked door that can only be open by a switch in an area that is only accessible to another team, or the key can only be found by a different team, which you can drop it into the dustbox to deliver it to the team that need it. I'd say this is a great addition to Finale, it's a fun system that force you to engage with the playable characters without playing favoritism like the previous games.
The combat is still as good as ever. It's the most average form of turn based combat where your AGI stat decide who get to act first, there are some passive skills that can affect this too, also what skill you use will affect the turn delay as well. What make Finale so good is the Mary Skelter's signature "Blood Gauge" and Jail roulette system. So basically, whenever you hit enemies' weaknesses or score a critical hit or overkill enemies, their blood will splatter on the party, filling the Blood Gauge in the process. Once the gauge reach max, the character will enter Massacre mode, unlocking new skills that usually great AoE or skills that hit real hard with little MP cost, as well as increased stats. Massacre mode will wear off after some turns though it's kinda random to me, sometimes I only get to use them for one turn, sometimes they stay in Massacre mode for 4-5 turns, not sure what decide that. However, depend on how "corrupted" the Blood Gauge is (indicated by the color, the darker the more corrupted it is), the character may enter Blood Skelter mode, with even more increased stats in exchange to the fact that they will go out of control, attacking both enemies and allies randomly. You can purge corruption by splatter Blood Youth's blood or let other character lick their blood gauge after accumulated to a certain amount for a defensive skill, it can either a healing skill or partywide buff depend on the character. Then you have the Jail Roulette, which will happened after you filled out the Jail's mood (there are many condition to this). Once you fill the jail's mood gauge, the roulette will spin and you can stop it at anytime for the buff they pointed to. Jail Roulette provide a lot of benefits such as increase rewards, buffs/debuffs, heal or dealing damage or inflict status ailment to the enemies. You manipulate what will show up more on the roulette using Jail Pieces in Control Jail option before your expedition. This is the Mary Skelter's staple, you will use them a lot. For me, it makes the combat in Mary Skelter series one of the most unique I've experienced.
Another new addition to Finale is the insectmare, which will swarm your party members randomly and make them unable to do certain action. It sounds good but in combat is kinda annoying since you have to use an item to repel them or bet for the roulette to have that option.
Now for the story, there are some new faces here: Mary, an introverted girl that always daydreaming; Charlotte, the new ara ara onee-san; Pyre, a girl with trouble past; and Toh, a man who lost his memories. There are also some new NPCs as well, Jabberwock, who is Snark's twin brother; and Yuto Gato, a mysterious man living on the surface. The new characters are all great gameplay wise, as for the story, they will take up the most screen time. Personally, I think the story is the weakest part of Finale. The zapping system ruined the pacing of the game since you have to read all stories from all 3 teams' perspectives. For the older cast, I feel like other than Otsuu - Little Mermaid pair, Alice, Red Riding Hood, most of the Clara's team, the rest don't really do much. It's a bit BS actually, my favorite girl is Cinderella and even in her affection story she's kinda forgettable. That said, some older characters did get more screentime, like Clara, they fleshed out her characters to actually involve in the story now instead of just being Haru's apprentice. The story is also kinda rushed near the end, where they just introduced a lot of thing without explaining it clearly, or they are explained in the game's novel, which kinda ruin the impact of the moment, and make the plot twists feel like they came out of nowhere. At least the ending is really sweet, I don't really like it but I don't find it bad either.
One thing I forgot to mention is how much I love the music. Imo, Finale has the best soundtrack in the series. Only bad thing is that the first 3 Jail Towers has some banger battle theme then later Towers just can't reach that peak again.
Overall, I think Mary Skelter Finale is a really great game, if you are a fan of anime dungeon crawling you definitely should check it out. It's might not be the best conclusion this series need, but it's still a good enough ending for this series incredible run.
