I finally decided to finish this series. A big part of this was me enjoying Dungeon Travelers, I wanted to try another dungeon crawler and see if it just a playstyle thing.

I had a better time. There’s still issues but overall I had a better time with this throughout then I did with Skelter 1 or 2. As for the story and such… eh. It’s alright, way to much missed potential in this setting.

Censorship

Have to bring this up… Note that this isn’t a version change thing. Japanese and English releases are exactly the same. It’s just from Skelter 2 to Finale some things got dropped/changed that at least have to be mentioned.

1. 3 girls had their blood skelters/berserk outfits changed. The game actually brings this up with Gretel noting her outfit changed, but it’s never brought up again. All the class outfits are the same as before.

2. the purge minigame is gone. You get some standing sprite versions of it in the gallery, but no rub/massage game with disappearing clothes. Considering it would have reused most of the art, it’s not a huge loss though I would have loved to see Charlotte’s, one of the new girls who’s bust might beat out Sleeping Beauty’s. As a mechanic, purge was always pointless so gameplay wise this is a nothing, it is sad the minigame is gone though.

3. They don’t moan if you click their crotches? I didn’t even know this was a thing in the previous games…

4. Their crit flash-in’s in battle are clothed now.

Overall the game does have lewd content, but nothing as extreme as 2.

Story-5

Story starts off right after Skelter 1’s appended true end from Skelter 2. The group is leaving the giant hole in the ground Jail, only to find hell at the top. A group calling themselves Massacre Pink starts mowing through the civilians and trashes our heroines, only for the angel girl to teleport everyone away. You watch this scene like 6 times from different viewpoints. It was decently powerful the first time, if not as graphic as it needed for the shock value to really work, by the 3rd time it was annoying. Only 2 of the viewpoints really give any new info…

Anyway, the game’s story is mostly about Massacre Pink, the giant Jail on the surface called the Devouring Armada Jail, and getting the party back together as everyone is scattered. 4 new characters were added to the parties to have some mystery and light drama, but honestly after chapter 1 the story falls to the side for pure dungeon crawling and romance lacking girl interactions.

It’s a story told in 3 parts as the three groups progress through their sides of their towers, which causes a few issues. As each group requires others to progress, and new chapters require everyone to basically be at the same steps, all the reading for the dungeons is front loaded and kind of samey. If Jack’s group gets a new piece of info and a question, then so will the other two, just about different topics. If Clara’s squad has scenes with them grating against each other, so will Toh’s. You are basically playing the same game 3 times with some slight differences to dungeon design and lore.

Jack’s team is the worst, since nothing really happens in his group until the final dungeon. His main story is who Charlotte, one of the 3 new playable characters, is and why the villain wants Alice. You get nothing to answer these until the final dungeon.

Clara’s group has Pyre’s arc. She’s part of Massacre Pink but doesn’t fit in and is now traveling with people Pink is definitely going to kill. This mixed with Gretel gives the group something character and lore wise to do, though what little you get is from character story stuff and not from the main plot(Pyre not being a Blood Maiden but a Torture Maiden and Massacre Pink’s identity Gretel learns in a book she finds? All character affection event stuff that goes nowhere). Their actual main story ends up being about 3 other random new characters.

Toh’s group is about his identity, Red Riding Hood getting her confidence back, and probably is the strongest of the 3 groups from a character writing point. Mainly since Red getting back to her Mary Skelter 1 personality is a fitting arc for her and should take a while, but it’s also the only real arc outside of Toh getting less serious.

All 3 groups suffer from the same thing, all the reveals are in the final chapter. It makes the entire thing lack punch. The final villain and some of the end reveals also lacked punch, the ending wasn’t that great in execution.

The game also comes with two short Vn’s. called Locked Up in Love and Locked Up in Love ~True End~. Locked up is a silly what if the cast had their powers but were just high schoolers, complete with a Tokimeki Memorial confession scene under the Jail Tower next to the school. It’s like less then an hour read, ending with you choosing which of the 10 girls Jack wants to date. You get 3 scenes with each ending with the implication they are going to get physical. True End is a follow up on Skelter Finale’s actual ending, where you choose who Jack actually ends up with but with their character development this time, a beach date, and a wedding Jack surprises the girl of your choice with.

Gameplay-4

It’s Skelter 2 with 3 active parties you can switch between freely. Each group has 5 members and only those 5 so we lost control of party configuration in exchange for honestly some tedium. All 15 girls need to be geared, class and skills dealt with, and their builds decided. The other two games had the five you used and that was it. It’s a lot more here. Though on the other hand, this leads to dungeon exploration being a bit more set for each group. Jack has little in exploration abilities, in fact Alice’s skill is basically rendered pointless. Clara gets a lot of big movement or distance skills, so her dungeon bits get a lot of holes to cross, while Toh’s group has mostly breaking things or the rare use of Little Princess to shrink keys. I honestly found exploring as Toh to be the most annoying as he has a lot of stop and go to break a thing.

The only other new mechanic is insectmares, annoying status effect things that block out combat actions and need blood thrown at the infected girl to deal with. These just add more for your blood character to do.

So I took what I did in Dungeon Travelers and applied it to how I played this, and I enjoyed it more. Not a lot at all, but I didn’t hate the experience like I often do at the end of a dungeon crawler. There were points I hated, like grinding for a few hours to find an enemy in the chapter 2 dungeon. Or the hour here and there farming for other requests which honestly are not ever worth doing.

I especially disliked the final dungeon. Mainly that it’s 8 floors long. The cool stuff happens on floor 4, after that it’s another long walk through 4 more floors for the finale. Those last 4 floors destroyed the pace of the story entirely. I switched to easy just to plow through those last few floors just to end the game.

Mary Skelter in general would have been served being a story heavy game rather then the story light thing it actually is. It has cool ideas with the Jail, blood libidos, aliens, core living humans, multiverse stuff and so on. It just doesn’t do a lot of that well as the actual story beats are too far apart. The blood libidos especially only matter for like 3 of the girls, having an entire dating sim with the girls having obsessions like Pyre’s burning things or Alice’s tea parties could be interesting.

Maybe the novels do the story better? I haven’t bothered with them.

Also, why do dungeon crawlers have the most boring treasure chests? The act of opening them and getting cool loot is baked into the genre, but so many that I’ve played just put junk in 99% of them. I got like 3 gear upgrades in the entire game from chests, and solved a few quests a little earlier. If it wasn’t for keys I would have stopped opening them with how useless they are overall.

Lewdness-4

Lewd wise, the series goes 2>1>3. 3 wins out over 1 if you ignore the purge minigame.

2’s pair up lewd cgs meant a decent number with some good shots most games don’t do with their focus on single girls, and the purge minigame meant each girl got at least 1 individual cg.

1 has a cg for each girl and the purge minigame. The endings cgs are a huge letdown, just being them smiling in the same pose and background for each girl. Overall it’s more focused.

3 has 3 cgs for fanservice in the entire core game. Each of the 3 groups gets 1 full group shot, none of which really land for me. To many different body types means the images lack impact and honestly, none of the stuff is that lewd. Weird T shirts, hot spring, and a pajama party.The endings cgs are a huge letdown, just being them smiling in the same pose and background for each girl.(yes, I copied this from Skelter 1’s, it has the same issue)

The post game vn stuff is a bit better. Each of the 10 heroines for Jack get a wedding image(same cg with a different girl, though Rapunzel gets a grown up form for this), a bikini cg, and a date cg. The swimsuit and date stuff vary heavily on how lewd they are, but overall I’d say it’s lewder then Skelter 1 baring the purge minigame.

Beyond that each girl has like 9 or so different class costumes to wear, including their swimsuit and some other cosplay. One of the enemies from the chapter 2 tower is a jiggly vine women, and 3 of the game’s bosses are cute girls who sadly are not n the bestiary though my saves are right in front of fights for all 3 of them.(chapter 2-4 you fight each of the Massacre Girls)

Final Thoughts

Overall I don’t hate the series. The ideas are cool if underused. They all start out fine, I just think every game in the series is to long for its own good. The actual story content of each is pretty small, so each game being 40+ hours feels so off with the story being like 1-2 hours of that. It fits dungeon crawlers to have that divide, but what makes Mary Skelter interesting is it’s world and lore, not its gameplay. So part of my issue is that disconnect.

As a lewd game series, it’s pretty weak and for whatever reason it doesn’t lewd it’s actual busty girls much compared to the smol ones. Each girl has the same cg count overall, but in terms of lewd it’s not exactly equal. The harem aspect was also just dropped for basically two games and felt more pointless then Trails into Cold Steels dating stuff.

I know it has it’s fans and is liked by the dungeon crawler community in general, but I’ve just never clicked with this series. At some point I just felt I should get it done and so I did.

Save for Mary Skelter Finale

Saves to the end of each chapter. This is because 1. You can fight the tower boss with any team with different scenes. 2. The start of a chapter doesn’t let you save without seeing a groups scenes, so easier to just do chapter ends then starts.

Each save has all enemies and missions complete as of that point. The team is strong enough to beat the game on normal with some luck/good play, no idea if I could beat hard. All cgs and other gallery content unlocked.

Gameplay: 4/10 Eroticness: 4/10 Story: 5/10

Completion:

Beat the game. Get max affections before chapter 5 starts, as that blocks all heroine events. Do those before chapter 5. Ignoring quests and bestiary which do nothing if finished, that’s it. Beating the game with the true end gets you all 10 heroine endings unlocked and unlocks the rest of Locked Up in Love ~True End~ to read. Then just read all of the Locked Up in Love stuff and done.