The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
Steven
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

Been playing SMT V a lot lately after un-dropping it; almost done with Chiyoda-ku now. The furthest I got previously was the beginning of Taitou-ku, where I dropped it, and I believe the second or third time I dropped it was around where I am now, but for some reason I'm enjoying it more this time. This game is okay, I guess; better than Deep Blue on the PC Engine or maybe some of the stuff on Action 52, but not as good as SMT IV. At least V sold well from what I remember, so maybe and hopefully we'll get a vastly improved sequel before 2030.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Blinge »

I've made it down to the underground station, the first in the uh.. "unclean ones" territory.

Man.. what a fucking cool game.
The only thing that i struggle with is the damn fusion, I never know when it's a good idea to fuse, or if i'm making the right decision. Also, there's times when my full stock can only give me fusions that seem to go backwards in level + stats so I just hold off, but it seems like its been this way for a long time.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

IV is a really cool game; it has that late 80s~early 90s cyberpunk aesthetic that III, Strange Journey, and V are completely devoid of. I prefer it this way, which is part of why I like IV so much. IV is very much a modernized early 90s post-apocalyptic cyberpunk game in pretty much every way from the music to the way dialog is conducted and descriptive text is presented instead of just showing you what is going on. It's my second favourite game of the past decade, with AM2R getting the top spot, and not by much. That said, I've played SMT IV for over 500 hours and AM2R doesn't come close to that, so yeah.

For fusion, in general you only ever need to get new demons when your current ones aren't helping; every single time you get stuck, it's because you have the wrong demons, so if you're doing okay, you're good with what you have for the most part.

Unlike V, which scales damage depending on the difference in levels between attacker and target, and unlike Devil Survivor, where the demon's base level is probably the single most important stat in the game, as it causes demons to get their asses kicked hard by things with higher base levels, even if the demons are significantly higher than their base level, IV doesn't have anything like this. It also lacks the elemental affinity system introduced in IV Final, so you can give any demon any skills you want and keep that demon around as long as you want and you'll be fine. So yeah, don't worry about it unless you get stuck or your demons start to hold you back. Once you do, get some new demons and you'll magically become unstuck very quickly.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Blinge »

Cheers bro!
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

Sure, no problem. I'd be sure to hang on to Angel, though; eventually Angel will evolve, and the evolutions will evolve until you eventually have Cherub, which is as high as it will go. Every evolution will typically result in you having a demon of significantly higher level than you currently are. There are a few other demons that do this, although I don't remember which ones they are, and Angel is the most notable one because it has the most evolutions, and because Cherub is pretty viable for late-game.

That said, you may want to consider fusing anyway simply because your fusion ingredients will eventually reach a point where they are stronger than the resulting demon, and also because higher base levels will generally, but not always, result in better results as it is. You should mostly be fine until you start to struggle, and in that case just get some new demons and change your armour, although you mostly want that for the resistances. Your pants specifically give you somewhat significant HP boosts, which is why I said to change your pants earlier lol. That said, I did one of my 7 playthroughs (or was it 8? I've played the game so many times that I don't even remember how many times I've played it...) on the highest difficulty setting using the default Samurai Uniform for the entire game, so it is entirely possible to do so. Don't remember if I changed my accessory, but I'm pretty sure that I did.

You don't have to bother with changing your weapons unless you are doing a gun build, though, and even then the only thing you'll ever really want to do is get the elemental ammo for extra press turns and for enemies that resist/null/drain/reflect physical and/or gun and maybe get the Clear Bazooka.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by ZacharyB »

I wish the Megami Tensei games didn't scale the experience based off of the demons' base levels. Eventually, you just can't level early demons any longer, because the experience cost after they gain about 20 levels is so high, regardless of what level they started at. If you like them, you're out of luck, and just waiting to fuse them into stronger demons down the road somewhere.

I guess that this is a good reflection of how certain demons just can't be powerful, but it would have been a riot to take totally kitted-out early-game demons all the way to the end. Just for fun.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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FFS i just spend nearly all my macca on a new sword in ueno
REEEE

also i love moh shuvuu man. great art, but she's weak to both pierce and something else? i don't want her on my team, she seems like a total liability!

also jack frost has levelled up loads of times and still won't give me a demon whisper the stingy cunt
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

I can't believe how terrible V's AI is. I just made it back to Taitou-ku, but the boss before was highly interesting; I null ice, so naturally the boss decided to sit there and spam Bufudyne on me and waste all of his press turns. Killed one of his extra demons and then ended up soloing him without my demons just because he decided to waste almost all of his press turns spamming Bufudyne on me even though it can't hurt me. Reminds me of my previous playthrough, where I did the same against Black Rider, who decided to spam Absolute Zero on me and waste all of his press turns, and I ended up using the auto battle to kill Black Rider without taking any damage at all. Weird game...
ZacharyB wrote:I wish the Megami Tensei games didn't scale the experience based off of the demons' base levels. Eventually, you just can't level early demons any longer, because the experience cost after they gain about 20 levels is so high, regardless of what level they started at. If you like them, you're out of luck, and just waiting to fuse them into stronger demons down the road somewhere.

I guess that this is a good reflection of how certain demons just can't be powerful, but it would have been a riot to take totally kitted-out early-game demons all the way to the end. Just for fun.
I don't remember the exact reasons why, but in IV Salamander is considered to be one of the best demons in the game. With the way IV's extra stats on level up features work, if you were to go get a level 1 demon, have all of the extra stats on level up stuff, and then raise that level 1 demon to level 99, it would be stronger than the demons that start in the level 80~90 range.
Blinge wrote:FFS i just spend nearly all my macca on a new sword in ueno
REEEE

also i love moh shuvuu man. great art, but she's weak to both pierce and something else? i don't want her on my team, she seems like a total liability!

also jack frost has levelled up loads of times and still won't give me a demon whisper the stingy cunt
Weapons in IV only affect your basic attack or your regular gun attack, not your physical/gun skills, which makes weapons pretty useless. You should equip a knife of some sort, however, as it lets you do your little field attack animation really fast. I want to say that the strongest weapon in the game is also a knife, which is weird, but okay. For demon whisper, it only happens once a demon learns its final skill and then never again. After that, you may consider fusing it to make a new demon.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Sima Tuna »

Blinge wrote:FFS i just spend nearly all my macca on a new sword in ueno
REEEE

also i love moh shuvuu man. great art, but she's weak to both pierce and something else? i don't want her on my team, she seems like a total liability!

also jack frost has levelled up loads of times and still won't give me a demon whisper the stingy cunt
A general rule for SMT is that unless a demon has some amazing skills, you want to prioritize weaknesses and resistances above all else. At least the way I play. It's especially true for SMT IV, where you have no defense stat. So when it's the enemy's turn, if you want to avoid being OHKO every time they do an attack, you kind of have to build around repel, absorb and resistance.

The flip side of this is those weaknesses only matter if the enemy can exploit them. The demons you face are determined largely by zone. So if the zone you're in doesn't have any demons with pierce attacks, it doesn't matter if she is weak to pierce.

While grinding and walking around, I generally use whatever demons I want. It doesn't matter if they instantly die when you're transitioning through zones you've been through. But when you go into boss zones/dungeons, that's when you really want to prioritize demons who strongly resist the elements/attacks you'll be facing in that zone. SMT IV is probably the worst SMT for instantly killing your characters. It can obviously happen in every SMT game (so much so that it's called "getting SMT'd" when you initiate a random battle and INSTANTLY get a game over from some bullshit you couldn't control) but it's way more likely to happen in SMT IV due to the lack of defensive stats.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Blinge »

Ahh I get it.
Yeah well... there's a bunch of dudes with guns walking around this place so i really feel pierce weakness is not the way to go currently
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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Steven wrote:Sure, no problem. I'd be sure to hang on to Angel, though; eventually Angel will evolve,
Huh i can make Archangel now, does that count? is he part of the progression?
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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Sima Tuna wrote: A general rule for SMT is that unless a demon has some amazing skills, you want to prioritize weaknesses and resistances above all else.
This is very true, which is why my current build in V looks like this:
Spoiler
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Much harder to die when over half of the elements in the game can't hurt you at all and you resist everything else but Force~

If I really wanted to, I can swap out my other 3 passives for Null/Drain/Repel Phys, Elec, and Force once I find those, making me completely invulnerable to everything that doesn't have pierce or Almighty, but I don't know if I want to actually trivialize the game that much.
Blinge wrote:
Steven wrote:Sure, no problem. I'd be sure to hang on to Angel, though; eventually Angel will evolve,
Huh i can make Archangel now, does that count? is he part of the progression?
Angel will become Archangel at level 12, and will get some new skills when evolving, although I don't remember what those are.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

It's always interesting to remember that CAVE made a Shin Megami Tensei game. I've never played that one, though.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Steven »

I finally finished SMT V. I bought a Switch just for this game, got the game on Japanese launch day, and... never really cared about it. Time to see if I like it more on my second playthrough, which I've already started for some reason. I guess I'll do magic this time instead of physical.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Blinge »

i urge you again to play through strange journey.
at least get through the second area / sector Bootes before you make your mind up?

but watch it though you can only do co-op attacks with demons that have the same alignment as you
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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Blinge wrote:i urge you again to play through strange journey.
at least get through the second area / sector Bootes before you make your mind up?

but watch it though you can only do co-op attacks with demons that have the same alignment as you
I made it through Bootes once already and I wasn't feeling it. I'll try it again, though I just bought III on Switch an hour ago and I'm going to prioritize playing that first, most likely.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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I guess... a lot of what I loved about SJ may have just been my first real experience of the "SMT Sauce/Formula"
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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I go to Boots to buy interdental brushes and hardon pills (`w´メ)
Burinju is this another one of those crazy sex games (`w´メ)
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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shin me gami will ya luv?
it's been so long
so very long
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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brb ordering a crate of dick pills and a DS (`w´メ)
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by BryanM »

Marsh's bit on Another Bible made me realize how awful the "enemies wait around for you to kill them, as you slowly trudge toward them" map design is, and it horrified me realize that's pretty much exactly all Shining Force games are.

Supposedly, early prototyping on FExSMT kenned close to what everyone was expecting from the announcement at first. But then Atlus was like "we've really got no experience with this tactical RPG thing, can we just make it another generic jRPG? It'd really help us if we could just make another jRPG."
Mortificator wrote:I'm sure I'm not the first person to do this, but the release of Soul Hackers 2 gave me the urge to chart the various branches of this series going back to the original novel. It makes sense to ME, though I don't know if that carries over to anyone else.

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I put on every game that has an English version (official or fan) and a couple Japanese-exclusives that are vital connective tissue (eg Devil Summoner). Since it's game-focused I left off other media aside from the first book trilogy. I also didn't include Tokyo Mirage Sessions, I guess because I think of that as part of the Fire Emblem family, and Jack Bros, because I wasn't sure where to put it. :mrgreen:
Why, Jack Bros obviously branches off the very first Megami Tensei game ever released. No, not that one, this one.

I also feel like the two Persona 2 games should be merged onto the same block, or you should at least swap Innocent Sin to the root of the tree since it came first.

I also also like how Majin Tensei 3 isn't anywhere to be seen. Yes, let us forget the darkness.

Also also also, this reminds me yet again how hard they pushed Devil Children. 10 games. 2 anime series. A manga. A cardgame with over five sets released. Ain't nobody could say they didn't try to make that work. Just too puerile and far away from an idealized world people would want to live in, imo; couldn't hang onto people into their teens. I just can't ever imagine a Devil Children gathering of 30-somethings like I've seen happen with Pokemon.

.... also I'm a little mad at Atlus now for not making more card game rpgs. It's just Card Summoner, isn't it? We need more card game RPGs.



It's kind of a trip of how this entire franchise started off of pulp fiction. Edgy bullied teenager, video game apocalypse, protagonist saving the day by punching things to death with his ladyfriend who both happen to be "special" for some reason, 90's cyberpunk/technological optimism... throw a rock, and you'd hit almost any modern video game nerd webnovels.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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I think everyone wants to forget Ronde exists.
BryanM wrote:But then Atlus was like "we've really got no experience with this tactical RPG thing, can we just make it another generic jRPG? It'd really help us if we could just make another jRPG."
But they made Devil Survivor, which is awesome! Maybe the people who made those were gone by the time that they made that TMS thing, though.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Sima Tuna »

Devil Survivor Overclocked is one of the best SMT games ever made. A pure 10/10 masterpiece. I was going to say "on par with Strange Journey and SMT III" but it's probably even better than those.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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Sima Tuna wrote:Devil Survivor Overclocked is one of the best SMT games ever made. A pure 10/10 masterpiece. I was going to say "on par with Strange Journey and SMT III" but it's probably even better than those.
It is absolutely one of the best games in the entire series without question. I REALLY need to get Japanese copies of both it and Break Record.

The only thing I don't really like about Devil Survivor is the thing with demons' base levels being what determines if they get completely destroyed or not instead of their actual stats. It's clear that they did this to encourage the player to get new demons, which you should do anyway, of course, but I feel it could have been handled better. It's not that big of a deal once you know about it, but the game never tells you this anywhere, so while your demons' stats might look fine compared to enemy stats, you'll still get totally demolished until you figure it out and get some demons with higher base levels.

While I'm here, I was on Amazon Japan looking for the SMT V OST and I noticed that HOLY SHIT AMAZON JAPAN GOT THE SMT IV OST BACK IN STOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by BryanM »

DS is indeed pretty great, these people are just risk averse as all heck. I think something with lower tension, with a New Persona style hub for the dating elements in between the EPIC WARS TO THE DEATH, would have done just as well. They're cowards, is all. Would've taken a bunch of learning new things; collaborations of shared IP are where corporations really like to half-ass things. (See: Dragalia Lost. A game with zero monetization and just seethed Nintendo political infighting between newcomers trying to make a name for themselves, and old dinos who'd rather everyone die if they can't get credit for something. I'm amazed so many SNK+Capcom games are as good as they are.)

What bums me out is that the low performance of Persona Q 2 and possibly Survivor 2 might have convinced them not to make more of them. I mean, you make two similar games on the same system, with the second one coming out right at the end of the system's life... of course it won't do as well. Oversaturated market. But one every decade, maybe, right?

Eh, I guess for Q and another Strange Journey, they have to finish that new Etrian Odyssey engine first. Much like Persona 5 on the PSX3, they gotta strike when the iron's cold.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Sima Tuna »

Devil Survivor 2 also suffered just a little bit for having a slightly worse story. Nothing major, but none of the characters really connected with me as much, and the apocalypse scenario felt way more abstract than what Devil Survivor Overclocked provided. That said, gameplay was generally improved (although I prefer DSO's combat) and the 3ds version of Devil Survivor 2 had a shitload of content. Most of which was fun. I think the Devil Survivor series also had the best funny moments of SMT's entire series. Like the fight to protect the snowcone jacks from being licked to death. There were a lot of very silly moments that worked because they were juxtaposed with such a serious, dark storyline. Of course, other SMT games do that too. But I laughed the most at the comedic elements in the Devil Survivor games. Devil Survivor as a series had extremely strong characterization, and so the comedic relief felt like just that: a brief respite from the unceasing horror of surviving in an unnatural hellscape.

Devil Survivor addressed another big complaint people level at SMT all the time: "the story sucks." Y'know, because most of the story of SMT games is subtext. Devil Survivor (especially Overclocked) added in all this extra dialogue, but it didn't dumb down its story or characters and it didn't become some generic anime. DSO never exactly spills the beans on who your character is, why you matter or why your hacker cousin guy is a big deal. There's, I think maybe 1 specific ending where your cousin *kind of* lets slip how he really feels about you and why. But the game doesn't spell things out. All the different story routes will let you in on what the various characters are going through, and the overarching story, but Devil Survivor still does a really good job holding back on the "why." If you want to know "why" then that's going to take more than one playthrough.

Devil Survivor probably has the best alignment options I've ever seen in an SMT game. Every choice feels like the correct one. I think you could make a strong argument for any of the alignment options. They all feel very well thought-out and natural. This isn't one of those SMTs where you get one True Ending and every other ending is shit. The only shit endings here are the ones you would expect to be The Shit Endings. Aka if you run away like a coward instead of fighting for your beliefs, yeah you gonna get a shit ending. But if you stay and fight, whatever alignment you choose, your ending feels reasonable for your character and is satisfying.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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Devil Survivor is sooooooooooooooo damn good. I really wish they'd make another one, but only if they can match the quality of the previous ones. I'd also really like to see Shin Megami Tensei go back to being a first-person cyberpunk dungeon RPG but with press turn and stuff, but that's not going to happen.

I really do feel that Atlus has been struggling to make an all-new Megami Tensei game that I've truly enjoyed since the Sega Sammy acquisition, though. Is it related? I'm not sure, but it is something that I've noticed. SMT IV is one of my favourite games ever, and that was the last new Megami Tensei game they did prior to the acquisition. Every great Megami Tensei game since then is a port of something from before the acquisition, like the Devil Survivor 3DS ports, or developed by someone else, in the case of things like those Persona 4 fighting games, which are pretty awesome. The rest of the games have just kind of existed and I didn't really like any of them, although I also don't really hate any of them. Except IV Final. Fuck that awful game.
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

Post by Blinge »

you guys are drooling fucking spergs for this series

... and i love it lmao
carry on, carry on..

is the SMT3 HD version really that bad? asking for a friend, literally.. he's considering buying.
for his first real SMT too!
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Re: The Shin Megami Everything Thread

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The Japanese PS4 version of III HD is fine from what little I have played of it, but be sure to patch it before playing it, as they improved performance and added some nice stuff in a patch, like the ability to choose demon skills freely, which started in IV. No idea about the other versions, but I think the international versions might have that patch already on the disc since it came out a significant amount of time after the Japanese versions. I only got the PS4 version because the Switch version was sold out on Amazon and I wanted a physical copy, so no PC version, which has Denuvo anyway, and I ended up only playing it for a few hours, but it seemed fine. My Switch copy is scheduled to show up tomorrow, so I'll probably have that then.
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