The Shin Megami Everything Thread

[Blinge]

I didn't even think about what demon's I was fusing in this one. SMT IV (the next mainline one) is even more prone to just being annihilated through playing at a leisurely pace. Have you been running from encounters or dashing through the game with a walk through?

Weird.

Haha a walkthrough? don't insult me!
Yknow in the teleporter maze or damage floor sections I have been putting on that sub-app that reduces the encounter rate.

I'm actually level 77
Demons are 74 Azrael, 72 Sphinx, 68 Rangda.
74 Lakshimi
72 Pales but he sucks.

I have researched a little bit and apparently Seraph is a beast and I gotta do a sidequest to get him.
so gonna do that and try to fuse mitamas to up magic stats on my final team.
Aaand maybe do the 5th sphere of extra content to lvl up more.

[MX7]

It's been years since I played it but I remember getting stuck on the teleporter maze in Eridanus for even longer than the Ariadne maze in SMT1. Or even the prison in III! Absolutely 'orrible!

I seem to remember my wife just decimated this game, and she took the piss out of me for saying it was hard, but then I checked her file and she was on 100+ hours. Same with the Etrian Oddyseys. I absolutely don't have the patience for such things anymore.

[Blinge]

Got Seraph.

I just hit 100 hours!
but that's with all sidequests i could do, and 5/6ths of the added content.
and falling asleep on commuter trains with the 3DS in my hand until i drop it.

One thing that fucks with me is the fusing, I've been fusing throughout the game but at this point it seems like a dead end with most of my demons, and the potential higher level fusions have shit stats!

[BryanM]

Like I told ya, the level stat is by far the strongest stat. Those other numbers don't mean shit!

(I'm extremely OCD so my first playthrough I used Ares and Black Frost through the entire game, resetting if their level up didn't go into their attack stats. Honestly it was suboptimal to the max, knowing what I know now about their insidious damage formula.)

[cj iwakura]

This game has.. builds??

I've been preparing. got a couple more levels, managed to get a demon with mediarhan and debilitate. In fact, two with debilitate if i bring Rangda, who reflects all physical, along. Team alignment will be fucked but Aleph apparently has no elemental weakness so meh?

The questionnaire at the beginning determines your stat allocation.

[bottino]

Speaking of getting stuck...

In Megami Tensei, I've been stuck at the Mazurka Corridors for a while now and I know that I'm not getting past this stage anytime soon

[Blinge]

Like I told ya, the level stat is by far the strongest stat. Those other numbers don't mean shit!

Haha i still don't quite understand. Like how it actually affects battles.
Also how long did you run with Black Frost for? The rate of level gain is SO SLOW you must've had to grind like fuck to keep him relevant!?

The questionnaire at the beginning determines your stat allocation.

Hah i don't remember this at all.

Well I beat the game. Meme Aleph's first form took long enough and i was on the verge of death many times.
Final party was lvl 89 Seraph from the sidequest. Absolute unit.
MC was 79, Also brought along Amaterasu and Garuda for heals, buffs, debuffs.

For once I was glad I'd been saving all them full party heal/SP items
After losing several of my backup demons including Ame and Garuda at one point, I managed to bring in a jobber demon, use Bite the Bullet to stop it being instantly wiped, then have it cast Recarmdra; sacrifice itself and bring my whole stock back. Felt like a Galaxy Brain play hahah.
Second form actually having elemental weaknesses meant I could pour on the damage much faster and finally end it.

Whole thing took ages. It felt fucking intense.

[BryanM]

The internet refuses to give me the exact algorithm, but the level gap in most Megami games determines the damage dudes take. For example, in Persona 3+ hitting monsters on floor 1 when you're at the endgame causes over 1,000 points of damage. Someone says it affects accuracy in Strange Journey too, so instant death is more instanty if you're lagging behind. (Someone also says that Devil Survivor takes a monster's BASE level into account which is.... so unfair. And maybe explains a couple things about my playthrough, considering how attached I got to these bastards after what a pain it is to put the skills I want on'em.)

(Imagine: You and your friends are walking home after school, maybe ready to grab a hamburger. Then! The sky blackens, thunderstrikes sound. Space screams in agony as it's torn apart in front of you, and some small turd demons pop out. It's the mother fuckin' apocalypse, bro! But thankfully God hasn't completely forsaken you, he's given you a even shot at this thing. You get your own pet turd demon and the ability to see numbers and stats. What a cool, benevolent god!

After being locked in your city for a week, in a death game with a ticking clock.... after bringing many great devils and false gods low, after the loss of many, many cherished friends you suddenly have a suspicion. And confirm it after a few tests: most of these numbers mean nothing! Nothing at all! Even leveling up demons is a sham! Where was this in the instruction manual?! What kind of an asshole god is this?!)
....

Checked my save file and Black Frost was Level 58 before he was retired, Ares 63 still a backliner. (B.Frost starts at 30, Ares 36.) They both have really high offensive stats (magic and strength respectively), lazy ass Shiva doesn't even lift bro. Pretty amazing how much mileage you can get out of Fire Amp and Agidyne. Also their resistance lines are pretty good for their monster tier, which was probably another reason I got attached to them.

[Bananamatic]

The internet refuses to give me the exact algorithm, but the level gap in most Megami games determines the damage dudes take. For example, in Persona 3+ hitting monsters on floor 1 when you're at the endgame causes over 1,000 points of damage. Someone says it affects accuracy in Strange Journey too, so instant death is more instanty if you're lagging behind. (Someone also says that Devil Survivor takes a monster's BASE level into account which is.... so unfair. And maybe explains a couple things about my playthrough, considering how attached I got to these bastards after what a pain it is to put the skills I want on'em.)

In Persona 5 it's capped at a 15 level difference and it's much less drastic than in 3 and 4 which are pure grindfests (especially original 3 with the AI controlled party members), I managed to beat Merciless in P5 (without NG+) while avoiding almost all random encounters and only the second boss was a real challenge, in Nocturne, 4 and 4A the difference is also pretty small.

Speaking of P5, Royal is looking like a shitty cash grab, the extra stuff seems beyond unnecessary and it only makes an already easy game even easier (Merciless was perfectly playable with the x0.4 exp and money multiplier, why the hell did they change it to x1.2?) Though that's Persona in general (aside from FES which actually improved the game quite a lot), the original game is great then it's years and years of crappy spinoffs for otaku money that's best avoided while complaining the dev time is going into cash grabs instead of mainline SMT.

Also 4A isn't nearly as bad as people make it seem, it's a great rpg and much better in terms of gameplay than 4...but the story doesn't feel like SMT at all.

[Blinge]

oh 5 Royal is going to make the game worse ?/

[Bananamatic]

There's obviously more content and added mechanics but there wasn't anything outright missing from the original game, the added story supposedly isn't very good, I don't like the new music at all compared to the original and it's easier than the original in every way...I'd say get Royal if you never played it but I doubt there's $60 of content that's worth replaying the entire game again for if you played the original, let alone if you played the original several times.

It looks more like a P4 Golden (unnecessary added stuff, game made easier for no reason, pointless otaku bait) than P3 FES (separate extra chapter that's mostly dungeon crawling, polished original with no big additions).

Also if you care about those things there are some localization fixes...and some "fixes" due to upset americans, take your pick

[BulletMagnet]

oh 5 Royal is going to make the game worse ?/

The reviews I've encountered for it so far really do seem split right down the middle - half say "they fixed what wasn't broken, the new stuff is paltry, just play the original", while the other half says "finally feels complete, plays almost like a new game, easily the definitive version" (though most do acknowledge that it's not necessarily a must-buy if you already played the original release). Tough to say which side of the divide I would tend to fall into, and thus not sure if I ought to bother...having finished the initial version, though, I was always leaning in the "wait for the price to drop" direction, so chances are that's where I'll end up.

[cave hermit]

I keep intending to play through SMT Nocturne (Or Lucifer's call depending on where you live), but I keep just... stopping shortly after beating Matador for no apparent reason. No more. I will do a complete playthrough now. I will get the true demon ending. I shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.

First question, is there any easy way to quickly refresh the fusion screen to choose the inherited skills, or do I really just have to keep backing out and reselecting?

[cj iwakura]

I keep intending to play through SMT Nocturne (Or Lucifer's call depending on where you live), but I keep just... stopping shortly after beating Matador for no apparent reason. No more. I will do a complete playthrough now. I will get the true demon ending. I shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God.

First question, is there any easy way to quickly refresh the fusion screen to choose the inherited skills, or do I really just have to keep backing out and reselecting?

Old school style, you back out and reselect and like it.

Taking that need away is the best thing about the newer games, but there is a certain charm to it. You learn quick ways of getting it done, and learn to say 'okay, these skills I MUST have...' then 'okay, I'll settle for this'.

[BryanM]

I always overreach on skills - there's something repulsive to me walking around with a weakness when these games absolutely destroy you if you have one.

Started SMT4 a bit thanks to this thread. Spent like two hours trying to get a Gryphon to join me - gotta say I've finally decided I'm not a fan of the conversation system. In Last Bible it's basically RNG menu gibberish, in the old Persona games it's basically the junction system from Final Fantasy 8. It's not like the relationship systems in visual novels or dating sims or the dialogue trees in adventure games - just a poor minigame to waste the player's time.

[Bananamatic]

Started SMT4 a bit thanks to this thread. Spent like two hours trying to get a Gryphon to join me - gotta say I've finally decided I'm not a fan of the conversation system. In Last Bible it's basically RNG menu gibberish, in the old Persona games it's basically the junction system from Final Fantasy 8. It's not like the relationship systems in visual novels or dating sims or the dialogue trees in adventure games - just a poor minigame to waste the player's time.

SMT4 in general is a memefest, you should try to enjoy how utterly stupid it is at some points instead of quitting it for the same reason

[Immryr]

started up my strange journey save which i haven't played in a couple of months. took me a while to remember what i was doing, wandering round delphinus. after a while i found the way forward, and it lead to a travelator maze in the dark! what joy.

[Blinge]

So..
The final boss, I think, of Redux' added content. Fucking hell.

Spoiler

It has a technique that blocks all attacks of your alignment for 7 turns.

7 fucking turns.
And the only damage this thing really takes is co-op damage. Nothing else can put a scratch in her.
Big Bang from my level NINETY-ONE Seraph does 50 damage.

Every now and then she heals herself for 1000.

There's nothing like spending an hour. An hour. On a fucking boss like that only for them to confuse your MC and heaviest hitter at the last moment and just watch your party melt.

welp. grabbed two more levels and went back in better prepared. Wiped the floor with it.

[Klatrymadon]

Soul Hackers is currently 50% off on the 3DS shop. An absolute steal, especially in Europe where it was only £8 to begin with.

[Blinge]

WAT. I just saw SMT:If was released on psx too!

Is it just a remake or a sequel to If on the snes?

[BryanM]

It's a gussied up port like Devil Children was. I'm sure they reused a lot of art assets between the SMT PSX ports.

Just noticed that Atlus developed Kartia. That was an odd little game, now lost to time forever.

[Klatrymadon]

Me: Everyone talks a lot of shite about SMT1. As long as you put loads of points into agility/speed so that you're guaranteed an escape when you need it, and keep demons with -zio and -bufu spells so that you can stun almost everything you encounter anyway, the game is actually pretty breezy, and nothing like the joyless, glacially-paced slog it's often made out to be. Also, playing on the original hardware is fun and in no way makes things needlessly more arduous.

Also me: *Reaches Lord Yama's court and can't harm a hair on his head with anything he throws at the fucker. Loses a good hour's dungeon crawling progress because he found the bosses before the save point.*

[Blinge]

I get the frustration but your post also makes me laugh.

What this game is fine as long as you make X Y and Z decision with stats at the beginning DUMMY why didn't you think of that!?

Reminds me of when someone said i was dumb for not jumping through hopes to get a 0 encounter rate just to be able to enjoy playing FF8

..anyway I'll get to SMT1 one day, would you say I should definitely follow your advice or can i still enjoy the game casually? I loved Strange Journey.

[Klatrymadon]

I get the frustration but your post also makes me laugh.

What this game is fine as long as you make X Y and Z decision with stats at the beginning DUMMY why didn't you think of that!?

Yeah, I was taking the piss out of myself there - that stuff about stats is pretty arbitrary and would be a nightmare to figure out by yourself! Getting anywhere in the game requires either knowing a lot of helpful tricks up front or a willingness to put in the work of experimenting with 'builds', spells and demon fusions until you figure out the strategies that work. This stands even if you've played loads of other games in the series! I could easily have missed things like the fact that the 'Estoma' spell (which lowers the encounter rate) can be fused pretty early on with the right demons (I still don't have it, 3/4 of the way through the game, but it helps just to know the option is there). You could easily fail to realise that agility isn't just important but should be prioritised throughout (about 1:1 with a character's strength or magic stat, if you want to be able to dodge attacks, escape from battles, or - so I hear - hit the final bosses at all). You could also waste a lot of points on vitality, since your health goes up with strength anyway. It's one of the few games I'd always recommend reading at least the beginning of a walkthrough for, or the Japanese manual if you can, since I imagine a lot of its systems weren't originally so opaque and tortuous. (I still haven't figured out why my MC is doing pretty low physical damage against most later enemies, despite being a 100% str/agi build.)

It's a great game and fast becoming my favourite Megami Tensei (I'll waffle about the good stuff when I finish it), but it definitely demands a big investment regardless of how you approach it, so I'd probably recommend playing a couple of hours of it and seeing if it grabs you enough to carry on. You can certainly play it at a casual pace, and you can afford to use the 'autobattle' feature on most enemies once you've levelled up a bit in a new area, which really takes the sting out of the encounter rate and makes the dungeons feel a lot less daunting. Just play it on an emulator with the Orden patch and the map button hack - having these home comforts and being able to fast-forward through tonnes of it will surely make it a lot more enjoyable, at least for anyone unsure of what they're getting into.

Edit: got Lord Yama. Just needed to exploit the absurdly high stacking you can have on buffs (x8 I think)!

[cj iwakura]

I get the frustration but your post also makes me laugh.

What this game is fine as long as you make X Y and Z decision with stats at the beginning DUMMY why didn't you think of that!?

Yeah, I was taking the piss out of myself there - that stuff about stats is pretty arbitrary and would be a nightmare to figure out by yourself! Getting anywhere in the game requires either knowing a lot of helpful tricks up front or a willingness to put in the work of experimenting with 'builds', spells and demon fusions until you figure out the strategies that work. This stands even if you've played loads of other games in the series! I could easily have missed things like the fact that the 'Estoma' spell (which lowers the encounter rate) can be fused pretty early on with the right demons (I still don't have it, 3/4 of the way through the game, but it helps just to know the option is there). You could easily fail to realise that agility isn't just important but should be prioritised throughout (about 1:1 with a character's strength or magic stat, if you want to be able to dodge attacks, escape from battles, or - so I hear - hit the final bosses at all). You could also waste a lot of points on vitality, since your health goes up with strength anyway. It's one of the few games I'd always recommend reading at least the beginning of a walkthrough for, or the Japanese manual if you can, since I imagine a lot of its systems weren't originally so opaque and tortuous. (I still haven't figured out why my MC is doing pretty low physical damage against most later enemies, despite being a 100% str/agi build.)

It's a great game and fast becoming my favourite Megami Tensei (I'll waffle about the good stuff when I finish it), but it definitely demands a big investment regardless of how you approach it, so I'd probably recommend playing a couple of hours of it and seeing if it grabs you enough to carry on. You can certainly play it at a casual pace, and you can afford to use the 'autobattle' feature on most enemies once you've levelled up a bit in a new area, which really takes the sting out of the encounter rate and makes the dungeons feel a lot less daunting. Just play it on an emulator with the Orden patch and the map button hack - having these home comforts and being able to fast-forward through tonnes of it will surely make it a lot more enjoyable, at least for anyone unsure of what they're getting into.

Edit: got Lord Yama. Just needed to exploit the absurdly high stacking you can have on buffs (x8 I think)!

Congratulations, you learned how to break SMT1. That and Charm/Paralyze bullets.
Sadly, it's not as broken in SMT2.

[Klatrymadon]

Hehe, I'm looking forward to having to switch up my strategy in SMT2! Relying on Mazionga, Dormina and Mahama to render everything either harmless or instantly dead is probably going to get old.

I'm at Tokyo Destiny Land now, and presumably around the point where I'm going to be locked into one ending or another (aiming for Neutral, since I've heard it's a really good one in SMT1). I still haven't done any sword fusions or even many 3-demon fusions, so I still have quite a lot to experiment with even if the main story is wrapping up. Presumably there are more of those "Four Door Gem" demons to find, too. Still loving it!

(I probably don't need better equipment at this point since I've 'broken' the combat, but I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong with money, since everything costs 50,000-100,000 macca and I usually have about 10,000. Maybe it's because I've been paying the Kaifuku too much to cure paralysis and revive people, etc. Need to remember I hace Recarm/Samarecarm. Oh well!)

[cj iwakura]

Hehe, I'm looking forward to having to switch up my strategy in SMT2! Relying on Mazionga, Dormina and Mahama to render everything either harmless or instantly dead is probably going to get old.

I'm at Tokyo Destiny Land now, and presumably around the point where I'm going to be locked into one ending or another (aiming for Neutral, since I've heard it's a really good one in SMT1). I still haven't done any sword fusions or even many 3-demon fusions, so I still have quite a lot to experiment with even if the main story is wrapping up. Presumably there are more of those "Four Door Gem" demons to find, too. Still loving it!

(I probably don't need better equipment at this point since I've 'broken' the combat, but I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong with money, since everything costs 50,000-100,000 macca and I usually have about 10,000. Maybe it's because I've been paying the Kaifuku too much to cure paralysis and revive people, etc. Need to remember I hace Recarm/Samarecarm. Oh well!)

Keep in mind that if you go Neutral(which is the best ending), you will have to do all SIXTEEN FLOORS of the Cathedral, which is hell on earth. Law/Chaos only require half.

[Klatrymadon]

Don't worry, I'm in it for the long haul now!

New SMT V footage and an exciting Nocturne announcement:
https://youtu.be/kNtacp8-GoI

[KAI]

Soejima will be doing the character designs instead of Kaneko? this is super cursed

SMT3HD JP trailer
SMTV JP Trailer

[ryu]

Isn't Strange Journey the last game Kaneko actively worked on? And I didn't see any mention of Soejima. I expect Doi to be in that position again.