The Shin Megami Everything Thread

[Steven]

Ah yes, Rock/Mega Man, yet another franchise that I have never played because it wasn't on Mac or Genesis aside from being on Sega Channel, which of course nobody had even heard of at the time and probably would not have been available where I lived anyway.

Did they really shit out 6 more or less identical games in 2 years? That's got to be a record. These days it would be called asset flip shovelware and vilified like all of the junk on the Switch eshop. Did nobody in the 80s have standards for this? I wasn't there, so I don't know. At least it took a few years to release that many Metal Slug games!

Anyway I am possibly going to take the risk of trying Vengeance on either Switch and put up with terrible performance or on PC and put up with Denuvo because I really would like a handheld version. Undecided as of now, but the Switch version is cheaper and won't require me to connect to the internet to get permission to play the game.

[ryu]

Did they really shit out 6 more or less identical games in 2 years?

That's only when you count the handheld ports and spin offs like the soccer game. The mainline games are at least about a year apart each.

[BryanM]

I was being mean, but it really was relentless at the time. Another game churned out every year. Eight robot masters, some Wily stages, then you fight Wily. Every single time. This one added sliding. This one added the charge cannon. Did either of those make the games any better? Not really, imo...

I remember reading about Mega Man 5 or 6 in an issue of Nintendo Power, and wondering what the point was, exactly. The Super Nintendo had been out for years by that point. Mega Man X was out or almost out. Did people really need that much Mega Man??

There's something quaint about how simple and humble everything was back then, that games like that could get made by the top studios. It's unfathomable this day and age, with the enormous budgets games have now. Nobody wants to be the last major game that releases on a console.

As for Mega Man, I feel Mega Man 9's success kind of gave people the wrong idea. For a nostalgia based property, you can only really come back once. (I kind of feel like the later seasons of Ash vs. Evil Dead suffered from this effect.)

(Vampire Survivors is the current poster child of people making clones while missing the more subtle points of what was cool about it. Compressing long ass games into complete play cycles of 10 or 20 minutes. Arcade style gaming, with meta progression added on. The thing to do isn't to clone a game that already exists and get lost in the crowd, but apply some of its novelty to different genres.)

(As for Mega Man, I kind of feel the same that I do about Mario Kart and most other games. There's no reason to make a smol game in this day and age. There's no reason to make sequels, if they're all the same and will have the same artstyle. Just make one game, and make it the biggest, most obnoxious thing that you can. 8 robot masters? .... why the hell not eighty? One protagonist? Why not five?

If I was one of their suits, I'd be the sicko advocating for Street Fighter X Mega Man X Ghosts n' Gobbos X Breath of Fire X Darkstalkers.)

Anyway I am possibly going to take the risk of trying Vengeance on either Switch and put up with terrible performance or on PC and put up with Denuvo because I really would like a handheld version.

There's always waiting for the Switch 2. It might be backwards compatible, or there might be a re-re-release with even morer added content.

(I don't think there will be, since every re-release necessitates adding a new waifu to the game, and I don't know if they have the time earmarked in the budget for that. Did you guys know Atlus has been running a loss for like a decade, and only have turned a profit recently?)

[Steven]

As for Mega Man, I kind of feel the same that I do about Mario Kart and most other games. There's no reason to make a smol game in this day and age. There's no reason to make sequels, if they're all the same and will have the same artstyle. Just make one game, and make it the biggest, most obnoxious thing that you can. 8 robot masters? .... why the hell not eighty? One protagonist? Why not five?

Maybe this is why Persona 5 is 9001 hours long! Who needs quality when you can have quantity instead?

Anyway I am possibly going to take the risk of trying Vengeance on either Switch and put up with terrible performance or on PC and put up with Denuvo because I really would like a handheld version.

There's always waiting for the Switch 2. It might be backwards compatible, or there might be a re-re-release with even morer added content.

(I don't think there will be, since every re-release necessitates adding a new waifu to the game, and I don't know if they have the time earmarked in the budget for that. Did you guys know Atlus has been running a loss for like a decade, and only have turned a profit recently?)

This is possible. I don't really trust Nintendo to not fuck the thing up somehow, but I might think about it. The real problem is that the Switch version might not even be programmed in a manner that allows it to run better on better hardware. I am tempted to get it on PC because someone will surely mod it and possibly fix any of the broken shit.

I almost got III on PC in the Steam sale for this exact reason, as I was hoping someone would mod the uncompressed soundtrack into the game. There is an uncompressed music mod for it, but it seems there is no complete uncompressed soundtrack or something like that, so some of it had to be recreated by the mod maker, so I decided to pass for now. I am amazed that Atlus didn't bother to have the uncompressed soundtrack for the HD version, even as an optional thing. Given how little space the game takes up and the fact that it's on a fucking Blu-ray, there are no excuses, only incompetence. Same with STILL not having analog movement, which was always weird because the PS2 shipped with an analog controller.

[Steven]

13 days left until Vengeance. I forgot about it until several days ago, and I haven't seen any of the trailers or whatever new promotional stuff it's had since they announced it. I'm hoping this will be much better than regular V. At least it will run better due to the Blast Processing™ on PC and PS5... right? Now watch it run worse on PS5 than on Switch somehow. With my luck that is exactly what will happen.

[Arino]

13 days left until Vengeance.

Does SMT5 have two hour cutscenes like Persona 5?

[ryu]

13 days left until Vengeance.

Does SMT5 have two hour cutscenes like Persona 5?

If I remember right it doesn't

[Steven]

It doesn't. It also ends in probably less than half of Persona 5's unbelievably bloated runtime, which I am quite thankful for. That alone probably makes it a better game! For as disappointed in SMTV as I am, it's way better than Persona 5 in every way except for maybe graphics, which are about the same. That's not a compliment for SMTV, which is an empty, easy, lifeless game with good music and not a whole lot else, but rather an indicator of how much I dislike P5.

Yes, I'm essentially banking on the new story being good and actually a finished product this time, but I'll take that risk because I really don't have anything else new to play at this point and they already said they fixed one of the biggest flaws of the original version (level scaling).

[Arino]

Ah ok that's good because I like the old SMT games because dialogues are not too long (no dialogue in a game is ever short enough for me though) and what's holding me back from playing Persona is all the bla bla.

Funnily I ordered SMT5 just before Vengeance was announced so when I received it, I returned it immediately and got a full refund because I knew that version would be obsolete by the time I'd play it

[Steven]

It may be worth keeping the original version of the game because it's probably going to be harder than playing the version of the original game that is contained in Vengeance, if that is appealing to you. It's already really easy on the highest difficulty setting and with Vengeance's combination of no level scaling and all of the other new stuff, the Vengeance version of the original story will probably be even easier unless they did a really big rebalance of everything in the game.

[Arino]

At this point it sounds like I shouldn't play either I am fed up with easy games wasting my time. I want to feel like I achieved something after clearing a game.

[Steven]

The hardest game in the entire Megami Tensei franchise, at least as far as I have seen, is Persona 1. Not falling asleep while playing it and/or throwing your PS1/PSP/whatever through the window because the battle system is the worst ever created without even bothering to open said window is extremely difficult! Persona 2 is slightly better, but still has such a high encounter rate as to render the game unplayable.

Other than that, most of these games are actually pretty easy once you know what you are doing. I hope Vengeance isn't too easy, but...

Now that I think about it again, isn't score attack or whatever in one of the Persona 4 fighting games actually legitimately super difficult? As legitimately super difficult as a fighting game can be, anyway, given the input reading, impossible inputs, ability to do charge moves without charging, and insane damage AI enemies are guilty of.

[ryu]

isn't score attack or whatever in one of the Persona 4 fighting games actually legitimately super difficult?

Yeah. The mode let's you unlock DLC content and is basically a scapegoat so people couldn't complain that some content was only available for cash.

[Steven]

3 days left. I won't even be able to play it much until maybe Monday because I have work on Friday, work all day on Saturday, and won't be in town on Sunday. Perhaps I should have gotten the Switch version.

[cj iwakura]

They posted the title roll, and it's a good one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8xzTWnOj9iE

I never did the Fiend DLC of V, all of it is included in V-2, right?

[Steven]

It is. It never should have been DLC at all. It was clearly something they finished and cut out of the game to sell separately. I want to blame Sega for this, but Atlus started doing dumb stuff like this in SMTIV before the acquisition. Vengeance unfortunately has its own DLC, naturally.

[Steven]

Plan has changed. Will not be out of town on Sunday after all. Might be slightly busy, but will have enough time to play and give thoughts.

That said, I have already seen people who got it early saying that the Switch version's performance is the same as last time, which is disappointing but expected.

[Augemitbutter]

Played for 3 hours, PS5 version runs smooth so far. I have no experience with the original, that's why i chose the original route in my first playthrough. I'll definitely go for multiple pt if the game doesn't bore me. A little disappointed everything has to look so open these days and you can run from everything. Main guy looks good, i hope to meet some new demon designs soon. Need to play more.

[Steven]

I am still waiting for my game to arrive. At this rate it won't be here until practically tomorrow.

Does it support 120 FPS on PS5 or is it stuck at 60? It should support 120, and there is no excuse for it not doing so because the Steam Deck apparently can run this at a mostly stable 90 FPS.

[Augemitbutter]

i can't get it higher than 60. There is also a little shimmer and i don't notice any surround sound support (it's there). But it runs smooth and traveling feels like Sonic 3D light.

[Steven]

That is most disappointing. Hopefully they'll at least patch it in later. I still can't believe how few PS5 games take advantage of the system's 120Hz output this late in its existence, especially in cases like this one, where it's a Switch port and the significantly weaker Steam Deck seems to outperform the PS5, at least at the Steam Deck's screen's resolution. Steam Deck probably completely falls apart if you try to run it at higher resolutions because that's pretty much what Steam Deck does. I'm guessing the PS5 version is stuck at 1920x1080, too.

[Augemitbutter]

it's 3840x2160 no native HDR. Cutscenes are old switch videos? That's where i got the shimmer. I just noticed there is surround sound in the field, so that's something. Anyway, i'm having fun. You can die in normal mode from missing attacks like the good old days, but there is save anywhere and you can jump to save/shop fountain etc. so danger is pretty low.

[Steven]

Oh yeah, I forgot that some of the videos on Switch seemed prerendered instead of real time. Those might look worse than the rest of the game if they didn't rerender them at higher resolutions for the port.

No HDR isn't really that surprising, though it is disappointing. There are not many games that use it, and the only ones that I have are Death Stranding Director's Cut and Jurassic World Evolution 2, the latter of which has such poor HDR implementation that it looks much better without HDR.

Edit: game get



please don't be terrible this time

and of course THERE'S A FUCKING DAY 1 PATCH. God damn stupid modern game industry can't do a single fucking thing right anymore.

After 2.5 hours Vengeance is basically just Shin Megami Tensei V Arrange Mode so far. The new arranged music is super weird and sounds like it came out of IV Final. The music was the only good part of that awful game, so at least that's good, right?

The graphics seem essentially 100% identical to the Switch version, so it still looks like a Switch game, but not at 8~20 FPS this time, and input lag is significantly lower than it was on Switch. You can turn the anti-aliasing off, which is odd. Why would you want to do that?

Youko is weak to expel, which is unusual for a human character, as most human characters that I can remember are typically immune to expel. She's probably Lucifer or a demon or something like that.

[Augemitbutter]

I appreciate how snappy the menus are and how you can access most essential functions with a button like left d-pad save, L1 port, R1 autoheal etc. It flows like a basic dungeon crawler. But yea something always gets lost when you port to many platforms and your team has no budget. There is no rumble on PS5. Even the Tactics Ogre remake had haptic trigger support. SMT can't get the basics.

[Steven]

The original Switch version didn't have rumble either. At least the menus are indeed better. On Switch the menus were sluggish and the whole game had some noticeable input lag. The whole game is much faster and more responsive now aside from battle animations, which are the same. The menus open and close faster, battles get to the first PLAYER TURN or ENEMY TURN thing faster after the battle starts, battles end more quickly, you can turn around quickly when running... yeah, it sounds weird, but on the original Switch version if you try to do a quick 180 while running you'll stop running. The whole game plays way, WAY better now.

Hopefully they fixed Charge and Concentrate, which are usually not worth using in most cases in the original version.

[Steven]

10 hours and 6 minutes in and 35% done with the game. They definitely made it easier. There is more glory and Aogami gives you additional stat points after major story events at the bench, so although I'm only level 25 I have 54 strength already, which is ridiculous. The Vengeance story isn't that different from the original version yet. Apparently that comes later. There are plenty of minor differences and a few extra bosses, but not many major changes so far.

Biggest complaint is that the guest characters take a spot in your demon stock and are constantly in your party, so you won't have as many demons as you could previously. They'll probably go away eventually, but for now they're somewhat in the way.

[Sima Tuna]

Really sounds like the opposite of what I want for the franchise, going forward. I want them to go back to pure dungeon crawling, party-customizing, demon-slaying bliss with a dark, minimalist story, difficult fights everywhere and selection of murky moral choices.

The series peaked for me with Strange Journey, Devil Survivor Overclocked, SMT III, DDS 1&2 and Soul Hackers. All of those games are a little different, but they share the important elements. Combat is difficult. Choices are morally ambiguous. The gameplay loop is very much pure dungeon crawling (or pure tactical battling, with DSO.)

I had too many complaints with SMTV vanilla to go into all of them here. The game was piss easy, boring, stuffed with obnoxious anime characters/tropes and Doi's tokusatsu obsession was on full display. I stopped around level 60 IIRC because I was too bored to continue playing. I was clearing every encounter with no challenge at all, but trudging forward with the story felt like walking through jello. Every time I thought something would actually happen, it didn't.

SMT 3 has a very good chance of party wiping you 5 minutes after you gain control of your character. Now that's what I'm talking about.

... I kid, I kid. But combat is usually exciting in the SMT games I mentioned, because there's a possibility of losing everything.

Spoiler

SMT IV is ok but really suffers hard from the lack of any defense stat. I heard the term "rocket launcher tag" used to describe high-level DnD and that definitely applies to SMT IV's gameplay loop. You either lock the opponent into a death spiral by abusing Smirk, or they do that to you.

[Steven]

Stats as of 13 hours 24 minutes and about 80% finished with the second area



Aramasa Renzan does like 15~18 damage per hit, costs 9, and Restore recovers 10 if I get a critical, so I'm hitting for 100+ damage without a critical and potentially doing it for better than free if I do get a critical.

Every other enemy and ally is in the 20-30 range for stats. I am also playing on hard. I think they made a mistake by letting Aogami give you three stat points after ever major story event. I hold up fine when taking neutral hits, but I'm going to start dumping points into 体 very soon.

Unfortunately Sukukaja and Sukunda still barely do anything.

[Augemitbutter]

i thought it was a little funny how this game is thirsting for your engagement in the 2nd area, with so many icons in the map, with the fairy pointing at stuff and the demons running around, this wasteland is pretty busy. But i prefer this over open space with endless walking. This light platforming works for me. They can put this into the next game and make it 100% harder and i'd be happy. Oh hello Turbo Granny, i was just talking about you.

[Steven]

I think Turbo Granny is one of the newly added demons. Pretty sure she wasn't in the old version, but I can't remember. Aside from the new set of bosses, I don't think I have seen any demons that are 100% new, though, just ones that weren't in the original version of the game that got added to this one.

BTW unless they changed it you can't get the final Miman in the second area until you start a sidequest that isn't available until like 75% of the way through the third area.