The Shin Megami Everything Thread

[BryanM]

> Cruisin' down the highway
> Come across two trash garbage rat grannies
> They cast Marin Karin on MC
> MC kills himself in a single stroke
> Later realize he still had on the Mind immunity helmet
> Look up Marin Karin's type
> The mind control spell that makes you want to kill your friends is not a Mind type spell
> It's Curse type
> The anti-mind control helmet MC was wearing is weak to Curses

Ah... how refreshing.

Actually having to live in this kind of world would be horrible. If you're the MC, I guess you'd invest all your stats into defense, becoming the biggest sponge in the omniverse. And equip status immunity gear, since who cares if God throws a Jihad at your face if you have a billion HP and a high magic resist stat. You'd live in constant terror of your demons (which you'd need to be able to kill anything) betraying you or your computer bouncing off a rock and breaking...

If you weren't the MC, I guess you'd get eaten by the first level 1 Kobold you come across. Being a chosen protagonist sucks, but it's better bullshit armor than any of the normo NPCs' get. 'Oh no I died to a dolphin because I wore my favorite fur coat outside.. because he was unable to harm me in any way..?...' Bah! At least you had a chance, man...

SMT3 was my first serious experience in the franchise, outside of the start of SMT1.... for some insane reason the only games they bothered to localize in English for this franchise back in the day were Last Bible and Devil Children Light+Dark versions. (I think the first three Devil Children game on the gameboy were probably better games. Or at the very least, brought more to the media environment they came out in.)

It's almost an anti-game, in the sense that it doesn't flatter your ass and is more like a barren liminal wasteland than a video game world. I've always been fascinated with the simulation aspects of video games, since it isn't offered much by the market. Games are more often something to be consumed and then thrown away, than to stimulate their own little world that does not revolve around you personally.

On the other extreme is coddling stuff like Conception, a game with 20 sub-systems and 60 classes and none of it matters because it's all the equivalent of garnish. Mash the fight command to walk from the start to the end of the game.


In Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, Orlean Prayer (Jeanne d'Arc's unique skill) will randomly do one of the following:

Restore HP to all allies
Restore MP to all allies
Inflict Bomb on the user

[BareKnuckleRoo]

For SMT culture though, you only have to be familiar with this meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wovh784sz9M

The highest peak of gaming meme culture.

The artist who made the original comic that was turned into a meme actually lives fairly close to me, I bought his book as a Christmas present for a few folks years ago, they're great! https://falseknees.com/

[BryanM]

This Happy Futon thing has to be one of the most overpowered casino cheat items in jRPG history. Just loads of time saved by your team regenerating ~5% of their life with every step you take. You can actually use attack skills to sweep trash, now! Amazing. For 50k yen, it's a steal.

The casino games themselves are pretty awful. You don't have to have a monster arena or a race track or a boardgame, but for crying out loud... Clunky menu interface, dice are lame... The jRPG time-tested standard, the slots, can not be activated by holding down the A button, so it requires you to own a turbo controller to be playable. Just awful. D- casino.

It's funny how few games have decent casinos, when the blueprint for how to do it is right there. Dragon Quest does what others don't...

[cj iwakura]

SH was also continuing the lovable trend of the MC being broken as all hell. I used Zoma for nothing but support, and buffed MC's attack to the moon so he can do like 1k in a hit, fun times.

[cj iwakura]

SMT IV and SMT V's soundtracks are both fire and of near equal quality.

I strongly disagree, SMT IV's OST had something for everyone, but much like the game itself, V's OST is scattered and unfocused.

IV had amazing track after track(Tokyo, Kinshicho District, Divine Powers, Lucifer's Palace, Cafe Florida, Members' Only Club), V's are few and far between. But credit given: when V's are good, they're great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPtJVXxZDRY

[Steven]

So Raidou 1 is getting a... remake thing, I suppose. That game is cool, but it's very awkward and clunky. Hopefully they clean it up so it isn't so awkward and clunky. I haven't seen any of the footage or screenshots, I just know that it exists and is supposedly somehow more than just a port, so hopefully this turns out good. Raidou is a cool premise, and with better gameplay this could turn out to be quite good.

[Augemitbutter]

Raidou 1 is good for the unique setting/timeline and music. The art is fantastic as well. The battles are indeed clunky and unbalanced. Normal is very mild while hard is running in circles to avoid 1 touch kills all day until you nope out. The remake has to rework combat and put proper balance in there. They'll make the combat more palatable but i don't trust Atlus with gameplay balance anymore. They'll make it easy and call it a day.

[cj iwakura]

The Hard mode of Raidou 1 is absolutely insane and I can't believe I cleared it. Escaping also takes literally 2-3 minutes, so I'm wondering if the remake will remove its fangs or keep it intact.

It really does have a fantastic story, but the game's lack of VA was part of its charm, so I'm on the fence about whether or not I should get the port.

[Steven]

It's really too bad that Raidou doesn't play more like Bayonetta or whatever. That would be awesome. Hopefully this remake turns out to be good, as Raidou always had a lot of potential that it never came close to living up to.

I never played Raidou 2, though, so maybe that's better.

[cj iwakura]

Raidou 2 has (much) better gameplay, and some fantastic music, but the story isn't nearly as compelling as 1's.

It tries to shoehorn a law/chaos plot into it, and it just doesn't really fit, but it has its moments.

Again, that music though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77R5q7Eczgg

[Mortificator]

I liked Raidou 2's story slightly more, but Raidou 1's has the service that people super into the series go insane over.

Raidou 1: Tokyo Millennium.
Fans: That's a reference to Shin Megami Tensei II! Thatsareferencetoshinmegamitensei2!! THAT'S A REFERENCE TO SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI TWOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gameplay problems go deeper than being awkward or clunky, though. In any decent action game – whether pure or diluted with RPG elements – physicality matters. Zelda 2 stalfos hold shields at chest level so you need to go for their legs, Dark Souls ghosts phase through walls to ambush you. Nothing like that can happen in Raidou. No matter what character model they use, the enemy just waffs around periodically casting whatever skills are on them. Even virtually all bosses are just another instance of The Monoenemy.

It's acceptable in a turn-based game for enemies to be wads differentiated by their stats & skills. When you have to interact with them in real-time action, it's incredibly unsatisfying.

[Steven]

Spontaneously decided to finish SMT V Vengeance Chaos ending. I had previously played a little bit of loop 2 last year after finishing loop 1 and dropped it about 20% into the second area. I am not done yet, but just got to the final area today. I like this area and its music; if the rest of the game had level design like this area, I'd be less harsh on it.

I got a kurama tengu about an hour into the game thanks to a fusion accident. Kurama tengu starts at level 39, so getting him by accident when I was like level 5 resulted in him carrying me until about 60% of the way through the game before he got fused into something else (Gogmagog, I think). Obviously, he made this playthough super easy. I can't blame the game for giving me something far stronger than anything in the first half of the game by random chance, but I was the one that decided to use that demon, so that one's on me entirely. The first time I had a fusion accident in this game it was a Jack Frost or something that was about 40 levels below my level, so it was interesting to get something useful this time.

I was holding back on making demons higher than my level because this already ridiculously easy game doesn't need to become easier, but after I made Gogmagog, who starts at level 60 or something, when I was level 40~45, I threw that out and now I have a bunch of level 60~70 demons, so so much for anything resembling balance. I only bought one demon (Silky) from the compendium to do it, so I don't feel like I cheated too much, but this playthrough is probably more or less ruined now. It's been 11 months since I started and dropped this playthrough and no longer remember if the ability to make demons at a higher level than the player on loops is something that you can automatically do or if you have to buy it with Glory, but this is what it turned into. I opted for the boring Belphegor + resistances physical almighty build again. Spending about 70% of the game doing nothing but spamming Sakanagi until you upgrade to Tenken Murakumo is efficient, but it's not very interesting. I may do magic next time, if there is a next time. I didn't like magic the last time I did it, but after endless Sakanagi/Tenken Murakumo spam it will probably be a bit more interesting, at least.

I guess I'm having fun, or at least feel that it gives me something to do that is not completely terrible or miserable. I just hope that the next SMT isn't like this, that it doesn't take forever for them to make a new one, and that they'll actually release something that feels like a finished product next time.

BTW if anyone gets a Switch 2, I am very interested to see if Vengeance runs better on it does on Switch. I don't have Vengeance on Switch, but I've heard it's the same as the original V's performance. I hope it runs better on Switch 2. That would be nice.

[Steven]

Vengeance Chaos done. Thoughts on Vengeance, 11 months later:

I'm not sure what to say about this game. The ending was... very short. I still don't believe in the Vengeance Chaos hero's philosophy or whatever. It's kind of funny because

Spoiler

the protagonist hesitates before taking Youko's hand when he decides to join her, as if he doesn't fully believe that it's the right thing to do either. I don't remember him hesitating at all during the Law ending. It's also been 11 months since I saw the Law ending, so maybe I he did and I forgot.

Speaking of the Vengeance Chaos hero, why the hell did they officially romanize her name as Yoko? In the Japanese text and website it's ヨーコ. The pronunciation is different, so it matters, and it really should be rendered as something else instead. Yōko, Youko, or even Yohko would have been better and preferable. Not that I'm ever going to play this game with the text in any language other than Japanese, but still.

Last time, I forgot to do a bunch of sidequests, whether because I'd had enough of the game and wanted it to end or simply forgot about doing them. This time I remembered. There is one important thing that I forgot: there is a secret second form for the final boss, and I didn't remember until after I'd already finished the game and saved my file. I guess I have to play the entire thing AGAIN now... I'd rather not. Not yet. I know that there is stuff in each of the two stories that unlocks stuff in the other or something like that, and now that I've done almost everything there is to do in the new story, only the boring original story remains. That original story is still better than the Vengeance story at certain things, which is weird. It seems to me, especially now that some time has passed, that you really should play the original story first because Vengeance has instances of events suddenly happening for some reason that's never (fully) explained, except there is an explanation, but it's in the other story, so if you didn't play the original V and go directly to the Vengeance story, there are things that spontaneously seem to happen for unknown reasons.

Ultimately, it seems like Vengeance suffered because of the structure and development of the original Switch-exclusive version of V. They had to force Vengeance to mostly fit within the context and confines of the existing V, which is basically an incomplete game by the director's own admission during the Vengeance reveal video thingy, and barring the one new area (which is probably the best or second best one in both versions of the game), Vengeance seems more like an arrange mode than a different game. As least it feels more complete than the original V does; even when it was released, V felt to me as if it was only about 70%~80% finished. Last time, I estimated that V and the new Vengeance route are like 70% identical and I still believe that to be true. The improved game mechanics both in and out of battle helped a lot with Vengeance, and having significantly lower input lag (original Switch V is unfortunately a very laggy game; it has some of the highest input lag on the system that I am aware of, comparable to the pre-patch City Connection Cotton travesty) and faster menus really make the game feel so much better, but it's closer to being the same game than a different game. I wish that it had been a different game, but it isn't.

As for the mechanics, some research suggests that there is a limit to how STR and MAG affect your damage output because when your STR/MAG stat is greater than your current level + 10, it doesn't actually increase dealt damage any more... or something like that. I am not sure how it works. Maybe this isn't true at all, but I started dumping stats into VIT after I learned about this, and I ended up with over 100 STR and VIT, so I got two gold bars on my stats page, which was cool. High VIT makes you super resilient to most things, but it ultimately didn't matter much anyway because I nulled almost everything. I previously thought that dumping everything into STR or MAG, depending on what you want, was optimal, but apparently it isn't.

Starting with SMT IV Final, Atlus decided to fix demons by adding elemental affinities, which is really great. V was basically the same, but Vengeance added a huge amount of unique skills and passive abilities, all of which are good and further differentiate demons from each other. From what I remember, demon alignment matters in every game except V, where it does literally nothing. There used to be demons that you couldn't negotiate with due to their alignment (typically Light and Dark), and you had to get them by fusion or using that weird thing that IV had that makes any demon that you recruit attempt to recruit any other enemy demons on the field. Even in Vengeance, I believe demon alignment does not matter at all for any purpose beyond giving you two extra words to read on the demons' profile pages. I hope that demon alignment matters again in the next game. It used to be important. Now it doesn't do anything and that is disappointing, especially because Vengeance returns to the old pre-IV Final player alignment system in which the player's alignment actually matters. As much as I dislike Strange Journey because of its ear-destroying music and painfully boring battle system, it probably has the best alignment system in the entire series. Let's return to that or something very close to it in future games, and bring Gun element back too because Gun is cool.

There is something that has been bothering me about Vengeance from day 1. This is something that I do not think I have seen anyone else say, and I don't know if this will make any sense, but the Vengeance route normal battle music very blatantly sounds like it's an arranged version of something else, which it is. It's like if someone who had never heard the original battle music heard the Vengeance battle music, they would automatically know that it's an arranged version of something. Does that make sense? I sort of got the same feeling from Saidaioujou's arranged soundtrack, but it's not as strong as it is here. Here it's like

game: HELLO, I AM ARRANGED VIDEO GAME MUSIC
me: Holy crap I get the point now go away!

Still, this time I had a lot of fun this time starting near the end of the second area and the beginning of the third area, which is the part of the game where a physical build can become almost untouchable with the broken Belphegor resistances + Resist/Null/Drain/Reflect passives, and by the end of the game I resisted physical and Elec and had Null/Drain/Reflect for everything else. This is fine for physical builds because you only need a single physical Almighty attack skill and maybe the critical charge skill that I don't know the English name of, but it doesn't really work that well for magic because you need a bunch of skill slots for passives, which you would normally want for various magic elements for attack skills, but if you get Naahma's resistances + Resist/Null/Drain/Repel Phys, you can conveniently do something very similar but not as broken, and this probably works better for magic because you only need to cover a single weakness with a passive skill. I was planning on upgrading my Resist and Null passives to Drain or Repel, but then I forgot and accidentally beat the game. I'll try to remember next time.

On the subject of weaknesses/resistances, spoilers for both Vengeance endings, I guess:

Spoiler

Now that I am basically done with all of the stuff in Vengeance, it's time to do research to learn all of the fun stuff that breaks the game. I learned today that both Tao's and Youko's goddess forms can be summoned for free on NG+, which is kind of silly, especially because Youko's goddess form is very powerful. She's probably one of the best demons in the game and getting her for free at the beginning will break this already too-easy game. I before I knew this, I gave her a bunch of items to boost her affinities to max just for fun. If I'd known that summoning her is free, I'd have upgraded her Null Light to Drain or Reflect instead. Oh well. I'll do it next time. Tao kind of sucks, but Dekunda + Luster Candy + really weak heal is still a pretty great skill in the few instances in which bosses have debuffs, which is strangely not that often.

I guess I had a lot to say this time, even though I didn't know what I wanted to say, so this post turned into a rambling mess, and is about as poorly structured as the game itself. I don't know what I will do with this game now. I kind of want to continue playing it. Maybe I'll summon the free game-breaking demons from the compendium and have some fun with those on a new playthrough. 復讐の女神篇 has almost nothing left for me to do in it, so I guess it's on to the original boring 創世の女神篇. I've been seriously considering getting the Switch version of Vengeance so I can be lazy and play it in bed. We'll see.

This is not important at all, but I noticed that there is a typo, or, more specifically, a 変換ミス, on the back of the box, which I noticed when I was checking prices for the Switch version at Tsutaya last night. It says you have both the new 復讐の女神編 and the old 創世の女神編, but on the game's website and in the text in the game itself, it's 篇, not 編. It's the same thing either way, but they should have at least been consistent with what's in the game.

One week later edit: it seems that Vengeance is stuck at sub-native resolutions and 30 FPS on Switch 2. That really sucks. At least it probably shouldn't have frequent and/or massive drops like the original V does.

[cj iwakura]

Re: Vengeance, while I was mixed on the game for the most part, and think the story just presents more issues than it fixes, the new battle music was largely amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPtJVXxZDRY
Namely the Qadistu theme.

Any last words? NOW DIE.

[Steven]

Yeah, Qaditsu battle music is great. It's probably one of the best tracks in the game. I do really like the Tokyo music, and that's probably my pick for best track in the game. As I listen to it more, I realize that it sounds very much like something from Persona 5. I like it a lot. Too bad you don't get to hear it much.

I've done a few more playthroughs of Vengeance now under various conditions (completely new save file, starting the game at level 99 and skip everything, etc.) and I've found that if you disregard everything except the gameplay and the music, this game is actually pretty fun. Skip the dialog, skip the cutscenes, and focus entirely on "how do I become as strong as possible?" and it transforms it into a fun experience.

When I did my level 99 playthrough, I skipped literally almost everything that wasn't optional: Miman, Magatsuka, all but like 2 or 3 sidequests, dialog, cutscenes, optional battles, etc., and it is indeed possible to blast through the game at level 99 in about 3~4 hours. When you play it like this, it's very... empty and soulless, to an even greater degree than the game already feels if you play it "normally", and also surprisingly short, so I guess this game might rely more on its optional content than I realized. One-shotting or running away from every non-boss enemy that you accidentally make contact with makes it a lot shorter, too. At least it went by pretty quickly. I'm also kind of ashamed to admit that I didn't learn you can save anywhere in Vengeance until my third playthrough, so don't tell anyone.

I also noticed something VERY interesting: at level 99 with over 100 STR, the first boss that I did not instantly defeat in a single (critical, because my Luck was high enough to get criticals on almost every attack) hit was

Spoiler

Fionn, who took two critical hits with no buffs/debuffs on either side

This was extremely surprising to me, as I expected this to happen much later in the game, but I failed to one-shot bosses before even the halfway point. I think I might have said before that Vengeance is easier than the original V, but the truth is that it's both easier and harder: easier in that level scaling doesn't make much of a difference, and harder in that you can absolutely game over at very unexpected points at level 99 if you play carelessly, as simply being at level 99 is no longer an automatic victory against non-super bosses now. Luck stat makes a huge difference, too, as you get seemingly unlimited critical hits when you have 100+ Luck against most enemies, so at this point I'm going to say that Luck is definitely a good stat for physical builds, especially now that I know that dumping everything into STR is a waste. I did have ミナゴロシの愉悦 or whatever it's called in English, though, so that helped.

Anyway, I have the PS5 version of Raidou coming in the mail, but I'm also somehow simultaneously playing SMT I (PS1), SMT III HD, SMT IV, and Vengeance (magic this time, for the second time). I'm probably going to drop at least one of these games for now just because this is way too many to play at once, and I want to focus on III and IV, but it's crazy to play them all at the same time and see how different these games and their design philosophies are, except III and IV, which are the most similar, I think. I never realized until now how much V desperately needed the dungeon designs and general design philosophy of III and IV instead of being a mostly empty wasteland with little in it besides the same dozen or so ruined buildings copy/pasted everywhere. Getting to the world map in IV for the first time in over a decade, as I haven't played the game for a long time, was incredible. It's like going for a swim in the game's flawless 世界観 and it's glorious.

But yeah, Raidou. Anyone else getting Raidou? I have avoided most of the media coverage for it (mostly because I'm too lazy lol, but also because I want to see how it is for myself), so I don't know exactly how different this will be, but I guess this is a straight-up remake-ish thing and not just a regular HD port like SMT III HD, right? Whatever it is, I am looking forward to it.

Additionally, holy crap SMT II PS1 bugfix version is expensive now.

[cj iwakura]

Did you take on the Demi-Fiend? He's not BS as he was like DDS, but definitely no pushover.

[Steven]

No, I keep putting him off. I go to fight him to figure out what he has, and every time I'm like yeah, I'll do this on my next playthrough because I just want this game to be over. Eventually I'll do it. I'm magic now and I'll have to redo my stats to be physical because I don't want to fight him as magic. That's fine in itself because there is an item to do that, but I'll have to get a lot more Glory to get the Almighty miracles for my physical build, as I'm not planning on using Almighty as magic. I might do it this time, but I'm not sure yet.

I've heard that at least one of the new optional super bosses in Vengeance is even stronger than Demi-fiend. I don't know much about them, including the requirements to fight them. I will check out those requirements once I get to the final area, as I'd be surprised if you can do anything related to them before that point. Well, as long as I don't forget... there is always a high chance that I will forget.

Speaking of new things, spoilers for Vengeance route endings:

Spoiler

So, yeah, about the two goddesses... they are indeed free on NG+ after you finish their respective routes, no matter what their stats are. Note that Tao does get registered in the compendium on the Chaos route, but you need to actually do the Law ending to summon her.

Summoning them on NG+ basically ruins the game because you get to start with something that could potentially look like one or both of these:

Spoiler

Yeah. Obviously, starting with either one at the beginning of the game is going to break it, and having both of them will make you even more unstoppable. I can't believe they really decided to make these two both 100% free under all circumstances. The solution is simple: don't get them from the compendium if you don't want to break the game, but it's still pretty tempting, especially in case you run into a bunch of Mitama early in the game and want something to Megidolaon the entire horde of them to death.

I'm not really sure if I like the skills that I gave them, but I'm keeping them like this for now. Tao learned Luster Candy at random during a level up, so that was pretty cool. I gave them +9/+5 on everything possible to see if it made them cost any more money, but nope, still free. +9 Almighty really helps keep the costs down for their Almighty skills, and having Energy Drain do more damage and therefore recover more MP is also great. Both of them can sustain themselves with it, with a net gain of about 42 MP per use, so I can use Chakra Pots on other things, which is nice. I wonder if either of these girls would be helpful against Demi-fiend; I know Tao is very helpful against Shiva, even when she isn't at level 99! Probably want at least Resist Phys for Demi-fiend in any case.

I also noticed that if you have Tao registered in the compendium at the end of the game, when she joins again on NG+ she starts with whatever her registered stats were, so in my case she started at level 99 and all of that.

I think I saw somewhere that Demi-fiend is actually harder in Vengeance than in the original Switch-only version of V, but I don't know the details.