The Shin Megami Everything Thread

[Sima Tuna]

What, you mean that Persona 5 game? I don't play anything with Persona 5 on the cover as a rule. I'm not rewarding Atlus with money until they get off the P5 teat.

[BryanM]

It is crazy to think 3 and 4 came out a couple years from one another.

... I would like to say they should have long moved on already, but I'm currently only more than halfway through 4 vanilla. My first experience of "playing" 5 will probably be the Phantom X game...

[BulletMagnet]

A bit of support for rumors of an "enhanced" SMT5 being in the works.

[ryu]

A bit of support for rumors of an "enhanced" SMT5 being in the works.

The Switch was a mistake. We could have played the enhanced port years ago had they developed the game for PS5 instead. It doesn't even need more content. The Switch just couldn't do its vision justice.

[Steven]

At this point I'd prefer to have a new game. Fixing this one would require so much work that they'd practically be making an entirely new game anyway.

Having a subtitle like that also reminds me of the horrific existence of SMT IV Final, which I would prefer not to experience again. At least V was only extremely disappointing; IV Final was offensively terrible.

The Vengeance subtitle itself doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the content of the existing game's story, either, unless they added stuff.

[Sima Tuna]

At this point I'd prefer to have a new game. Fixing this one would require so much work that they'd practically be making an entirely new game anyway.

Having a subtitle like that also reminds me of the horrific existence of SMT IV Final, which I would prefer not to experience again. At least V was only extremely disappointing; IV Final was offensively terrible.

The Vengeance subtitle itself doesn't really seem to have anything to do with the content of the existing game's story, either, unless they added stuff.

This.

I'm not interested in seeing SMT V again. If they want to remake something, they should first port over all the 3ds games you can no longer FUCKING buy on the eshop, and which are prohibitively expensive to purchase on cart.

I'm not speaking for myself, as I already own every good SMT on 3ds. But more for the people who own a switch or other console and never experienced Devil Survivor Overclocked or Strange Journey.

SMT V is, I think, sadly emblematic of the shift in the mainline games thanks to Doi and the success of Persona. Too many annoying anime stereotypes. Too much tokusatsu in the designs. Simplistic plot framings because the games no longer are interested in complexity. Not that the chaos/law/neutral setup was ALWAYS a winner. You really need to play with the ideas (like Overclocked did) to properly create fulfilling routes. Ideally, every route should feel "correct" and no route should be the canon one. But that's haaaaard, dude! Easier to just make Chaos the Evil Karma Bad Guy route, Law the "okay mom I will clean my room" route and Neutral Humanity the "everyone wins and the world is happy forever" route.

[ryu]

SMT V is, I think, sadly emblematic of the shift in the mainline games thanks to Doi and the success of Persona. Too many annoying anime stereotypes. Too much tokusatsu in the designs. Simplistic plot framings because the games no longer are interested in complexity. Not that the chaos/law/neutral setup was ALWAYS a winner. You really need to play with the ideas (like Overclocked did) to properly create fulfilling routes. Ideally, every route should feel "correct" and no route should be the canon one. But that's haaaaard, dude! Easier to just make Chaos the Evil Karma Bad Guy route, Law the "okay mom I will clean my room" route and Neutral Humanity the "everyone wins and the world is happy forever" route.

Strong points. But I still liked IV (even Apocalypse) and V for their atmospheres (sound and visuals) and gameplay. My biggest problem with V was indeed the tokusatsu influence on the main characters' design. I hope that won't happen again in the series.

[Sima Tuna]

SMT IV is pretty ok. SMT IV: Apocalypse was awful imo.

The tokusatsu influence on designs goes far beyond the main character. Ever since 4A, something like 80% of the new Doi demon designs and a bunch of Doi's character designs are just dudes (or ladies) in toku costumes.

When you look at the old SMT titles that could have possibly had the same complaints leveled at them, there was usually a horror element that kept the design from seeming too "cool." A lot of the Digital Devil Saga demon alter forms are this way. They could be cool, but they have some weird element (like teeth for boobs) that stand out as bizarre and unappealing. And that's an example of probably the most toku influenced of the pre-Doi SMT titles. When you get into 4A and V, it's just toku everywhere. Even Strange Journey Redux has some with the new (doi-designed) demons. As well as the "super cool female character" shoehorned into the story for no raisin.

[BryanM]

I went through a video of the pokédex since you felt strongly about it, but only noticed a few monsters that gave off that vibe. Most of the goddesses felt like goddesses, most monsters felt like monsters, most gods felt like gods. Hydra looked fine to me.

Artemis is the only one that feels out of place, more like Power Girl, but she's always been a cursed pokemon. Her boxy look in Persona 2 being the highpoint of her career so far.

I guess there's a couple of factors at play there. One is the diminishing returns on non-human designs. I.E., you can only have one lion guy wrapped in a snake. (This is a problem kaiju properties always have to deal with; if you get lazy you get a cast like Rampage Total Destruction. Ideas are limited, so you might as well have cyborg Jason Voorhees in space.) And wanting to have more zazz in the late-game pokemon. Diaper-man Odin really did lack in zazz.

What would be really avant-garde is if they made the game using the Devil Children designs. Now that would be a shitshow I'd love to watch. Sigh, only something that could happen in our imaginations...

[ryu]

Ever since 4A, something like 80% of the new Doi demon designs and a bunch of Doi's character designs are just dudes (or ladies) in toku costumes.

Thinking of demons in tokusatsu costumes, only Odin and the dude clinging to you in 4A come to mind. Maybe that guys' mother too. Otherwise I don't seem to remember any demons looking that way.

[Steven]

Doi's Zeus looks ridiculous, as do the final few bosses in V and some of the new bosses in IV Final that didn't return from IV.

He salvaged IV's super weird/bad Lucifer in IV Final for sure, although I find it amusing that he always brings his chair with him wherever he goes in that game.

[Sima Tuna]

There are tons. Including old demons which have been changed to make them more toku and conventionally attractive.

Spoiler

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/megam ... 0809185216

The Lucifer one is just shameful.

MC looks like a real dickhead too:

[Steven]

I was going to mention Nanashi's stupid hair, but you beat me to it. V protagonist's asymmetrical hair is also really dumb, although I'm not sure if it's better or worse than Nanashi's. Aside from his strange hair, Nanashi is mostly in line with something that you might find in SMT I, so I guess it can be forgiven. I like the art design in that game in general. The whole "let's carry around a bunch of random swords and guns and various shit that looks like it might be useful in a post-nuclear apocalypse situation and also tie a computer to my arm" thing is cool. Can we have more of that please?

Spoiler

Doi/modern Atlus: "No, and fuck off for asking"

[BryanM]

The nuZeus is definitely overzazzistical, and I have no idea yet what's going on with the SMT4remixNakamaEdition silliness (I'll get to it some decade!), but I feel nuOdin isn't too far off from Metatron or the like. There's gonna be a lot of overlap with this chuuni stuff.

Things were a lot simpler back in the 'ole Majin Tensei days. Good 'ole 80's cyberpunk.. For those who dislike zazz and haven't already, you should check out the art of Last Bible Special. Everyone's a dirty hobo in that game, especially the playable classes. The first Last Bible (the gameboy game, not Last Bible 3 that shows up on a google image search these days. Last Bible 3 has horrible art. Guess you have to search for "Demon Slayer Revelations", ugh..) itself had some pretty good traditional gothic art. (In black and white mode.)

I feel like they don't get mentioned, ever. Except from a couple hardcore Atlus junkies like MarshSMT...

[cj iwakura]

IV/Apocalypse had their problems, but they were high art compared to the unfocused mess that is V. Plots that go nowhere, characters with no presence in the plot whatsoever, bland and repetitive world maps, and two dungeons?


If this is what happens without Kaz and Okada, they need to be begging for them to return.


As an aside, I'm still really digging the Devil Survivor 2 anime. It does a great job of showing the scale of a demonic invasion, and making the Septentriones scary(and massive).

[Steven]

Well, it's announced. Looks like they did indeed add a lot of stuff to the game.

Actually, it looks like they did just make a whole new game. They seem to have updated a huge amount of things, too. This should prove interesting.

[EmperorIng]

Thanks for beta testing, switch bros!

[Sima Tuna]

It's a shit game. Not gonna double-dip.

From nintendies life comments section:

Dogorilla

9
Dogorilla7:19am

I know this isn't the first time Atlus has done this but an enhanced rerelease on the same platform the game was originally released, with no way to buy the new content separately for people who already own the game, is baffling to me.

Lmao, Atlus really just over here trying to fuck the early adopters as hard as possible.

[Steven]

It's also 9878 yen again. People are complaining about games being $70 in the USA but this shit basically costs $100 here... again! It did last time and it was clearly an unfinished game!

At the very least, even if the new stuff is all somehow even worse than the old stuff, it will and should (hopefully) run above 12 FPS outside of battle this time on non-Switch hardware, though.

BTW the game's director said in the thingy that this version is being made because there was a bunch of crap that they didn't manage to implement in the previous version. I guess that would probably be that weird stuff about joblessness or whatever that they talked about prior to release that never made it into the game. When I think of SMT I totally think about joblessness every time. Doesn't everyone?

Maybe this game will actually be good now that it's closer to being a finished product. Please be good... it's going to have Denuvo because Sega, but in the case that the level scaling mechanic isn't removed, I may get this on PC in the case that someone mods it out or changes it. Hopefully there is a mod to fix the game so that physical skills cost HP again instead of MP so physical demons aren't useless as fuck with their tiny MP. Thanks for breaking physical demons, Strange Journey. This is admittedly much, MUCH worse in IV than it was in V, though.

[BryanM]

I guess that would probably be that weird stuff about joblessness or whatever that they talked about prior to release that never made it into the game. When I think of SMT I totally think about joblessness every time. Doesn't everyone?

Well, yeah, of course. These games always have politics (which is just a broad way of looking at human desires) as their underlaying theme. The hypocritical bullshit that Chiaki the ancap sprouts being a point that gets brought up a lot.

Like much of fantasy, the protagonist becomes a jobless murder hobo basically immediately. But unlike most other games, SMT asks the question: do you want to continue being a murder hobo, do you want to retire and become a communist drone, or do you want to go back to boring normie life where everyone is still screwed and doomed, but not in a way that's remotely as much fun?

Hopefully there is a mod to fix the game so that physical skills cost HP again instead of MP so physical demons aren't useless as fuck with their tiny MP.

Ugh. One of the things that drives me crazy are the games that use fixed damage physical attacks. It's like.... what's the freakin' point? To do 5% more or less damage than the default attack command? Often I find myself only caring about AoE physical attacks.

Which are ludicrously overpowered in the later Persona games. With regeneration and a couple heal spells per hour, your MC can sweep trash infinitely so easily...

[Steven]

I guess that would probably be that weird stuff about joblessness or whatever that they talked about prior to release that never made it into the game. When I think of SMT I totally think about joblessness every time. Doesn't everyone?

Well, yeah, of course. These games always have politics (which is just a broad way of looking at human desires) as their underlaying theme. The hypocritical bullshit that Chiaki the ancap sprouts being a point that gets brought up a lot.

Like much of fantasy, the protagonist becomes a jobless murder hobo basically immediately. But unlike most other games, SMT asks the question: do you want to continue being a murder hobo, do you want to retire and become a communist drone, or do you want to go back to boring normie life where everyone is still screwed and doomed, but not in a way that's remotely as much fun?

Then there is V's true neutral ending... still not sure how I feel about that one, but I guess it's relatively harmless. That itself might be why I am not sure about it.

I didn't get the law and chaos endings in V yet, but I may get them in Vengeance if the game is markedly improved over V. The Vengeance story has its own endings, though, and I doubt that I want to play this game that many times, but I'll consider it if the game is mostly fixed. I played IV 8 times, but that's because I really like that game. I read summaries of the law and chaos endings in V a while ago, but I already forgot what happens in both of them and also the non-true neutral ending even though I actually got that one on my second playthrough.

Hopefully there is a mod to fix the game so that physical skills cost HP again instead of MP so physical demons aren't useless as fuck with their tiny MP.

Ugh. One of the things that drives me crazy are the games that use fixed damage physical attacks. It's like.... what's the freakin' point? To do 5% more or less damage than the default attack command? Often I find myself only caring about AoE physical attacks.

Which are ludicrously overpowered in the later Persona games. With regeneration and a couple heal spells per hour, your MC can sweep trash infinitely so easily...

It's rather interesting and saddening that some of Persona 5's battle mechanics are closer to what Shin Megami Tensei should be than what SMTV actually has. I never though I would say this, but I wish that some of the mechanics of P5 were reimplemented back into SMT. Gun element, physical (and gun) skills costing HP, Hama and Mudo always doing no damage but with a chance of instant death, and the additional expel/curse element skills that do damage would all be great, and they should have been here from the start.

I would like to see the regular physical attack not be completely terrible in these games for once, though, especially because I had more fun with the physical builds in V and especially in IV than I did with the magic builds. I did gun instead of physical in IVF and that was pretty good too.

Having said all of this, I would REALLY like to see the next SMT go back to having the player character be super weak and essentially limited to summoning demons and using items like how it used to be, not because I actually want to play that way, and you certainly can play the newer games this way, but because it would be funny to see everyone's reactions if he couldn't use attack skills again.

[Sima Tuna]

I thought Soul Hackers had great party balance. You want to use your human characters as much as possible because they have no cost. But the humans aren't so strong at first, and there aren't many (just you and Nemissa.) You can get one other "no cost" party member and he'll be in your party all the time, but he's pretty mediocre. In a six-person team, you only get 3 for free. Everyone else costs per each step/turn they are summoned. Finding the right balance between "how much can I afford to spend keeping a full party out" vs "how much do I desperately need the power boost from 3 more demons?" That was a great idea.

I don't think any modern SMT game would ever do that again, because gamers today would cry a river of tears. A big part of the challenge of Souls Hackers was figuring out how to make your main character usable as something more than a summon bot. Sure, Nemissa is a strong mage, but someone has to stand in the front row to block enemies from dogpiling damage onto her. If you put your main character in the front row, he better not die... This is one of those SMT games where main character death = game over.

[ryu]

Having said all of this, I would REALLY like to see the next SMT go back to having the player character be super weak and essentially limited to summoning demons and using items like how it used to be, not because I actually want to play that way, and you certainly can play the newer games this way, but because it would be funny to see everyone's reactions if he couldn't use attack skills again.

The protagonists of the early games were even weaker than Strange Journey's dude?

[Steven]

Yeah, Soul Hackers is a cool game. I got it very shortly before SMTIV released, but I didn't finish it before I got IV. I have been meaning to play it on Saturn, but I keep forgetting to go look for it. I doubt there is much of a reason to play the Saturn version instead of the 3DS version, though.

Having said all of this, I would REALLY like to see the next SMT go back to having the player character be super weak and essentially limited to summoning demons and using items like how it used to be, not because I actually want to play that way, and you certainly can play the newer games this way, but because it would be funny to see everyone's reactions if he couldn't use attack skills again.

The protagonists of the early games were even weaker than Strange Journey's dude?

Yep. No game over when they die, though. That came later. It's kind of funny because the other human party member characters in the old games have magic, but the protagonist gets nothing at all lol. He does get regular sword and gun attacks, but they are not especially powerful.

I have seen some speculation that you should still increase the protagonist's magic stat because it serves as both magic attack and magic defense, but I haven't really tested it that much because I don't really like playing those older games.

[BryanM]

In a six-person team, you only get 3 for free. Everyone else costs per each step/turn they are summoned. Finding the right balance between "how much can I afford to spend keeping a full party out" vs "how much do I desperately need the power boost from 3 more demons?" That was a great idea.

The balance between humans and demons is always rough, too much in one direction makes one or the other way better than the other. There's a huge problem in making humans dominant: collecting and managing demons is the main draw of this franchise. If they're superfluous, you're shooting yourself in the groin.

The Last Bible games were pretty bad at this - since it was so slow and clunky and difficult to advance monsters with fusion, you were better off just using whatever trash you picked up. Right up until the game just gave you meta units with the zombie Karin/Kraken/Dragon from playing the game. Majin Tensei was another level of fucked - let's make a game where you can command a massive army of monsters, and make it suboptimal to play that way. Not only suboptimal - but much less fun. The game absolutely crawls already, and more units just slows it down even more.

I think the Devil Suvivor games have a good balance. Let the humans have a pet or two.

The protagonists of the early games were even weaker than Strange Journey's dude?

That man's an absolute unit. I clown on the feeble physical skills that barely do +20% to +50% damage, hardly ever worth even using, and this bro's pumping out Almighty Renzokukens left and right by the end of the game...

The early game heroes are basically the first character you get in Dragon Quest 2, big dumb sword oxes. They're not actually weak for the majority of the games; since they can level up (demons couldn't) and you control the stat allocation, they're reliable and will punch harder than demons with their stats all over the place. It was a simpler time, we didn't need no skills. (Also they'd often be able to use healing items when demons couldn't. Which made up for their lack of skills and gave items a big boost in utility compared to these days. They were actually helpful, since there was a unit that actually needed them.)

Sometimes there would be ridiculously overpowered demons available extremely late in the game, like being able to pick up the boss monsters after the end of Last Bible. It's always long past when they'd be helpful for winning the game, though...

[ryu]

That man's an absolute unit. I clown on the feeble physical skills that barely do +20% to +50% damage, hardly ever worth even using, and this bro's pumping out Almighty Renzokukens left and right by the end of the game...

I remember he got stronger later in the game. Not like that though. Should probably replay the game someday. Strange Journey was one of my best experiences with the franchise.

[Sima Tuna]

That man's an absolute unit. I clown on the feeble physical skills that barely do +20% to +50% damage, hardly ever worth even using, and this bro's pumping out Almighty Renzokukens left and right by the end of the game...

I remember he got stronger later in the game. Not like that though. Should probably replay the game someday. Strange Journey was one of my best experiences with the franchise.

Not surprising, considering it's one of the best SMT games ever made.

[Steven]

The balance between humans and demons is always rough, too much in one direction makes one or the other way better than the other. There's a huge problem in making humans dominant: collecting and managing demons is the main draw of this franchise. If they're superfluous, you're shooting yourself in the groin.

The Last Bible games were pretty bad at this - since it was so slow and clunky and difficult to advance monsters with fusion, you were better off just using whatever trash you picked up. Right up until the game just gave you meta units with the zombie Karin/Kraken/Dragon from playing the game. Majin Tensei was another level of fucked - let's make a game where you can command a massive army of monsters, and make it suboptimal to play that way. Not only suboptimal - but much less fun. The game absolutely crawls already, and more units just slows it down even more.

I think the Devil Suvivor games have a good balance. Let the humans have a pet or two.

Then there is Nanashi, who is probably the most powerful thing in this entire franchise as far as I know. It's even more strange because while he is technically ridiculously powerful due to having pierce on everything and potentially no weaknesses and a bunch of resistances, everything else in the game that is threatening at that point also has pierce. I hate that game so much.

V also has that funny build where you use Belphegor's resistances with Repel/Drain/Null Fire, Repel/Drain/Null Light, Repel/Drain/Null Force, and also Repel/Drain/Null Physical and Elec if you really wanted to, which results in nothing being able to do anything to you at all unless they spam almighty or use status ailments or piercing skills. This build doesn't leave a lot of room for other skills, especially if you are doing a magic build, but it's pretty great for physical if you don't mind doing a cheesy all-resistance build. I wonder if they will redo the weaknesses and resistances in Vengeance so this build isn't possible. They redid the weaknesses and resistances in IVF, so it's not impossible.

Anyway, I have decided to give Vengeance a try, so I preordered the PS5 version since it's already 15% off on Amazon Japan. If I'm going to get it I might as well get it while it's discounted. The Switch and PS4 versions are 18% off for some reason. I hope they improved a lot of stuff.

[ryu]

So I've played the first couple hours of the P3 remake now. I always wanted to see the game remade because the original was very low in production value. Now with the remake... it's a low production value game in HD. The janky screen transitions are even more uncanny and the dorm has lost all of its atmosphere. The character artworks look just as bad, but it's even easier to tell now that they're displayed in HD. As for the character models, it's nice thay they're more detailed now, but why does everyone have these awkwardly defined jawlines?

Brilliant. Good job Atlus, thanks for nothing.

[Steven]

Oh yeah, I forgot that game existed! Is it as boring as the original version or did they make it better?