The Shin Megami Everything Thread

[BryanM]

Oh god, exposition sounds horrible. It's always horrible!

There's a lot of defective design in the dungeons beyond just layouts, too. Gaining levels is the only thing that really matters, so the lower floors are just a speedbump to the real optimal grinding zone before the strength check at the boss. It isn't like Dragon Quest 1 where you need to acquire power to get to the next better grind zone. (Getting faster EXP is a reward you had to work for! ... at least, it used to be, in the old days : ( )

Diablo 2 has a similar issue, where rushing forward will get you into zones that have better rewards. But there are low level items that might drop that still have value later. Equipment in Persona games is... mostly useless. Going even as far as having weapon power do nothing unless you use the basic attack command. The costumes are the only thing that really matter!

And of course Personas are acquired in the Velvet room. There's not some cool uber rare drop that might happen after a battle that'll change anything. Personas get changed more often than socks anyway, even if there were.

So rewards are almost non-existent, and the dungeon itself can be flattened to the topmost floors where a boss you can't beat yet without grinding lurk. Most of the floors exist solely to be an empty hall you need to bypass on your way to somewhere relevant. It's not a lot to engage with. Not even fun movement like games like Super Mario 64 and driving games have.

Then on top of that it consumes time, clashing against the dating sim mechanics, so the optimal way to play is to take in these giant three-four hour grindothons all at once. Agreeing to go to the dungeon when one of your homies asks you to go should award affection points, at the very least!

.... but of course all of this could be very intentional. Save all the good dungeon crawling for their dedicated dungeon crawling games, so people will still have to buy them, right?

Profit motives strike again... : [

[Blinge]

The place to grind is the highest xp per hour, not the toughest battles, even if they give more per fight
But you knew that.

Not sure where the balance is in P3

And what about when a character gets tired, forcing to to leave the dungeon and play school sím again.

[Steven]

Yeah, Persona 3 sucks. Still way better than Persona 1 and 2, though. As time goes on, I have started to realize that the best Persona game is probably P4U. P4D probably gets second place or something, unless you want to give it to P4A instead because why not.

[BryanM]

Eh, P1 and 2 are just different kinds of games. More traditional jRPG dungeon crawlers. The only thing that really needs to be improved on them is having cards just drop for killing things instead of needing to talk to them, and P2's atrocious autobattle interrupt-to-input-a-command thing.

The place to grind is the highest xp per hour, not the toughest battles, even if they give more per fight
But you knew that.

And what about when a character gets tired, forcing to to leave the dungeon and play school sím again.

Oof, there's a huge downtime from walking between fights, so a battle has to drag on super long for the (+50% or more) increased EXP to not be worth it. And Persona trash mobs pretty much always eat shit within ~3 rounds, and that's when they don't have a weakness.

And when the little wimpy babies start whining about needing to take a nap, I tell'em to shut up and keep grindin'. It certainly helps that my MC is a horrific monster built to sweep trash forever, and doesn't really even need the sidekicks. Not that I would ever return to the lobby and let them escape.


...... this is really one of those gameplay/logic segregation things.. my party members should realistically have had negative affection points, realistically.....

[Mortificator]

In P3 Portable you should never see a non-boss enemy attack. Every encounter can be swept or fled without consequence. In other versions a bad outcome might be pinned on the party AI, but with full control it's all on you, baby (baby baby baby)

[BryanM]

Eh, I was expecting it to not be Persona 3 Complete, and FES and Portable to fly up to heaven...though replacing the voice cast is a little new. I guess they're all grandmas and grandpas now, but still : /

Thankfully I'll never have to worry about catching up enough to have to think about ever playing it~

We'll be like ash, or can jam brain/computer interfaces into our spinal cords by the time that happens.

[Steven]

I'm honestly more interested in the supposed SMT V Complete Edition, especially because I have been thinking about giving that game another chance for the past few weeks.

That said, I don't really think the game is completely salvageable. Atlus would have to completely redesign the majority of the game to fix it and that's probably not going to happen. Some parts are fine, like most of the general mechanics and the music, but the rest of it is pretty disappointing. Even the music, which is really good, is still disappointing if you compare it to the unbelievably good soundtrack of IV. That's possibly quite unfair because IV has one of the best soundtracks of anything that ever had or ever will have a soundtrack, but that's how it is.

I know people don't like IV because it's closer to I and II than it is to being more of III, but I prefer it that way, so I do hope they make more games like IV as long as they never EVER do something like IV Final again. It's still probably a better game than V, though, and that makes me sad.

[cfx]

The only reason I would be interested in P3Reload is that it will probably include the Japanese VA. And probably will need it, as while the old English cast was fine, any new cast will probably sound like every single other dubbed game does now.

However, I knew they'd make changes I am not going to like, and they've already outlined them. They're totally eliminating the fatigue mechanic, and they're making it where you can maximize all social links in a single playthrough. With those changes, any aspect of time management or scheduling would appear to be out the window. The interview said the fatigue thing was incompatible with the calendar in the game. Without those two things, what point does the calendar even serve, if you can do everything whenever and however much you want to?

If SMTV is real and it's on PS4 I'll get it as it will be the first time any mainline numbered SMT has been on anything where I can play it, except for SMT III, which I am not interested in. I won't have SMTIV to compare it to so I can be blissfully ignorant about SMTV's inferiority.

[BryanM]

I did kinda like how P3 tried to punch up verisimilitude a bit, such as trying to make your friends seem less like your typical jRPG slaves. That you had to talk to them to change their equipment, and they kept trying to be naughty and change their equipment on their own even though I assigned them perfect gear already. (Aka, items that covered their weaknesses so the entire party wouldn't randomly eat shit. Gotta love that new-fangled SMT3 press turn crap. "Anything with a weakness is less than shit" sure is one way to balance a battle system...)

I'm on the team of preferring slack on the social links; it takes me around seven years on average to play through just one of these games, so I'd like to be close to seeing everything on the first playthrough, as doing a second one is inconceivable. : (

Don't like them submitting to the idea of "cram dungeon time all into one day"; the original idea in P3 to spread it out a little and let the player relax was right. They just, like, should have designed the game not to actively punish the player for doing that. Which they could easily do because... they're like.... the designers.....

Eh, I guess at least some people will be happy. And they'll probably be the people who wanted a remake in the first place..

[Sima Tuna]

I'm honestly more interested in the supposed SMT V Complete Edition, especially because I have been thinking about giving that game another chance for the past few weeks.

That said, I don't really think the game is completely salvageable. Atlus would have to completely redesign the majority of the game to fix it and that's probably not going to happen. Some parts are fine, like most of the general mechanics and the music, but the rest of it is pretty disappointing. Even the music, which is really good, is still disappointing if you compare it to the unbelievably good soundtrack of IV. That's possibly quite unfair because IV has one of the best soundtracks of anything that ever had or ever will have a soundtrack, but that's how it is.

I know people don't like IV because it's closer to I and II than it is to being more of III, but I prefer it that way, so I do hope they make more games like IV as long as they never EVER do something like IV Final again. It's still probably a better game than V, though, and that makes me sad.

I basically wrote off SMT V at this point. The combat is ok but the rest is just a trash fire imo. Totally different and inferior tone to any of the other mainline games. SMT IV had little bits of anime thrown in, so that it was a little more "persona-like" than Nocturne or Strange Journey. But even so, its design was core SMT and the story was pretty alright. I didn't like IV:A at all though. They improved the combat but dialed the anime tropes and persona elements way up. I'd probably rank IV: A below SMT V but who knows at this point. At least IV: A fixed the broken defense stat from SMT IV.

SMT V is just a mediocre game imo. At the end of the day, it should have been better than it was. I was so excited when I first saw footage of the early areas and it seemed like they were planning for a full sequel to Nocturne, at least tonally. But that first area is more of a one-off. I loved the early parts of SMT V, where you're largely on your lonesome, making deals with demons and trying to figure out how to progress on your own. With just your dumb talking armor for a friend. But then all these wacky anime characters show up, and even worse, they add a school for a while.... Like dear god, name me one thing mainline SMT needs LESS than school days.

I still don't like Doi. His designs are strongly biased towards tokusatsu shit and, while that can be cool in abstract, I don't think it entirely fits with SMT. A little of that can be ok. Maybe one or two demons who look like kamen riders can be kinda neat. But when half the cast are that way (or more,) I have to roll my eyes. It contributes to the designs feeling samey and trying too hard to be "cool." The coolest designs in SMT games were never trying to be "cool," like Mara. Mara is fucking cool. It's a monster penis riding a chariot. But Mara isn't wearing sunglasses and a kamen rider suit, trying to impress the kiddies.

[Steven]

Like dear god, name me one thing mainline SMT needs LESS than school days.

That's really easy: Toki. Or, SMT IV Final in general. Almost everything about that game is just awful except the music and the way that the UI is way faster than it is in IV. The character design (except Doi's redesign of Lucifer; he definitely salvaged that from its super strange design from IV, although it does make it look like Lucifer brings his giant chair with him wherever he goes for some reason), the designs of the new demons, the story... all of it is just bad, but the gameplay mostly works, aside from the stupidity of what they did with smirk. Smirk was broken in IV, but in fixing the broken aspects they ruined a bunch of stuff in order to make up for the changes.

Anyway, yeah, V would need to become a different game to fix its many problems, and at that point they might as well just make SMT VI instead, although after the consecutive trash fires of IV Final and V, maybe I would prefer for them to just give up and make more Persona crap or something.

Doi... yeah, I still don't like his demon designs, but I guess his human characters are generally alright aside from the aforementioned IV Final garbage, although V's protagonist's asymmetrical hair is really really bad. Nanashi's hair is pretty stupid and Flynn's looks a bit weird if you really look at it, though. Why can't Doi give the main characters hair that is not stupid? I guess it doesn't really matter that much, and I'd really prioritize getting him to fix his demons instead. Some of his demons are probably okay, but the rest just kind of aren't. The first time I saw his Zeus I was like "WTF is even going on here?". That might be one of his worst designs.

[cfx]

I'm on the team of preferring slack on the social links; it takes me around seven years on average to play through just one of these games, so I'd like to be close to seeing everything on the first playthrough, as doing a second one is inconceivable. : (

Given my age I likely won't be playing anything more than once either. I just don't subscribe to the idea that seeing all the game has to offer in one playthrough is desirable. I also like the idea that there's a reason to potentially play again sometime even if I never do it. What's next, otome games where the girl gets every guy in a single playthrough?

The interview said there were people who had figured out how to max all the links in the PS2 game in a single playthrough and they (developers) were surprised it was possible, but that they were going to make it where you could do it now. To me this implies they would make it very easy to do so; otherwise many people still won't be able to do it, and that part is what I'm against. If they want to rebalance it a bit that's fine but that's not the impression given from the interview, assuming it was accurately translated.

I've never played P3P, but one article I read comparing some changes made in it, the fatigue system was apparently tweaked where it wasn't quite as punishing but it's still there. That kind of change could be fine as long as they don't make things too easy but just totally throwing it away sucks.

[BryanM]

What's next, otome games where the girl gets every guy in a single playthrough?

To be fair, most of those aren't 140 hours for a single playthrough and often do have high difficultly harem routes. There's a reason the Newsona games all let you be a manwhore : /

The social links will have as much slack in them as Persona 5's does. I don't think that was ever something that was going to be in contention; if anything was carved in stone from the start, that was it.

Not everyone will be happy with everything they do.

Such is the eternal problem with remakes: if nothing is changed besides a new coat of paint, why bother. If you're changing stuff, why not make an entirely new game instead. I'm more of a Dragon Questy "just keep piling more shit on top of the base game, until it resembles the leaning tower of babel" myself.... if it must be done at all.

It is endearing they've had gigantic arguments in meetings over many decisions.

[Steven]

I resumed my abandoned SMT V playthrough from October for some reason, and I am almost done with the game. I think that the worst thing about the game is that it feels like it's only about 2/3 finished and they were forced to push it to release anyway. The music is good and most of the gameplay is okay, if super unbalanced in favour of the player, but things like the level design, the story, and everything else seems like they ran out of time and had to ship what was complete.

Aside from the framerate dropping to somewhere around the 8~15 FPS range at times, I still can't believe how ridiculously high the input lag in this game is. This game just seems like a mess in general.

I just realized I need to add some clarification to this:

(IV Final) is still probably a better game than V, though, and that makes me sad.

By better I mean the actual gameplay itself is probably better and better balanced, as it doesn't hand you a bunch of free or cheap tools near the very beginning of the game that can easily trivialize a lot of the game, which V does. V's story and characters are way better, which really says a lot about how bad IV Final's characters really are when they are around for basically the whole time while most of V's cast has only a handful of lines over the course of the entire game. At least Dazai makes brief appearances throughout the game, though, because it sometimes seems like the devs completely forgot that all of the other characters exist.

On the subject of Dazai, that scene where Dazai

Spoiler

throws away his hat and becomes insane or whatever

is super hilarious. The first time I saw it I started laughing at how silly it is, and seeing it again last night made me realize that it is definitely a really odd scene.

[cfx]

If this theoretical new version of SMTV is really called Complete Edition, instead of "all DLC included" maybe that means "Hey we finished the game this time!"

[Steven]

I certainly would like that!

As it is, it has the skeleton of a great game, but with its inconsistent and awful framerate, high input lag that makes platforming feel really awkward during the rare occasions when you have to actually do it, giant but mostly empty areas that can only be distinguished from each other by the differing color palettes, really weird balance that makes the game super easy even on the highest difficulty, absent characters, a lifeless, predictable, and uninteresting script that is missing things that they talked about including years ago but didn't (someone somewhere mentioned commentary on joblessness and some other stuff and none of that made it into the game), and some relatively uninspired hallway-type areas to run through, the game seems almost like an alpha build that they debugged and pushed to release because they ran out of time even though the game was announced over 4 years before its release.

It's very disappointing, but at the same time the music is fucking awesome (still a massive step down from IV's, but I can forgive it for that because nothing compares to IV's soundtrack), the battle system is good if you disregard the imbalance, the animations are mostly pretty great (there are a few oddities, however, like the way your character clearly snaps back into place after he uses an item on himself), and the voice acting is okay (Sugita is here!), so I'm not really sure what happened with this game. I only have the Japanese version of the game, BTW, which completely lacks the English script and voice acting, so maybe those are better or worse, but I don't know.

[Blinge]

so people would recommend P5 over Royal?

[Steven]

P5 is already way too long for its own good and P5R is supposedly even longer, so that's something to consider. That's part of the reason that I didn't get P5R, as making the game even longer than it already needlessly is was not exactly an enticing thought.

[cfx]

P5R is definitely longer; it adds a fourth semester onto the previous end of the game. Heresay, but I've read it goes from around 100 hours in the original to 120 or so in Royal.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of everything, but this video talks about the changes in a fairly general way that doesn't really spoil anything unless you don't want to know anything at all about the game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kER78nxqNw0
If you watch that read the pinned post as well as he corrects a few things from the video.

This video talks about the censorship in Royal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwZAaSc4MAA

There's also a rather large price difference, at least digitally on PS4. The original game has been added to Playstation 4 Hits so is now $20, or currently on sale for $8, while Royal costs $60. Royal does now include all of its DLC which used to make it cost even more. That's the US prices but it's similar on the EU stores.

[BryanM]

Hoo, is that all that was censored? I was worried it was more comprehensive and persistent than that - like character art.

That sounds somewhat similar to how they toned down the language in Persona 3's Ken link, where they try to make it sound like you're just.... good friends.... hanging out.....



..... these games are gonna start getting really weird once they let us date our Personas.... just imagine watching a movie with Mara as he gobbles down popcorn......

[cfx]

I'm not sure if anyone ever verified if more was censored, but that's all I ever saw reference to. If I understood all that is said in the video, I think it was made before Royal was released and what is said was based on what he was told by someone that worked on the game. My monitor's speakers are damaged and as such I had a little trouble understanding some of what was said.

Someone somewhere no doubt has compared everything, but in general how many people will have played both versions of a 100+ hour game? And if your memory is like mine, I'm not sure I'd trust that I remembered every difference after going thrrogh that second 100+ hours.

[Steven]

Finished SMT V again. Chaos ending this time. I guess I kind of liked it more this time, but it still feels kind of unfinished and disappointing. I did physical the first time and magic this time and I don't think magic was as fun as physical was. Will probably do physical from now on, I think. Will probably replay the game for the Law ending now, and I also just realized I forgot to fight Trumpeter this time. Oh well. Still got to see him anyway because I ended up using Trumpeter because he's pretty great.

I guess that's all there really is to say about this game.

[Sima Tuna]

Yeah, SMT V sure is a game that exists! It's definitely the game of all time.

[cj iwakura]

I was beyond disappointed in V, and was also extremely excited at first.

It only has two dungeons, and one is actually brilliant, which makes the dead open world a crying shame(especially since it's mostly fun to explore thanks to the climbing verticality of the designs).

The story is a trash fire from start to finish, characters come and go with little to no relevance, and it's nearly impossible to care about anyone. The OST was also a massive step back from IV, shockingly(despite a few good tracks).


A complete version with more dungeons and fleshed out characters MIGHT help, but not by much.


Soul Hackers 2 was also majorly disappointing, but it was FAR better than SMT V, at least(in that it has good characters and a *decent*(faint praise) plot).

[Steven]

It's still way better than every other non-port game released after P4U, although I skipped Soul Hackers 2. What's wrong with Soul Hackers 2 again? There is a store near my house that has new PS5 limited edition copies for like 3000~4000 yen or something like that, so I'm guessing that the store is trying to clear them out and failing because everyone hates the game, but I never really looked into the reasons why.

Well, I guess I looked into it a little bit and apparently the problem with the game is everything.

[Sima Tuna]

The main reason I skipped it, despite loving the original Soul Hackers, is the difference in style. It really doesn't look like a Soul Hackers game to me. Soul Hackers has this, late-'80s, grungy, mesoamerican-infused punk attitude. It's dark without being edgy and features teenage/younger characters without becoming a school sim. Soul Hackers is gritty.

Soul Hackers 2, by constrast? I can't even tell what they were going for. The tone doesn't seem remotely the same. Totally different visuals and character designs. The gameplay is different too. Soul Hackers has very traditional SMT dungeon-crawling gameplay, with a full party of six comprised of 3 front and 3 back. You have a mostly-useless main character who summons demons, a secondary protagonist who functions as a strong mage (Nemissa) and then your 4 demons. Which includes a unique demon, if you like. Every demon has a summoning cost AND an upkeep cost, so you have to decide how many companions you can "afford" to keep out at a time, when exploring dungeons. Nemissa, the MC and the special demon are free. But the special demon is pretty shit until you boost him. So, although you'll want a party of 6 for boss battles, a standard dungeon run you'll probably only keep out around 4.

Soul Hackers 2, as far as I can tell, doesn't do any of this. There's no first-person dungeon crawling, no six-man party, no demon summoning cost-benefit-analysis, no free demon who is shit, but you can level him up, no Nemissa, no mesoamerican spiritual iconography, no punk hackerz....

Again, I'm just going off what I've seen of the game. It looks like somebody combined the dungeon exploration of SMT IV with the combat of Persona and slapped the "Soul Hackers" name on it. I've not seen a single piece of media for Soul Hackers 2 which in any way properly conveys the sense of it "in the same series as" Soul Hackers. It doesn't have anything of the identity or style of Soul Hackers. It'd be like if someone made a new King's Field game but it was in third person and looked/played exactly like Elden Ring. Like, sure you might think the game is good (or not), but it's not King's Field.

Soul Hackers 2 is a case of Atlus deciding they wanted to make a new game but needed an existing IP name to slap over it to increase sales. I went from "omg i'm so excited! finally soul hackers!" to complete disappointment in record time. Pretty much as soon as any gameplay footage was revealed. A complete HD overhaul of Soul Hackers 1 gameplay would have been fucking sweet and you won't convince me otherwise. Imagine first-person, tile-based dungeon exploration and combat in a fully 3d, high-definition game engine on a system capable of high-quality visuals. For as much as I love Soul Hackers, player imagination has to do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to the combat graphics. They are rather simple until you get used to them.

[Steven]

Oh yeah, magnetite used to exist. That was a weird mechanic. Don't like it, don't dislike it.

[cj iwakura]

It's still way better than every other non-port game released after P4U, although I skipped Soul Hackers 2. What's wrong with Soul Hackers 2 again? There is a store near my house that has new PS5 limited edition copies for like 3000~4000 yen or something like that, so I'm guessing that the store is trying to clear them out and failing because everyone hates the game, but I never really looked into the reasons why.

Well, I guess I looked into it a little bit and apparently the problem with the game is everything.

The dungeons are repetitive as all hell, and have no personality. You have one giant randomized dungeon a la Tartarus, a warehouse, an apartment building, a dockside port, and... the final dungeon.

It's a shame, because the story isn't bad at all, and the gameplay is fun, but it feels rushed to say the least.

I had more fun overall than V, but much like V, it also smacks of wasted potential, especially from the cast, who are genuinely great, and have some neat backstories & fun interactions. (The endgame really screws the pooch with a certain character, but that's another story.)

Ringo's also a nice lively MC, which helps a lot.

[BulletMagnet]

Some of the series' music will soon be available to stream.

[Steven]

Did anyone get Unfortunately-Not-Devil-Survivor yet? Apparently it released recently.