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Post by The Great Klaid on Jul 17, 2015 0:10:33 GMT -5
I just got frustrated with it. Basically nothing of it appealed to me. I was hoping for something in the vein of Nocturne, darker and more stylistic. SMT4, for how interesting the previews looked, turned out to be, in my opinion, overall very generic and boring in the themes of its world. It lacks the weird natural mystery that Nocturne has. I felt like all of the characters were really unappealing and one-dimensional. I mean in every SMT there's the Law Guy vs. Chaos Guy and they telegraph pretty early which one is which, but the whole game was just so godawful bland. The talking wristband annoyed the shit out of me because it felt really antithetical to the series and more like one of those "Nintendo" things. I found myself a lot more frustrated than challenged. I'm pretty sure if you go find the SMT4 thread you will see my opinion of the game dwindling in real-time. I had high hopes for it since the previews were leading people to speculate some interesting theories about where and when the game takes place. Someone thought up the possibility of Jerusalem and I thought, man, that would fucking rule as a setting. All of the previews were of this kind of idyllic-looking feudal castle country. Whoops turns out it's Tokyo, again! I think that reveal was the exact moment my enjoyment of the game was broken. I put quite a bit of time into it and after getting frustrated with the awful world map I put it down forever and finished Soul Hackers instead, which has two final dungeons that are seriously a 10 hour thing unto themselves and I still had way more fun obsessively mapping every available tile of two enormous mazes for two weekends straight than I did at basically any point in SMT4. So yeah. These are just my impressions of the game and honestly I didn't finish it, but I don't see myself going back to it again. That's alright Ike I'm on your side. And seriously fuck whoever came up with that Neutral ending grind. Because you do not tell me "Here is a list of sidequests" and then go "Oh you're going to have to do all of those now. Well nto all of them, no we won't tell you which ones. Don't be dumb, we haven't told how to go places for the story why would we for the side quests. Eat Shit."
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jul 17, 2015 8:50:30 GMT -5
You can use Google Maps if SMT4 is giving you trouble. The map his hilariously bad in that it's designed assuming you're a Japanese person that's been to/lives in Tokyo. In that context all the directions characters give you are actually really useful and simple, but obviously anyone not familiar is going to have no idea what neighborhood is in what area and stuff. A huge mistake for something that was obviously going to be released outside of Japan from the get go. I don't mind it being set in Tokyo though, I mean that's what the main SMT games have always been all about. The designers spoke about this a lot prior to SMT4's release. It's funny though I was actually a bit let down by SMT4's setting in the beginning until that reveal and the shift in the music/enemy designs. That ended up making it like the raddest game ever for me. It borrows a lot of elements from the previous three SMT games, making Nocturne more of an outlier. Nocturne is so amazing though, it does such a great job of taking the barren structure of SMT1 and 2 and using that as an integral part of the game's atmosphere and visuals, incredible.
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Post by Discoalucard on Jul 17, 2015 9:49:01 GMT -5
SMT4 is my favorite of the core series. It's mostly because I love the style and atmosphere of MT2/SMT1/2 but they're still ultimately clunky 8/16-bit RPGs. SMT4 takes those general principles but makes the interface much more workable, eliminates random battles, takes the improved battle system of the PS2 (and later) games, makes demon fusion much easier, makes quest running much easier, and generally just improves the quality of life by a few hundred percent, in spite of the awkwardly designed overworld. It gets unbalanced as hell if you know what you're doing, but most of the earlier games were like that too (and only tried to balance it out with magnetite consumption, which was more tedious to manage than anything).
SMT3 is fantastic but it is an outlier, tone-wise. It also lies in this weird state where Atlus was polishing up some of the jank of their 32-bit titles, so it looks and feels slick, but has a number of holdbacks design-wise. One of the main reasons I prefer 4 over 3 is the level structure. SMT3 takes real world locations and turns them into grid-based dungeons like the old days, but SMT4 modernizes it so most of the places you visit feel like actual locations and not just something mapped out in square blocks.
For as much as the characters of SMT4 were not that interesting, I really appreciated the way it made you go to alternate versions of Tokyo to see the Law/Chaos variations play out, as compared to just discussing philosophies in a theoretical sense.
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Post by Neo Rasa on Jul 17, 2015 9:51:10 GMT -5
Speaking of the grid based design, when you look at how not near the walls you can get in some areas you can totally tell Nocturne was meant to be first person when they were first making it. I kind of wish you didn't have to beat the game first to unlock that option.
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Post by kaoru on Jul 17, 2015 10:20:14 GMT -5
I enjoyed SMT4, but yeah, NPCs in that maze that is actual Tokyo's road layout only telling you "go to side street X" was really not very gaijin friendly. I mean, I kinda know the big districts like Ikebukuro, Akihabara and such, but the individual streets/subareas not so much. The story and characters were ok, but left me a bit cold overall. But I think that's mostly because there is not a single surprise to been had if you know the two NES and first two SNES games, because it hits the exact same point and archetypes - just having finished Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei didn't help.
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Post by mynameistravis on Jul 18, 2015 2:44:44 GMT -5
I just picked up Nocturne today and I was wondering how difficult is hard mode?
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Post by caoslayer on Jul 18, 2015 2:55:04 GMT -5
I enjoyed SMT4, but yeah, NPCs in that maze that is actual Tokyo's road layout only telling you "go to side street X" was really not very gaijin friendly. I mean, I kinda know the big districts like Ikebukuro, Akihabara and such, but the individual streets/subareas not so much. The story and characters were ok, but left me a bit cold overall. But I think that's mostly because there is not a single surprise to been had if you know the two NES and first two SNES games, because it hits the exact same point and archetypes - just having finished Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei didn't help. Not only gaijins. Imagine that you are from another city. Like being from LA and the game giving you directions for nyc.
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Post by Échalote on Jul 18, 2015 3:43:17 GMT -5
I just picked up Nocturne today and I was wondering how difficult is hard mode? -Items are 3x more expensive -Traps and damage zones deal 3x the damage -Poison inflicts 3x the dmg while walking -You cannot run from fights(unless you use an item or skill to escape) -Enemies deal 2x the damage -Instant kill spells are more effective So unless you already know the inside out of the press turn system, I wouldn't recommended on a first run, game is already tough as it is (esp if you want to do the True Demon Ending)
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Post by cj iwakura on Jul 18, 2015 7:44:28 GMT -5
I feel Strange Journey is a very underrated game. Love the atmosphere and cast, it's a shame it got such a shoestring budget. Imagine if it had been on the scale of IV.
My favorite remains Nocturne, though. At the end of the day, IV is just too damn easy. It has a wonderful beginning, then the difficulty falls off a cliff once you hit Tokyo. Nothing can touch you. The custom fusions and character builds make breaking the game a cinch.
SJ and Nocturne have perfect difficulty scaling. Never too easy, never (quite) too hard. Challenging from start to end.
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Post by personman on Jul 19, 2015 14:29:36 GMT -5
I remember the second Raidou game releasing when I worked at gamestop, I think the second Digital Devil game shortly followed as well. The alternate history of raidou really interested me and the futuristic setting of DDS really caught my interest but I never got to them out of fear of the subject matter. Growing up in a religious household and all. I think now though I'll have to atleast put the raidou games on my wishlist but the first one didn't get a localization did it? No sense importing that if I can't read what's going on I suppose.
Lost Odyssey really scared me away from jrpgs. DDS looks possibly interesting enough to make me take a risk though. The breaking point for me in lo was towards the end where there was a huge maze like dungeon with absurdly high encounter rates that gave you enemies with as much health as a boss. After trudging through all that for nearly a day and a half all it rewarded me with for all that tedious, mindless grinding was a spell that was useless. Pissed me off so much. So long as dds does not have segments that are designed to deliberately waste as much as my time as possible and actually make me think in combat I may see about tracking down a copy. Maybe I'll like nocturne as well.
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Post by Échalote on Jul 19, 2015 14:35:53 GMT -5
Both Raidou games were translated, you're probably thinking about the first Devil Summoner on Saturn, which was never localized (although a fantranslation is in the works).
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Post by personman on Jul 19, 2015 15:35:10 GMT -5
Coworker back then mentioned it didn't show up here but it doesn't surprise me he was wrong. Cool then, I'll definately see about getting those soon. I should probably read the article here and see if there is anything else that would interest me. I didn't realize there was so much to the series outside of persona which I can already tell I'd hate. Full on anime just isn't my thing.
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Post by Échalote on Jul 19, 2015 15:45:02 GMT -5
(Altough if you don't like huge maze dungeons and high encounter rate, you're going to have a bit of a problem with a lot of megaten games :v )
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Post by personman on Jul 19, 2015 16:06:44 GMT -5
It depends. I wouldn't mind it so much so long as the method of getting through them isn't mindless. The place I'm thinking of in lo had no way to make those battles go quicker by exploiting weakness or gaming a gimmick of some sort. They just had a shit ton of health and there was nothing to do about it but attack. Situation like that should offer something for you to do for clever use of resources, or paying attention to systems just anything to engage you and then reward you with rapid progress. With the way everyone mentions an emphasis on party compositions and stuff it sounds like I'd like the megaten stuff... Maybe.
Maybe I'm just too picky, but it always felt to me this genre can never strike a balance. However sometimes I don't care due to the setting being charming enough like Wild Arms or Shadow Hearts so again, maybe. Demon infested apocalypses sound cool.
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Post by Ike on Jul 19, 2015 17:17:00 GMT -5
DDS2 was way before Raidou 2, I think at least 3-4 years. Raidou 2 was one of the last hurrah of PS2 releases.
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