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Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers |OT| New World Order, Old World Chaos

S

SkyTurnsRed

Banned
So what's the general consensus on this game? I've never played an SMT game before (as in, ANY of them), I have Persona 3 on PSN, I preordered SMT IV, and this is drawing my interest... however, so is EO IV. I'm torn between starting Persona, grabbing this, or picking up EO IV. Any thoughts?
 
S

SteeloDMZ

Banned
SkyTurnsRed said:
So what's the general consensus on this game? I've never played an SMT game before (as in, ANY of them), I have Persona 3 on PSN, I preordered SMT IV, and this is drawing my interest... however, so is EO IV. I'm torn between starting Persona, grabbing this, or picking up EO IV. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

The game is really great. I'd recommend buying this and starting it first since folks seem to agree it's around 40 hours or so, while Persona 3 FES can take you up to 100h.
 
O

ohlawd

Member
SkyTurnsRed said:
So what's the general consensus on this game? I've never played an SMT game before (as in, ANY of them), I have Persona 3 on PSN, I preordered SMT IV, and this is drawing my interest... however, so is EO IV. I'm torn between starting Persona, grabbing this, or picking up EO IV. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

EOIV >>>> this game

But you should still pick up Soul Hackers.
 
GeekyDad

GeekyDad

Member
ohlawd said:
EOIV >>>> this game

But you should still pick up Soul Hackers.
Click to expand...

Goes to show how to each his own. I'd switch those titles, but yeah...

Nothing wrong with the EO series, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit over the years. But I prefer a good story to lead me on over feeding the beast for the sake of...feeding the beast.

And as an aside, I just got to the part where Lunch and the gang meet up with his dad at the chip factory, and that scene has solidified my love for this game. I don't know, it's the little things for me, I guess. But I really dug the exchange in that scene.
 
S

Soulhouf

Member
ohlawd said:
EOIV >>>> this game

But you should still pick up Soul Hackers.
Click to expand...

I love EOIV and I did everything in that game but no. Soul Hackers is the superior game, the port is perfect and thank god they didn't make some dumb moves to screw it.
Playing this game again makes me sad because it reminds me how the Megami Tensei series has fallen. The only remarkable recent game is Strange Journey but even that one doesn't come close to Soul Hackers or Nocturne.
 
B

buddha0991

Member
Soulhouf said:
I love EOIV and I did everything in that game but no. Soul Hackers is the superior game, the port is perfect and thank god they didn't make some dumb moves to screw it.
Playing this game again makes me sad because it reminds me how the Megami Tensei series has fallen. The only remarkable recent game is Strange Journey but even that one doesn't come close to Soul Hackers or Nocturne.
Click to expand...

eh
 
S

Soriku

Junior Member
Soulhouf said:
I love EOIV and I did everything in that game but no. Soul Hackers is the superior game, the port is perfect and thank god they didn't make some dumb moves to screw it.
Playing this game again makes me sad because it reminds me how the Megami Tensei series has fallen. The only remarkable recent game is Strange Journey but even that one doesn't come close to Soul Hackers or Nocturne.
Click to expand...

Nah.

And have you played Raidou 2?
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
SkyTurnsRed said:
So what's the general consensus on this game? I've never played an SMT game before (as in, ANY of them), I have Persona 3 on PSN, I preordered SMT IV, and this is drawing my interest... however, so is EO IV. I'm torn between starting Persona, grabbing this, or picking up EO IV. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Depends on what you're looking for. Grab EOIV if you don't care for story and just want a straight up dungeon crawler with party building/customization. Grab Soul Hackers if you want a dungeon crawler with more story and characters and an urban fantasy style setting somewhat similar to the Persona series.

EOIV isn't bad I guess, but I find myself kinda having to force myself to play it sometimes because it's just not that interesting. Having much more fun with Soul Hackers.
 
B

buddha0991

Member
If anything, Megaten is more stable quality wise these days than "the good old days." Maybe not as hardcore, but defininately the Megaten brand on a game means more secure quality than it did in the 90's/early 2000's.

*Eyes Ronde, NINE, Devil Children/Demikids.*
 
S

Soulhouf

Member
buddha0991 said:
If anything, Megaten is more stable quality wise these days than "the good old days." Maybe not as hardcore, but defininately the Megaten brand on a game means more secure quality than it did in the 90's/early 2000's.

*Eyes Ronde, NINE, Devil Children/Demikids.*
Click to expand...

I agree. Back then they were doing a lot of exeperiments. Some ended up being master pieces and others just awful. But to be honest, nowadays I keep my expectations very low. I don't see Atlus take these kind of risks.
Not only the hardcore aspect, but also the controversial subjects.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the 3DS port of Soul Hackers. Atlus even added a hard mode for my greatest pleasure.
BTW the voice they put for the save terminal in the museum(Paradigm X) is fucking awesome.
 
B

buddha0991

Member
Soulhouf said:
I agree. Back then they were doing a lot of exeperiments. Some ended up being master pieces and others just awful. But to be honest, nowadays I keep my expectations very low. I don't see Atlus take these kind of risks.
Not only the hardcore aspect, but also the controversial subjects.

Anyway, I'm very pleased with the 3DS port of Soul Hackers. Atlus even added a hard mode for my greatest pleasure.
BTW the voice they put for the save terminal in the museum(Paradigm X) is fucking awesome.
Click to expand...

How do you feel about what we know about SMT4?

What the hell was up with that voice btw. SAAAAAAAAAAAAVE?
 
T

Thoraxes

Member
cj_iwakura said:
Funny, I figured it was some joke about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Nemechi basically gives you rare demons, some only available through him. I figured he was someone you could use in battle like the Zoma, but I guess not.
Click to expand...

Ah, that would've been great too.
 
S

Soulhouf

Member
buddha0991 said:
How do you feel about what we know about SMT4?

What the hell was up with that voice btw. SAAAAAAAAAAAAVE?
Click to expand...

Then gooooooooooo... yeah that voice is hilarious. And the background music amplifies the effect.

Regarding SMTIV, if I exclude the character design of the heroes and the lack of new demons by Kaneko, the game has a lot of Labyrinth of Amala (Nocturne) vibe, which is reassuring.
The only remaining question mark is the story. I hope they will take the risk to tackle touchy themes like in olden days.
I think that they will include many options (difficulty levels, fusion options, etc...) to try to please the old fans and the new players as well, which is good.

I was planning to buy the 3DS SMTIV pack but since the US version will be released in July, I will wait.
 
S

spiritfox

Member
Thoraxes said:
When it absorbs too much it dies. (Remember how the boy in front of the painting said dolphins lie?) Just keep wailing away at him with magic till he dies.
Click to expand...

Ahahaha, I basically killed the boss by slowly hitting it with my sword and waiting until it ran out of MP for its spells and Lullaby. Thought it was the worse boss ever.
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
After giving this game another try, now it clicked with me. I'm 4 hours in and I'm really liking my first MegaTen game. Is Soul Hackers like over 100 hours like the Persona games though? Not that I would mind.
 
T

Tomat

Wanna hear a good joke? Waste your time helping me! LOL!
Jotamide said:
After giving this game another try, now it clicked with me. I'm 4 hours in and I'm really liking my first MegaTen game. Is Soul Hackers like over 100 hours like the Persona games though? Not that I would mind.
Click to expand...

Just curious, where are you at in the story after 4 hours? I'm at the same time played.
 
J

jello44

Chie is the worst waifu
Jotamide said:
After giving this game another try, now it clicked with me. I'm 4 hours in and I'm really liking my first MegaTen game. Is Soul Hackers like over 100 hours like the Persona games though? Not that I would mind.
Click to expand...

Some ding-dong in the thread mentioned it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 hours.
 
T

Tyrant Rave

Banned
Jotamide said:
After giving this game another try, now it clicked with me. I'm 4 hours in and I'm really liking my first MegaTen game. Is Soul Hackers like over 100 hours like the Persona games though? Not that I would mind.
Click to expand...

General consensus seems to be in the range of 20-30 hours.
 
T

Totakeke

Member
I have the Hawaii Frost from the pet shop quest and he's weak and useless. I can't fuse him nor do anything useful with him, is there a use for him or can I just throw him away?
 
J

Jotamide

Unconfirmed Member
Tomat said:
Just curious, where are you at in the story after 4 hours? I'm at the same time played.
Click to expand...

I just beat the Warehouse.

jello44 said:
Some ding-dong in the thread mentioned it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 hours.
Click to expand...

I'm ok with this.

Also, is the "Lost Word" attack from the Knocker demon (Jirae) a troll attack? I used it once and killed all my demons. WTF?
 
J

jello44

Chie is the worst waifu
Busaiku said:
Hey, don't worry, I did that too.
It actually wasn't too bad though.
Click to expand...

So did I. Thanks to every other megaten game, my brain is trained that when an enemy absorbs something, to not use that same attack again. :p

Thankfully I had a demon with Rakunda and another with Tarukaja, so it made it a little easier.
 
S

Soriku

Junior Member
Right now I'm almost 20 hours at the
VR Haunted Mansion
. I've done some side stuff including the Amami Bypass, VR Park, Dungeon Q. Also I try to fill in the map in each dungeon. I don't see myself taking less than 30 hours to beat the story.

There's also someone here who took 53 hours to beat the game with no side stuff but filled in the maps. I think that's on the extreme high end though, while 16-17 hours is on the low end.

Seems like everyone's mileage varies lol. I think I'd still peg 20-30 hours as the average though.

Also, I looked at a sidequest FAQ for the PS1 version of this game (spoilers). Anyone know what this is?

Mr. Gain's Mini Games
It appears when the following conditions are satisfied:
a) It is not full moon
b) Your comp is not in DARK state
c) The smiley icon is displace when you choose the Talk option
Choose carefully when you are asked the following question. If they give
you the answer as written below, you have 1/16 chance to play the mini
game in Chinami!!! The games are "Viva! Pilot" and "Rizumu de pan"(press
following the rhythm)
Click to expand...

Who/where is this Mr. Gain guy?
 
S

SatelliteOfLove

Member
jello44 said:
So did I. Thanks to every other megaten game, my brain is trained that when an enemy absorbs something, to not use that same attack again. :p

Thankfully I had a demon with Rakunda and another with Tarukaja, so it made it a little easier.
Click to expand...

Yup. I don't assume a boss is unkillable unless he takes no/one damage, or one-shots, either.
 
M

MechaX

Member
SkyTurnsRed said:
So what's the general consensus on this game? I've never played an SMT game before (as in, ANY of them), I have Persona 3 on PSN, I preordered SMT IV, and this is drawing my interest... however, so is EO IV. I'm torn between starting Persona, grabbing this, or picking up EO IV. Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

It really depends on your personal preferences. This game is definitely more story-driven than EO IV by a significant margin. However, if you're more driven by exploration, EO IV will definitely satisfy you more there.

I guess for a comparison, EO IV is my first entry into the series at all. Soul Hackers was probably one of the few MegaTen games I haven't finished next to If, the first Devil Summoner, and the Majin Tensei titles (and I guess RONDE too). I would personally say that EO IV is a better game than Soul Hackers in a lot of respects, even if Soul Hackers has a pretty interesting story. From a dungeon crawling standpoint, no dungeon in Soul Hackers ever gets as crazy as some of the other dungeons in the series (most notably, Sector E in Strange Journey as an easy example). Gameplay is a bit on the easy side outside of some "WTF" bosses here and there. A lot of fights can really, really be exploited due to enemies having poor resistances, or bosses just not being able to cancel out massive debuffs and buffs.

At the very least, getting into something like EO IV might be more of a risk.

I also really like Persona 3 FES, but that game is going to take a long time to get through. But if you start Persona up a bit and like it, I would just say to play through that.
 
GeekyDad

GeekyDad

Member
Wow...

The third-vision-quest
bosses
almost single-handedly tanked this game for me. It was a love affair up until that point. Locked up twice at the exact same place with
Tiamat
, so I went to the
other boss
. Literally took me close to 45 minutes to beat, I would estimate. Really wish I had changed it down to Easy mode for that, but it didn't occur to me 'til afterward. It wasn't difficult, it was just mind-numbingly boring and tedious.

I don't say this lightly, but that was perhaps one of the worst all-time boss battles I've experienced in an RPG spanning...what, about 35 years of gaming? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. That was no wart on an otherwise excellent game; it was a huge fucking goiter!
 
cj_iwakura

cj_iwakura

Member
GeekyDad said:
Wow...

The third-vision-quest
bosses
almost single-handedly tanked this game for me. It was a love affair up until that point. Locked up twice at the exact same place with
Tiamat
, so I went to the
other boss
. Literally took me close to 45 minutes to beat, I would estimate. Really wish I had changed it down to Easy mode for that, but it didn't occur to me 'til afterward. It wasn't difficult, it was just mind-numbingly boring and tedious.

I don't say this lightly, but that was perhaps one of the worst all-time boss battles I've experienced in an RPG spanning...what, about 35 years of gaming? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. That was no wart on an otherwise excellent game; it was a huge fucking goiter!
Click to expand...

Did you use Hecate or the multi-hit spell? The latter makes it go much quicker.
 
M

MechaX

Member
GeekyDad said:
I don't say this lightly, but that was perhaps one of the worst all-time boss battles I've experienced in an RPG spanning...what, about 35 years of gaming? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. That was no wart on an otherwise excellent game; it was a huge fucking goiter!
Click to expand...

You should have a multihit fire spell (that does insane damage in one hit, let alone the 5 times it will hit) and a spell that instantly restores HP and MP. With either of those, I don't see how the fight could take above 5 minutes.
 
GeekyDad

GeekyDad

Member
cj_iwakura said:
Did you use Hecate or the multi-hit spell? The latter makes it go much quicker.
Click to expand...

MechaX said:
You should have a multihit fire spell (that does insane damage in one hit, let alone the 5 times it will hit) and a spell that instantly restores HP and MP. With either of those, I don't see how the fight could take above 5 minutes.
Click to expand...

Ugh...I guess I brought it on myself perhaps. I keep forgetting, you have to scroll across to view the different spell types. Wow again at my failure.

Thanks.
 
S

Saibastian

Neo Member
I'm a little iffy going into New Game Plus
It seems someone told me there is a specific method or guide you're supposed to follow to have the different ending possible in new game plus

Other than that the game is even easier than before, I thought it was pretty simple from the first run but now with the fusion level removed you can be running around with demons 5-9 levels higher than your base level, its pretty ridiculous. Can't wait to run around with Shiva and other higher tier demons at end game.
 
T

TurnipFritters

Member
Saibastian said:
I'm a little iffy going into New Game Plus
It seems someone told me there is a specific method or guide you're supposed to follow to have the different ending possible in new game plus

Other than that the game is even easier than before, I thought it was pretty simple from the first run but now with the fusion level removed you can be running around with demons 5-9 levels higher than your base level, its pretty ridiculous. Can't wait to run around with Shiva and other higher tier demons at end game.
Click to expand...

Big spoilers ahoy~
There are two flags for the new ending:
The first is when Madam Ginko is giving you the nameless sword (after the auto factory), tell her that you're not sure yet. The second is way later in the game, when the characters accuse Spooky of betraying them, you need to stay at the hideout with Spooky.
 
S

Saibastian

Neo Member
TurnipFritters said:
Big spoilers ahoy~
There are two flags for the new ending:
The first is when Madam Ginko is giving you the nameless sword (after the auto factory), tell her that you're not sure yet. The second is way later in the game, when the characters accuse Spooky of betraying them, you need to stay at the hideout with Spooky.
Click to expand...
Got it chief. Thanks.
 
T

TurnipFritters

Member
The more I play the more typos I noticed. Enemies that are hella weak to Expel have Nu: Expel written on their resistances, the Nyan Claw says Lu+2 instead of Ag+2...

Also I've gone through the Mall/Warehouse like three times now. Thank god for Radiance.
 
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