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Shin Megami Tensei Community Thread: Be Your True Demon

cj_iwakura

Member
my friend got me an AWESOME christmas gift!
CXAyuo0WYAAFXtP

A true friend. I own it as well, still need II and III though...

(IV when, Kaz?)
 
Nearing the end of my SMT iOS playthrough. I have a question about armor affinity: does "All" mean every affinity's covered without caveat? Right now I have some weaker armor left in my inventory with specific affinities (Fire2, Ice, Psyche, etc.), but I haven't been forced to experiment using them to mitigate bosses' magic damage I can't debuff. The armorer at the Law area in
Basilica
's got a HeatRes suit which both Hero and Heroine can wear, too, and I'm tempted to sell the other items to speed up my playthrough. Any reason not the do the latter?

Game is disappointing in terms of difficulty (early mid-game dungeons (Kongokai + mind-dive) had the most challenge). I really loved being forced into an alignment after trying to play Neutral as best as I could—Sugamo was a fun place even though I slammed through its bosses using basic buffs. To prove my worth I made sure to try the Devas' Halls first thing, but that only rewarded me the first time in Shibuya because they all have mostly the same encounters which never scale ahead of your team. Being fastidious about my offensive and defensive magic/skill coverage means I've spent around 3 hours just at Cathedrals honing a surprisingly powerful team, yet I'm drowning in MAG all the while. I honestly don't know which is easier, this or Trails in the Sky SC. OG SMT is definitely simpler but gains from having fast battles, even if there's loads of them. But TitS SC (my most recent reference point for a JRPG) has some tactical dimension and late-game difficulty spikes. I love the idea of different enemy groups I have to target over others but that's an underutilized idea in OG SMT, even though the game's fine throwing 2 or 3 sets of enemies at me per encounter now. So hopefully the rest of Basilica after revisiting Shinjuku is fruitful. Give me bosses that'll make me regret not fusing Pascal into Cerberus, Atlus!

Story-wise, the premise is great and so are some of the subtle additions to NPC text once you've cleared event milestones. Law Hero is cool and articulate, but I prefer Chaos Hero just because he genuinely wants to consider you a friend and looks up to you even after you've parted ways (him showing off at Destinyland with his "girlfriend"
who I suspect is Yuriko//Lilith
is hilarious). Gender roles in this game are very conservative—I know the franchise is all over the place in terms of male/female story character balance, but Yuka feels like dead weight. The forced alignment shift halfway through my Neutral run was clever, and the game's balanced just right to accommodate either trial outcome. And killing
Ravana
seemed anticlimactic until his daughter showed up, making it a sad moment in a game where apocalypse seems a bit mundane.
Riding a turtle across flooded Tokyo must have been absurd in 1992, as it subverts the airship end-game trope flawlessly
.
Basilica
is pretty good, if tedious for a final dungeon, and I'm probably not even halfway done yet. The music upgrade for this port makes it worth listening to but not by much, as the original compositions aren't that well-developed for 1992 Japanese game music standards (Meguro expanding the boss theme is appreciated); visuals are decent, though I'd prefer Soul Hackers/Mother 2-style psychedelia for battles.

Overall I've enjoyed this dungeon-crawler and am glad to hear the sequels pick up in terms of difficulty and removing any redundancies. Most GAFfers recommend something like Persona 3 or SMTIV for starting on the games but this option's perfect for me since I can memorize spell names and understand fusing, plus it's easy-ish (a bit too much in parts I didn't expect).
 
I think the original SMT might be the easiest game in the series. Though I'm certain there's a few outsourced spinoffs that might give that title a run for its money.

It's a very noticeable step down from DDS:MT2's comically sadistic edge, but it's also a bigger game. Story is more cohesive, the apocalypse unfolds at a nice clip. Late game revelations do what they need to do.

I'd love to share tips about strategy but to be honest, when I played it in 2002, I just bought the best armor and weapons and ran blindly forward through everything. Didn't even understand what half the spells did!

SMT II is a rare example of a game that improves upon many of the faults of the first and manages to introduce some bigger problems of its own. It's probably best you take it in on your own time, I'd rather wait to talk about it until someone's in the middle of playing it.
 

Hylian7

Member
I think the original SMT might be the easiest game in the series. Though I'm certain there's a few outsourced spinoffs that might give that title a run for its money.

It's a very noticeable step down from DDS:MT2's comically sadistic edge, but it's also a bigger game. Story is more cohesive, the apocalypse unfolds at a nice clip. Late game revelations do what they need to do.

I'd love to share tips about strategy but to be honest, when I played it in 2002, I just bought the best armor and weapons and ran blindly forward through everything. Didn't even understand what half the spells did!

SMT II is a rare example of a game that improves upon many of the faults of the first and manages to introduce some bigger problems of its own. It's probably best you take it in on your own time, I'd rather wait to talk about it until someone's in the middle of playing it.

I had started and made decent progress through SMT1, and while stuff wasn't particularly hard, the game can blindside you with a death you didn't expect, and your last save was quite a ways back. While this can happen in any SMT, I think SMT1 is more prone to it happening. It can be extremely frustrating, in a way that makes you just want to put the game down because you don't want to replay all the progress you lost. I like the idea of mistakes causing you to go back to the last save point, however I think SMT1's are too far apart. Is this improved on in SMT2?

I honestly think Nocturne and Strange Journey's save points, especially the latter, are spaced apart perfectly, where they aren't too frequent to make the game too easy, and aren't too far apart where it's just so frustrating and you don't want to play anymore.

I enjoy difficult games, but not ones that feel unfair. SMT1 does pull that unfair kind of difficulty sometimes, which can make it a very frustrating game to play at times, however it is still great.
 
No, I don't think SMT II improves on the save points.

I'm thinking of one dungeon in particular, very late in that game, where there is a long stretch of no-save-ever, plot, and at least one boss that you need an item to kill that you can totally miss if you happened to go the wrong way.

I think the first Cozy Okada directed SMT game that does address save points is Soul Hackers, which has generous save points and HALLELUJAH an add on to let you save anywhere, and it's acquired very early on in the game.

Knowing your complaints, I would just go straight for that one if you have a 3DS. Only $10 on the eShop right now, don't delay!
 

Hylian7

Member
No, I don't think SMT II improves on the save points.

I'm thinking of one dungeon in particular, very late in that game, where there is a long stretch of no-save-ever, plot, and at least one boss that you need an item to kill that you can totally miss if you happened to go the wrong way.

I think the first Cozy Okada directed SMT game that does address save points is Soul Hackers, which has generous save points and HALLELUJAH an add on to let you save anywhere, and it's acquired very early on in the game.

Knowing your complaints, I would just go straight for that one if you have a 3DS. Only $10 on the eShop right now, don't delay!

I've already played Soul Hackers, I was just wanting to experience older SMT games. I'm still going to finish SMT1 some day, and play SMT2 as well, just sucks that it will also be a frustrating chore to some degree.
 
I was joking with a friend the other night about how the maze with invisible drops is a Megaten tradition as old as time itself.

On some level, I appreciate how mean fixtures like the multi level invisomaze and the limited save points happen to be. Especially after giving the Famicom titles some playtime, it no longer feels like that was an oversight. No, the designers can and will be pretty mean if the play testers didn't push back hard enough.

By that same token, I don't miss how SMT IV got rid of those for good. Not one bit.
 
I enjoy difficult games, but not ones that feel unfair. SMT1 does pull that unfair kind of difficulty sometimes, which can make it a very frustrating game to play at times, however it is still great.
Honestly nothing in my playthrough of SMT1 (finished a couple hours ago) felt unfair, more likely tedious and padded-out. The upper Chaos-path levels of
Basilica
before
Asura
feel that way; couldn't Atlus implemented shortcuts of some kind allowing you to skip levels with bosses on them? The build-up and maze navigation is overkill for sure, especially compared to how easy the bosses are. Only
Michael
gave me any real trouble, but I had Throne ready and waiting for the occasion (Lakshmi would have been even more ridiculous!). Arachne and Zenki + Goki are way worse than what SMT1's end-game throws at you.

More floor drops and damage zones would have been cool, barring other, more interesting map gimmicks. Otherwise I was rocking a huge inventory of items with not much use for them, all because I tweaked the hell out of my team. Meeting
Laozi
at the end is sort of neat, but Neutral ending's anticlimactic in a way I didn't expect—I mean, why not have a definitive end-boss instead of two you fight or skip based on alignment? Anyway, it seems I'm prepared for SMT games where you need to rebuild teams often per boss(es), since I've had enough of this (admittedly decent) power trip.
 

Hylian7

Member
I picked Devil Survivor 2 back up and got frustrated by the dumbest thing. I'm on day 5 and these are spoilers for that.

I was on the part where I need a dancer and someone to "act sexy" to summon Shiva. Hinako being the dancer was obvious, she talked about it all the time the last two days. She also made sense for both categories, but you can only pick her as the dancer. Out of who was left, I wasn't sure what the answer was for "act sexy". My first guess was Io, nope. Then I thought it might be Otome because of when she was kind of advancing on the protagonist a while back. Nope. So then it had to be Fumi, right? Nope, and now I'm out of time. That leaves Airi and Makoto, and even though she was the one who gave the hint, I thought it was more likely to be Makoto that Airi. I looked it up, it's fucking Airi...

I really hate how this game does obtuse shit like that. When I ran out of time, I reloaded my last save because I knew that meant something bad would happen. Of course my last save was before the previous battle, god dammit.

I was kind of frustrated with the one on day 3 too. If you don't go after the RAM immediately pretty much, that character in the video is dead. You only get an arbitrary amount of time, unlike on day 2.

I like the idea of permadeath of characters, but I wish they didn't make it so damn obtuse sometimes.
 
Wait, what happens if you mess up the "sexy character" thing again? I imagine it can be tough to get burned like that, but I didn't have any personal issues with saving everyone so I'll admit it's hard to personally relate with a similar example.
In fact I remember feeling the permadeath was kinda arbitrary because they all seemed obvious compared to Devil Survivor 1 where going to the end without a character dying on your first try and no spoilers is a minor feat.
 

Hylian7

Member
Wait, what happens if you mess up the "sexy character" thing again? I imagine it can be tough to get burned like that, but I didn't have any personal issues with saving everyone so I'll admit it's hard to personally relate with a similar example.
In fact I remember feeling the permadeath was kinda arbitrary because they all seemed obvious compared to Devil Survivor 1 where going to the end without a character dying on your first try and no spoilers is a minor feat.
I don't know, but I didn't want to find out so I reloaded my save as soon as I saw Hotsuin say that I was out of time.
 
So I'm new to this series, only played P4G so far. From the non-Persona games, which SMT game has the best story?

I only have a PAL 3DS and a NA Vita.

Devil Survivor Overclocked seems pretty interesting, and so does Strange Journey.

As for gameplay, as long as it isn't based on grinding, everything goes. P4G is the first JRPG I have finished though, so I hope the games aren't *too* hard.

Sorry if I'm being too demanding. ._.
 

Capra

Member
My SMT experience begins and ends with the 3DS games, but from what I've played it seems Soul Hackers might be the best starting point for you. The story and atmosphere are solid, and as far as difficulty goes it's definitely the most manageable SMT I've played - without getting into the postgame dungeons, at least. It also has Nemissa.

Personally I'd say Overclocked has the most interesting story and characters but it's also, at times, one of the most overwhelmingly-difficult RPGs I've played.
 

Seda

Member
So I'm new to this series, only played P4G so far. From the non-Persona games, which SMT game has the best story?

I only have a PAL 3DS and a NA Vita.

Devil Survivor Overclocked seems pretty interesting, and so does Strange Journey.

As for gameplay, as long as it isn't based on grinding, everything goes. P4G is the first JRPG I have finished though, so I hope the games aren't *too* hard.

Sorry if I'm being too demanding. ._.

SMT series games tend to be more combat/dungeon focused than something like Persona 4. They also tend to be a little more difficult for newcomers, so it might be tough to find one that suits you considering P4 is the only JRPG you've completed.

SMTIV might be worth checking out. The intro section is oddly most difficult part of the game, so it takes a few hours of brute force and frequently saving before things lighten up considerably. SMTIV does a few things to try make things more convenient for the player, such as streamlined fusion elements and being able to save anywhere. It also has a bit more character presence than something like Strange Journey. Being relatively new, it has stronger presentation than some of the other available titles, but it's still first-person in combat. The world map can be annoying to navigate, however, because it's easy to get lost and difficult to avoid encounters. To some, this alone ruins the game.

As Capra said, Soul Hackers has some nifty characters and a cool cyberpunk vibe with manageable difficulty. It's worth noting that it's essentially a 1997 game, so it feels very "old-school" in presentation. IIRC the fusion elements are a little more involved - or in any case it doesn't have the same ease-of-use tools SMTIV does. It has a more natural difficulty curve. If you don't like fusing too much, Nemissa and MC can almost handle themselves anyway. Might be worth referencing a guide for this one to help prevent getting lost or setting up your team. I don't remember how saving works in Soul Hackers.

Strange Journey is a great game - but very focused on the dungeon crawling aspects (it is essentially an Etrian Odyssey-structured game after all): mapping out the sections, some puzzle solving and maze navigation. It's probably one of the more difficult of the 3DS games. The story is a bit lighter but handled pretty darn well. howlongtobeat puts it at about 60 hours, most of that crawling around mazes. You can look up the maps online to make things easier.

If you have a PS2 (or PS3 via PS2 classics), Digital Devil Saga is a good place to start too. Preset party characters instead of fusions steamlines things, with a slight focus tilt towards story. More intricate dungeons than P3/P4, certainly.
 

Hylian7

Member
Soul Hackers has Terminals (save points) in dungeons much like the pre-SMT4 games, however you have 5 "app" slots that you can put apps that give you different benefits in. Some apps take up more than one slot. There is an app that lets you save anywhere, but takes up 2 slots. This can be particularly useful in the 3DS version since it is on a portable system, and the Terminals are fewer and further apart than games like Strange Journey.

Also in PS3/PS4 PSN for $10 is SMT3: Nocturne. It can be difficult, especially if you are unfamiliar with series mechanics, but this one basically tells you to learn to use the tools the game gives you or you will fail. If you've ever seen those memes about the skeleton Matador that says "I challenge you to a duel", that is from this game. He is an early boss known to often give players trouble, and you have to use buffs/debuffs and exploit weaknesses to beat him.
 
Thanks guys!

I'm currently thinking Devil Survivor Overclocked (the concept sounds amazing) or SMTIV (20€ and the newest game, so more less risk in case I don't like it).
 
Thanks guys!

I'm currently thinking Devil Survivor Overclocked (the concept sounds amazing) or SMTIV (20€ and the newest game, so more less risk in case I don't like it).

I think SMT IV would be better. DeSu is difficult even by SMT standards. Strange Journey is a hardcore old school dungeon crawler but its my fave SMT.
 

Hylian7

Member
I think SMT IV would be better. DeSu is difficult even by SMT standards. Strange Journey is a hardcore old school dungeon crawler but its my fave SMT.

Devil Survivor Overclocked was my first SMT, and yeah, I kind of agree. Especially if you don't know how to abuse SMT mechanics, you're going to have a bad time. I never finished Devil Survivor Overclocked, I got to day 6 or 7 and stopped for some reason, I forget why. I remember most of the tough battles though, I just barely scraped by by the skin of my teeth. I remember Beldr and Belial being particularly difficult for me, and most of my damage was through weak physical attacks. I also tried to make my protagonist a jack of all trades and that did not work out, as he was my most useless character.

It's funny when I'm playing Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, how much easier the game is once you understand SMT's mechanics, and how to use the mechanics of that game. I managed to kill Botis on Day 3, and cracked both Ziodyne and Shield All. I built my protagonist with a high amount of Magic and very little of everything else (just some Vitality and Agility, no Strength because I don't need it). Even the bosses that are strong against Zio-based spells still get wrecked by Ziodyne, and I imagine this will keep happening until late game. Throw on Elec Boost on top of that and my protagonist can pretty much one shot anything as long as it doesn't null, reflect, or absorb Zio, and even then I can bring out a different element dance and put out a ton of damage.

Killing Botis makes that game so easy in some cases.
 
Usually you can finagle your way out of a hard boss fight in SMT games but you can actually get fucked in DeSu and not be able to progress, which is why I wouldn't recommend it as a first game. It's good, but harsh and unforgiving.
 

Hylian7

Member
Usually you can finagle your way out of a hard boss fight in SMT games but you can actually get fucked in DeSu and not be able to progress, which is why I wouldn't recommend it as a first game. It's good, but harsh and unforgiving.

Depends on the game. SMT4 you can get away with that in a lot of cases, Nocturne, not so much. Strange Journey is probably a case where you can get away with it, but of some of it's infamous boss fights will mess you up.
 
Chiming in here, but I think even among SMT fans you won't find much consensus as to what's best.

For my part I hated Strange Journey, loved Nocturne, loved IV even more. Think Soul Hackers is pretty alright, though it deffo feels like a 1997 Saturn RPG. And if I started talking about the series at large, you'd have a ridonculous megapost.

Just try whatever interests you. It's not a very consistent series, but that means that there might be some odd game you'll like even more than the last.
 
Thanks guys!

I'm currently thinking Devil Survivor Overclocked (the concept sounds amazing) or SMTIV (20€ and the newest game, so more less risk in case I don't like it).
One day, I'd like to finally hear someone describe Devil Survivor as being "kind of like Bahamut Lagoon".
 
Free battles give so little EXP that it makes grinding not ideal. Couple that with extremely difficult bosses, a time limit and plenty of opportunities to screw up.

I've been through the game over ten times. I don't know of anywhere you can get well and truly stuck, which is why I'm asking.

Edit: I even went with an awful flat build on my first play, which made the game way harder than it needed to be and I made it fine.
 
I've been through the game over ten times. I don't know of anywhere you can get well and truly stuck, which is why I'm asking.

Maybe stuck isn't the right word, but you can come up against a boss that feels like you are banging your head against the wall even for SMT games, which will probably happen unless you have prior experience.
 
Maybe stuck isn't the right word, but you can come up against a boss that feels like you are banging your head against the wall even for SMT games, which will probably happen unless you have prior experience.

Oh, sure.

It was my first SMT though and I made it fine, even with a terrible build where I just raised every stat equally. Just gotta change your team a bit. *shrug*
 

cj_iwakura

Member
So I'm new to this series, only played P4G so far. From the non-Persona games, which SMT game has the best story?

I only have a PAL 3DS and a NA Vita.

Devil Survivor Overclocked seems pretty interesting, and so does Strange Journey.

As for gameplay, as long as it isn't based on grinding, everything goes. P4G is the first JRPG I have finished though, so I hope the games aren't *too* hard.

Sorry if I'm being too demanding. ._.

Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga, Soul Hackers, Raidou 1, and Devil Survivor, in that order. Not that DS is bad, just it's the least good.

Strange Journey is the second hardest, IMO.
 

jonjonaug

Member
I'd almost call Strange Journey's difficulty just about right. There's really only a few things that stick out.

1. The sector E boss is able to just straight up kill your party if it feels like it, with little to no room to counteract particular move combinations that may arise. I appreciate the difficulty of this boss fight for the most part, but to some extent it feels random if you'll be able to win or not even with a well prepared party. All that really needs to be done here is change how it's random status effect attack works so that it has less of a pool of possible statuses to inflict.

2. The invisible walkway section in sector H can leave you in a situation where you have a map that looks entirely explored with no idea of where to go, and unlike the invisible doors in other sectors this section is spread out across multiple floors. The save points available to you in this part are also far fewer than the rest of the game, so you can easily spend over an hour wandering in circles without finding any save points and with no idea of what to do next.

3. The final boss is scaled at least 5-10 levels too high for when you'll likely first encounter it. The easiest way to kill it isn't to spend time forming a smart party, but either use codes to summon up a team of very low level demons with reflect skills on them due to how reflect damage is calculated (does the amount of damage it would do to the target, instead of being calculated against the defense stats of the caster) or just grind a bunch. Every other boss in the game can be killed as soon as you encounter it by being clever, but the sheer strength of Mem Aleph throws this mostly out the window. The final boss on the Chaos route at least isn't so bad.

4. Despite the map on the second screen having a lot in common with the Etrian Odyssey series, there are no mapping tools. You can't draw your own maps or notarize the map, which leads to some rather unfair feeling situations in the later dungeons. I don't actually have a problem with the difficulty of most of the dungeons everyone complains about as-is, but being able to draw and annotate your own maps for this kind of game would go a long way in making it more fun in general.

There's really not much else in the game that I think needs to be tweaked. If these things were fixed it would give Nocturne a run for its money in my book as the best SMT game, but as it stands I'd place it below quite a few of the other games in the franchise. #2 and #3 above particularly stand out in how they leave a sour taste in your mouth in the last few hours of an otherwise excellent 40-50+ hour game, whereas I find that most SMT games and their spinoffs tend to have quite satisfying endings. If there was a 3DS remake for the game that addressed this I would buy it in a heartbeat.
 

Hylian7

Member
I don't understand why there was no 3DS port/remake of SJ. I feel like it would benefit more than Devil Survivor 1 or 2.

Speaking of DS2, i'm on day 6, approaching the end of the Sep arc. I'm curious, is the Tri stuff as long as the Seps?
 

Seda

Member
I don't understand why there was no 3DS port/remake of SJ. I feel like it would benefit more than Devil Survivor 1 or 2.

Speaking of DS2, i'm on day 6, approaching the end of the Sep arc. I'm curious, is the Tri stuff as long as the Seps?

The Triangulum arc is notably shorter, but still longer than just an epilogue. Maybe around 60% of the length of the main game.
 
Does Strange Journey require to you to map dungeons by hand? Seems like a great entry point to me (wonderful atmosphere, challenging, close to the core SMT formula) but if it means I have to map shit out for 70 hours then that's a deal breaker.
 

jonjonaug

Member
Okay, thanks! I'll give it a try sometime soon, then.
I would actually call this a negative in that you can't draw the map at all, it's all automap. Some of the later dungeons have really complex layouts and being able to enter comments on the map like in EO would have made things way more managable. Plus I hate having to step on every individual damage floor tile or purposefully fall through known pitfalls or walk through known one way doors that'll lead me in a loop to fully map an area.
 

Hylian7

Member
I'm nearly done with the Septentriones stuff in Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker. I'm on what I think is probably the last battle of day 6,
the one where you have to choose to side with Ronaldo or Makoto, or neither.

That was a hard decision, but I ended up choosing neither.

Also I was curious about something two battles ago:
Can Io actually die? I looked it up and apparently she can if your fate with her isn't 3 or higher. I had been bringing her fate up ever since the beginning of the game, so it was no problem for me, but if you didn't, could you possibly bring her fate high enough before that battle? It seem so arbitrary that that's the thing that would keep her alive. When every other death video is prevented by being at the right place at the right time, why is this one suddenly different?

It kind of irritates me that some of these things either require luck that you picked the rights things beforehand, or knowledge of what happens in the future. Good thing this game has multiple saves. I've just started making a separate save every time there is a death video, and in case I screw it up I can just go back. I like the permadeath idea, but some of these are just obtuse I feel like.
 
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