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Shin Megami Tensei Community Thread: Be Your True Demon

Frimaire

Member
Ehhh, Nocturne's hard mode isn't so bad.
I did my first playthough on hard and it's not like it was unplayable or anything.
The only weird thing I noticed is that a few things in stores were like, prohibitively expensive.
 
I almost killed Matador on my 2nd try. He started doing this Andalucoa bullshit which wrecked my team. But I think I've got this bastard now.

What a game.
 
I can sort of buy the others divorced from their myths because I don't really picture Krishna as a trendy fedora wearing teenager looking dude, or Odin as a Power Rangers villain, so I just see them as their own characters for the most part. Maitreya looks on point with what he is supposed to represent though, so he stands out way more. YHVH has always been an irredeemable asshole throughout the franchise so that's just a given at this point.

I would've liked to side with the Divine Powers, but they needed to be portrayed as a legitimate reason first. Apocalypse has these cool little ideas with lots of potential, so it's a shame they decided to sideline it all in order to tell the ∞th story about the power of friendship defeating God. Or the story about how you act like a total asshole for no reason I guess.

That you perceive them as original characters is pretty damning, isn't it? SMT has previously been more faithful and neutral than this in regard to its portrayals of mythological entities, distinguishing itself among other video games. I'll say Krishna still looks like Krishna for the most part, but his characterization (and that of everyone else) is mishandled and even feels hateful.

YHWH may be wrathful and jealous, but that's not quite unambiguously evil within his context. Whereas SMT2 was very much in line with his Old Testament wrath, 4A depicted him as a master manipulator bent on world domination.
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
I think I might have to do a full RTTP thread when I finish SMT1 on iOS, I played like 6hrs of it on my flight today and it really is just sooo gooood. I feel like it might be a contender for my favorite game of all time.

The entire segment in roppongi, and the 4 dungeons at the great fork are ridiculously well built. Each has such a varied feeling to it. And the crazy conundrum of the Yoma trial when trying to do a neutral route really makes you think about the morality system. It's so cool that no matter what that one moment forces you to pick a side and then find a way to shift your alignment back.

I could probably gush about this game forever.
 

marmoka

Banned
Coming to Europe early 2019.

I hope this time Deep Silver brings the game the same day as in NA, like they did with Persona 5, and not 4 months later like they did with Apocalypse. I homebrewed my 3DS to be able to play Apocalypse region free. It was worth paying 70 euros for the game and ship costs.

I have played a bit of SJ until Area 3 Boss (
ship-eating giant pig
), and gave up then. I know how the game is more or less, and I don't have too much hurry like I had with SMT IV and Apocalypse. I don't need to import it this time.
 

Rizzi

Member
I never thought of Dante
from the Devil May Cry series
as scary guy until the third kalpa.
Now I know better.
 

Rutger

Banned
I never thought of Dante
from the Devil May Cry series
as scary guy until the third kalpa.
Now I know better.

I imagine a lot of demons are scared of Dante, and since you're part demon now you get to see how it feels to face that Smokin' Sick Style!
 
Well, let's hope SJ comes to Europe in a timely manner.

I don't know what it is with Apocalypse, maybe I'm burned out on the setting but I think it's mostly the poor cast and weak story, I still haven't finished the game. SMT is by far my favorite franchise and I've played most of them, I've never had to force myself to finish a single one until now. I love them all. This though, it's just so meh.
 
Possibly stupid question. Atlus loves doing their remasters/remakes, but what's stopping them from doing the same for SMT? I think the only thing they did was release 1 on IOS, still bummed out on the lack of Android.
 

asagami_

Banned
Possibly stupid question. Atlus loves doing their remasters/remakes, but what's stopping them from doing the same for SMT? I think the only thing they did was release 1 on IOS, still bummed out on the lack of Android.

I guess lack of interest. I was a bit disappointed the 3DS project was not a 1&2 remake using the EO engine (or SMT 3 <_<), but SJ is always welcomed.
 

Lynx_7

Member
I mean, they've already remade SMT I and II a ton of times. SMT I alone has GBA, PS1, Sega CD, TurboGrafx and iOS/Android remakes. We were just lucky enough to miss almost every single one of them.
 

Joqu

Member
The SMT IV engine would have been such a great fit for some 1, 2 and If... remakes. I love me some Strange Journey and all, but yeah, bummer.
 
I mean, they've already remade SMT I and II a ton of times. SMT I alone has GBA, PS1, Sega CD, TurboGrafx and iOS/Android remakes. We were just lucky enough to miss almost every single one of them.

If that's luck, I don't want it.

I guess lack of interest. I was a bit disappointed the 3DS project was not a 1&2 remake using the EO engine (or SMT 3 <_<), but SJ is always welcomed.

If not a smt 3 remaster, just give it to me on ps4. I already have it on ps2 and 3.
 

Joqu

Member
I need all the PS2 SMT games on PS4.

PCSX2 emulation is still a little too wonky to my taste, but they look great in higher resolutions. Bah.
 

Lynx_7

Member
From what we knew from Hardin, PS2 releases on PS4 aren't even a blip on their radar right now. If we ever get Nocturne, DDS and Raidou on PSN, I'm guessing it'll be at the tail end of the generation just like on the PS3. Doesn't help that it's not just Atlus but everyone else seems to be releasing PS2 games at a snail's pace. Probably Sony's fault for enforcing trophies.
 

Joqu

Member
From what we knew from Hardin, PS2 releases on PS4 aren't even a blip on their radar right now. If we ever get Nocturne, DDS and Raidou on PSN, I'm guessing it'll be at the tail end of the generation just like on the PS3. Doesn't help that it's not just Atlus but everyone else seems to be releasing PS2 games at a snail's pace. Probably Sony's fault for enforcing trophies.

Yeah, that's probably the case. PS2 on PS4 has been a huge disappointment in general, the trophies aren't worth the pace they've been releasing at and the fact that I need to pay full price for them again is a little bit insulting considering I got stuff like Journey for free.

I just like the way the emulation works on PS4. :/
 

Opa-Pa

Member
Yeah, as much as I love Strange Journey, I never even dreamed of it getting a remake and it being the secret 3DS project. A SMT1 remake seemed like a no brainer, but I guess it'd have required to restructure the game a lot and basically rewrite most of the dialogue to be up to today's standards, whereas SJ was mostly dungeons and conversations with static images, so it was way simpler to recreate.

And yeah Nocturne in HD by any means necessary without resorting to emulation on PC is a dream. I'd vastly prefer a remaster or PS2 on PS4 release though as I see Atlus as more than capable of messing the Kaneko art style in a remake and that'd be the ultimate sin.

Make it the Raidou version though!
 
Yeah, as much as I love Strange Journey, I never even dreamed of it getting a remake and it being the secret 3DS project. A SMT1 remake seemed like a no brainer, but I guess it'd have required to restructure the game a lot and basically rewrite most of the dialogue to be up to today's standards, whereas SJ was mostly dungeons and conversations with static images, so it was way simpler to recreate.

And yeah Nocturne in HD by any means necessary without resorting to emulation on PC is a dream. I'd vastly prefer a remaster or PS2 on PS4 release though as I see Atlus as mote than capable of messing the Kaneko art style in a remake and that'd be the ultimate sin.

Make it the Raidou version though!

Yeah, still a little disappointed with how they are handling Radiant Historia and to a lesser extent Strange Journey.

More Raidou is always welcome. Hopefully Atlus will be more like the ps2 days where they release a bunch of console games. Raidou, Digital Devil, and SMT, still need to start Digital Devil 2.
 

marmoka

Banned
Remastering Nocturne should be easy.
Just put HD textures and voice acting. Adding difficulty settings would be good as well.

If they need to update the models, they already have the demons in HD in Persona 5

But a new SMT game is coming soon. They could start working on the remasterization after releasing it.
 
Remastering Nocturne should be easy.
Just put HD textures and voice acting. Adding difficulty settings would be good as well.

If they need to update the models, they already have the demons in HD in Persona 5

But a new SMT game is coming soon. They could start working on the remasterization after releasing it.

Plus work on the sound mixing. It is the one actual flaw with the classic.
 

Rutger

Banned
Remastering Nocturne should be easy.
Just put HD textures and voice acting. Adding difficulty settings would be good as well.

If they need to update the models, they already have the demons in HD in Persona 5

But a new SMT game is coming soon. They could start working on the remasterization after releasing it.

Instead of remastering Nocturne, I think they should team up with Capcom to create Devil May Cry: Nocturne(Featuring Demifiend from the Shin Megami Tensei series)

An action game about Dante's journey through the Vortex World, with a different ending than any we are used to since he's now the MC. Bring in more characters from DMC as bonus bosses and unlockables, make the Demifiend unlockable, make Jack Frost unlockable, let's get this party started!


Or, I guess they could just go all out on a HD Nocturne remaster instead of a new game.
I don't know, it's a game that can be played digitally on any PS3, it's not something that's hard to find and it's still perfectly playable, so I think I'd rather see those resources put towards more new entries in the mainline SMT series.
 

Euphony

Banned
It had to happen at some point but I'm starting to feel SMT fatigue setting in after playing through Persona 5, Nocturne, and just recently Digital Devil Saga. Since I did a brief write up about my thoughts on Nocturne, I thought I might as well do the same with DDS since I just got done with it.

My overall impression of the game is very high and, dare I say, I enjoyed it a little bit more than Nocturne. There are some aspects that I ended up missing in DDS, mainly the SMT staple demon fusions, which made the game feel more like a traditional RPG with SMT elements. That being said, I still enjoyed the Mantra system in DDS as it greatly increased your party's versatility and I'm also a sucker for skill trees. One thing that I found out of place, though, was the
Wikipedia Mantra. I had to do a double take to make sure I was reading it right
. Coming from Nocturne I also thought that DDS's dungeon's were less impressive. However, one dungeon that really stuck out to me was the 4th,
Coordinate 136 or the Castle dungeon
. Even though the dungeon wasn't particularly visually appealing or difficult, I really enjoyed going
through each floor and hearing the story of the Twin Princes and the Princess
. I also got a good laugh out of
the skeletons chained to the wall in the basement making bad skeleton puns
. Given what happens in the game and that the Princess
looks like Sera
, I'm willing to bet that
Twin Princes story is going to have greater meaning after I play the sequel
. It was also very refreshing to play an SMT game that doesn't revolve around Judeo-Christian mythology and instead focused on a mix of Buddhism and Hinduism. I'm eager to see where the sequel is going to take things but like I mentioned in the beginning, I'm feeling the fatigue set in and I want to take a break. One last thing I'd like to mention is how much I adored the music in DDS and that it is probably the reason why I enjoyed the game more than Nocturne. Shoji Meguro continues to be one of my favorite composers of all time. I could write more about what I thought about the game but I'll cut things short for the sake of being brief as this is already getting longer than I originally planned.

Some of my favorite tracks from the game
Muladhara
Svadhisthana
Spider's String
Hunting - Comrades
Hari-Hara <- My favorite
 

marmoka

Banned
So my Jack Frost persona reached Level 50 in Persona 5. I'm in level 58.

Let's make this little guy as strong as possible!

6k7P97u.jpg
 

Hylian7

Member
So since SJR is going to have some gameplay changes... What would you think of they let you actually level your own stats? I know that was a fairly common criticism of the original.
 

Frimaire

Member
What's different about the Mantra system in 2 that makes it better than 1? I didn't expect it to be changed between games.

I wouldn't say it's objectively better or anything, I just remember liking it more.
It's laid out like a honeycomb grid instead of a tree, and you can unlock special mantra by getting all the surrounding ones
 
What's different about the Mantra system in 2 that makes it better than 1? I didn't expect it to be changed between games.

It's a hexagonal grid and bought/mastered (I forgot which) Mantras unlock adjacent ones.

It was also very refreshing to play an SMT game that doesn't revolve around Judeo-Christian mythology and instead focused on a mix of Buddhism and Hinduism.

Neither do the games you recently played, really, but DDS was a change of pace regardless yeah.
 

Rutger

Banned
So since SJR is going to have some gameplay changes... What would you think of they let you actually level your own stats? I know that was a fairly common criticism of the original.

I hope not, that will let us break the the game far more than save anywhere ever will.
 

Euphony

Banned
It's a hexagonal grid and bought/mastered (I forgot which) Mantras unlock adjacent ones.



Neither do the games you recently played, really, but DDS was a change of pace regardless yeah.

A hexagonal grid does sound interesting, at least more than the linear one in DDS1. And yea now that I think more about it Persona 5 and Nocturne didn't really revolve around Judeo-Christian mythology all that much with P5 only having some Kabbalah stuff in it and Nocturne..well Nocturne was definitely something else. Still, I liked that DDS did something different than what I was used to seeing in an SMT game.
 
Gaf, help me out with some advice.

I'm new to the SMT games and JRGs in general. I started with P5, it was excellent. Just finished P3FES, heavily enjoyed that title as well.
which title should I breach into the mainline SMT games with?
I own, Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1/2, Devil Survivor, Strange Journy, SMT IV, and Devil Survivor Overclocked.

Also whats the preferable way to play Persona 2? PS1 or PSP?
I have the PS1 version, but the PSP variant is affordable so I could go either way.
 

Lynx_7

Member
Gaf, help me out with some advice.

I'm new to the SMT games and JRGs in general. I started with P5, it was excellent. Just finished P3FES, heavily enjoyed that title as well.
which title should I breach into the mainline SMT games with?
I own, Nocturne, Digital Devil Saga 1/2, Devil Survivor, Strange Journy, SMT IV, and Devil Survivor Overclocked.

Also whats the preferable way to play Persona 2? PS1 or PSP?
I have the PS1 version, but the PSP variant is affordable so I could go either way.
Persona 2 is actually a duology: Innocent Sin (the first game) and Eternal Punishment (the second). The west only got the PSP port of IS, so the game you own is probably Eternal Punishment. I'd suggest playing them in order.

Out of those games you listed, Devil Survivor Overclocked is the "closest" one to Persona while still being a good introduction to something closer to the mainline series. It's time based (though it takes place in 7 days instead of a year), has a large focus on its cast and is very story heavy. Gameplay-wise it plays like a megaten game on a grid, basically, and Normal mode is pretty hard for newcomers compared to most other Normal modes in the series. It also deals with the classic SMT conflict of law, neutrality and chaos, in some ways handles it better than most mainline titles do.

Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 are also more story focused alternatives to the mainline games. They play more like traditional JRPGs (fixed party members) with the press turn battle system. Most fans regard them both very highly so it's also a good choice.

If you want to go straight to Megaten (and I'd say you're more than ready to, should you wish), choose either Nocturne or IV. Nocturne has (much) better dungeon crawling, great atmosphere and a minimalistic narrative while SMT IV follows a much more traditional template of law vs chaos, has a bigger focus on narrative/world building and is, for the most part, more beginner friendly (with the exception of the first dungeon being by far the hardest thing in the game, which is really backwards design). Pick whichever one sounds/looks more interesting.
 
Persona 2 is actually a duology: Innocent Sin (the first game) and Eternal Punishment (the second). The west only got the PSP port of IS, so the game you own is probably Eternal Punishment. I'd suggest playing them in order.

Out of those games you listed, Devil Survivor Overclocked is the "closest" one to Persona while still being a good introduction to something closer to the mainline series. It's time based (though it takes place in 7 days instead of a year), has a large focus on its cast and is very story heavy. Gameplay-wise it plays like a megaten game on a grid, basically, and Normal mode is pretty hard for newcomers compared to most other Normal modes in the series. It also deals with the classic SMT conflict of law, neutrality and chaos, in some ways handles it better than most mainline titles do.

Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2 are also more story focused alternatives to the mainline games. They play more like traditional JRPGs (fixed party members) with the press turn battle system. Most fans regard them both very highly so it's also a good choice.

If you want to go straight to Megaten (and I'd say you're more than ready to, should you wish), choose either Nocturne or IV. Nocturne has (much) better dungeon crawling, great atmosphere and a minimalistic narrative while SMT IV follows a much more traditional template of law vs chaos, has a bigger focus on narrative/world building and is, for the most part, more beginner friendly (with the exception of the first dungeon being by far the hardest thing in the game, which is really backwards design). Pick whichever one sounds/looks more interesting.

Hey, thanks! I was leaning towards Nocturne, but I think you've convinced me.

Also yea, I thought I had heard we only got one-half of Persona 2, I assumed that the PSP version was the same as the PS1. That's good news though, it would have been frustrating to only experience one part of that story.
 

Maxwood

Oh rock of ages, do not crumble, love is breathing still. Oh lady moon shine down, a little people magic if you will.
I'm a bit burned out on Nocturne after going through the Obelisk.
Maybe I shouldn't have started playing this straight after finishing Persona 4 and Digital Devil Saga.

Feels like i've broken the game after fusing Daisoujou and unlocking all his skills.
The challenge has been gone for a good ten hours. Maybe I should kick the allmighty Djou out, temporary.
 

Rizzi

Member
I'm a bit burned out on Nocturne after going through the Obelisk.
Maybe I shouldn't have started playing this straight after finishing Persona 4 and Digital Devil Saga.

Feels like i've broken the game after fusing Daisoujou and unlocking all his skills.
The challenge has been gone for a good ten hours. Maybe I should kick the allmighty Djou out, temporary.

I got rid of him a while ago and now I don't feel like I'm cheating anymore. :p
 
I'm not sure if I can tell what anyone means with the division between "story-based" and "not-as-story-based". It's pretty weird language that I only come across within the SMT fandom. DDS is comparably subtextual and opaque to Nocturne but perceived totally differently by most, probably due to the more prominent and populated cast of main characters.

I'm a bit burned out on Nocturne after going through the Obelisk.
Maybe I shouldn't have started playing this straight after finishing Persona 4 and Digital Devil Saga.

Feels like i've broken the game after fusing Daisoujou and unlocking all his skills.
The challenge has been gone for a good ten hours. Maybe I should kick the allmighty Djou out, temporary.

I fused him away for the sake of variety. You should probably take a break too.
 

Hylian7

Member
Should I track down a copy of Strange Journey? Or do you think I should just wait for the remake?

Honestly I would just wait til we learn more about SJR. While they have said it will have the new character/storyline, and features like saving anywhere, there's still so much we don't know. I would hope some of these things (such as save anywhere) are optional and can be turned off at the start of the game, a la Casual Mode in Fire Emblem Awakening/Fates/Echoes.

I honestly think that the original will still be worth playing after the remake, if only for things like the old artwork of the humans, lack of save anywhere, etc. It's kind of pricey, a quick search of Amazon found it for $50: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VA593A/?tag=neogaf0e-20

Granted it's possible I could be entirely wrong, they have the original artwork available as free DLC, lets you turn off Save Anywhere, the new character/story is awesome (I actually do think it will be cool and don't really understand the hate for Alex), and the game will retain everything that made the original great. We have just seen so little of the game other than some screenshots, the trailer, and a couple of clips that were less than thirty seconds. Really hard to tell much of anything.
 

Taruranto

Member
My PC broke, so I finally decided to get over it and finish SMTII. Hopefully I'll succeed this time lol.
Anyway, I had forgotten how stiff the game was, even as someone used to old RPG.
 

Rizzi

Member
And that's a wrap on Nocturne. True demon ending.
Holy shit Lucifer was hard as fuck.
Now to decide what to play next.
 
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