-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Shin Megami Tensei IV |EU OT| Atlus Shrugged
- Thread starter Samurai_Heart
- Start date
I'd like an option to switch. First-person battles are just way faster and more time efficient, makes random encounters less obnoxious and is perfect for portables, so I don't want that gone. But I'd also like to get my fill of epic battle animations from time to time. Sadly I don't think we will ever see something like that.
Hm, I suppose one could do it that way. I decided on consolidating them primarily due to wanting to save skill slots. Worked out for me, but I suppose keeping them separate is still feasible (particularly when considering the issue mentioned of potentially missing with Antichthon, whereas Debilitate never does).
GwyndolinCinder
Member
I Guess Mino is the first boss of the game that destroys you if you don't debuff and buff?
Cheers.
Don't think I have many buffs or debuffs. Guess I need some new demons.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Omoikane keeps heeling himself up right before dying every time zzzZZZzzzz
How many HP does he have so I can time my attacks accordingly and kill him in one turn before he regens up?
E_Darkness
Member
Do we know of any EU region exclusive bugs yet?
About how long did your NG+ run take?
Pretty long (around 30h), but I did a New Life cycle (stat resets), AND I started on hard, even thoug I switched to normal midway. I did quite a lot of sidequests too.
Ah I see, hopefully it's pretty quick to run through in NG+ if I carry over my stats etc.
I heard it's between 5 to 10 hours to get to the alignment lock.
Dragon1893
Member
In Soul Hackers buffs/debuffs are completely OP, even the final boss can be turned into a wimp. They stack up to 4 times and make a huge difference on offense and defense both on you and the enemies.
Last few bosses I fought were disappointingly easy, it's really weird how the game throws a couple of really challenging bosses at you early in the game and then the difficulty just goes completely downhill like that.
The open-ended nature of the game can cause you to run into difficult fights (I went exploring and ran into a level 44 boss when I was level 20 and got completely destroyed), but otherwise the game is indeed too easy, though of course the typical situation of getting "SMT'd" can still happen with a bit of bad luck.
Not bad at all, might be feasible to play through and see all the endings this time for me.
Yeah the difficulty isn't very consistent. It's a shame really. I did run into some very late game bosses that were quite difficult though, but they felt difficult in a cheap way (Super activate insta-death, lots of smirking etc). Low level mobs can even take you out if they get the initiative and are lucky with criticals sometimes. Kind of BS since you can't affect whether they get initiative or not on the world map or when reinforcements arrive in battle.
Don't play on hard then.
Hard mode is plain unfair, ennemies get the initiative like 80% of the time, they do much more damage and you do much less, and the compendium prices are just incredibly high (40k macca for a good demon, and that's with the maximum discount from the apps)
GwyndolinCinder
Member
Just got to big T, not loving the overworld map was kinda excited to walk round normally D:
The XP you gain during quests is based on the MC level.
Ah ok, thanks.
So if I want to level up an Alice, I should fuse her right now, so that she at least gets all the mission XP... But I think I'll have to buy the grinding DLC anyway to optimize my MC build post game, I don't have the patience to level up all those high level demons for them to whisper the skills to my MC... :-(
Imp the Dimp
Member
Question regarding alignment
So I sided with Walter, killed Tayama's demon and opened that gate to hell. Now i'm in the desert. Am I past the alignment lock? And if so, is this the chaos path?
Black Soma
Member
Man, after a game over I just want to quickly reload my game but Charon is always in the way. I don't understand why they put this mechanic in the game since you can save anywhere.
Totally agree, it almost made me skip the game. In the end i'm glad I didn't because i'm enjoying it but I think i would like it more with a "full" combat system.
Actually, one of my friends who was on the fence about the game decided not to buy it because he really dislikes this kind of combat.
If you had forgot to save in a while and died just before you got to where you wanted to go it would kinda suck. When I don't want to be revived I just hit the home button and restart the game, it's quick enough.
The combat system is full. It's just the view that's different. I get what you mean, but this is just presentation not an issue with the actual system or gameplay.
You'll know when you get there, they make it pretty obvious.
Black Soma
Member
I wish the game had a soft reset option. Would be much quicker.
only if you wanna count being able to post screenshots on miiverse as a bug.
If so it's an awesome one!
Convenient for Fiend hunting during the endgame, as they only have a 1/256 chance of appearing in very specific locations. Should one kill you, paying him will send you right back to just before you fought it, then save so that you won't have to find it again until after you win. Reloading a save without paying Charon would mean having to attempt to respawn that Fiend all over again.
The sequence is annoying to skip through otherwise, yes (even with the fast-forwarding, it takes too long).
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
Just finished the game. I really enjoyed it as a whole, the atmosphere, the soundtrack, the new "no mazes, just proper places" -design philosophy was a nice change of pace for the series ( I still want dungeon crawling back for the next game though).
But the balancing and the battles were totally fucked up. Without a defense stat absolutely everything in this game is a glass cannon. Normal enemies, your party, even bosses, everything dies fast. I barely had any memorable long lasting boss fights in this game, so goddamn unfortunate if I compare this shit to Nocturne.
There are barely any useful skills for the protag in this game, 8 skill slots are like, 5 slots too many, Charge/ Concentrate + 1 single and one multi-target attack is all you need on him. The MP-regen App means no resource management is necessary, and there are way too many demons so you can cover all your needs extremely easily.
This game just plays extremely awkwardly, like nothing concerning stats, balancing and skills makes any sense. Compared to Nocturne, where i had to think about which demon to fuse, which Magatama to use, prepare to get through long dungeons without being able to save and fight boss battles that are not over in 20 seconds (one way or the other) it's just not a very satisfying experience.
But the balancing and the battles were totally fucked up. Without a defense stat absolutely everything in this game is a glass cannon. Normal enemies, your party, even bosses, everything dies fast. I barely had any memorable long lasting boss fights in this game, so goddamn unfortunate if I compare this shit to Nocturne.
There are barely any useful skills for the protag in this game, 8 skill slots are like, 5 slots too many, Charge/ Concentrate + 1 single and one multi-target attack is all you need on him. The MP-regen App means no resource management is necessary, and there are way too many demons so you can cover all your needs extremely easily.
This game just plays extremely awkwardly, like nothing concerning stats, balancing and skills makes any sense. Compared to Nocturne, where i had to think about which demon to fuse, which Magatama to use, prepare to get through long dungeons without being able to save and fight boss battles that are not over in 20 seconds (one way or the other) it's just not a very satisfying experience.
I agree with you Muramasa. The game has a lot of balancing issues.
The save scumming and MP regen app are among them and must go away in the next game. Nocturne also had no defense attribute but the bosses had way more HP, that's why the battles lasted longer.
What reassure me though is that the dev team still remember how to make a SMT which was my biggest worry when the game has been announced. So I enjoyed it a lot despite the big balancing issues and some awkward parts such as the quest system and the new demon design.
The save scumming and MP regen app are among them and must go away in the next game. Nocturne also had no defense attribute but the bosses had way more HP, that's why the battles lasted longer.
What reassure me though is that the dev team still remember how to make a SMT which was my biggest worry when the game has been announced. So I enjoyed it a lot despite the big balancing issues and some awkward parts such as the quest system and the new demon design.
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
You sure? I thought more Vitality also meant more defense. But alright, point being that everything is a one- or two-shot in this game for some reason.
I totally agree about Atlus still having the potential for greatness because SMT IV was definitely a good game. Here's hoping for SMT V coming before 2025!
装甲悪鬼村正;138386758 said:
Yes I'm positive. More Vitality in Nocturne meant only more HP.
I think the super uber bosses in SMT4 have something like 16K HP whereas in Nocturne it can go to 60K.
Also I prefer how physical skills use HP in the previous Megaten. What would be great in SMT5 is to go back to that and tie HP growth to strength and MP growth to Magic, that way you have more options when building demons and it makes more sense. In SMT4 the way HP and MP grow is unfortunately set in stone depending on the demon.
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
Yes, this means physical demons can actually use their skills. The only thing they are good for in SMT IV is not dying as fast because they have more HP. It's just another design decision that makes no sense. What a weird game this is.
装甲悪鬼村正;138386758 said:
Yeah, I was surprised too when I learned that, you don't notice it that much in Nocturne imho.
At least it worked much better in Nocturne.
And yeah, I don't understand why they switched physical skills to MP consumption. Like things are, MP and HP type demons have huge drawbacks...
装甲悪鬼村正;138386758 said:
Vitality is far better than defense as a concept because you can better influence your defensive capabilities with it. In SMT IV your defense is limited by your progress (meaning the stuff you can buy in shops) while in games with Vitality you can pump however much you want into it.
I found the quick kill or be killed boss fights pretty disappointing in SMT IV.
è£ ç²æªé¬¼ææ£
Banned
Yeah, the complete absence of a defense stat is extremely obvious in SMT IV, while I had no idea about Nocturne.
And I just downloaded the first Archangel DLC with the last couple hundred Yen I have on my account. I guess those don't count as uber bosses because they went down as fast as every other boss but I'm not going to buy any more. Too bad about that amazing boss theme being DLC only.
snow in jamaica
Member
I really love seeing a physical-based demon and it having next to no MP.
Also manual skill selection is a lovely thing but it needs restrictions.
Also manual skill selection is a lovely thing but it needs restrictions.
装甲悪鬼村正;138399742 said:
Well, technically, the Uber bosses are
Sanat
Masakados
Sanat
Masakados
Supposedly the Fiends aren't easy either.
All this is because of that annoying almighty spamming these bosses sometimes fall into.
Spieler Eins
Member
Guys,
I blew up Tokyo
The current restriction is skills unique to that demon (i.e., Desperate Hit with Demonee-ho). That said, that can usually be circumvented by fusing in mid-battle, which allows such skills to be inherited anyway. It requires minimizing the amount of skills the demons being fused have on their lists to improve the chances of getting something you want, though, since you can't select individual skills with mid-battle fusions.
Imp the Dimp
Member
I prefer free skill allocation. Devil Survivor had it as well and it was hard as fuck.
There are so few of those that it doesn't really mattert that much (Desperate-Hit is even "whisperable", contrary to the other unique skills).
But yeah, they need to put some sort of restriction, the game is completely broken as is.
Aside from those: compendium discounts.
There's also Alice's Die for Me! among the unique skills that can be whispered, but yeah, not much else (the ____ of God elemental skills associated with the archangels being among those that can't be whispered, as with the skills unique to
Masakado's Shadow
There's no way I'd want to go back to shuffling for skill sets, but at the same time, the system is very easy to break once you know how it works.