Lmao. Is this the first time you play this franchise? That sounds like every SMT game I've played.
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Shin Megami Tensei IV |OT| The Dark Souls of Persona
- Thread starter Volcynika
- Start date
Lmao. Is this the first time you play this franchise? That sounds like every SMT game I've played.
I'm inclined to agree to a degree. People say that the game is difficult. I would hardly call it difficult. Annoying and tedious might be more apt. The only truly difficult portion of the game was in the beginning trying to recruit your first demon. If you fuck that up it's just hard to deal with shit. Other than that, the bosses have been alright. Juggling deaths and trying to figure out what demons to replace and stuff is, however, a challenge.
GeekyDad
Member
It's interesting how, though you can free-run in this game, it still very much feels like an SMT game. I think you'll find it feels very similar in a lot of ways. However, since you can free-run, there's a lot more room to design the dungeons in more interesting ways, and I feel they did that here.
And though a lot of folks are saying the dungeons are a lot smaller, they do become more expansive the further into the game you get.
Basileus777
Member
You're not missing anything. it's a non-Persona SMT game, the story is an afterthought.
aka, every boss fight in every game. Know what it's weak to and know what it's going to do.
SMT in general just pushes a lot of fight difficulty into the "planning for the fight" step. There's less on-the-fly decision making. So there's a lot more planned around trying a fight and then beating the fight as two separate events.
I'd consider "getting the element the boss is weak to" as part of the team building. As early as the second major boss, you can get demons that Null their damage type and proceed to rob them of their Press Turns.
GeekyDad
Member
Wow...no.
Uh... I'd say that even Persona's stories are an afterthought. It's mostly about character interaction than anything else. What I've played so far for SMT4 isn't really wowing me or keeping me engaged narratively.
Don't do this to me man. I only have like... what... 2 weeks or so?
Your character has a lot of interaction with Burroughs.
ttocs
Member
Not sure if this can be easily answered, but I'm newly in
and I honestly don't know what to do. I've done a few things here and there and moved the story along a bit but I eventually get to a point where there is a big
They said I should move along and when I try to interact, I can't. Did I miss something here? Should I be somewhere else right now?
Tokyo
fire wall with two people standing in front of it.
You need to go to
the government building
Alright. touche. Meaningful character interactions. They're just dialoguing and while the conversations can be interesting, they don't really contribute much other than for infodumping and worldbuilding which in all honesty, I get that from the visuals and the minimal amount of plotpoints I've gone through in the game.
As far as the difficulty is concerned (up to a quest after finishing the Black Samurai one), the game is really controllable. Outside of super fringe cases (Enemy getting the first turn + all-target skills that crit/weakness + Smirks), it's pretty hard to die. The early game has less planning (or, rather, "weaker" planning) but you'll get to the point where you have the options available to you to make worthwhile choices to do a fight.
Honestly, a lot of SMT difficulty will come down to how well you utilize fusion.
Because not much has happened up to this point. There's intrigue but not much spelled out.
Honestly, a lot of SMT difficulty will come down to how well you utilize fusion.
Because not much has happened up to this point. There's intrigue but not much spelled out.
InsaneElite
Member
Have you gone to Ueno? It's just west of the Sky Tower you descended from. Talk to everyone in the bar there.
Saying it's an afterthought is a real disservice to how SMT games are written. It kinda saddens me to see people equate narratives which aren't dramatic or entirely focused on the linear path as "boring" or "afterthoughts". There's a lot of effort put into creating an interesting setting, and there are many characters and events which serve to flesh out the setting in various ways. Not everything is connected to the main quest lines, but almost everything you experience is relevant in some ways and can be pieced together to create a better understanding of the state of the world, what is happening in various places, how different factions and events are affecting the people who live in the world, and so on. There's so much flavor to be found all over, from the background design, the NPC dialogues, the item descriptions, and all the optional quests. There's always something there which makes the experience deeper.
How much plot you find and appreciate depends on how much you care to look. It doesn't mean they don't care about the story, it's just a different style of storytelling. Being subtle is one of the hallmarks of SMT, where the player is meant to be an observer who takes everything in while going about doing what he's required to do to survive. Along the way he will encounter various viewpoints, and decide what sort of future he favors for the world. The beauty is in how everything is placed throughout the game for you to discover and experience, and not thrown in your face with dramatic cutscenes and emotional events.
"Congratulations on completing the quest."
As the dead bodies pile up.
Put a lot better than I could. The game doesn't really spell much out / hit you in the face with much. It's a lot of slow buildup and minor reveals (either in intrigue/mysteries/questions or answers) that cascades once enough pieces fall into place. There's a lot of character interaction and world building to be done. Much can be taken from what can be considered throwaway NPC dialogue.
F0rneus
Tears in the rain
...Me too. My digital waifu!
Why stop at just Burroughs? They should make a DLC pack where every character is voiced by Baker.
What about Nolan North?
I absolute love Dark Souls and I enjoy the very subtle ways the game eases you into the world. SMT4 is very similar in this regard. This game has excellent worldbuilding and it's very immersive. However, the story, or rather the plot, doesn't hold me. If there is a significant amount of realism or whatnot with the world but nothing that's happening in the main quest to keep me excited remotely then I feel there is a problem, especially when there is a clear main quest that you're driving onwards with.
The Persona of Dark Souls.
"Not much has happened" in the sense of "the plot hasn't moved much." Up to the point you're at, since it's the same spot I'm at (more-or-less), you've done:
One thing. You've accomplished in capturing the Black Samurai. Of course, along the way you discovered Tokyo, learned of the Ashura-kai and their drugs and mob racket, learned of the Ring of Gaea cult, and seen the state of the world below. But "not much has happened." Very little has been flat out spelled out for you. You just know of the factions in place and the only big thing so far is the Black Samurai's identity and what that could potentially mean
So we've gone full circle.
This may sound funny, but even the title screen starting music does remind me a lot of Dark Souls. Lol
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
This sums up SMT pretty well.
Basileus777
Member
I poorly phrased that. I actually like how mainline SMT games are structured, I wasn't voicing a complaint. I like the lack of cutscenes and the more subtle world building. I was really just commenting on how the game isn't really narratively driven and that the story itself isn't the main draw. If you want to include the setting as story, then well, that changes it.
There are uncanny resemblances in storytelling. However, there is one difference between the two games. One bombards you with cutscenes compared to the other. Dark Souls makes you feel like you're interacting with the narrative and the world because there are so few cutscene breaks that take you out of it. In SMT4 it's not like that. Cutscenes are the primary method of moving along the story and plotpoints but the disparity between discovering and seeing what to do and knowing what to do is making me somewhat cringe and bewildered about the storytelling execution of the game.
Once again, there are various narrative ideas/points set in front of you. However, I think that there might be a pacing issue. If it take yous 19 hours to set into the ground for the real meat and what is going to happen then I'm not exactly sure I feel invested.
The keyword is "compared." I'm speaking relatively.
EDIT: Just to be clear. I don't think the story in SMT4 is bad. It's just not keeping me interested or exciting and I feel that largely has to do with pacing of the main plot.
Are you playing the game with the intent of experiencing a narrative? Secondly, is there an intention in the design that wants to tell a story?
Basileus777
Member
Is the story in Pokemon an afterthought?
I'd buy a Johnny Yong Bosch pack for $9.99.
I had to shift my expectations and preconceived notions about what to expect from a JRPG narrative with regard to SMT IV but once I did I found myself acclimating quite nicely to the game's storytelling and pacing. Really enjoying my time so far.
Basileus777
Member
You jest, but I'd actually buy that.
Granted, I think the 19 hours is because of your own pacing and doing side quests. As far as the main quest is concerned, that part of the game is all of a few hours. Like, sub-10 without all the distractions.
I don't necessarily disagree with what you're saying. I'm just perfectly fine with how much information I've been given. It's a slow build-up and I know that my payoff is in the mid game, not the early, as far as the plot dumps are concerned.
Well, my question is this: How is the setting for a RPG not the story? A videogame is an interactive experience, or at least it's supposed to be. If the genre is such that the purpose of the narrative is allowing the player to explore and interact with the setting, does that not make it an integral part of the narrative itself?
When we speak of the "setting" here, it's not like we're talking about detailed design materials and backstory which isn't actually part of the package. This is often the case with novels, film, and television, where the setting is developed beyond what is used to give the creators more material to tap from while telling the story. But here, the entire setting is there for the player to experience, so it's clearly part and parcel of the actual "story" being experienced.
A game like Tetris or Pong clearly has no story, and that's not why people play it, but I really don't think it's true of something like SMT.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
They try and tell a story. It isn't the main part of the game of course. They are dissimilar in a way, but my comparison came from expecting something out of a game, in this case a great story from Pokemon, that isn't designed to be there as a core of the game's ethos.
SMT is about experiencing a world, whether that be Pre-Apocalypse Japan and Apocalypse Japan, The Millennial Kingdom and the surrounding world that has been built up after an Apocalypse, a Vortex World that is ready to be recreated, or a Pseudo Medieval Feudal World that doesn't appear to be as it first appears. On your journey as a blank slate you will meet various factions and people that will try to vie for your support in this World.
hosannainexcelsis
Member
Exactly. I think one of the storytelling advantages of video games is that it's able to give you a setting to explore and discover in a non-linear fashion, so it's able to flesh out a world in all sorts of ways that are unavailable to a linear medium such as a book or film. Making a game story all about moving from plot point to plot point fails to make use of this advantage.
I like SMT IV's story because it has a compelling setting. I want to learn more about how things came to be this way and how people have dealt with the situation they've found themselves in. The game does a good job of providing little tidbits of information about that scattered all over and wrapped up in an atmospheric package.
Chrono Helix
Member
Maybe I'm reaching here, but I think the biggest factor that contributes to this sense that bosses are unfair in IV is that they get 3 press turn icons (in addition to the random hit skills they're fond of using in this game). Early on your demons will at most be only able to null an element, which leaves the boss with one press turn icon, which isn't going to stop him from pulling off an AOE physical attack that crits, which leads to a party wipe easily. Most bosses in Nocturne only had 2 icons, so if you null their first attack their entire turn's over.
Then again, I was also speculating that the reason they have 3 press turns in IV is that they don't have Beast/Dragon Eye anymore.
Here's my contribution to the debate about how fair/unfair SMT IV is:
Okay guys, seriously, while there's a bit of luck involved in every negotiation and battle, I think there are enough factors you can control which makes it pretty fair. Think of it as Poker, where luck is a component but how you influence that and manage it against the other players is what makes it..... wait..... WHAT? I just got wiped by Blight again? FUCK THIS SHIT!
hosannainexcelsis
Member
You have to accept the Challenge Quest from the Quest menu before they'll show up.