Atlus Shin Megami Tensei IV 3DS (beating MaroonSkein to the punch!)

[Hobo Elf]

I'm not feeling it this time. As my nick suggest, I'm a big Nocturne fan. Strange Journey was great, not too far off Nocturne in fact. SMT IV has significant gameplay problems (see Nikaido posts) but also the game was getting more generic anime. That's a problem, it's a series that was doing mostly its own thing, while it was of course strongly influenced by anime.

Now Apocalypse feels more and more generic and seems to be getting more edgy: looks there's poodles of blood and loads of demons! There's also lots of demons with titties, what's not to love? Sure, the series was always about cheap horror with supernatural events and beings but it seems that it has become a joke of a joke now...

The series always was on a careful balance artistic and gameplay wise and it seems that newer games are trying their best to break that.

Your problem with the game is that it's an actual mainline SMT game instead of a Nocturne sequel. Nocturne is so far removed from SMT1 & 2 that it's weird they didn't make it into a spinoff. Dunno what your beef with SMT4's gameplay was (the mechanics were superb, the best the series has seen yet, but the balance was off and so the game became easier for it) but all the Japanese hardcore SMT fans universally agree that SMT: Final/Apocalypse not only fixed everything what was wrong with SMT4, but it is considered to be the best mainline SMT game. Japan loves it even more than Nocturne.

Is that truly the case? I wrote off apocalypse as I thought it was just more of SMT4. I guess I will keep my eye out for it.

Bosses have been buffed to better match the QoL improvements that made SMT4 easier. The Smirk system has been refined; spells now have alternative modes that go off if you cast them with the Smirk. Hamaon and Mudoon, for example, are not Light / Dark based OHKO spells anymore, but deal damage now. If you cast them with the Smirk status they'll work as the usual OHKO spells. This means that you can't get lololo insta killed during an unlucky ambush. You can get OHKO'd if you screw up and give Smirk to the enemy. Feels a lot more tactical this way. The art of some of the monsters have been redrawn as well to feel like they fit in better with the game. The same crappy designs apply, but the coloring and style doesn't make them feel out of place anymore, so it's at least an improvement. Medusa being one of the most obvious examples. Fans of the mainline SMT games will also be pleased to see that SMT4: Final/Apocalypse serves as the final chapter of the plot that spans between SMT1, 2 and 4.
Those are the most important things that were fixed off the top of my head.

 

[Hitoshura]

I'm not feeling it this time. As my nick suggest, I'm a big Nocturne fan. Strange Journey was great, not too far off Nocturne in fact. SMT IV has significant gameplay problems (see Nikaido posts) but also the game was getting more generic anime. That's a problem, it's a series that was doing mostly its own thing, while it was of course strongly influenced by anime.

Now Apocalypse feels more and more generic and seems to be getting more edgy: looks there's poodles of blood and loads of demons! There's also lots of demons with titties, what's not to love? Sure, the series was always about cheap horror with supernatural events and beings but it seems that it has become a joke of a joke now...

The series always was on a careful balance artistic and gameplay wise and it seems that newer games are trying their best to break that.

Your problem with the game is that it's an actual mainline SMT game instead of a Nocturne sequel. Nocturne is so far removed from SMT1 & 2 that it's weird they didn't make it into a spinoff. Dunno what your beef with SMT4's gameplay was (the mechanics were superb, the best the series has seen yet, but the balance was off and so the game became easier for it) but all the Japanese hardcore SMT fans universally agree that SMT: Final/Apocalypse not only fixed everything what was wrong with SMT4, but it is considered to be the best mainline SMT game. Japan loves it even more than Nocturne.

If Final/Apocalypse is even better than Nocturne, I'm definitely sold! I'm fine with SMT 1 & 2, I played the PS1 ports with a guide to survive the moon runes as my japanese skills are limited to deciphering katakana and a few kanjis. Not the best games I've played, but the story line was well done. The "I've got a grid of 16x16 to make dungeons and I absolutely have to fill it with little content" was not however. But these too had important gameplay flaws, regular opponents had too much HP and/or defense and took ages to kill. Damage dealing magic, even if you were going to hit weaknesses, was rather useless (too low damage output) but insta kill like hama/mudo was great. The gun that targeted all opponents with sleep bullets was tearing through random encounters in auto battle was game breaking to say the least.

 

[HotSnack]

Is the release schedule gonna be a hilarious FUCK YOU to Europe again?

Its Atlus. Do you even need to ask?

Worse. It's Sega Europe now. They already showed no interested in bringing over their own Sega RPGs. I expect them not to port anything that isn't called Persona or Hatsune Miku (and thus dashing my dreams of playing EO5).

 

[Perkel]

Didn't like SMT4 at all. Dropped it after two hours of basically grinding because everything basically two shotted my monsters and i didn't have cash to buy restoratives in quantity where i wouldn't need to grind more.

Though i need to finish Strange Journey. This is by far better game than SMT4

 

[Abu Antar]

Didn't like SMT4 at all. Dropped it after two hours of basically grinding because everything basically two shotted my monsters and i didn't have cash to buy restoratives in quantity where i wouldn't need to grind more.

Though i need to finish Strange Journey. This is by far better game than SMT4

It apparently gets easier, but then again, it becomes too easy (according to some impressions).

 

[Hirato]

SMT4 has some hard as fuck new game+ bosses though, such as Astaroth.

 

[Matador]

In addition to some of the flaws mentioned here, I'm going to explain my main problem with SMT4.

Compared with Nocturne,the demons are useful for shorter amount of time when acquired. Here they get deprecated too fast.

You don't get to enjoy the demon you struggled/are hyped to get for a long time,because they level up slower than in nocturne.It is always better to look for a new fusion and get a higher level demon that too soon will be deprecated.

I know that the point of this games is too get demons->fuse them->get more powerful demons,and repeat, but the pace is poor.

At is core these are party RPGs (bobbers) and one of the attractive of the genre is to progress,improve your adventurers and achieve goals with them. This collide a bit with the Pokemon concept,but you can do it better if you pace better the need for demon upgrade.

I can remember complete dungeons,beating bosses and meaningful parts of Nocturne without so much fusion, just having a solid group of demons with balanced skills and distinct roles. And this creates a great sense of achievement.

In addition in SMT4, with the new designed fusion system, you pass the same skills immediately to all the next generation demons. Creating a party in which all the demons do the same.

I don't think these 2 factors are good for a party dungeon crawler.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Compared with Nocturne,the demons are useful for shorter amount of time when acquired. Here they get deprecated too fast.

To add to this, I'm pretty sure skills like Life Bonus that give demons 10%/20%/30% more maximum life only apply during the time of the initial fusion, too. So a low level demon that you raise to higher levels will never get as much benefit from those skills, which is kind of a bummer because I like doing stuff like fusing an Uber Pixie and taking them it to the end game.

Despite its flaws, though, I really did like SMT4 a lot. Wasted too much time on it. The fusion search system is such an improvement I have trouble going to back to the earlier games anymore. It was really dumb that you could only play Hard mode after finishing the game once, though.

 

[Hitoshura]

This bring again the point that the series need careful design balance, which Nocturne and Strange Journey has and SMT4 doesn't. I do not care when games advertise than they have countless items, potential allies, etc... When you have too much of something, they tend to blur out over time. However, a few games in the series do it well.

These games have less demon churn and they feel more distinct from each other. The reason is that it's difficult to propagate all the "good skills" down the chain, when you fuse a new one, it will comes with its signature skills which can be hard to get rid of, you will transfer some key skills from its parents and finally, you will have some left overs. This balances well the fact that your fusion chain did matter (you had to prioritize skills inherited) but you didn't end up with "perfect demons" overnight and the resulting demon still has its personality.

Sure the "reset fusion countless time" in Nocturne could be improved upon. If I where to program a similar system, I would hash the parent demons data to create a random number seed that I would use to generate a fixed number list of potential results still with the inheritance rules system, something that could also be more explicit in the game. This system would also help to differentiate between game difficulty settings, for example, I would only show 8 possible results in hard mode, 16 in normal, etc...

 

[Hitoshura]

Apocalypse is dated September 20 for NA. It's going to be a busy new releases month for me, there's also DQ7 remake I'm looking forward landing 4 days earlier than that.

 

[Talby]

Just completed this, (original SMTIV, not Apocalypse) took about 50 hours. I got the Law ending. It's okay, but way too easy and held back by the handheld limitations. It was a mistake putting this on the 3DS instead of a home console, but I guess it was a financial decision since main SMT isn't as popular as Persona. Random thing that bugged me about the story: is it ever explained anywhere why people in the Japanese-style Kingdom of Mikado all have European names? I guess cause it's the kingdom of God or some shit?

Anyway, I started a new game in Nocturne on Hard to cleanse my palate. Gonna go for the True Demon ending and kill YHVH for making me suffer through SMTIV.

Edit: I've thought about this a bit, and I think it would've been more interesting if the roles of Jonathan and Walter had been reversed. When you meet them it's really obvious which will be the Law/Chaos hero based on their personality, and there are no surprises. At least in Nocturne, it's not immediately obvious what kind of Reason each of the humans will pursue. (except for Hikawa since he sets everything in motion)

This way, both of them could get some actual character development, with the hot-headed Walter realizing there are rules and traditions in place for a reason, turning him towards Law, and the traditionalist Jonathan coming to see how the law he wants to uphold keeps people ignorant and oppressed, so he turns coat and goes Chaos.

 

[Lutte]

Technical choices like going for third person in full freedom 3d environment instead of going with EO engine as they did with SJ hampered SMTIV as much as it being on handheld. While the SMT were never really heavy dungeon crawlers, the tiny room sized crap in SMT IV really broke the joy of exploring and going forward.
About financial decisions and Persona's popularity, the latter is actually helping SMT mainline now that Persona 5 is released. They worked on a ton of 3d demon assets and an engine which are going to be reused for the next mainline SMT game. SMT V is a Switch game and it will feature the full demon roster in 3d glory like Nocturne.

I didn't have any problem with SMT IV's characters however. The SMT characters were always more about representing an alignment than being multi-dimensional, in-depth representations of humans. Sometimes it's done in a slightly more subtle way, sometimes it's not, it's no big deal either way I can't say I ever cared for any character in the series. If you did, you will probably become really angry once you start playing SMT IVA.. because even someone who doesn't really care for characters such as I can't really turn a blind eye to the constant stream of nonsense and chatterboxes put in that game. IVA has some of the best combat in the series.. and also the most insufferable characters to the point that it really ruins the atmosphere of the game.

 

[Martius]

Just completed this, (original SMTIV, not Apocalypse) took about 50 hours. I got the Law ending. It's okay, but way too easy and held back by the handheld limitations. It was a mistake putting this on the 3DS instead of a home console, but I guess it was a financial decision since main SMT isn't as popular as Persona. Random thing that bugged me about the story: is it ever explained anywhere why people in the Japanese-style Kingdom of Mikado all have European names? I guess cause it's the kingdom of God or some shit?

It was probably just cost cutting. Nearly all recent Atlus games were on some kind of handheld -ds, psp, vita or 3ds. Only Persona 5 and Tokyo Mirage Sessions are exceptions. Hopefully right now they can move to something else.

 

[IPFreely]

I've like the recent Atlus hand held games (I actually quite liked SMT Apocalypse), but playing Persona 5 and seeing the fusions on a big screen again is pretty sweet.

 

[Doktor Best]

Playing through this right now with my MC being on lvl 24.

Is Demolingual a worthwhile app? How many demons will i be able to talk to exclusively with this app and are those of any importance?

 

[Thac0]

Playing through this right now with my MC being on lvl 24.

Is Demolingual a worthwhile app? How many demons will i be able to talk to exclusively with this app and are those of any importance?

Quite many are exclusive, I remember that one kicking in quite often. I don't think any of them are particularily strong, since it is usually dreg type demons that do not speak human. The gigachad carries are usually angle type or other vaguely humanoid demons.
But not being able to capture those dregs means capturing fusion fodder to keep your bank stocked becomes harder in certain areas. I always take it eventually for that alone.
It is not necessary to get a full compendium. You can get the demons through other means but scout+ and fusion. (but who is autistic enough to do that anyway?)
But it is nice to have and makes certain areas of the game much less annoying, as I am permanently fusing random bullshit in SMT and I hate having an empty backrow and no fusion fodder.
Depends on your playstile. I take it always.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Is this cover inspired by SMT4 or just mainline SMT?

 

[d1r]

The fucking kill animation transparency bug has finally been fixed after all these years in the latest Citra release! Rejoice everyone!

 

[Sentinel]

The fucking kill animation transparency bug has finally been fixed after all these years in the latest Citra release! Rejoice everyone!

Won't believe it until I see it.

PS: Is it a vulkan-only fix?

 

[d1r]

The fucking kill animation transparency bug has finally been fixed after all these years in the latest Citra release! Rejoice everyone!

Won't believe it until I see it.

PS: Is it a vulkan-only fix?

Am using OpenGL.

 

[Sentinel]

It's a miracle.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The fucking kill animation transparency bug has finally been fixed after all these years in the latest Citra release! Rejoice everyone!

Won't believe it until I see it.

PS: Is it a vulkan-only fix?

Am using OpenGL.

What version are you using? I am using the last canary version and I still see the issue (with both opengl and vulkan).

 

[d1r]

The fucking kill animation transparency bug has finally been fixed after all these years in the latest Citra release! Rejoice everyone!

Won't believe it until I see it.

PS: Is it a vulkan-only fix?

Am using OpenGL.

What version are you using? I am using the last canary version and I still see the issue (with both opengl and vulkan).

Citra Nightly 1989