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Atlus Shin Megami Tensei V - It's been hurting my OCD.

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
running a suboptimal LCK/str Hard - currently about 66/50. Not convinced luck does much of anything, though I do like an ailment specialist MC with ailment mastery up. Probably better as STR/vit to maximise the "phys dmg + if afflicted with x" abilities.

Yoshitsune and Alice are fabulous. Usinh fiend dlc now and Matador and Biker stats seem too bleh, daisoujou uniques are nice.
 

LJ40

Cipher
Joined
Jul 16, 2014
Messages
612
Location
Wizardry/Ultima/Goldbox
I liked the game a lot but some of the bosses and the final dungeon in general are very underwhelming. I started the game feeling it was a :5/5: but in the end is a:3/5:. I'm kinda annoyed at Atlus they dissapointed me twice in the year. First Persona 5 and then this. Still a good game on its own and much better than P5, i guess my expectations were just too high.
To be fair, Persona 5 was released 5 years ago and was developed for a system 2 generations back. If it's only disappointing you this year, that's kind of on you.
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
What a creative way to manipulate press turns. According to the video uploader comments he spent like 3 hours resetting to fish all the crits so there's that. Ingenious stuff regardless.
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
I've found best way to farm macca (at this point of the gaem - for careless fusing purposes), much better, efficient and fun than hunting mitamas - switch difficulty do Safety and start killing Demi-Fiend over and over - on Safety he's really easy for 99 party, first time gives 666.666 macca and after that prize is still above 200.000. Plus, if you have already used his essence, you will receive another one.
 
Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 14, 2020
Messages
803
I wanted the game to flop, now seeing the success they will want to "expand their audience", like every other series trashed by the normalfag audience. Time to go back to my cuck shed of dungeon crawlers without auto mapping which will always be free from normalfag influence, or games without UI like Dwarf Fortress.
 

dacencora

Guest
I wanted the game to flop, now seeing the success they will want to "expand their audience", like every other series trashed by the normalfag audience. Time to go back to my cuck shed of dungeon crawlers without auto mapping which will always be free from normalfag influence, or games without UI like Dwarf Fortress.
I hope you get lots of Kodex Kool Kredits for this post.
 

catgode

Novice
Joined
Jul 7, 2021
Messages
13
Hydra took me a few tries, Loup Garou needed like three, everything else goes down in two max.

This is a turn based game. Unless you are playing tactical turn based a boss taking more than one try for someone with experience is hard, taking more than two (ie surviving the first real attempt with prep work) is peak difficulty.
I play hard games to revisit being a child, taking multiple attempts for bosses and getting immense dopamine rushes when beating them. I remember being stuck on some bosses for weeks.
But the problem is we are not dumb children anymore. I can ironman the average Final Fantasy blind, not a single threat of death even. The last boss that had me stuck for more than a day was YHVH from STM IV Apocalypse.

I am gratefull that difficult games like this exist, because if every game was as easy as your FFXIIIs then I would drop JRPGs.
But it still won't be truly difficult in a way a Battle Brothers is.
If you want some more oomph, from the series I played I consider only two harder than SMT.
Etrian Odyssey, because it has a more stringest element of ressource management, and SaGa, because it breaks a lot of JRPG conventions, so you need to relearn a bunch of stuff.

thanks for recommendations

i generally agree with what you said, I had a lot of trouble coming to a consensus in my head in regards to how i feel about the difficulty of the game, kept going back and forth between being happy and not. im not in a great state of mind and wasnt back then so that mightve contributed. the level being a big factor in damage scaling definitely played a trick on me more than once, with some optional bosses making me unsure if im approaching them wrong or just needing to hit the level gym and go up in numbers.

ive finished the game today at hard with 80-something hours and wanted to do some more bad takes but i think i went too aggresive with trying to finish the game and burned myself out twice in the process + personal stuff.

overall feels like a good game, but not a great game. i had my hopes up in the beginning with a sane difficulty curve, mana being an actual issue, and checkpoints instead of save anywhere, but return pillar, estoma, trafuri and smoke balls trivialize the exploration and resourse management bit. abscesses and bosses started getting interesting near end of 3rd area, abscesses with 3 or more enemies in particular i found surprisingly fun and stimulating. game in general felt like it was losing steam in the 3rd area, and taito restored a bit of the drive.

dungeons felt too big. not in the "muh dungenz too long" sense. corridors felt ridiculously large, making avoiding encounters easier combine this with easy predictable patterns and being able to easily outrun demons aaaand it gets boring. i actually liked the smt4 encounters in dungeons more. ambushes, not being able to easily outrun, not being able to easily disable them via estoma. the ability to see them felt less like a way to avoid them and more like a way to give the player means of starting the fight on your own terms. also i think corridors were much tighter, so you couldnt just run past them.

im mixed on essences, felt like they undermined fusion a bit. not sure how to change that or if it should be changed at all. it definitely cuts some tedium out, but it kinda served the "flavor" in a way. i never got into fusing lvl 99 pixies with -dyne skills though so ymmv. i liked the fantasy of tweaking the builds and figuring out fusions to make a squad that works for the fight, so the ability to quickly patch a resist or an elemental skill onto a demon with essence fusion went against it a bit. so its probably me being dumb and weird.

special shout outs to ananta, principality, lahmu and dominion (and to lesser extent camael) who i held onto a bit longer than i probably should, but with grimoires and sutras they kept giving me bang for the buck.

also (lawchad very end boss spoilers i guess?)
the nahobino nuwa fight was so underwhelming it hurts. i dont know if i went overboard with resists/nulls on my team, got lucky or if she really is that easy, but after flubbing my first try and spending 10 minutes getting demons with good fire spells, i just did her 5x faster barely having any strategy. spammed fire spells and chucked a mediarahan once or twice and that's it.

luci pissed me off with him nulling majority of stuff but i kinda appreciate it getting me out of my comfort zone and forcing to redo my squad a bit. i feel like the game couldve started incentivising pierce a bit earlier though. or maybe im blind and/or stubborn and just didnt get it when it tried to?

--
after contemplating a bit, i feel like a big reason for nuwa fight being the way it is was me getting rank violation miracle and just fusing lvl 95 baal with maragibarion and high fire pleroma lol. not sure if thats more on the game or on me but at least its somewhat solved.

so yeah, a strong 7/10 for me, i guess. ill get started with nocturne after i detox myself from turnbased anything for a bit, probably. was nice chatting with yall, cheers
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
Shiva killed on Hard, with low level party and magic build Nahobino (so it's doable):



Now if someone could defeat Demi-Fiend with similar setup...
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
i am setting up for shiva/demifiend now. had a quick look at shiva, seems like the only answer is set up with luster candy / debilitate / dekunda? i dont see how else to survive the massive almighty attack?

i did some careless fusing so might havr to hunt essences down or something, esp bowl of hygiea as well.
 
Joined
Dec 19, 2012
Messages
1,633
I'm still going through the main story, in the Demon King's castle atm. So far lil fox bro and black ooze were my MVPs overall.

Trying to regain an essence seems pretty grating- is it just a matter of feeding a demon a grimoire, autobattling an ez fight, hoping for the best and then repeat? Other than the essences that are sold in the store that's the only way I can thinkto get them.
 
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
2,430
Trying to regain an essence seems pretty grating- is it just a matter of feeding a demon a grimoire, autobattling an ez fight, hoping for the best and then repeat? Other than the essences that are sold in the store that's the only way I can thinkto get them.

Level up demons and hope for the best is the only way to get certain essence for demons that are not random encounters and I've never met situation when demon give it more than once, for another you need to refuse demon and level up again

For demons/random encounter - buy Deadly Aura 3 miracle, you can demand essence form cornered demons.

Other than store you can find essences in treasure box, some are rewards for completing quests (e.g. 'Power Beyond Control' gives Amanozako's one).

Oh, and you can farm Demi-Fiend essence every time you kill him.

i am setting up for shiva/demifiend now. had a quick look at shiva, seems like the only answer is set up with luster candy / debilitate / dekunda? i dont see how else to survive the massive almighty attack?

This and try to to transfer Null Phys (form Ongy-Ki) / Repel Phys (Fallen Abdiel, NG+ only) and Enduring soul.

Level up Idun for Golden Apple spamming.

Bring Yoshitsune with Impaler Animus and Critial Zealot - with Hassu Tobie you will alway have ciritals -> more press turn ->more chance to kill Ananta / Parvati before they heal Shiva.

Give MC Demi-Fiend essence for affinities (on Safety he's way easier than Shiva on Casual).

I still haven't beat him because I gave up on first run (magical build on Normal), now I'm replaying NG+ on Hard but that's how I'm doing preperations based on previous countless fiascos.
 
Last edited:

SerratedBiz

Arcane
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
4,143
I feel like the game is a huge letdown in a lot of regards. A lot of the new mechanics have made the game too easy, as described by others before. I never run out of MP and rarely need to go back for healing, and getting back to a save point to fully heal is as easy as a return pillar which trivializes the whole experience anyway. I essence fusioned my MC with almost every resistance known to man so there's no chance of instakills and a very low chance of losing any battle.

The game has some killer songs, though.

 

N0rn

Novice
Joined
Dec 28, 2021
Messages
30
I feel like the essences really make building the protagonist and other demons too easy. Whispering in IV was at least more dependent on actually training demons in your party instead of just finding an essence which has the skills or resistances you want. Fusion is also way more convenient by adding a fusion list that includes the compendium. In other SMT games, I always used to write the fusion combinations down I couldnt do yet but have already discovered. This more exploratory aspect of party building kinda gets lost as well.
All in all, I was satisfied with the game in general, even though several aspects let me down a bit (difficulty, story, environments). Doing my third playthrough now, this time as a reborn, and going for true neutral.
The game has some killer songs, though.
That is true, this boss theme really captures the SMT atmosphere well I think.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Charm works on Shiva which makes the fight a whole lot easier.

I am not super convinced - my lv92, 100+ luck MC seems to have sub-50% chance on landing +9 affinity charm. Seems to be ailments can be great to make life easy for mobs and some bosses but you cant rely on it the way you can luster candy or blocks. You can do Accursed Poison but then you give up other uses like Shield of God or Freikugel.

Managed to get Hard Shiva down over half with Yoshimitsu, Fallen Abdiel and Alita but I really should have kept Idun... just not enough buffer to avoid collapse when one or two things go wrong.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet
I am not super convinced - my lv92, 100+ luck MC seems to have sub-50% chance on landing +9 affinity charm Seems to be ailments can be great to make life easy for mobs and some bosses but you cant rely on it the way you can luster candy or blocks..

Just like everything else combat related in SMT and Persona, I'm guessing that ailment reliability goes up the closer/higher in level you are in relation to the target. Stats matter but not to the same degree as your level does. Iirc in SMT5 you do and take about 10% more damage for each level you are above or below the target. If it works similarly for ailments it would have a dramatic effect on application.

And while Luck does help landing ailments, +/- 100 is considered to be average at level 90+. It isn't going to be fudging the numbers too much in your favor. Since stats cap out at 999, there's going to be a pretty gradual shift in effectiveness. I have no idea how affinities affect ailment chances, if they do.

If you're worried about wasting turns then there's always the option to use skills where the ailment is a secondary effect.

Take my words as idle musings rather than raw facts, however.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Surely ailment affinity affects ailment chances, or what are they even for? That said, I'm still not entirely sure what LCK does in SMT5 (hence ending up with a silly 100str/100lck MC).

Since the actual game more or less ends around lv80, its a bit of a pain to get up to lv99 unless you stocked a ton of gospels - I think this is where the heavy level dependence hurts. A level 70 demon with 100+ main stat shouldnt die from a feather brush just because of level.
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
Joined
Feb 17, 2009
Messages
13,997
Location
Platypus Planet
Surely ailment affinity affects ailment chances, or what are they even for? That said, I'm still not entirely sure what LCK does in SMT5 (hence ending up with a silly 100str/100lck MC).

Since the actual game more or less ends around lv80, its a bit of a pain to get up to lv99 unless you stocked a ton of gospels - I think this is where the heavy level dependence hurts. A level 70 demon with 100+ main stat shouldnt die from a feather brush just because of level.
Luck is for ailment application. It doesn't seem to increase Critical at all. Might have some kind of affect on hit/dodge chances. I hoarded my gospels until the very end so I could boost my level for the end game stuff. It felt like the low level cap on enemies was done just to "force" people into buying the XP Mitama DLC.
 

Abu Antar

Turn-based Poster
Patron
Joined
Jan 19, 2014
Messages
13,512
Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I guess this will eventually find its way to PC (
clear.png
fabulously optimistic), which will make it top 1 million units sold.
 

Riumedis

Novice
Joined
Dec 30, 2021
Messages
13
https://personacentral.com/atlus-2022-smtv-sales/
Looks like SMT V did pretty alright regarding sales. Not as good as Persona 5 obviously, but 800000 isn't a bad number considering IV took 2 years to get to 600000.
That is more than I thought it would sell, since in Japan it only sold 184,388 units according to Famitsu. It seems that the marketing push that Atlus and Nintendo did help quite a lot to move units outside of Japan.
 

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