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

[Puukko]

I am very critical of P5 but it definitely handled that aspect well. I remember having to really gauge if I could keep going forward or if I should go back and heal/save.

 

[d1r]

Cleared the game on HARD (73 hours, no SUPER BOSSES).

Some points of interest

Spoiler

• Soundtrack is a very mixed bag this time around. The dungeon soundtracks are very weak, and some of the battle themes (Hydra), and remixes (SMT5 Demi-Fiend remix) are just random noise. The overworld themes are absolutely fantastic though.
• Dungeons are absolute ass and unfun. Just cut them already if you really feel the need to include them just because it's a series "trademark". The overworld exploration aspect without the minimap felt so so much better.
  
• Story was just an afterthought, though I have to say that it kinda picked up in the later stages of the game, like SMT4A. Yet, some characters feel very underdeveloped, which was kinda annoying. The pacing at the beginning of the game was also very weird. It was not bad, just weird.
  
• Yakumo WAS NOT THE FUCKING MAIN CHARACTER of the game.
• Doi's Ultraman designs for the main characters are not good, and I do hope that he will not continue to Doi'fy other demons of the series.
• Definitely the best and most balanced gameplay of the SMT series so far. Game's definitely a 9/10. And it was worth the wait.
  
• SMT4 = SMT5 = SJ > SMT3 > SMT2 > SMT4A > SMT1 > IF

 

[Tigranes]

Nearly at the end, spoiler question -

Spoiler

Purple leyline "Mysterious Entrance" where you beat Vasuki

- it says cannot enter at current level, what level do I need to be?

Also, re. Khonsu:

Spoiler

Killed Amon, dude took the wings and went away, seems like that's not the end of it? Where do I find him again?

EDIT: well, found the answer for Khonsu -

Spoiler

talk to Miyazu @ Fairy village

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I finished 'Golden Apple' quest long ago and still, there is no Idun to fuse, wtf? Is this a bug or there are some additional requirements?

 

[Puukko]

I finished 'Golden Apple' quest long ago and still, there is no Idun to fuse, wtf? Is this a bug or there are some additional requirements?

Special fusions don't show up in the list until you have at least one of the ingredient demons in your compendium.

Just beat Shiva. Did a few hours of grinding and fusing before that and went in with a lvl 99 party. That was a fun and rhythmic fight, excellent battle theme too. A good appetizer for the true anal rape that is DF. This isn't a fight you can turtle. I will likely have to create even more specialized demons.

 

[Bohrain]

Demifiend can be cheesed to an extend by constantly swapping in a demon with null/drain phys since he'll do a physical attack against it every time you do it.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Special fusions don't show up in the list until you have at least one of the ingredient demons in your compendium.

I had all the components either in stock or in compendium and still no Idun.

Now, stuck on Castle 3rd Stratum platforming shit.

 

[Puukko]

Special fusions don't show up in the list until you have at least one of the ingredient demons in your compendium.

I had all the components either in stock or in compendium and still no Idun.

Now, stuck on Castle 3rd Stratum platforming shit.

Did you complete the followup quest involving Loki?

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Did you complete the followup quest involving Loki?

Oh, so it should be 'Goddes Stolen' from Jack Frost, not 'Golden Apple' quest from Oberon/Titania, thanks!

 

[Mortmal]

Nearly at the end, spoiler question -

Spoiler

Purple leyline "Mysterious Entrance" where you beat Vasuki

- it says cannot enter at current level, what level do I need to be?

Also, re. Khonsu:

Spoiler

Killed Amon, dude took the wings and went away, seems like that's not the end of it? Where do I find him again?

EDIT: well, found the answer for Khonsu -

Spoiler

talk to Miyazu @ Fairy village

I think it required level 80 at least, second hardest fight in the game . Dont try to do that now ! I did it early before finishing the main story and if you can do that you roll over anything the game pit you against in two rounds(except demi fiend dlc)...Dlc maybe made things too easy, you get so much macca , tomes and gospel its very easy to min max an invincible team.
Still had probably more fun than playing anything else this year i think.

 

[Puukko]

I did the final boss at appropriate level, then reloaded and got to grinding for the extra bosses.

 

[Mortmal]

I did the final boss at appropriate level, then reloaded and got to grinding for the extra bosses.

Can you tell me what you need to fuse abaddon ? Cant find that info anywhere on web .Randomly fusing my uber compendium demon just require too much macco grind now.

 

[Puukko]

I did the final boss at appropriate level, then reloaded and got to grinding for the extra bosses.

Can you tell me what you need to fuse abaddon ? Cant find that info anywhere on web .Randomly fusing my uber compendium demon just require too much macco grind now.

https://aqiu384.github.io/megaten-fusion-tool/smt5/demons/Abaddon/fissions

Fusion tables for every game.

 

[TheSoul]

First impressions after making it to the second netherworld area (a lot of comparisons to nocturne are made)

• Combat Changes are mostly good. Once you realize the game's trying to focus more on attrition than a quick burst of combat like 4, the design decisions made more sense to me. Only decision I'm not a fan of is limiting skill slots and some of the special skills being noticeably better than others.
• Still baffled over being unable to carry over improvements from previous games. You can only register 1 demon or all of them, no inbetween. Autocombat now requires you to click ok, breaking the flow too often for me. You can't zoom out the camera, items are a bitch to cycle through, etc.
• Art for demons is actually pretty good. I like the designs much more this time around. I hate all the character designs though, especially MC and that fucker he fused with. It's ugly, out of place, and embarrassing to see ingame (you even naruto run). It's the exact opposite problem I had with 4, where I liked all the designs, even the samurai, but all the new demons looked fucking awful.
• Writing feels rushed, especially with how you enter the netherworld the first time. It's still too early for me to say, so I'll just say I'm less than impressed right now. Even nocturne had more interesting and defined characters at the beginning to me.
• Atlus played way too much xenoblade while making this game. Making the overworlds big deserts was a huge mistake, and all the random junk farming for macca gets tedious real fast. The only thing to really do in here is collect glory or run up to every vending machine, as the overworld doesn't have anything to say like nocturne did. This made the game feel unfinished when all you explore are buildings, sand, and random cars. I was interested when you get to explore the school, since it's finally something different, but then half of the paths just get blocked. It also hurts the game's difficulty when you can just fasttravel anywhere instantly. I stopped caring about losing demons and mp conservation since all you have to do is hit L and they give you a lot of opportunities for free healing. Compared to Nocturne's overworld, it and 5 end up feeling like completely different worlds despite looking very similar.
• The soundtrack is really, really weak. It sounds unfinished, with most of the tracks just being ambience without any style like previous games. Even the battle tracks don't hit right, and it's the most disappointing aspect to me. I ended up just listening to nocturne/metal in the background because it all sounded so underwhelming.

TLDR
Gameplay is carrying much more than usual, everything else seems to be a step backwards. Outside of combat it plays like Nocturne but for people who didn't like Nocturne.

 

[dacencora]

as the overworld doesn't have anything to say like nocturne did

I'm at roughly the same part as you, and while some of your points I agree with, this one really made me "WTF am I reading?" because there are tons of secrets* and lots of demons that say funny/interesting things in the overworld. I find the sidequests to be more fun/more memorable than IV, as well. Overall, I think that IV still has the superior combat (unique abilities and affinities aside), but that V is much more fun to run around and do stuff in.

*Yeah yeah, it would be better without a minimap.

 

[TheSoul]

as the overworld doesn't have anything to say like nocturne did

I'm at roughly the same part as you, and while some of your points I agree with, this one really made me "WTF am I reading?" because there are tons of secrets* and lots of demons that say funny/interesting things in the overworld. I find the sidequests to be more fun/more memorable than IV, as well. Overall, I think that IV still has the superior combat (unique abilities and affinities aside), but that V is much more fun to run around and do stuff in.

*Yeah yeah, it would be better without a minimap.

When I say that, I mean the quests and exploration feel more like it was done for the game to have gameplay than build off the atmosphere. The open world and all the design decisions I felt had to accompany this holds smt5 back more than it helps the game. Nocturne had a lot of moments that made me feel like we were in a dead world, with the lost souls and manikins. Strange Journey made the team outsiders in a foreign world, with you being unable to explore half the maps at first, needing to identify enemies, and these decisions made the game feel like a desperate struggle vs the unknown. Both made me afraid of this world and what was in it.

5 doesn't feel like a struggle until you fight a boss, and you just get told where to go with quest markers. I'm not worried about what lies beyond when I'm exploring, I'm just running and trying to find the next warp point. The tone feels completely different from what we're told to when we play the game. The quests are just there. You help mermaid, fuck up a demon, and collect x items from an enemy. Maybe i was missing something. Honestly preferred 4's, because it sets up how fucked tokyo is.

 

[dacencora]

5 doesn't feel like a struggle until you fight a boss, and you just get told where to go with quest markers

Oh yes, absolutely, the survival-like trepidation is certainly weaker here. I still think it's there a little bit, but much weaker than other SMTs. Though, to be frank, Strange Journey and Nocturne do that the best. IV wasn't that good with that either with save anywhere. I really like the combat in IV and loved the game whenever I was in combat, but I thought the rest of the game was rather weak. Combat is the most important element in an RPG so it's still a good RPG, but overall I think V is stronger than IV in every aspect except the combat, and even there, the lack of affinities in IV was odd to me, and I am glad to see its return in V.

 

[Pathfinder: Kingmaker]

Holy Chimera: A monster with the heads of a lion and a male goat and the tail of a snake. It was originally a holy beast representative of the seasons, but in the midst of being taken into Greek myth, it was looked down upon as a ferocious monster.

DRAGON'S DOGMA REFERENCE?????

 

[Hobo Elf]

Autocombat now requires you to click ok, breaking the flow too often for me.

I think this can be turned off in the options.

 

[catgode]

my save file

I'm convinced redditards are braindamaged and suck Nocturne's dick so hard because having to use buffs is peak strategy for them. Does the difficulty pick up from where I am? So far most of the fights I've had people hype up were easy. Hydra took me a few tries, Loup Garou needed like three, everything else goes down in two max.

I'm pretty sure my honeymoon phase is wearing out, if it didn't end outright. Random encounters are background noise now, I can spam Estoma for borderline free and completely ignore everything. In SMT4, you needed to hit an enemy with your overworld attack. And I'm pretty sure in general Estoma only worked if the encounter was lower level, so you had to fight till your level outmatched enemies in the area. Here? It's just a big "fuck off" button that completely disables encounters. If I somehow *do* end up in a fight, Trafuri is dirt cheap, so are Smoke Balls.

I'm convinced the game gives the player too much control *and* too much information. Spyglassing bosses on the first turn removes the element of discovery since you already know everything there is to know. Magatsuhi moves are beyond lame, for some reason even if you're fighting a badass sword-wielding physical attacker, their magatsuhi move just has to be an elemental AoE for some fucking reason (Cum Hail with a Maragion, are you serious???). Oh right, the reason is that you need to be able to cheese the move with a dampener. The most threatening big dick moves are just free turns for the player.

I literally never need to look at my demon's weaknesses. If they're weak to the magatsuhi move, I give no shits, because I use dampener. If they're weak to most attacks, I use dampener anyway for extra safety, or spam Guard and it's the same, since Guard prevents weaks and criticals. I've spent 0 minutes fusing my demons specifically for a boss fight. [EDIT: i do occasionally use an essence or two to get weakness-hitting attacks onto a demon, but that is at most. i guess just how it works with the essence fusion nowadays. still, usually id have to fuse new demons for resists/nulls, and that's just not the case here because of dampeners and guard anyway, so my point kinda stands?]

Buffs and debuffs are still king, Fairy Banquet and spamming debuffs made Lahmu a walking miserable joke.

Why are dampeners cheaper than shards? Seriously. 150 macca. Shards are, what, 300? 400?? What the fuck Fatlus. 3 dampeners is too much. Nerf that shit to 1 max.

Sorry for the rant, I just... just don't know. Why are people busting nuts over the difficulty? It's not hard. I don't feel in danger. In SMT4 at least I had to concentrate+megido the random mobs, here I just ignore them. I'm playing on Hard, I'm not braindead grinding, the only DLC I own is Return of the True Demon and I'm not even making any use of fiends at all (using a sprinkle of Daisoujou, and that's it atm, Hell Biker and Matador are kinda meh). No bullshit Cleopatra, no bullshit Artemis. Idunn is reportedly really strong, got her a bit ago, haven't used her much though. No Mitama DLC. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be playing drunk? Should I avoid doing any sidecontent to keep myself underleveled? Should I staple my balls to the wall? I even avoided getting the Knowledge of Tools miracle because I can tell it's busted and I found the game to be easy enough as it is.

I'm not good at video games. I'm not a veteran of the series by any means. Old RPGs scare my zoomer brain. I'm not doing any big brain strategies, most of my fusions are just me winging it to get a higher level demon.

Walked into the

Spoiler

Shohei

fight yesterday by accident. He ripped a new one in my MC with a physical attack. If I boot up the game tomorrow, do minimal prep, and manage to do him second try (first serious try), I think I'm just gonna turn the game off at the spot and start Nocturne. Or SJ:R. I have both. I'll get to see what the fuss is all about.

Internet lied to me again and I'm mad. Am I doing something wrong???

 

[Dishonoredbr]

I finished the game yestarday and all i have to say is..

The gameplay , especialy the combat carries this game so hard. If the gameplay wasn't nearly as fun this game would be extremly forgetable because everything else is just kinda mid.

This game clearly wasn't 100% finished and lack focus. That's especialy true when you stop to think about everything involving the story , plot points and especialy characters like Yuzuru that give a vibe of ''This game clealy had a entire area or two cut''. 8/10 game but it could be much more honestly. It feel like the team behind SMT has a ton of raw talent but they're like headless chickens trying to make a semi-decent story and characters. I got that feeling playing SMT4 , SMT4Apocalpyse and SMTV just make me certain that something is wrong with Maniax/SMT team.

Also this game LOVES to suck Nocturne dick so much that make this game like less because of it.

''OOOOHH GUYS GUYS DO YOU REMEMBER NOCTURNE? WE ARE JUST LIKE NOCTURNE ? DO YOU MEMBER THE CONCEPTION? THE AMALA DRUMS? THE GAME IS JUST LIKE NOCTURNE , SO MUST BE GOOD yAH?''

 

[dacencora]

my save file

I'm convinced redditards are braindamaged and suck Nocturne's dick so hard because having to use buffs is peak strategy for them. Does the difficulty pick up from where I am? So far most of the fights I've had people hype up were easy. Hydra took me a few tries, Loup Garou needed like three, everything else goes down in two max.

I'm pretty sure my honeymoon phase is wearing out, if it didn't end outright. Random encounters are background noise now, I can spam Estoma for borderline free and completely ignore everything. In SMT4, you needed to hit an enemy with your overworld attack. And I'm pretty sure in general Estoma only worked if the encounter was lower level, so you had to fight till your level outmatched enemies in the area. Here? It's just a big "fuck off" button that completely disables encounters. If I somehow *do* end up in a fight, Trafuri is dirt cheap, so are Smoke Balls.

I'm convinced the game gives the player too much control *and* too much information. Spyglassing bosses on the first turn removes the element of discovery since you already know everything there is to know. Magatsuhi moves are beyond lame, for some reason even if you're fighting a badass sword-wielding physical attacker, their magatsuhi move just has to be an elemental AoE for some fucking reason (Cum Hail with a Maragion, are you serious???). Oh right, the reason is that you need to be able to cheese the move with a dampener. The most threatening big dick moves are just free turns for the player.

I literally never need to look at my demon's weaknesses. If they're weak to the magatsuhi move, I give no shits, because I use dampener. If they're weak to most attacks, I use dampener anyway for extra safety, or spam Guard and it's the same, since Guard prevents weaks and criticals. I've spent 0 minutes fusing my demons specifically for a boss fight. [EDIT: i do occasionally use an essence or two to get weakness-hitting attacks onto a demon, but that is at most. i guess just how it works with the essence fusion nowadays. still, usually id have to fuse new demons for resists/nulls, and that's just not the case here because of dampeners and guard anyway, so my point kinda stands?]

Buffs and debuffs are still king, Fairy Banquet and spamming debuffs made Lahmu a walking miserable joke.

Why are dampeners cheaper than shards? Seriously. 150 macca. Shards are, what, 300? 400?? What the fuck Fatlus. 3 dampeners is too much. Nerf that shit to 1 max.

Sorry for the rant, I just... just don't know. Why are people busting nuts over the difficulty? It's not hard. I don't feel in danger. In SMT4 at least I had to concentrate+megido the random mobs, here I just ignore them. I'm playing on Hard, I'm not braindead grinding, the only DLC I own is Return of the True Demon and I'm not even making any use of fiends at all (using a sprinkle of Daisoujou, and that's it atm, Hell Biker and Matador are kinda meh). No bullshit Cleopatra, no bullshit Artemis. Idunn is reportedly really strong, got her a bit ago, haven't used her much though. No Mitama DLC. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be playing drunk? Should I avoid doing any sidecontent to keep myself underleveled? Should I staple my balls to the wall? I even avoided getting the Knowledge of Tools miracle because I can tell it's busted and I found the game to be easy enough as it is.

I'm not good at video games. I'm not a veteran of the series by any means. Old RPGs scare my zoomer brain. I'm not doing any big brain strategies, most of my fusions are just me winging it to get a higher level demon.

Walked into the

Spoiler

Shohei

fight yesterday by accident. He ripped a new one in my MC with a physical attack. If I boot up the game tomorrow, do minimal prep, and manage to do him second try (first serious try), I think I'm just gonna turn the game off at the spot and start Nocturne. Or SJ:R. I have both. I'll get to see what the fuss is all about.

Internet lied to me again and I'm mad. Am I doing something wrong???

Man this is interesting. I obviously suck compared to you. Matador took me quite a few tries, and I fuse demons specifically for every boss fight. I didn't think that IV was particularly difficult. I think that V is much harder and so was Nocturne. The only real challenge on SMT IV was that some of the mobs could smirk you and then destroy you fairly easily. The bosses are much more meat-shieldy in this game, I think, than they were in IV. In IV I could take a few hits to see what the boss was weak to, but in V, I just use the spyglass because my demons seem squishy and bosses are more powerful. TLDR: I'm bad at this game lmao.

 

[Tigranes]

"Too much information/tools for the player" + "Not enough survival mood driven design" is probably what all the major criticisms boil down to (and correctly so). I am still very happy that we have a new mainline SMT that has, on the main, really really good gameplay.

For cat boy - I assume Hard? It's not the most difficult SMT at all due to the amount of control player gets over every phase of the game. If you're reading reddit or somethng and caring about the opinions there maybe that's a problem you can solve in your life.

Plot was nonsense in almost every SMT so I dunno what the big deal is there. I see SMT stories as just fragments to set the general mood around the Big Question rather than any coherent sequence of actual events.

 

[catgode]

If you're reading reddit or somethng and caring about the opinions there maybe that's a problem you can solve in your life.

unfortunately im at a spot in my life where arguing with people on the internet is the most exciting thing that's happening

"Too much information/tools for the player" + "Not enough survival mood driven design" is probably what all the major criticisms boil down to (and correctly so). I am still very happy that we have a new mainline SMT that has, on the main, really really good gameplay. [...] It's not the most difficult SMT at all due to the amount of control player gets over every phase of the game.

Yeah, if you remove all the dumb crying I did, that's basically where I'm at. I'm definitely enjoying the game myself still, feels like a good 7/weak 8, I just feel like it's playing it too safe. Wish bosses threw more curveballs I needed to actually prepare for/adapt to. Was fighting some random abscess and saw enemies absorbing Magatsuhi, so I used a dampener for the element I was expecting out of habit. Got slapped for 4 critting basic attacks. Survived, but it still shook me up a bit just because I wasn't expecting it. But yeah, I wish the Magatsuhi moves were something spicier than just a "some elemental attack" like severe single-target elec or medium AoE fire for the sole purpose of being counterable by an item. Something almighty or a powerful debuff. Maybe endgame bosses have something interesting up their sleeve, I hope.

Also not too thrilled with the level-based damage calculations. This isn't an open world game where I can go wherever, we're still gated by story progress, so there's no need to enforce the soft level requirement anyway. I won't the fighting enemies on level X without beating that one boss on the way. The only real "value" out of this level thing is that we can have ridiculously powerful enemies on the map to come back later to, but the game doesn't allow us to easily check their levels without jumping into a fight, so you never really know if you're ready. Too low of a level? You deal no damage and get oneshot. Too high of a level? Your damage numbers are doubled and boss tickles you.

As a side effect, demon variety in random encounters suffers a bit. If a game pulls up an earlier demon in a fight to accompany whatever you've engaged, they usually serve as nothing other than a minor distraction. Got 2 Koppa Tengus when engaging Nekomatas, and they dealt 5 times less damage hitting my weakness than Nekomatas just using the basic attack, purely because of the level gap. Might've not included them in the formation at all at this point.

my quote

my save file

I'm convinced redditards are braindamaged and suck Nocturne's dick so hard because having to use buffs is peak strategy for them. Does the difficulty pick up from where I am? So far most of the fights I've had people hype up were easy. Hydra took me a few tries, Loup Garou needed like three, everything else goes down in two max.

I'm pretty sure my honeymoon phase is wearing out, if it didn't end outright. Random encounters are background noise now, I can spam Estoma for borderline free and completely ignore everything. In SMT4, you needed to hit an enemy with your overworld attack. And I'm pretty sure in general Estoma only worked if the encounter was lower level, so you had to fight till your level outmatched enemies in the area. Here? It's just a big "fuck off" button that completely disables encounters. If I somehow *do* end up in a fight, Trafuri is dirt cheap, so are Smoke Balls.

I'm convinced the game gives the player too much control *and* too much information. Spyglassing bosses on the first turn removes the element of discovery since you already know everything there is to know. Magatsuhi moves are beyond lame, for some reason even if you're fighting a badass sword-wielding physical attacker, their magatsuhi move just has to be an elemental AoE for some fucking reason (Cum Hail with a Maragion, are you serious???). Oh right, the reason is that you need to be able to cheese the move with a dampener. The most threatening big dick moves are just free turns for the player.

I literally never need to look at my demon's weaknesses. If they're weak to the magatsuhi move, I give no shits, because I use dampener. If they're weak to most attacks, I use dampener anyway for extra safety, or spam Guard and it's the same, since Guard prevents weaks and criticals. I've spent 0 minutes fusing my demons specifically for a boss fight. [EDIT: i do occasionally use an essence or two to get weakness-hitting attacks onto a demon, but that is at most. i guess just how it works with the essence fusion nowadays. still, usually id have to fuse new demons for resists/nulls, and that's just not the case here because of dampeners and guard anyway, so my point kinda stands?]

Buffs and debuffs are still king, Fairy Banquet and spamming debuffs made Lahmu a walking miserable joke.

Why are dampeners cheaper than shards? Seriously. 150 macca. Shards are, what, 300? 400?? What the fuck Fatlus. 3 dampeners is too much. Nerf that shit to 1 max.

Sorry for the rant, I just... just don't know. Why are people busting nuts over the difficulty? It's not hard. I don't feel in danger. In SMT4 at least I had to concentrate+megido the random mobs, here I just ignore them. I'm playing on Hard, I'm not braindead grinding, the only DLC I own is Return of the True Demon and I'm not even making any use of fiends at all (using a sprinkle of Daisoujou, and that's it atm, Hell Biker and Matador are kinda meh). No bullshit Cleopatra, no bullshit Artemis. Idunn is reportedly really strong, got her a bit ago, haven't used her much though. No Mitama DLC. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be playing drunk? Should I avoid doing any sidecontent to keep myself underleveled? Should I staple my balls to the wall? I even avoided getting the Knowledge of Tools miracle because I can tell it's busted and I found the game to be easy enough as it is.

I'm not good at video games. I'm not a veteran of the series by any means. Old RPGs scare my zoomer brain. I'm not doing any big brain strategies, most of my fusions are just me winging it to get a higher level demon.

Walked into the

Spoiler

Shohei

fight yesterday by accident. He ripped a new one in my MC with a physical attack. If I boot up the game tomorrow, do minimal prep, and manage to do him second try (first serious try), I think I'm just gonna turn the game off at the spot and start Nocturne. Or SJ:R. I have both. I'll get to see what the fuss is all about.

Internet lied to me again and I'm mad. Am I doing something wrong???

Man this is interesting. I obviously suck compared to you. Matador took me quite a few tries, and I fuse demons specifically for every boss fight. I didn't think that IV was particularly difficult. I think that V is much harder and so was Nocturne. The only real challenge on SMT IV was that some of the mobs could smirk you and then destroy you fairly easily. The bosses are much more meat-shieldy in this game, I think, than they were in IV. In IV I could take a few hits to see what the boss was weak to, but in V, I just use the spyglass because my demons seem squishy and bosses are more powerful. TLDR: I'm bad at this game lmao.

I'm wondering if maybe you just fought Matador at a lower level than me? I can certainly see the fight being challenging if you attempt it underlevelled enough, which is easily possible since you can access the fight wayyyy before you're even close to lvl 26, which is I believe what Matador has. I found him to be decently manageable, just Sukunda him out of his Red Capote, Force Dampener when he prepares Magatsuhi (I think he was casting Mazan for it, right?) and abuse the weakness, but I was close to him at level. Could've fought him a bit earlier, I knew it was possible if I spent some time doing tryhard fusing, but I figured I'd rather spent less time moving forward in the game and getting these 2-3 levels than more time fusing for one fight I might've just been underleveled for. I think I might have missed out in retrospect. And no, I don't think IV was difficult either, that's pretty much the popular opinion. Difficulty drops off hard after Minotaur/Medusa.

***

I think I'll just stop complaining and go back to actually playing the game, but from what I've read it gets easier as you go on, as is tradition, so I might not get what I look for. Slightly miffed even on the "hardest" difficulty I have to put extra effort to be slapped by the game. I wonder how far I'd be able to get just ignoring all the side content, mitamas and navigator loot before avoiding fights and being underleveled blocks me for good. For now, back to pumping Principality with grimoires because I don't want to let go of my cool angel.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm convinced redditards are braindamaged and suck Nocturne's dick so hard because having to use buffs is peak strategy for them.

No, you're mistaken. Nocturne is praised for its cool atmosphere, competent dungeon design and engaging mechanics. The challenge in MegaTen has always been the dungeons as a whole with the traps and dead ends that waste your resources; usual dungeon stuff. Looking at combat in a vaccuum is a mistake. Individually, combat and bosses have never been all that challenging in MegaTen outside of a few exceptions. It's fun and it does require you to think about things like team composition and skill inheritances instead just mashing buttons or grinding to get through, but it has never been very hard. Brainlets who get ambush Mudo'd screeching over the game being too hard despite it giving you several options that completely negate (and punish the enemy while doing so by robbing them of their turns) should be ignored.

''OOOOHH GUYS GUYS DO YOU REMEMBER NOCTURNE? WE ARE JUST LIKE NOCTURNE ? DO YOU MEMBER THE CONCEPTION? THE AMALA DRUMS? THE GAME IS JUST LIKE NOCTURNE , SO MUST BE GOOD yAH?''

It is a spiritual and literal sequel to Nocturne, so it makes sense.