Yep. Whatās he doing these days?
4A has a āwinterā release date in europe
i keep seeing screenshots of high-def kaneko demons from p5 and hoping for a ps4 smt5
Kanekoās supposedly still with Atlus. I never hear in what capacity. He was fairly present in Strange Journeyās production, and was responsible for some of SMTIVās plot outline, but otherwiseā¦?
Honestly good as P5 looks on its own, that was one of the hypest things when the first trailer dropped. They did go back to demons as enemies though, and Atlus is resource efficientā¦so hereās hoping!
Eh, glory days of MegaTen are behind us, I am afraid. Only waifulands from now on. Not that I blame it solely on Atlus, tis the way of Nippon these days.
Kazuma Kaneko is probably involved, but wants to give the junior staff of the company more chances, I guess. Just like Shoji Meguro is handling only Persona from now on, and lets the younger composers oto the other stuff. Which I donāt mind, despite being my favorite composer I think he peaked with DDS and has become quite predictable in his compositions. SMTIV soundtrack was ballzer and it was handled by one of the juniors.
Iāve always been vaguely interested in the SMT series
What are the highlights? How much of my life do I need to devote to these things to get the fun (or at least cool) parts?
Iāve only played through a handful of them, but the franchise as a whole has a reputation/history of being lengthy, grindy, and well above average difficulty.
So it depends upon the ones that interest you and what youād consider fun or cool parts, but most of them require at least a couple hours to get into the actual systems and flow of things.
Iām not good at offering advice on where to start, other than Nocturne and Persona 3 for PS2 maybe.
Oh, Iāve played P3 and P4 (thoughā¦ I think I just sortaā¦ stopped right at the end of both). Iāve gotten the impression that the Persona series of games are more character focused (via the daytime activities and S-Links) while the SMT games are more dungeon-crawl-y to the point where some are straight-up Wizardry variants. Is that accurate?
Theyāre dungeon crawlers, more so than your average JRPG.
I donāt think thereās any grinding in the games. Mapping out the whole dungeon is a standard for dungeon crawlers, and as long as you do that, itās all good.
Would suggest Nocturne as well, which is also arguably the best SMT game as well. Introduced the press-turn system that the earlier games lacked, and is stylistically the coolest and most cohesive as well.
DDS games are great, although somewhat more limited in their gameplay with not as much party variety. Story is more narrative heavy and melodramatic, but interesting setting and Kanekoās designs elevate it way above over typical anime trash.
Kuzunoha games are interesting, but the most rough around the edges as well. The first game ties into earlier SMT games in a really cool way. Setting is very unusual for a JRPG though, so definitely worth a try.
P3&P4 are okay. I regard P3 pretty good, even though this marks the animu creep in the franchise. P4 was more of the same and while most people consider it superior due to pretty superficial improvements and/or subjective plot/style/character preferences, it is personally my least favorite MT game.
Want to get into P1 and P2 games as well, but the original PSX localized version is incomplete, and the PSP remake has godawful music compared to the audiological heaven of the original. P2 is supposedly the best Persona game.
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kanekoās been sidelined ever since strange journey bombed since that was kind of his baby. i donāt think heās done anything but scenario work and rough guidelines since. heās getting old, too, he might just be having trouble keeping up nowadays.
bear in mind itās also entirely possible kanekoās been holding the franchise back too. theyāre trying to find new footing with these new games, with a new generation of artists. theyāre not going to hit the mark perfectly.
of course the new ones arenāt exactly progressive, eitherā¦
pre-PS2 atlus games are all super duper grindy, although thanks to various glitches speedrun routes do exist for some of them (smt2 is the glitchiest)
they kind of took a different direction at that point, with greater emphasis on party composition, and it paid off for them
Definitely piqued my interest in Nocture. Iād heard it was grindy and hard as hell, but Iāll have to finish P4 firstā¦
nocturne is grindy if you let it be grindy, but levels arenāt going to be what makes you win or lose, generally speaking
i would argue that if youāre a seasoned rpg player itās not even that hard
the encounter rate is a bit frustrating at times but you donāt necessarily have to fight them all
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Iāve learnt to not trust anyone who tells you that post-Dragon Quest 1 JRPGās are grindy. If you utilize all the shit given to you, especially in the case of Nocturne, thereās no need to grind whatsoever. It does expect you to just map out most of the dungeon, of course, but thatās pretty much the basic gameplay loop of this genre.
I think itās just that most JRPGs are pretty shit at demanding the player to git gud or ask to utilize any of the items/abilities so that when people do hit a wall, they tend to just alleviate this with grinding.
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Strange Journey is a very interesting game. I would recommend it if youāre into dystopian science-fiction and donāt mind first-person dungeon crawlers. It is hypnotizing to uncover the symmetry of the dungeons. But it has many things going for it.
I couldnāt get into Nocturne much. I think itās because I played it after the modern Megaten games. If itās your first then youāll probably like it more.
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Yeah when it comes to āgrindā I was talking about how people see SMT games a lot, alongside them being time consuming and requiring of your attention. Not them actually demanding repeated battles for leveling and drops, necessarily. The encounter rates and steep difficulty can make it seem padded, but knowing the systems and general patience balances out most of it.
I really want to playthrough Strange Journey againā¦ what a nerve-wracking and awesome experience.
strange journey is great but fuck that final dungeon
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(p5 spoilers) http://eirikrjs.tumblr.com/post/150868907667/screenshots-of-a-bunch-more-hd-kaneko-thanks-to-a
there are a ton of them on this tumblr
I guess this is the thread where everyone poo-poos the Persona games or at least the latter-day ones, but I appreciated that I almost never needed to explicitly grind. A lot of battles were winnable through smart management of character abilities.
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also kind of related but Hellnight, the PSX horror game created by the Atlus-affiliated Dennou Eizou has character design art reminiscent of earlier Kaneko actually. Iāll try to take some pictures of the official strategy guide later, since that art is not available anywhere on the interwebs I think. wonder if kaneko/smt was an influence on those guys.