the end of MegaTen as we know it

[janitor]

@Rita

For all the good things about SJ, the final boss spike is not such a big deal. Although it sort of was since I didn’t beat it, ha. What was wrong with the dungeon itself, though? I don’t remember much except the beautiful scenery but that’s just about every sector. The only other thing is how assets were reused later on in the game. Kind of disrespectful to itself, but.

Final boss I liked, and it even made me finally change up my party (rip the Alice I’d had for 30 levels with a freaking Megidolaon skill mutation of all things).

But the last dungeon was just entirely too long and tedious and with encounter rates too obnoxious even for me. I remember being tired of it by the time I got to the room with the invisible walls and I just groaned and checked out for the day when I got to it.

[tt_zop]

Atus loves reusing assets so I see no reason why we wouldn’t get a ton of SMT games for the current generation, SMT5, DDS3, new Devil Summoner, Devil Kids, Jack Bros 2 shit man, maybe even a whole new franchise. It’s exciting.

[bib]

yeah but is anyone playing smt4a or what, i want some impressions, dang

[anothersphere]

Well it looks like I might lose power for a couple days or so, so I’ll be picking up Apocalypse along with my other storm prep stuff today. I went through a good few DS games back in the 2004-5 hurricanes.

[cigarette]

so. . .did anyone play megaten and find themselves up to their necks in occult study irl? because that’s what happened to me after i played p3. i went to the nurse’s office and ended up doing follow-up research for years afterward.

maybe that’s why i’m so attached to it.

it’s also the only one i’ve beaten. i stopped my play-through of p4 even though i’m at the very end. i started p2 a few weeks ago and have suspicions that it’s going to end up being my favorite cast wise but, if my history with nocturne is any indication, i’ll probably be dying fairly often.

i’m still mad about that cache cube on the world map that i opened without saving the game first.

[the_kyphosis_gamer]

I’d love to see a VR Jack Bros 2 from the same perspective as the original.

[janitor]

it’s been like a decade but i remember p2 eternal punishment being quite difficult in the early-mid game

innocent sin was a cakewalk comparatively

[tt_zop]

It bugs the hell out of me that there wasn’t a psp version of eternal punishment. I know you can play the psp innocent sin and then the ps1 classic eternal on there but I get the sinking feeling that while IS probably has a modern translation that EP has a lazy half-assed Persona 1 style job on it. It’s kept me from playing those two games.

[Persona]

It’s great, go play it

If you liked SMT4, you’ll like Apocalypse. There’s a lot of QOL improvements that I enjoyed but I can’t remember what they are anymore because I’ve become accustomed to the new game.

The first few hours are repetitive especially if you got the Neutral Ending in the last game because it’s heavy in exposition explaining the scenario of the new game, but once you get past it, it twists into its own thing.

When I was talking to a buddy about it way before it was released, he called it SMT4 with waifus, and he kinda isn’t wrong. Though one of the “waifus” is a dead comic relief character from the first game who turned into this world’s equivalent of Slimer and thinks he’s the main character now.

It’s neat to see a side story branch turned into a full game. It’s like if the Snow Queen quest in Persona 1 became it’s own sequel (which it kind of was just because of how many hours it took to clear it but whatever).

[janitor]

I actually didn’t think there was anything too wrong with the EP translation at the time… was I missing something?

I should try it in it Japanese sometime, though.

[Persona]

The EP localization is fine; guarantee you can still play it now.

P1 is its own demon, though I find it charming now.

[tt_zop]

Yeah I could be totally full of crap, just an itch that maybe two different styles of translation wouldn’t mesh like the games are supposed to.

[janitor]

i gave persona 2 eternal punishment another shot to see what i felt about it in 2016

some thoughts:

• localization’s fine, above par for the era
• dig all the various locales you can go to, though i’m certainly not talking to everyone to find out if their dialogue changed, even though it almost always does after a game event
• the cast is fun too, Katsuya is the most boring one by far but even he’s got his share of goofiness for being the obligatory ikemen character.
• music is pretty good on the whole. not quite as contemporary/urban as p3 went but definitely trying to get its own flavor going.
• actual combat is fairly bland and tedious, finding myself missing press turn and variations thereof
• the sprite art is frequently really nice but the animation is often really stiff and it stands out like a sore thumb
• the persona system is garbage. persona need to level up, which means you need to use them constantly, every turn, which means there is no reason to ever do a physical attack if it isn’t maxed out yet. it also means you are locked into them for quite awhile.
• additionally the persona have unmarked compatibilities with each character so that SP cost is higher if they’re not ‘compatible,’ so have fun figuring this out so you can actually keep enough SP to the next level up
• way too much is dependent on characters leveling up, as it refills their HP/SP, which means you actively try to plan around it to avoid having to pay excessive money to Trish for healing up
• screw getting tarot cards, too. the only way to get them is demon negotiation, and this may be the worst demon negotiation system in smt history. you have to choose which party member(s) talks to the demon, and each one has a different effect. you want to figure out how to make them interested to get cards, which is often not TOO hard and relatively easy to guess. (Katsuya for smart dudes, Baofu or Urara otherwise)
• but doubly fuck the free tarot cards, which are needed for many types of persona. they require that you first make a contract with a demon, which means you need to figure out how to raise the happiness of the demon, which is usually quite a bit more obscure than making them interested, requiring you mash all the various party member permutations to figure it out. additionally the permutations change based on order, so maya+katsuya is not the same as katsuya+maya, meaning you have 4+(4*3)+(nope)=16 possibilities to check with a 4 person party, which becomes a 5 person party eventually. at least they tend to carry over across a specific class of demon once you do figure it out.
• definitely more difficult than innocent sin, mostly because certain bosses (hello, that one specific Joker boss in the casino!) have pretty rough stat/type checks.
• seriously who came up with this demon negotiation system it’s the worst

this feels like the sort of game that would be interesting to try to route but is just frustrating on a first playthrough because of too much hidden information and too much commitment to things you don’t know anything about.

i appreciate a lot of the system improvements p3/p4 brought to the table more now, but, still, screw sociopathy links.

[21012]

i pretty much ignored everything about the mechanics in EP and did fine. even if i agreed with all of your criticisms i would still say they’re immaterial to what’s actually remarkable and worthwhile about the game

i appreciate the observations, though.

@janitor

screw getting tarot cards, too. the only way to get them is demon negotiation, and this may be the worst demon negotiation system in smt history. you have to choose which party member(s) talks to the demon, and each one has a different effect. you want to figure out how to make them interested to get cards, which is often not TOO hard and relatively easy to guess. (Katsuya for smart dudes, Baofu or Urara otherwise)

this is an Objectively Bad Opinion though. the capriciousness and obscurantism is the best thing about demon conversation and the complexity of variables in P2’s is fucking great

[janitor]

actually i feel like p2’s negotiation system is just… it’s not random and capricious once you “know” a demon’s personality type. Like, oh this guy is a Fool, I have to have Baofu talk a few times, because it will always work, and hope the rng likes me on counter-questions, done. Because it is like this, it turns it more into a chore to figure out what a type of demon likes instead of trying to make good with this particular incomprehensible demon.

[21012]

i don’t think that’s fundamentally different from how it generally works in the series. i guess dangling the reward of tarot cards causes more friction with how people feel the need to game the system and how reliably it actually responds to this need

[janitor]

tarot cards are a necessity as it is only able to be acquired by demon negotiation. it is not optional, even if you are ignoring mechanics you have to upgrade your persona once in awhile and that is the only way to do so.

and not just, like, one negotiation, you have to do it four or five times to get enough cards to get the same result of one in a mainline smt.

it’s just tedious

[21012]

imo emulate ep w/ fast forward button

[tesby-sama]

I have SMTIV:A on my 3DS and got the point where combat starts. I got stomped after fighting some angel for a long time and then an actual boss fight started which I wasn’t prepared for. Crud.

But man do I love everything about the game presentation wise. The amount of detail in this wrecked underground place, the music just being amazing, the slick UI and etc. I don’t know how far I’ll stick with this game but so far I’m engaged.

[Persona]

I saw the movie It on Saturday and man, it’d be the perfect (pre-Persona3) Persona game.