my favorite song in soul hackers is the Spookies HQ theme.
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Soul Hackers is the only non-Persona SMT Iāve been able to finish without getting burnt out or distracted, and Iāve tried them all. The aesthetic is just the perfect distillation of what I would daydream about after seeing in gaming mags growing up hoping and praying that theyād release over here.
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So speaking of 3ds megatens, are all the Redux and Overclocked enhanced versions considered the best ones of their games? Despite the convenience Iām always a bit vary for a gameās balance when a āsave whereverā system is added to one with previously very strict checkpoints.
Redux apparently adds anime horseshit to Strange Journey and takes away all the Kaneko character portraits 
which is the story going forward. the old guard at atlus is gone and buried. Kuzunoha and Strange Journey games were the last of the Kaneko era (iirc Kuzunoha ideas had been floating around for years) and the basic setting and premise of SMT IV was outlined by Kaneko as well. considering how Apocalypse turned out, Persona games becoming waifu sims, weeb shit in Strange Journey redux, expect the series to become even more generic weeb shit in the future.
also now that they handed out Persona games to a new director, I bet what we will have going forward is even more conservatively weeby than the Hashino years.
Overclocked is strictly better than the original. I love how its added content is endgame, route-locked
SJ Redux is more of a mixed bag but I prefer it over the original.
- There arenāt any app slots anymore, you can just use them all no strings attached. Itās AMAZING, and balanced compared to the first game if you play on hard
- You donāt lose if the main character dies anymore, if you get the app
- The new dungeon is absurdly big and I love it and all its bosses
- Save anywhere is easy to forget since the old savepoints are still there
- New story isā¦ not amazing, but tolerable. Please do not think this is anywhere near as trashy as SMT Apocalypse
- The Doi designs for humans are close enough to the Kaneko ones, and the space crew gets some much welcome actual art
- The new demons are pretty bad though. Zeus is a beefed up Daganronpa bear and is the worst thing about this game
- Mastema makes a >:-( face instead of his usual :^} face if you fight him, which is also unforgivable
- Higher resolution is nice, but the backgrounds now look dreadful compared to something like Etrian Odyssey 4
- The virgin mary (Maria) is a new boss. Unfortunately sheās just a generic Ā« prove your strength to me Ā» boss
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oh my god, that soul hackers music. i slept on that one, i need to play it just for that muuuuusic
i am playing Strange Journey OG right now and trying to finish it this time (3rd time trying to). Itās a cool, good little dungeon crawler butā¦ i donāt like the music i donāt think! Itās āinterestingā for SMT music, but i like SMT music the way it usually is for a Reason
hmm. maybe iāll out sj on hold again and play soul hackers instead
iām pretty sure they hint at kuzunoha raidou in the bonus interview video with kazuma kaneko and cozy okada that came with eternal punishment. raidouās design is also re-hashed from a phone card made for a mystery novel company I think (or maybe it was a novel, but I only ever saw the scan of the phone card) that kazuma kaneko drew in like, 1999 or 2000 (which itself is heavily biting yasunori kato).
I did not like Strange Journey. It was just reallyā¦ I donāt know, bland? And I was never a fan of the Etrian Odyssey system. Which is too bad, because the story is kind of cool.
Soul Hackers is 1,000% cooler than Strange Journey.
Also recommending some of the Hyper Arrange album tracks. Some of them are amazingly goofy. This one is sung by the various Soul Hackers characters, including the Spookies and Manitou. āI canāt wait to get your tender, finger-lickinā soul up on my plateā is a pretty good lne.
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Iāve already went on on these forums about inhumane staircases in RPGs, and these ones in Shibuya from SMT4A are a pretty good example:
Just imagine a pregnant woman trying to climb these
Another aspect of worldbuilding where SMT4A falls short compared to SMT4 : Stairs
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I originally gave up and sold soul hackers about halfway thru, but this thread made me miss it and I went to go look for it again today. All the stores near me that used to have 13 dollar CIB copies are sold out and itās like pretty expensive on eBay now so I think thatās a sign I should just forget about playing it and continue listening to the soundtrack.
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i mean thereās always
yeah itās worth looking into if you still want to play 3ds stuff i think
It seems like the only way now is some thing where you use your expensive gpu to brute force some kind of key? Also pretty soon I plan on playing culdcept online with some randos assuming itās not dead at this point.
Er, what? Iāve been emulating Soul Hackers 3DS this whole time without brute forcing anything or using an āexpensiveā GPUā¦
ETA: unless you mean playing the ROM on the 3DS itself. then, no clue about that. but i was able to decrypt the CIA using my 6 year old computer for use with CITRA with no problem.
Yes like to hack your 3ds in general if youāre on the latest firmware nowā¦
ah that sucks, i did mine a couple of years ago and at the time it was just a point of putting a bunch of exploit stuff on an sd card
Ometeotl is my new favourite Megaten demon(s). Look at this cool monstrosity
They never got any big role in any game, AFAIK theyāre not even a random enemy or boss, but just a potential fusion result (without being interestingly elusive either, like Jeanne DāArc or Huang Di are)
They have one really unique quirk in SMT4 in that they are constantly spinning during demon conversation, so you can see both sides of the design, and I think theyāre the only demon in the game who do that? Hard to notice because you have to get out of your way to talk to Ometeotl.
Beyond the lower half of the body being another top half, thereās another hidden aspect to their design I didnāt notice at firstā¦But itās really obvious in retrospect and so sexual I canāt help but burst out laughing everytime I see it
Ometeotl is a real Kaneko Bingo winner with body horror, striking color work, relevance to the source material, genitals, an air of dignity, etc, all rolled in one design, and itās a crime that this scan is the highest res picture I could find on the net
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Found one a bit better.
Thereās a nice rip of all demon and character art from IV + F/A floating around, which are high res but with some grit and pixelation from the 3DS format.
I got both Ometeotl and Jeanne in each game respectively, I think the latter by fusion accident and relatively early. It was hard to part ways!
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Ometeotl is one of my favorite demon designs in the series. All the Aztec demons are pretty choice! (s/o to Tlazolteotl aka Toilet Goddess)
gods, i need to splurge on a Kaneko Works sometime. Whichever one has all that glossy Nocturne art of the Demifiend beating ass
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Itās Volume III that has the Nocturne art and more up-to-date demon designs (well, as of ten years ago). I recommend Digital Devil Apocalypse, though, it has Kanekoās older stuff up to, I believe, Soul Hackers? Itās pretty rad.
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