Topic: The Megami Tensei Thread

One gameplay feature I wish MegaTen would do away with is getting an automatic game over if the main protagonist dies. Especially if there are demons or party members who withhold items like medicine or can cast spells like Recarm, it's just extremely frustrating when you spend so much time just chipping away at certain bosses' health only for you to die first and not even getting the chance to get revived by someone else.

Although SMT IV's game over screen was actually pretty creative and funny

@TheFrenchiestFry That was really frustrating when I played Nocturne. I actually stopped playing because I had the wrong magatama equipped and was crushed by one of the sisters at the top of the tower (cant remember the names, sorry). There are 3 of them, you fight them individually and consecutively, and they have different strenghts and weaknesses. And if you lose to the 3rd sister, you have to redo the fights with the other 2.

@Losermagnet The Moirae Sisters in Nocturne were annoying enough but the absolute bane of my existence was the Natural Dancer in Persona 3

Their names were from what I remember, Atropos, Clotho and Lachesis

both the persona 2 titles and smt4 didnt have a game over when the protag died, and digital devil saga afaik, but yeah when it is present its pretty annoying

@TheFrenchiestFry they weren't too bad, but the time investment to redo it broke me. I'd love to pull all nighters but my body physically wont do it anymore lol.

I have P3 FES but since the Nocturne Switch announcement I've been waiting to start anything new in case of more announcements.

@boop23 Reason number 425 that Persona 2 is the best mainline entry

Also didn't SMT IV have that cutscene where Charon told Flynn to pay him in Macca to revive him if he didn't want to cross River Styx to live with the deceased?

@Losermagnet Nocturne is definitely on the list of games I need to replay, and in terms of P3 I honestly wholeheartedly prefer Portable to FES which is why I'm probably never throwing out my Vita if it comes to PC like Persona 4 Golden

@TheFrenchiestFry yeah it had that cutscene if the whole party fell, but if you saved often it was more ideal to just reload the game entirely than watch the game over scene every single time

@TheFrenchiestFry I'm kicking myself for not getting a Vita. It seems like it doesn't have a great variety of games but still has a few gems. The persona series alone would've been worth it.

@Losermagnet A lot of people just call it the Persona machine seeing as how it has every main entry except P5, but I always thought it had probably the best selection of legacy content out of any handheld including the 3DS considering it had PSP/PS1 backwards compatibility in addition to numerous remasters or re-releases of high profile PS2 and PS3 games like the Sly, God of War and Ratchet & Clank Collections as well as having almost all the major Final Fantasy games up to X-2 and most of the Metal Gear games

@boop23 Honestly the cutscene is too funny for me to want to not watch it all the way through. I love how he's only disappointed that you died because it would mean collecting another deceased soul and letting him into his haven.

yea it was super creative

@TheFrenchiestFry I wonder why it never caught on. I suppose Sony doesn't really have a big marquee title like Mario or Zelda that non-gamers would recognize and want, but there's got to be more to it than that.

@Losermagnet It was a lot of things. Mainly Sony's ambivalence towards supporting it considering they flat out stopped making first party games for it after only one year, in conjunction with numerous other factors like the ludicrous memory card prices and that aside from Persona 4 Golden there wasn't really a game on the console you could consider a killer app. By 2013 Sony instead really tried to push the console as essentially a companion device to the PS4 for stuff like cross-save and Remote Play (which I made so much use out of)

I honestly find it even more jarring the Vita didn't hook more people considering it and the Switch actually have a lot in common based on what both consoles set out to do.

@TheFrenchiestFry yeah, "ahead of it's time" is a cliché but it seems like that might apply to the Vita.

How's the analog stick/d-pad? I think I heard the d-pad was squishy, but that may have been the PSP.

@Losermagnet The squishy d-pad definitely applies to the PSP

The Vita d-pad is super clicky and tactile, as are the face buttons

The launch OLED model had a problem with the Start and Select buttons being almost flush with the console, but that was completely fixed with the Vita Slim

The analog sticks are really good for what the handheld needed but it kinda sucks they don't click down like the DualShock sticks

They use the touchpad for L3/R3 functions in stuff like remote play with PS4 games

I only picked up a Vita at Christmas so it isn’t a dead system to me. I’ve played around 8 games on it so far this year and I’m still buying more. New games might not be being released but the online store is still active and there are loads of great games I’ve missed on there.

I beat Catherine Full Body this week, I took my time with it. I loved the puzzling gameplay, story telling and world building. It was such a rich experience. I love classic SMT games but it would be great if the teams had more chances like this to experiment too.

@JoeDiddley Catherine imo is probably Atlus' most underrated game even still to this day. I actually enjoyed its story and characters a lot more than Persona 5 personally. Also no other game has made my hands sweat this profusely compared to how tense some of the challenges are.

The Switch version is also easily the best version of Full Body considering Atlus did the unthinkable and actually put the DLC on the cartridge instead of charging for it separately on launch day like they did with Full Body on PS4.

Catherine was one of the first SMT related games I played and I thought it was brilliant. I love puzzles and and relating the chaos v. order themes back to something so human like commitment was a great thing to experience. I'm a little disappointed that the other games go so fantastical, but I still enjoy what I've played so far very much.

@Losermagnet I actually like the more fantastical elements in games like mainline SMT and Digital Devil Saga. It means that subseries like Persona and a spinoff game like Catherine feel more distinct due to how grounded everything is thematically and aesthetically.

It just shows off how diverse in themes, genre and gameplay a franchise like MegaTen can be in comparison to franchises like Final Fantasy or Pokemon.