Topic: The Megami Tensei Thread

I think the recent news about the PlayStation Store shuttering on pre-PS4 consoles perfectly illustrates why I think above a lot of other Atlus games, Persona 1-3 deserve the remaster/remake treatment on modern hardware

Physical copies of the PSP titles are super expensive to come by as is (Persona 3 Portable in particular is reaching into the $600 range even secondhand) and in terms of Persona 1 & 2, not only are the games super expensive physically making a digital purchase your only accessible option for getting into the games without breaking the bank, but P2EP in particular was only ever re-released digitally on those exact platforms affected by the Store shutdown, which basically means after August they're practically lost to history at this point unless they're brought over to new platforms

Persona 5 may be PlayStation exclusive but it's probably going to be widely available for a long ass time even if it stays that way considering the PS4 will probably live through the PS5 lifecycle, especially given the latter console is backwards compatible with the former meaning there's a stronger likelihood of the PS4 continuing to get support well beyond Sony themselves. Had Persona 4 Golden stayed on Vita P5 would straight up be like the single most easy to access game in the entire series without emulating

Thank you developer of Karate Kid for NES and some other games I guess

I've just pre-order Shin Megami Tensei 3 for the Switch, it's £36.85 at Base.com which is the cheapest in the UK for any other UK folk. I take it this thread is gonna be the make shift SMT3 thread rather than having it's own on the forum?

I've never played the orginal as I didn't get Atlus/SMT games til the DS/Wii era. I actually think Trauma Centre was the first Atlus games I played until Devil Survivor came on my radar.

I am still waiting for pre orders to open here in Portugal. If not avaiIable I have Amazon but I would like a discount...

But this game is the one I most looking forward for this year that has been already announced (fingers crossed for silksong and axiom verge though)

@Balta666 It's a strange one as SMT3 is a day one buy for me but New Pokemon Snap and Resident Evil Village have got me more excited. It's feels a tad too much like I'm buying into the hype from the hardcore SMT fans saying it's the best SMT rather than having my own hype but hey-ho I still expect to be happy with it.

@jump well I cannot say I am looking forward to those two (not into "on rail" and horror games) but as a big fan of JRPG and never played SMT games I am also really hyped for it and hoping the poor performance and the high difficulty of the series does not burn me on it (for instance I quite hated tales of Vesperia and Nino kuni to the point I traded them after 5 or so hours as the combat felt boring to me)

@jump Honestly if you ask me I personally think in terms of mainline IV is slightly better than Nocturne

Nocturne's fantastic but there are a lot of MegaTen games imo that edge it out like Digital Devil Saga, Persona 2, Devil Survivor 1, SMT IV, Soul Hackers and even Persona 3

@TheFrenchiestFry Now I'm just expecting it to be garbage and I'm about to cancel my pre-order ;p

The SMT4 games were great but I loved the Devil Survivor games. I'm a sucker SRPG and as incredibly cool as the soundtracks in the other games are DS's rock soundtrack made a nice contrast to them.

Well, if they bring SMT IV to Switch &/or Steam, I'll probably try that .... Pre-ordered Nocturne for Switch, so I can trade that in afterwards

In general, I enjoy mainline SMT (post-Nocturne, because the SNES games have aged like milk left out of the fridge) significantly more than any of the spinoff stuff. The Devil Survivor games are decent, but I'm not huge into the SRPG battles and buying demons through auctions. Also, the character designs, dialogue, etc. aren't to my liking. Didn't really like the cast of DeSu1, and the second one feels like it was drawn from a very generic anime. Soul Hackers is... OK. Decent. Probably the best of the pre-PS2 Atlus games I've played. But it FEELS quite old. Persona... the first one is tedious as hell, I hate the combat, dungeon crawling, and enemy recruitment system in the sequel, Persona 4's dungeons are pure garbo (and the means of obtaining new Personas sucks in both versions), and as good as Persona 5 is, the totally unbalanced mechanics makes it too easy 99% of the time, even on the hardest difficulty. My kid nephew struggles with older Pokemon games and he can still kick butt on the higher difficulty settings. Digital Devil Saga 1 is quite good, but the lack of recruitable demons seriously hurts the gameplay, and the sequel is just a mess in general.

I have my preferences between them, but Nocturne, IV, and IV: Apocalypse are three of the best JRPGs I've ever played.

Still need to play Strange Journey, Persona 2 EP (only played IS), Persona 3, the Raidou Kuzunoha games, and the various obscure fantranslated SNES MegaTen games that don't fit into the other categories, but I'm not expecting my viewpoint on the series to change much, based on what I know about them.

With all that said, the Etrian Odyssey games are almost all excellent, and many would rank close to the top of a "favorite Atlus games" list for me.

@Ralizah Persona 5 is easy but honestly nowhere near as unbalanced as Persona 4 is imo

Physical attacks were clearly way more essential to every one of my playthroughs of that game than skills or magic. You fuse a Persona that can null or resist Physical or attach that skill through manual inheritance and you've basically won the game right there. It's like how Nocturne treated Physical but on a whole other level of broken

@TheFrenchiestFry Both games are ridiculously easy when you get into them, but I'll say this: the beginning of Persona 4 (vanilla, not Golden) is significantly harder than P5/P5R is at any point.

Persona 5 also makes it way easier to fuse Personas with exactly the skills you want.

I also don't recall Very Hard in Persona 4 TRIPLING damage done when hitting enemy weaknesses, either. On the highest difficulty, you're effectively an unstoppable god of death the moment you get a decent spread of skills. Except against bosses, where the game becomes a war of attrition. Which is funny, because I'd say bosses are what mainline games do best.

Even on the second highest difficulty, every battle becomes "auto-target enemy weaknesses/all-out attack/win" and lasts, like, ten seconds.

All-Out Attacks shouldn't trigger as soon as you drop everyone. Hitting enemy weaknesses is WAY too damaging to enemies. When you use an attack that hits multiple enemies and one of them absorbs/repels it, you're not punished for playing poorly.

P5R with more balanced mechanics would probably be one of their best games. There's barely even room for stuff like baton passing to shine in anything other than boss battles, and boss battles aren't built to test the player's understanding of the gameplay like in Nocturne/IV/IV:A.

I'd give anything for P6 to go back to a battle system that's more like Nocturne's.

@Ralizah Merciless in Persona 5 Royal is much the same story

Unironically easier than hard mode due to the damage multipliers when exploiting shadow weaknesses and giving you more EXP after the end of encounters

I'd love for Persona 6 to go back to something more along the lines of Persona 3 or Nocturne where it actually gets easier the better you get at understanding the game mechanics and the better equipped you are for encounters. It actually rewards player skill rather than through arbitrary rewards based on the difficulty you play at

The boss battles in P5 especially aren't that rewarding to go through. It feels like you can get through pretty much all of them with the same team/Persona builds and you aren't really required to strategize. Focus moves like Mind Charge are also way too good to not be used almost by obligation especially by endgame

Since people are bringing up Persona 6...it will be interesting to see what happens next since the director of 3-5 has gone off to work on games of a "different style" I wonder if the next Persona will be doubling down on the established and popular formula or if the new person will want to inject new ideas into it.

I hope they bring in fresh blood honestly

P3-5 aren't in a position where they're creatively stagnant per se, especially given Persona is the most critically well received branch of the Megami Tensei franchise, but I personally think the stories have been getting weaker with each installment even though they're all relatively strong, especially in P3's case

I personally hope they go back to the darker and more character driven nature of P1-3 since the emphasis on slice of life aspects in P5 particularly greatly affected how much I actually liked the cast of that game. Most of them kind of act like caricatures and not necessarily like actual characters I care about, and not helping things is that they made the Confidant system so important in that game to the point where I feel they're barely fleshed out in the main story itself and I don't really get a sense of camraderie or chemistry when they're together as a team

Popular opinion; Haru was boring and had no character. Boooooo.

I hope we do get some good story and characters though. I enjoyed 4’s story and characters more than 5’s.

I'd like to see some more work done on the dungeons for the next Persona myself, I know some like randomly generated dungeons but I liked the change.

P5's dungeons were a massive step up in terms of variety and visual identity. Handcrafted dungeons should just be the way MegaTen goes from now on. It makes the procedurally generated ones look especially archaic going from Persona 5/Royal back to Persona 4 Golden. I hope SMT V also goes the route of having pre-determined dungeon designs rather than randomized ones

I just hope the stories get more variety. Persona 4 and 5 have huge similarities in stories, causing me to guess certain things that would’ve been a surprise if I didn’t know the plot of 4 to begin with. I hope that Persona 6’s story is entirely different.

@Slowdive Should I ask that Youtuber to post a video to explain what your own opinions on the game is? ;p