Topic: The Megami Tensei Thread

Are any stores offering a steelbook case for nocturne preorders? I dont usually go for those things, but I have steelbooks for Persona 5 Royal and Catherine: Full Body. I'm kicking myself for not getting the P5 Strikers sb cause it looked fantastic.

@Losermagnet Funnily enough they did produce a steelbook for the game just like those other games, but it's Japan exclusive. There's no such thing coming domestically unfortunately which SUCKS

@TheFrenchiestFry ah nuts. Im still gonna get it but i may wait until later this year. I still have my PS2 copy so I'm in no rush. Outside of shiny new HD graphics the only other thing I'm excited for is the voice acting.

Highly unlikely. They experimented with real time combat early on while developing Persona 5 but found it would potentially alienate way too many people. If they couldn't do that with Persona, ain't no way they're bringing that into mainline

Plus, they could probably just continue the Raidou games in that case

@Snaplocket SMT V is going to have some variant of press-turn combat. 100% guaranteed.

@Snaplocket But Zelda was already breaking traditions with BotW. Voice acting was like the 10th or 11th shakeup added to that series among other things

SMT games are iterative. Their biggest changes usually come from presentation, certain gameplay additions and also just general graphical fidelity that comes with more modern hardware

It's already been said that SMT V's gameplay mechanics are a fusion of Nocturne and IV's so that basically already confirms it's going to play very similarly to the other main entries

SMT's audience at face value seems different but that's only because there's not that much overlap between the two fandoms given Persona's much more stark popularity, especially in the West. Persona's general gameplay is very iterative of SMT, using a turn based system with dungeon crawling elements and the same weakness exploitation system, but it found its own identity through the time management and social sim aspects they started integrating into the games beginning with P3. Other than that, it's basically an SMT game

@Snaplocket The thing is, BotW set out to change the series' conventions. SMT V isn't setting out to redefine it's series. It'll expand on the gameplay of the older titles, like an actual sequel would usually do in a series. Not everything that comes to switch is going to be huge and groundbreaking, or redefine the conventions of a series.. and that line of thinking that it will is a dangerous mindset to have.

Just because Breath of the Wild changed the Zelda series doesn't mean other games will follow suit. Pokemon didn't. Monster Hunter sure as hell didn't.. and yet those two games are fine. Monster Hunter is probably better than the Pokemon example, but still.

SMT was always a dungeon crawling game with turn based combat, and it'll probably stay that way until it's no longer profitable.

@Snaplocket FFXII's combat isn't action-based, though, in any way, shape, or form. It just goes the PC RPG route of allowing you to program how party members will react to enemies on the field. That series didn't go in on action until XV.

Zelda has always been action-based, so I don't know why you're mentioning that.

@Snaplocket No one’s saying that you’re saying this just because you personally want it. However your prediction’s 100% never going to happen. Zelda’s always been an action game, and a bunch of examples you brought up aren’t action games either. SMT will never have action combat as stated for reasons above.

(Unless it's intentionally designed from the ground up as an action game like Raidou or Persona 5 Strikers)

Has anyone tried the Japanese version of the game? Have they fixed the technical issues on switch for SMT 3 nocturne

@anoyonmus The English release is seemingly shipping with all the previous JP release patches which stabilized the framerate and added stuff like manual skill inheritance, but it's still rough around the edges from the footage I've seen

There are still framerate dips on both platforms, the music's still compressed as hell and the FMVs remain unaltered which means they stand out next to the cleaned up visuals

Will Nocturne flash a lot like how the trailers do? Or is that just a trailer effect?

@TheFrenchiestFry maybe wait for reviews I guess.

Because of the limitations of the PS2, it might not be great but hopefully it is good enough

@anoyonmus Impressions haven't complained about performance, and the Switch footage we've seen of it in English looks fine, so I wouldn't worry on the performance front, unless you're the type to lose your mind when a tiny bit of slowdown happens here and there.

It still has the compressed battle music and cutscenes, of course. Those were never going to change. Cutscenes aren't a big deal seeing as how there are... only a small handful in the entire game. The music situation isn't ideal, but the OST sounds great outside of battle, and I like the voice acting, so all that's really left to complain about is that the battle music sounds like garbled singing in a PS2 game instead of garbled singing in a modern game.

With all the patches and whatnot, it seems like a perfectly acceptable remaster.

@Ralizah let us hope. I hope this gets at least an 8 out of 10 imo

@anoyonmus An 8/10 from whom, exactly?

@Snaplocket nah, the easy mode is free day one DLC. I’m not sure why just didn’t include on the cartridge but hey-ho.

@Snaplocket What Jump said, plus the easy mode isn't even technically needed for this game anyways, since it's one of the easier entries in the series.

None of the mainline games are unapproachably difficult. The series has garnered a reputation for hardcore difficulty over the years that's mostly undeserved and born from people trying to play these games like Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, where the solution to any obstacle is to just throw yourself at random encounters until you're sufficiently high-level enough to steamroll your enemies.

Nocturne also has non-random skill inheritance now, which is half of what made the original frustrating in the first place.

Easy mode is overkill, IMO, insofar as it makes the game easy enough to brute force your way through it. And there's no point in doing that. The gameplay is what makes SMT special. If someone just wants to plough through the battles quickly to get to the story, they're better off playing Persona or something.