Shin Megami Tensei IV

Let's talk about Shin Megami Tensei IV. If you have a 3DS and like RPGs with dungeon-exploring, turn-based combat, and Pokemonesque demon-collection, this is a great game.

As long as you don't mind dying. A lot. My play clock says 22 hours, and I'm not halfway done with the game yet. This clock is a lie because I've had full-party wipes at least 50 times, so add a bunch of hours to that. The difficulty is absurd, but it's really fun once you get the hang of it. I like that the difficulty isn't the sort that you can solve by grinding levels. You have to learn the battle system, learn the enemies' weaknesses, and acquire better demons to help you fight, or you'll never get anywhere. Once you do learn how it works, everything is manageable.

I love Atlus games. I love how vaguely disturbing they are. The story/dialog is just bizarre for no reason. And they don't bother explaining. They immerse you in the world and you kind of slowly figure out how things are. I don't know if it's the same in Japanese, but the translators and voice actors really did well.

Shin Megami Tensai make some of my favorite games, and Shin Megami Tensai IV is great. The only main issue I had was the complete lack of direction it gives you. It's as if the game expects you to, in advance, know where Shibuya is suppose to be. O_O

And I wouldn't say it's bizarre for no reason, at least not the demon's dialogue. It's bizzare because it is suppose to sound alien coming from a mindset that is suppose to be different then that of a human. (Mind you, they did a terrible job of this in soul hackers, but I digress. :p)

I beat the game a while back, even managing to land the nuetral ending my first go. :p

The lack of direction is a good thing though. It forces you to go exploring. I found so many things so far because I was wandering around looking for the next town or the dungeon I needed to complete next. SMT4 takes this to a bit of an extreme maybe, but I like it.

It adds to immersion too. The game characters are completely lost exploring these new areas. So am I! I feel more like I'm in the game that way. Someone in the game mentions the name of town in passing and I think "Oh, is that somewhere I can go? Maybe I should go look for it". A few more people mention it, and suddenly I have a solid idea what to look for, if not where to find it. Eventually I find it and I feel good about accomplishing something.

Games are about solving a problem. In this game finding things is one of those problems. Finding things is just as fun a problem as finishing a battle without dying, or getting enough money for equipment, or delivering something for a fetch quest.

What's the alternative? A big yellow arrow pointing to the next town is what a lot of games do, and it kills the need to do anything except follow the arrows. That can be fun too if there's enough other stuff in the game to keep you going, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Just my opinion, of course.

Maybe the option to ask for a direction? :p

It never so much as gives you a basic direction to go in. Yes, you don't know where to go, and neither do the characters, but the inability to get any one in the area to say 'oh yeah, just go east' is not immersive to me. :p

And I don't see it as solving a problem because it's not like a maze or anything. It's just wandering aimlessly until you find where it is you were suppose to go. It's not like you are applying any skills, knowledge, or chance/odds, it's just mindless wandering. (I like doing that anyway, cause I like to explore. I just don't like the Idea that nobody anywhere will say 'Oh yeah, that place is east-ish).

Not a huge complaint though, fairly minor. :p

I think a few skills are required:

* Resource management - wandering around is dangerous, can you survive long enough to find the place you need to go and get back again alive?
* Memory - Have I been here before? Have I explored all 5 of these side-paths? Where did that guy say I was supposed to go again?
* Patience/perseverance - Can you stick with the game long enough to make it through? Especially when you keep getting killed by stupid random encounters while you're trying to accomplish things.

Not gonna lie, I came close to giving up a bunch of times out of frustration. Particularly because of this quest: (SPOILER)"Find the military base", where you have to progress by talking to some completely random no-name guy in a bar :mad2:. This game does take things to an extreme.

I do recall a few places on the map where people would say "X is south, Y is north", but yeah, not a lot of those.

I was refering to the overworld specifically, not the dungeon. :p

Memory doens't have anything to do with it when you are not told where to go.

I guess the third one applies, though I find it difficult to enjoy having my patience tested. ;P

Regardless, what endings did you manage to land in the game?

I am hoping this will appear on EU shelves soon.

NO SHIN MEGAMI IS YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR GETTING BRAVELY DEFAULT BEFORE ME! :mad2:

:shobon:

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Originally Posted by NeoCracker

Regardless, what endings did you manage to land in the game?

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I haven't beaten it yet. :(

:cry:

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Originally Posted by Dr Unne

The difficulty is absurd, but it's really fun once you get the hang of it.

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Nah, this is the easiest game in the main series by far. Nocturne and Strange Journey were several times more difficult.

I've never played the others, so I can't say whether they were more or less difficult than this one. SMT4 is undeniably difficult for the average gamer though, based on my experience, my friends', and general reviews I've read.

SMT games in general, I find, are pretty hardcore when it comes to difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Dr Unne

I've never played the others, so I can't say whether they were more or less difficult than this one. SMT4 is undeniably difficult for the average gamer though, based on my experience, my friends', and general reviews I've read.

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It's harder than the average RPG, I give it that. It's definitely one of the easiest, and most forgiving games in the series though.

A couple games in the series have had struggles with the difficulty just being unfair though, like Nocturne. (Seriously, my first too random encounters in the game killed me before I even had a chance to take a freakin' action). Persona 3 definatly had it's moments were the you would just get killed for no good reason, though for the most part that game was fine.

I find Devil Survivor 2 and Persona 4 to be the hardest entries in the series that are the best about not just straight up murdering you through unfair means.

^Indeed. Nocturne is without a doubt the hardest, but that's because the computer is cheap. Same thing applies to P3 on a lesser scale.

In terms of fair difficulty. I'd have to go with Strange Journey being hands down the most difficult. Devil Survivor 2 is up there as well. Persona 4 was one of the easiest MegaTen games though.

I had a harder time beating that one then either Tensai IV or the first Devil Survivor though. :p

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Originally Posted by NeoCracker

NO SHIN MEGAMI IS YOUR PUNISHMENT FOR GETTING BRAVELY DEFAULT BEFORE ME! :mad2:

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At least you have a release date for Bravely Default. We haven't even had SMT IV announced for EU. Damn region lock.

It was my first SMT game. I never had a problem finding my way, the quest screen always told me everything I needed. I also found the difficulty a healthy challenge, but nothing too bad once you get out of Naraku. The hardest part about finding where to go next, for me, was my unfamiliarity with location names, but after a while they feel a lot more recognizable. I tried to do all the sidequests I could, but ended up completing the game because some of the side bosses were destroying me. :P Aligned with Chaos thinking I'd screw over (SPOILER)Lucifer at the last second, and kind of regretted it once I was all locked in. I plan on getting all the endings through NG+, I loved it!

Necro-bump because I'm finally on the very last quest to beat this game, after months of struggles and losing interest. The ending I got was (SPOILER)neutral ending, somehow.

My first big complaint with this game is that it could really use a labeled map. Very often you'll know the name of a place you need to go to, and have no idea where that place is because everything is a meaningless ! on the map. And you can't walk anywhere without getting into 10 or 12 random encounters. On that note, best thing in the universe: Auto-pinpoint + auto MP regen.

And my second big complaint is that the plot makes no sense. But that's JRPGs for you.

How long does it take to blast through the game on NG+? I might just google the other endings. My game clock is nearing 50 hours, and that doesn't count the 100+ times I got my party wiped and reset.

Well if you are familiar with Tokyo's layout the map isn't that hard to understand. I disagree about the plot not making sense, in fact I feel it's one of the best written stories in the series. What I love about it is that you have to uncover it for yourself. No one really sits you down after the beginning and really explains what is going on instead talking to the people of Tokyo or Mikado will drop the hints you need to piece everything together. It's incredibly fulfilling after years of playing RPGs that spoon feed the story and characters to you to finally have something that requires a bit more thought and action on the players part.

I've been meeting to do a write up of this game as a blog.

Oh, the way the world is presented, the opportunity for discovery, the lack of spoon-feeding is a great part of the game. I love being dropped in the world without a clue and having to figure everything out. I love a world that's presented in little bits through atmosphere. But that's the setting, not the plot.

So far as the plot: (SPOILER)The entire game is fetch quests and "go kill this guy" quests. Then out of nowhere, it's like "I have this sword I can't unsheathe, and by the way you're the reincarnation of some guy who turned into the dome above Tokyo, so here go talk to this rock, he'll give you a cup you have to fill with liquid hope." What the crap?. There's no narrative, just weird stuff happens randomly, or something happens to force you to go from point A to B so you can find a new dungeon. There's no character development. I like the whole childhood friend arc at the beginning, but after that there's no interaction between people beyond killing or saving them.

Which is fine, not every game needs a good narrative. I still enjoyed the game a lot. The dungeon-crawling and demon-crafting parts are the main draw of the game, and I'm still doing it after 52 hours, so it must've been done right. It was very satisfying going from party wipe every 3 battles, to breezing through the endgame because I figured out how not to suck.

The issue here is that SMT has never been about character or narrative. This isn't Persona, DDS or Devil Survivor, SMT has always been about exploring the world and having the story unfold through the events. The story is learning about the world and that's why the characters are rarely given much character development because their real roles in the story are to be mouth pieces for the factions you can choose from. I mean uncovering what happened to the past with the cocoon and the Masakado, realizing who Akira is in the Neutral path, watching as the battle between the Cult of Gaea and the Ashurai Kai tear apart the group and then discovering that (SPOILER)destiny is at work here and your just living in the aftermath of a previous chosen one's path is pretty damn exciting.

I will agree that after you make the choice that locks you in your path the plot gets a bit more swiss-cheese since if you want to get the gritty details about Walter and Jonathan's stories you need to align yourself with their factions but I actually liked the quest Masakado gives because it ties very heavily in Masaskado's role for Japan and in the series. Symbolically the quest makes perfect sense to be honest and it's not like reviving Masakado was going to stop Lucifer or the Archangels from trying to pull off their plans, I actually liked the story.