Shin Megami Tensei

[Clones]

Akira was really cool in both sides. But if he's in both of those worlds, what about our World?

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

The first world is what happens when Law rules, the 2nd work is what happens when Chaos rules. They are alternate realities. The White show you them to try and convince you that nothing works (neutral can't work in theory cuz you're from the neutral world and it was a mess). The thing is Akira screws up the message everytime by being the guy who basically says "I started as Law/Chaos but I now understand *the other side* after living here and meeting you"

 

The way they posed it it seemed like it was different points in time, which is also possible but I don't think that's right exactly.

 

I think Akira is the like...avatar of you (the neutral you) in each of the two worlds.

 

I'm almost positive I'm neutral route now, Isabeau joined me and the other two fools are gone.

 

Fingers crossed I have to kill them cuz they were useless for the most part

 

Nozomi at least got a happy ending she became the new fairy queen and I can fuse Black Maria now altho idk what I'm gonna do there?

 

I want to use black maria tho i know that much

 

high elec pleroma/thunder reign/antichthon/salvation/samarecarm/drain gun/null phys/concentrate?

 

idk i might do something else over HEP and TR...something that can be used on single targets better. Ragnarok maybe? I don't have a ragnarok guy yet so idk

[Clones]

There's a theory floating around that the Akira in our World is actually Aquila.

 

Oh man PD, prepare to be disappointed. The final boss designs are awful. Just plain awful.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

I'm almost positive he is or is related to it, the Law route almost states it directly.

 

Basically I think the idea is that Akira is the dood who tries to get things moving in the right direction after someone else does the heavy lifting. So sorta like how in Norse mythology, after Ragnarok happens and all the most powerful gods and monsters are dead, the weaker gods and beings that survived rebuild the world. In the Law world, after you slay Pluto and give them a fighting chance at survival on the surface, he leads them back up himself and builds the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado. In the Chaos world, after you slay Kenji, he takes over and starts trying to change the basic philosophy of the world to one where the strong and weak can live together. Not as overt as the Law world's statement, but you could take it to mean he's making Mikado, as well.

 

In both cases he wasn't strong enough to enact the change himself, but his heart is in the right place and he at least has the know-how and guts to make things happen. He just needs the help of a friendly god (you) to fight against the unfriendly gods.

 

There's a good chance once I finish the game I write a huge post about all this based on what I see in this neutral route, a lot of which will involve my critique of the game itself. There's a lot to think about and note imo, in terms of game design and the story/world itself.

[Clones]

That'll be good. I was tempted to do that, buuuut I wanted to wait until someone else was finished the game. That and I'm pretty bad when making something constructive like a huge forum post about a game.

 

Akira is basically what you said, the guy that everyone looks up too for decisions but can't actually make the physical changes. I really wish there was more of him. It felt like a missed opportunity to me.

 

I never did finish that Nozomi challenge quest line. I was very tempted too but didn't bother. The again, I spent a good chunk of my time just before the final boss for Chaos route trying to get to Tayasou. Or whatever that place is called. Pretty good place if you're like lvl 70 and need to do a little grinding or get some demons.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

I'm like lvl 87 lol grinding isn't an issue

 

"The meek shall inherit the Earth" pretty much fits Akira to a tee.

 

I've got tons to say about him I think but I'll hold off for now

[Clones]

Ehhh I went there since I was still wearing those hockey pads. Didn't get fucked over by Hama all the time. Plus there's some cool demons over there. Turns out it's Toyosou.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

word son it's something

 

man for neutral route u gotta complete like every quest in the game to become the champion of humanity hahahaha this has wasted my entire fucking day

 

to try and curb my frustration I spent some time grinding for cash and bought the boy shorts in the designer store now I look like a really gay version of the demi-fiend

[Ataraxis]

I just made it to the point of being in Infernal Tokyo today. I enjoyed being greeted with that music out of the gate, but I miss the map of Blasted. I've actually gotta say I really don't enjoy traversing the Tokyo cityscape at all.

 

Also, I'm level 81 and seeing more of the demons in that range, and I just realized I skipped over a lot of the ones in the 70's. Like, to this point I've actually been fusing them almost constantly, but I'm finding it hard to let go of some of the ones I've been making lately.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

beanie+koga saburo torso+boy shorts (siegfried ones)

 

keanu I'll be straight with you the best demons in the game are pretty much the 60-70 range ones with only a few exceptions, especially cuz of stat boosting

 

I tested it some my marici (base 70?) is superior to Vishnu and Shiva while being 6 levels back. Superior as in every stat is higher

 

except hp and mp of course

 

Huang Long pretty much is the best demon in the game I'm almost 100% convinced now unless there's something I haven't seen yet that's somehow even more absurd

[Ataraxis]

I believe it. The ones I'm having the hardest time letting go of are the ones who were high 60's when I first fused them. I do have a couple from the mid 70's who are dope as shit too though.

 

Oh, and when I was making my Kinmamon all the dudes I leveled to make the Elements, and the Elements themselves, ended up beating out everything at a comparable level. Like, their average stat value in everything was as good as the highest on some of the demons with great single stats.

 

I'm fine with that though 'cuz there's definitely a few lower level demons I'd rather have.

 

Oh also all the female demonoids I've seen look hot.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

really hot

 

that's why I didn't get why alice was so bad cuz low level should be fine once you catch them up they are inherently stronger wtf??

 

Kinmamon does fucking work tho

[Ataraxis]

I hated the skill set I had on my Kinmamon but he ended up rocking shit all the same. I just made him to make him.

Another dude I hated the skills on was Kama, but he carried himself with pride and got a lucky morph and worked unbelievably well for me. I traditionally hate that guy, but I gotta give respect where it's due.

 

When I get to the end, if I decide I've got it in me to flat out try and do a demon by design, Scathatch is probably topping my list right now.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

I'm still planning to use Nekomata hahahahaha

 

altho I kinda got all the ones I want so I'm set mostly. Huang Di I'm still trying to get right I still have to finish my experiment. I wanted to make Masakado once I get him too if they didn't redo his art in a way that infuriates me.

 

Kama lowkey has a great design

 

and masakado just joined me and he's a fucking floating head? ugghhh omg man

 

Unbelievable

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Man the Gabriel and Michael fight was legitimitely hard for me, I lost on the first try but rethought my strategy and went back to stomp their guts, which is precisely what happened fuck them

 

I think my final team is like a whole 10 guys deep? Lemme see here:

 

Vishnu, Demonee-Ho, Black Maria, Isis, Huang Long, Marici, Ongyo-Ki, Chi You, Amaterasu, Tenkai

*I was typing out moves but then this fucking laptop did the thing where it moved cursor by itself and erased all I had wrote so fuck it assume they were all uber well-made*

 

I have these guys and I still use them but their usage is pretty low now, mainly on a team dynamic thing:

 

Kinmamon - Glacial Blast/High Ice Pleroma/Null Phys/Dekaja/High Phys Pleroma/Null Gun/Trisagion/High Fire Pleroma

Masakado - Madness Nails/Occult Flash/Charge/Bloody Glee/High Phys Pleroma/Repel Phys/Drain Gun/Life Surge

Alilat - Megidolaon/Concentrate/Mediarahan/Samarecarm/High Force Pleroma/Floral Gust/Drain Elec/Debilitate

 

I'm at Lucifer Castle now or w/e it was called I'm pretty sure I can win at will and he'll be a total joke to fight so fuck him

 

Oh I went ahead and did the Ancient of Days DLC I think technically I was supposed to wait til new game+ to attempt it but fuck it how much stronger can I even get realistically?

 

Anyways I rolled his ass too. Took 3 tries tho shout out to Ancient of Days for making me think before watching him get merc'd nasty.

 

I wanted to ask you guys about this but did you notice that Berserker God seems to be more effective than madness nails like always? Also did you notice that occult flash seems to be more effective than everything except bgod as well?

 

okay I haven't finished the game on Neutral yet (I'm in Lucifer's Castle) but I felt like talking about this now so here we go:

 

 

 

As you guys probably know by now I think Nocturne is one of my favorite games ever. I went into SMT4 hoping for something that was at least 75% as good (so basically a great game) and I think we got that. That being said I have a bunch of problems with the game. I'll start with minor stuff (i.e. stuff that didn't bug me that much) and get to the heavy stuff (the shit that almost killed it) at the end:

 

-There's not enough moves. Nocturne was chalk full of moves that were useful and weird, and I think this game should have gone that route, as well. There's not a whole lot of trickery and strategy that you can accomplish with your demons outside of basic roles (ice/healer, ice/fighting, fighting/gun, gun/heal, gun/fire, etc).

 

-The endgame/postgame content/demons is kinda lame. Frankly they should have copied Nocturne and spread the fiends/extra side stuff out across the game. I hate when games lump it all at the end, because then you don't get to enjoy the results of it. Why would I want to fuse the riders after I beat the riders when I'm probably lvl 99?

 

-The Tokyo map is poorly done. Just not worth the headaches.

 

-There's too many fucking demons. This is especially problematic when you realize there's no real differences between demons aside from resistances and base moves, because all of them use the same scales for stats (hp, balanced, mp types; str/dex, mag/luck, agi, balanced types). This could easily have been streamlined.

 

-My big problem: I absolutely do not like how they handled the Law/Chaos/Nothingness/Neutrality paradigm. The thing about Nocturne that made it so strange and uncomfortable, and thus compelling, was that noone was in the wrong or right for doing what they did. Out of all of the big movers (Hikawa, Chiaki, Isamu, yourself, and to a lesser extent Lucifer), nobody's Reason, or motives, or even actions, were necessary "wrong". In many (all lol) cases they were evil, but they were what happens in the embryonic world you were in. What made the game so morally tricky and forced you to think so much was the fact that everyone had perfectly good reasons for saying and doing what they did, and they all had a belief system that made sense. Noone was trying to be the bad guy; they were all trying to "do the right thing" and accomplish their dreams for the sake of the world.

 

That doesn't happen at all in SMT4. The Eastern Kingdom of Mikado becomes an afterthought after you reach Tokyo, just a place to receive missions and occassionally get new gear. The Tokyo factions are all scum, too. Ashura-Kai are human harvesting creepy mobsters with a guy who wants to rule the world, and the Gaea Cult are musclebound elitist egomaniacs lead by some nutty demon queen who clearly just wants everything to burn. And the angels side with the Ashura-Kai? That doesn't even make sense. So let's say the Ashura-Kai don't actually represent Law (which is bogus, but bear with me), which means the angels are the first instance of Law's representatives showing. Why wait so long? And why paint them in such a negative light so quickly? Even Lilith didn't get that bad a hand dealt. Also the Nothingness route is thrown at you out of nowhere. It would only make sense to agree to ending the cycle if you wanted to see a different ending for the game. The White are complete buffoons. They send you, TWICE, on missions to show you the futility of each route and the result is only that Akira feels like "neutrality" is the best answer, and that as long as you're stronger than the other side people will manage. Why would that convince anyone that wiping out existence is the answer?

 

I get the art direction, and I understand that a lot of the game's narrative is trying to demonstrate to you that Law and Chaos in the SMT4 sense are not that far apart, just different viewpoints of the same world. But I think it was poorly handled. You aren't supposed to assume one side or the other is truly wrong for believing what they did; that's not what SMT is about. Moral ambiguity and forcing you to question your beliefs is what the games were all about. At least before.

 

 

I put it in spoiler tag to shrink the window cuz its a lot of words even tho I left a ton out

Edited August 19, 2013 by YUNG ADULT CONTEMPORARY

[Clones]

Man, that was a great read. You're pretty spot on with most of my complaints as well. Although I think my biggest complaint is that your companions really don't get all the much character development besides little bits here and there.

 

If they had to redesign the monsters, why not get Kaneko just to redo some of them? Seriously, making them look like what some look now is a bit stupid.

 

Also fuck that one route. You know the route. Fuck that one. Wasn't needed, and we seriously could have something else in it's place.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

ugh man I talked to a friend about this for a whole hour at a pizza joint, the Law/Chaos/etc thing just drove me nuts for SMT4. I'm 99% sure that they should have just used the Nocturne paradigms or work along worldview lines instead of "Law" and "Chaos".

 

Dood idk if I mentioned it in my complaints thing but the new art bugs the shit out of me. The Kaneko art is as vital to the SMT franchise as anything else, I don't care if they were trying to tell a different story with the art and that's why they changed it (idk if that's what even happened I am guessing that based on what I saw) but straight up that art sucks. It's just not any good. Masakado is a fucking half a head wtf.

 

The Nothingness ending to me is just bad story telling, and yeah the characters could use a bit more development, but instead of me complaining about those two points I'll point something out how Nocturne handled it instead.

 

So in Nocturne, from the drop you are learning about each person's Reason. Even before you know what Reasons are. And these are people that you interact very little with (this is uber intentional, to build that isolated/strange/depressing feeling you get wandering the Vortex World. You're just a creepy half-demon shaman wandering the wasteland absorbing info and slaying things. But by the end of the game you know EXACTLY where everyone stands, what they believe, and how they accomplished it. Hell, you even know exactly how and why everyone ELSE failed to accomplish anything. There isn't a single wasted line or scene in the game. Everything matters. And the questions all make sense in the belief system sense. Nocturne is basically written like a great comic book. You only get so many panels and pages so you gotta make it all count, and you have to try and tell as much of the story as you can in the art (which Nocturne nails, of course).

 

Stuff like this I don't think matters to most people as it does to me but that's mainly because I'm big on storytelling and seeing how stuff like that is put together, especially since I like to write and read so much.

[Clones]

Law and Chaos is a pretty old concept. If they were going to bring in back instead of using Nocturne's system, they should have added a sort of a twist to it rather than it being clear cut.

 

And stop making me want Nocturne more. I can't find that game, at all.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

What's up with the Ancient Day DLC ending anyways? I didn't understand the cocoons thing.

[Ataraxis]

I'm going to refrain on commenting on much else with regards to overall opinions until I beat the game, but:

 

And stop making me want Nocturne more. I can't find that game, at all.

 

Amazon.ca has it for $20. GOGOGO.

 

It's through amazon themselves. What I heard was that they found a warehouse full of over shipped or unsold ATLUS games a few years back. They've got a few others sitting around, too.

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

Nocturne is great

[Clones]

 

Amazon.ca has it for $20. GOGOGO.

 

It's through amazon themselves. What I heard was that they found a warehouse full of over shipped or unsold ATLUS games a few years back. They've got a few others sitting around, too.

 

I uh, don't buy games from places like Amazon. Steam is really the only place I buy games but that's cuz of Steam Cards.

 

So I've heard that Nocturne is great.

 

Yeah I never bothered with the Ancient of Days DLC. Probably won't bother with much else DLC wise now.

Edited August 21, 2013 by Clones

[YUNG MASTERLESS GLENCOUR]

cool, they are supposed to be story related but I don't feel like I learned too much from any of them really, at least not yet. Maybe I gotta think about it more.

 

The monsters aren't very good either but one thing that's kinda dope is Ancient Day can pass that concentrate+ skill it has...I forget the name but it's basically 3x damage instead of 2.5x damage.

 

I wanna say Sanat has the phys equivalent.

 

tbf the in-game content is pretty bulky there's plenty there. Those money/exp/app DLCs are god tier tho.

[Ataraxis]

I uh, don't buy games from places like Amazon. Steam is really the only place I buy games but that's cuz of Steam Cards.

 

So I've heard that Nocturne is great.

 

I get you and all I can say is FAIR ENOUGH.

 

I don't see myself ever buying the DLC. That applies for almost every game, to be honest.

[Ataraxis]

So I guess I can go neutral or chaos. I split my file so I can take a crack at both. Also, it looks like one of my best demons by the end is gonna be...Earthys.