@Layth

There are definitely moments of frustration but the ability to save anywhere and to revive just before the battle that killed you is still a welcomed addition for this type of difficulty. I had two enemies wipe out my entire party in one turn yesterday but then it's up to you to get back on your feet, build up the proper resists to counter their attacks and form a better and more effective plan against enemies in the area. Plus you can always recruit a demon of that type which can allow for easy escapes later. It's fun and definitely makes the battles more engaging. I plan on sticking with it until the end.

You know, I'm all for challenge, but sometimes this game is far too luck based.

For a side quest, I had to fight this enemy that loved cast Mamudoon (instant death attack that has a chance of hitting all team members). Despite my best efforts of increasing my evasiveness and exploiting his weakness, he consistently landed it on my MC and at least one other demon his first round of attacking. After failing numerous times, I decided to just take a break for lunch. After coming back, every time he attempted the attack it missed, and I wound up beating him with my team almost at full health. I did nothing different; the game's RNG just decided to be nice to me finally and let me win.

Things like that just make me more and more tempted to shift to Easy mode.

@kgtennispro

There is also a spell that increases your party's resistance to Mamudo that you could have used, if you managed to stumble upon the right demon.

@Guillaume

Interesting. I've been pretty on top of my demon collecting and haven't stumbled upon that yet.

And I could have built a team of demons resistant to Mudo as well, but that just seems like a disgusting amount of time/demons to waste on a side quest that gives you some awful piece of armor you'll never even use ;p

But even in a broader sense, every boss battle has still been very luck dependent for me so far. Against the first boss, the first time I fought him he slaughtered me despite full evasiveness. Then when I reloaded the save, and tried again, he missed almost every time making it an extremely easy fight.

I guess part of the SMT charm is this fact that even if you're fully prepared you can still get screwed over by bad luck, but it just serves to irritate me

I'm really interested in this game but I always prefer playing previous games in a series before jumping this late in the game. Based on the wikipedia entry for the series as a whole... it's confusing, especially with all the spin-offs and such (Devil Sumoner, Devil Survivor, etc.).

As an owner of Nintendo systems only, are there any recommendations for previous games to play in the series? Or should I just jump into IV?

@roykoopa64

I don't believe the games are tied together all that much. I heard that there might be small references to other games but there hasn't been anything so far that has left me confused or thinking I'd understand it if I played another game in the series and I'm over 15 hours in now.

@kgtennispro I get your complaint and I have kind of felt the same about past SMT games, but I think the intention of the developers really is that you'll build an entire team that can handle the one issue that you're currently facing. Seems like a waste of time to me, but some people get into that.

@shinriley

Misleading title is misleading.

I kinda hope Valve buys 'em, so I can get some damned Shin Megami games on my PC. Then again, Atlus is unusually dedicated to brands with their games even as a third-party. All their Persona games go to Playstation brand, with only a few SMT titles hitting Nintendo's handhelds and practically nothing else. It doesn't seem like great business (from their old third-party perspective) to be so dedicated to single consoles like that. If Nintendo acquires them, however, that'd be... interesting. I hope that doesn't lead to an eventual toning down of the demonic content of their games. Not that I think Nintendo would off the bat, I mean the SMT IV has all its content, but I'd hate to hear down the line in an Iwata Asks "We let them keep their core gameplay, which we thought was very good, but we got rid of Mada because it looked like a... well, you know [laughs] and we decided to stop calling them demons and start calling them Pokemon BECAUSE IT'S NOW SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: POKEMON, BITCHES! WOOOOO!"

DID XBOB JUST BLOW YOUR MIIIIIIIIIND?

Probably not, like 50 people suggested Atlus in that thread, but whatever I HAD FUN TYPING IT.

@Xbob42

Eh, Nintendo went after Bayonetta which had some... questionable content at times And that doesn't seem toned down from what we've seen so far.

VofEscaflowne said:

@Xbob42

Eh, Nintendo went after Bayonetta which had some... questionable content at times And that doesn't seem toned down from what we've seen so far.

Oh, I don't mean right off the bat. Right now they're trying to catch that elusive "hardcore," gamer, who loves violence and boobs and satan. I'm talking about 10 years from now when Nintendo's doing A-OK again and wants to retain their "family values." I'm not saying they will for sure, I'm just wishing aloud that it never comes to that.

Though Personakemon would be pretty cool, if'n they didn't make it all super-super-super-safe like every goddamn Pokemon game where it feels like it's trying so hard to not offend you that it can actually be insulting. Least to me. Put a LITTLE edge in there every once in a while! You don't need blood and guts to make a sharp point that gets people thinking. Black & White took it a little further with "What if Pokemon don't WANT to fight?" but then it's just brushed away with "WELL OF COURSE THEY LOVE TO FIGHT! POKEMON!" I thought it was a goddamn fair question. Critical thinking is never bad for anyone. Why not have the explanation be that, yeah, some Pokemon don't like to battle, but most battling ones do enjoy it? Just having it be a blanket limp-wrist answer was so boring and one-dimensional. I mean if you're not going to really explore the philosophical side of whether or not Pokemon like to battle, why bring it up to begin with?? If you don't want Pokemon to be any deeper than the shallow end of the pool, don't kick it off with questions like that!

Now I'm just ranting. I like it when games challenge their players and make them question what they're doing. Not just because it's "cool," but because when you get players thinking like that, they come to appreciate the game more, and things outside the game more. Critical thinking just isn't in enough movies, TV or games these days. It's getting more prevalent, but dammit I want more of it! MORE! BLARRGH!

@shinriley @VofEscaflowne Ug very misleading. For a second I was like HOLY F THIS IS AWESOME NEWS HOW HAVE I NOT... oh, it's not news, its speculation.

@Xbob42 "Only a few" SMT games hitting Nintendo's handhelds? If Atlus is dedicating SMT to anyone right now it is certainly Nintendo's handhelds. Since the last console game in 2008 (Persona 4) the SMT breakdown has been as follows:

Nintendo handhelds - 5 games (Devil Survivor 1 / 2, Strange Journey, IV, Soul Hackers) and Devil Survivor 1 was revamped for 3DS... so let's say 5 1/2. Supposedly there is another one in development on 3DS as well.

Sony handhelds - 4 games (Persona 1, 2, 3, 4)

Everything else - JACK. Although there is the crossover with Fire Emblem planned for the Wii U.

All 4 of the Sony handheld games have been ports / remakes, while most of the Nintendo handheld games have been brand new games.

So, in conclusion, SMT has essentially abandoned consoles for an entire generation (do we expect this to change anytime soon?) and moved to handhelds instead, and Nintendo handhelds have seen the bulk of this with 5 (1/2?) games, although Sony is right there behind with 4 games.

With that said this idigitaltimes article is just straight up wishful thinking at this point. As much as I'd love to see it happen, I really, really doubt that Nintendo will buy Atlas.

@Zero I was talking about the only SMT games I really care about, actually: Persona. Devil Survivor is okay, too, but the rest I couldn't care less about. But yeah, should've been more clear. (I find the mainline SMT games to be incredibly lame, will try out this one when I get the chance, since people love it so much.)

@Xbob42 Hmm, the way you worded it though "only a few and nothing else" made it sound like you consider the Nintendo platforms to get scraps. When in reality they're the only ones that have gotten new SMT games since Persona 4 in 2008 (not counting the fighting game) so I'd say they are where Atlus is focusing the series right now.

As for Persona, Atlus hasn't actually done anything with Persona since 2008, unless you count a bunch of ports and a fighting game. So it's tough to say at this point where their Persona eggs lie. Most likely 5 would probably be on PS4 or PS4 / Xbox One (360 did get the fighting game, so maybe Xbox is in on the franchise now), but then again who knows? I didn't expect an entire generation without a Persona RPG and yet here we are.

Oh no, it wasn't that I thought Nintendo got scraps, it's that I thought that once Atlus chose a platform, they stuck with it religiously, they're not very multi-console. Which in my opinion kinda sucks. But I'd prefer PC versions of everything, so that kind of goes for absolutely every game I want.

As for the Persona titles... Atlus seems to release Persona way late in a console's lifespan. Persona 3 came out in 2006 in Japan, 2007 in the U.S., so the same time the PS3 launched, and then for the U.S. almost a year after the PS3 launched. Persona 4 was 2008 for both, meaning about 2 years after the PS3 was out. I'd expect the same kinda treatment for Persona 5.

Well the Persona fighting game did go to both the PS3 and 360, although I have no idea what, if anything, that says for the potential platforms for Persona 5 whenever it drops.

I kind of think that PS2 got Persona 4 so late in its life because there were like 150+ million PS2s around at that point and people were still buying PS2s in massive numbers. I don't know how long the PS3 will actually survive after the next set of consoles come around.

I was more leaning toward them making Persona games extremely slowly...

Persona 4 came out quickly after Persona 3, but it used the exact same engine and Personas and all that. Even the combat system was only slightly modified, and in a very confusing way until you played Persona 3 (most people who play Persona 3 these days do so after playing 4, myself included.) and realized that Persona 4 had light "slash" and "pierce" attacks because there were three types of physical damage (piercing, slashing and blunt) in Persona 3. They didn't even change the descriptions in Persona 4! So you're left thinking "What the hell is the difference between this ability that is light piercing and this one that is light slashing?? They look exactly the same!"

I think it just takes them an ungodly amount of time to build an engine or something.

I guess? They knocked out 4 pretty fast though.

Right, like I said, they reused the engine, so when they have to build a new one...