Tribes of Trusty
Member
Context : I love JPRGs, and two of my favourite RPGs ever are Persona 3 and Persona 4 and my first contact with the series thanks to the overwhelming popularity P3 had and how it brought SMT to the light to western audiences (even if I had already bought SMT III Nocturne and Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army which I didn't play yet).
After being initially interested in the game and fed up with Atlus fucking Europe over with how it treated the gamers, the multiple delays, the absence of news, the release over a year after the initial one and the lack of physical release, I caved in in a sale and bought the game for 12. So worth it, because if SMT IV isn't the best JRPG ever, it's not far from it.
The beginning of the game : The word that might be best to describe the beginning of the game is unprepossessing. Because it is crazy how different the rest of the game is different from the beginning, to the point it doesn't even look like the same game, and one can only wonder if this was done intentionnally, maybe out of elitisim, maybe as a throwback to old school games, maybe it was kind of a though-love several hours-long tutorial. Anyway, the beginning of the game is likely to discourage a lot of players (it nearly did for me), because of :
- Its difficulty. For those who aren't acquainted with the SMT mechanics (even through spin offs such as Persona), it can be quite brutal if you don't get quickly used to fusing demons, negotiating, exploring, and think buffs and debuffs spells are useless (dear god use them for they are the most important spells in the game)
- Its apparent limited exploration. You only have a few locations to visit and cannot explore them in a 3 dimensionnal space, and even then you are limited to speaking to NPCs and buying things from the store.
- Its austere graphics during battle, contrasting with how the game looks when you explore the Naraku (spoilers :
), spanning the two 3DS's screens with displayed at the top the enemy in a 2D sprite with limited animation, and at the bottom the commands for your characters. Like in Dragon Quest, the previous SMT and most old JRPG, you only see the enemy and the effect of your attack/spell. No player character on screen, no 3D models, no invocations like in Persona 3 and/or 4, only one human character in your party with a guest human who's AI controlled, the rest are demons.
It is a little though to get used to it at first, and some might hate it, but personally I grew to love it, as it is functional, fast-paced and keep distraction to a minima
- The majority of JRPGs place you into the role of a hero, a super-important main character and an entourage you get to know everything of, from their past lives, their loved ones, their past times, their tastes in anything, etc. And the story is fed to you through long cutscenes and mandatory exposition. SMT IV has very little of this
but you have to go look for it, and think about what happened and what was implied in order to get all of the story.
Why is this game excellent : With all that said, why should you even play this game ?
For the same reasons I played it for nearly 90 hours for my first playthrough ant got 3 out of 4 endings :
Next I know I have to play the other games in the series to quench my thirst of SMT and Persona 5, maybe by playing SMT III and Soul Hackers I just bought. How are Devil Survivor games ? I heard they're like a mix between SMT and Persona in style of gameplay and story, which might be perfect for me as they also are on 3DS.
After being initially interested in the game and fed up with Atlus fucking Europe over with how it treated the gamers, the multiple delays, the absence of news, the release over a year after the initial one and the lack of physical release, I caved in in a sale and bought the game for 12. So worth it, because if SMT IV isn't the best JRPG ever, it's not far from it.
The beginning of the game : The word that might be best to describe the beginning of the game is unprepossessing. Because it is crazy how different the rest of the game is different from the beginning, to the point it doesn't even look like the same game, and one can only wonder if this was done intentionnally, maybe out of elitisim, maybe as a throwback to old school games, maybe it was kind of a though-love several hours-long tutorial. Anyway, the beginning of the game is likely to discourage a lot of players (it nearly did for me), because of :
- Its difficulty. For those who aren't acquainted with the SMT mechanics (even through spin offs such as Persona), it can be quite brutal if you don't get quickly used to fusing demons, negotiating, exploring, and think buffs and debuffs spells are useless (dear god use them for they are the most important spells in the game)
- Its apparent limited exploration. You only have a few locations to visit and cannot explore them in a 3 dimensionnal space, and even then you are limited to speaking to NPCs and buying things from the store.
- Its austere graphics during battle, contrasting with how the game looks when you explore the Naraku (spoilers :
which I thought was definitely going to be a Tartarus-like randomly-generated dungeon to explore for all the game like in P3
It is a little though to get used to it at first, and some might hate it, but personally I grew to love it, as it is functional, fast-paced and keep distraction to a minima
- The majority of JRPGs place you into the role of a hero, a super-important main character and an entourage you get to know everything of, from their past lives, their loved ones, their past times, their tastes in anything, etc. And the story is fed to you through long cutscenes and mandatory exposition. SMT IV has very little of this
as you can guess you ARE kind of important
Why is this game excellent : With all that said, why should you even play this game ?
For the same reasons I played it for nearly 90 hours for my first playthrough ant got 3 out of 4 endings :
- Nearly everything that might be overly difficult and frustrating with the game is completely reversed after a certain point in the beginning of the game, a boss that serves as a wake-up call and a plot twist (that I hope you don't know of like I did as I went in the game blind, so it came as a great surprise to me)
- Exploration : there is a whole lot of it. Like, a good chunk of the game is exploring, in a 3D space, and the game can be really awe-inspiring graphically with its setting in 3D mode. There is a lot of optionnal stuff and places to explore too.
- Sidequests : a whole load of it. Most of them are interesting and test your skills in battle, with a special mention to the special Burroughs quests, which brings us to the next point...
- The battle system : definitely the high point of the game. The battle system is fast, intelligent and most of the time fair. It's based on the press turn system which applies to foes to allies alike and gets you extra turns to fight when you strike your opponent with their elemental weakness, but erase your turns if you use one of their elemental resistances. The battles can get tactical very quick. Also, even more so than in Persona, the buff and debuff spells are vital to your survival. The game rewards intelligent thinking during battle and punishes brash actions and fighting like you would in other JRPGs (like spamming basic attacks on seemingly weak or underleveled ennemies). You can easily take on ennemies that are 10 to 20 levels above you if you play it right, but the inverse is also true, which keeps you on toes for all the game.
- Saving anywhere. Woohoo.
- Anti-frustration features such as continuing the game once if you died in battle by paying a fee of Macca - the game's currency or Play Coins (think like Dragon Quest)
- Demon recruiting fusion. It gets addicting real quick to fuse demons, test them, playing with skill inheritance, to discover new demons, recruiting them in battle, etc.
- The setting : without spoiling, let's say the setting is unique and really well done. The sense of urgency and dread is present throughout the game.
- Multiple paths and endings, 4 of them, wich are all unique and play differently. It is not possible to get all of them in a single playthrough and the arguably "best ending" is really though to get. But fear not, as there is...
- A new game plus mode which you can choose how to do it (keeping level, equipment, money, etc, or not)
- 500 demons, all with their really interesting mythos trivia. Gotta
catch'emrecruit/fuse them all ! On a related note : most of the mythology presented in the game is accurate, which is cool to see. - The story is really enjoyable, albeit not the best point of the game.
- Burroughs is
my waifuadorable - The music is so good. Special mention to a favourite of mine : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6cSbof7Pik
- I'd rather have the Japanese voice acting, but the English VA is good too.
- The choices you have to make throughout the game define you alignment : Order, Chaos, or neutral. The problem being there aren't any neutral choices or nuanced chaos/order choices in the game, which makes getting the Neutral ending difficult, and make you sound like a shizophrenic at times if you decide to get the neutral ending.
- A problem with the neutral path :
Forcing you to do sidequests to get to the ending feels kind of cheap and like a way to artificially lenghten the game
- Only two save slots. 6 would've been ideal imho.
- The story can be difficult to piece together, and apparently there are optionnal DLCs that explain a great deal of backstory.
- The party guest character AI can get REALLY stupid. Like what the fuck Jonhathan I got my ass handed to me and lost my turns at the previous turn because I used Bufudyne on an enemy who repelled it and YOU'RE USING IT NOW ?
Next I know I have to play the other games in the series to quench my thirst of SMT and Persona 5, maybe by playing SMT III and Soul Hackers I just bought. How are Devil Survivor games ? I heard they're like a mix between SMT and Persona in style of gameplay and story, which might be perfect for me as they also are on 3DS.
