@@declibsed they invited a bunch of guest artists from Kamen Rider to draw most of the fancy new designs in SMT4... but apparently due to contract shenanigans Atlus cant reuse the designs, thats why Tenkai, Luci and Merkabah got re-drawn in SMT4 Apocalypse by Doi
a lot of people say nocturne is the dark souls of turn based rpg games, but seeing it as your main recommendation makes me glad that its not seen as this massively difficult game all the time. thing is, you're rewarded with exploiting weaknesses, but so are your enemies. the game isn't as difficult as people hype it up to be unless you're actively just not paying attention to the game's core mechanics (apart from a few gimmick bosses). playing nocturne also helped me appreciate all kaja and kunda buffs in the later installments of persona. definitely a good place to start with smt - it's just all around a really fun game.
100% agreeing with you here, Nocturne is by no means easy, but It's really not what people make it out to be. I feel like most of the difficulty comes from the random BS the game throws a you, like instakill moves or ambush encounters
It's punishing but honestly just above average difficulty if you understand and fully explore its systems. Imo it has nothing on the DS version of Devil Survivor or Etrian Odyssey, and I'm pretty sure it pales in comparison to old school western crawlers like Wizardry 6 and 7.
SMT3 is hard when you random Encounter Nyx, that give you sleep ailment and then uses a move that insta-kill all the sleeping enemies, losing 3 hours of farming. In SMT4 you can get smashed by demons who are 20 levels under. With crits and Insane damage. But at least you can revive the MC. Which one will you choose?
When I finished strange journey, I start tearing up but not because of the game, it was the idea that there are a lot of games and series that have really creative ideas that I'm probably not going to play them or know about them video games are truly beautiful and enjoyable way to see humans creativity
Tokyo Mirage Sessions is an EXCELLENT rpg. The combat and gameplay is sooooooooo good. The story depends on your preferences, altho the music videos and idol screnes are BOMB
When I found out about SMT as a child I always wanted to play it since I liked p3 so much but when I got a 3ds, some of the buttons broke since I always play smash lol. At least I've beaten the minitour
It's kinda funny how the 2 megaten games I've played for a significant amount are the ones who got rereleased this year (p3/smt5). They are both great but imperfect games, so a rerelease is appreciated, but still. That said, reload absolutely slaps! Fixed most of my annoyances I had with fes.
@@Dias_SD Strange Journey is pretty dope, I heard people were upset with the changes in Redux, but most of the changes except for the sub app changes seem positive plus you can skip the extra story content if you want. I'm currently on Carina right now and love the combat and fusing demons is dope and rewarding. I'm a Christian so seeing tons of stuff from Judeo-Christian mythology is really cool. It seems like the game is pretty nuanced when tackling it instead of being completely black and white or black and black which is nice to see as I've heard the series has had issues with that in other installments due to cultural misunderstandings in Japan due to the country's history.
@@doggodingus3555 Thank you for your detailed reply. It's awesome you are having fun. Now I'm curious to try it too. I hope you continue to enjoy the game
If gameplay is something you really want, P5R isn't going to be the most fun, but you should still play it, so it's better to play it when you're still new rather than skipping over it. Also, turn the difficulty up and don't use the DLC. It's not that bad tbh.
My first main line megaten game was 4 apocalypse now I’ve played both nocturne and 5 and I’m currently hyped for 5 vengeance and hoping to get my hands on the other 3ds smt games Persona fans should definitely give atlus’s other games a try
The 3ds games are so insanely good despite being on such limiting hardware. Definitely give those a shot, Devil Survivor and Vanilla SMT 4 were a joy to play. Yeah I hope Vengeance can get some of the new fans from P5 and P3 Reload into the other parts of the franchise, would love to see SMT flourish again like in the PS2 and 3DS era
I am interested in what you might dislike about the angel designs for SMT IV. I personally love them as they are somehow confusing in a perceivable and kinda understandable. They look human, or at have the form of a human, but are so wildly different and beyond understanding that its amazing. And this was hand drawn. Not like AI making something that you kinda understand but don't, Doi somehow managed to make all of those feelings just with pixels and a pen. Needless to say, i love the designs and sad you don't but i respect you opinion.
I just don't like how "overdesigned" they are, there's too much going on in the designs imo and it takes away from the uniqueness of them, but I do get where you're coming from. The designs do certainly have their appeal. I'm not sure if the designs are really from Doi, someone in the comments has already pointed out that most of SMT IV's designs were from guest artists, so those could be from someone else.
My first smt experience was emulating p3fes, despite being interested in royal. I really liked everything but struggled in battles (it was my first jrpg ever). Then just as i reached December Reload got announced. I still don't know how to feel about it.
@declibsed Meh. It's a series that's been established as a "trail and error" strategy game where you learn weaknesses and figure out how to counter demons/ai attacks. Just look at the Demi-fiend in DDS and the Lucifer fight in Nocturne. Hell I'd go further with that one boss fight with a fake YHVH in SMT II, if you don't know what to expect your stuck with an hour long boss fight. It's definitely not a series for everyone but I still love it.
I did Persona 5 royal i liked it very much Actually doing Persona 4 golden i almost finish and mid game of Nocturne Very good games indeed I downloaded Strange Journey gonna do it next 👀
I will say, the only thing that is *really* bad about P5R over P5 is that it shoves its overpowered DLC down your throat. If Morning Star x 3 for practically no sp cost for the price of free don't do you in, it's Neo Cadenza joining your summoning pool.
That's true, however you can choose to not use the op dlc persona, like I pretty much did. My biggest problem with P5R is how Kasumi's inclusion is handled, she barely has any relevancy before the final palace. I really like Kasumi and her development, but the devs needed more time to properly place her within the story.
yeah except fusion accidents can still fuse them, and some (especially when it comes to the Fools), will take prevalence over other personae you'd rather fuse instead. @@declibsed It was hard not to go in and Neo Cadenza when I accidentally fused FemOphreus through accident. Still busted the game on my own merits, but that's because they buffed Ryuji's SL to the sun.
@@Manavine Forgot about the dlc persona taking prevalence when fusing, but I did not know that you can get them through accidents 💀 Now I get what you meant with "shoving down the throat"
I played Shin Megami Tensei 3 through steam for the first time last month and as a persona fan who began with 4G it was an amazing experience. I personally believe the press turn system is truly superior over the one more system. I really enjoyed continuing my (persona)l trend of making Ose the ultimate strongest warrior but this time with SMT, i have to make sure that I have a well rounded team surrounding him and myself. I ended up with a newfound love for two additional demons Odin (Magic) and Dionysus (Support). It would've been Black frost over one of them but since the pc release was botched I couldn't be bothered to reset. I'm looking forward to SMT V and cant wait to continue the saga ans im glad i branched out! Edit: For those wanting to try smt 3, GET IT OFF OF STEAM KEY SITES!! I got mine for 15 bucks and don't regret paying that price for a shitty remaster
Press turn is also better in my book, it pushes you to carefully think about your moves instead of just throwing out your strongest attacks without real worry for repercussions. Please refrain from promoting key sites, you never know how they are pushing these prices so low since many of them use stolen credit cards. You can instead wait for the games to go on sale, which happens all the time and you get to support the games devs instead of potential credit cards thieves.
“First” game I played in the series was Persona Q, I liked the characters but the combat was not for me, thankfully I got P4G on the PSVITA and actually enjoyed playing through the story (people complained about the ported game having PS2 graphics, but what do you expect it’s a port not a remake). Anyways, after beating P4G and then P5R, I got the SMT3 remaster, P3P port, SMTV (which I got 2 months before SMTVV was announced😭), and SMT4 on the 3DS. I also have Soul Hackers 2 but haven’t started on that yet, probably gonna beat PQ finally and then start working on that. Probably gonna get P3R soon just because I want to play The Answer.
Personally I would recommend persona 3 reload as the starting point as it’s a amazing remaster of p3fes (that I played years ago, it’s wonderful) because it’s a more digestible story on the surface, while underneath the rabbit hole goes deeeep into complex things. But it’s also a good introduction to basics SMT turn based system and arcana can be a good introduction to understanding the opponent if one does know mythology. Also it has the best story of all the games and Aigis (also the sun social link) AND the ending will make you cry. Either maybe watch persona 4 golden, the gameplay ain’t actually that fun and pretty much just min/maxing, there’s a reason why their favorite persona is yoshitsune. It has a more complex level of Freudian psychology than 3. The character is the biggest selling point of it, but the fandom has a tendency to not understand that the midnight channel is other peoples perception of a person’s hidden desire and the shadow is acting out, not their actual feelings. Also some things reeeeealy didn’t age well or even was well when it released. Persona 5 Royal has better gameplay, but suffers heavily from that your first two teammates are garbage characters, that stupid wannabe cat and loud blond ape ruins every decent moment and the ending is just ehhh, no real finality to it? But finishing it opens up to plat persona 5 strikers which is the best spin-off game and introduction to musou games and Sophia is a pretty good character. For persona 1 you have to read the manga for the best version Persona 2 is/ep is pretty good Or play the digital devil sagas and then nocturne, watch SMT 4 as “smirk” is bullshit! Then SMT vengeance SMT 4 apocalypse is optional but the writing is some real hipster garbage
Yeah I thought about recommending P3R as well, but I haven't played it myself, nor do I really like the fact that a 70 euro game gets a 20- 30 euro story dlc additionally to it's repertoire of day 1 dlcs. Also I gotta disagree with only watching a playthrough of SMT IV, the game is great in it's own right and one shitty mechanic doesn't make it not worth playing.
I have to say this. Soul Hackers 2 is so incredibly mid. Forgettable villains and side party members. Okay gameplay. Bland dungeon design. Huge let down. If I had to give a top 5 Megaten games, it would be something like: 5.Persona 3 4.Digital Devil Saga 3.Shin Megami Tensei IV 2.Persona 4 Golden 1.Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
Would've loved to see SH2 succeed and be a great game. From what I've seen it has a lot of unique and interesting ideas, but the dev team fell short in the execution, be it because of time or budget restrictions. Your list is honestly pretty based. Out of curiosity, have you played Devil Survivor or Strange Journey?
@@declibsed I have played strange journey but i hate tactical rpgs, so i never had the interest to play devil survivor. What puts me off strange journey is the dungeon exploration. That old megaten style of moving is not for me. I have dropped both the ps1 version of Persona 1 and strange journey because of it.
@@freddiemercury5080 Yeah I get that, Strange Journey didn't really catch me either and I'm struggling to get myself motivated to continue playing SMT 1. Going from the newer games to the old dungeon exploration is really jarring
SH2 has interesting mechanics that can be improved upon with more SH titles down the line. Mid predictable story is fine but yeah the dungeon design is very bare bones, even Nocturne did that better. I'd recommend it to people who love gear-centric rpg games.
@@shinyanakagawa8241 SH2 is the purchase i regret the most on my steam account. On the other hand, SMT 3 Nocturne became one of my favourite JRPGs alongside DDS 1 and P4. Sure the gameplay on SH2 is cool and all but why pay that much when you can get the Nocturne remaster for half the price?
Eh, honestly it does have some redeeming qualities from what I've seen. Of course it has a plethora of problems, but It doesn't seem like garbage to me. Well I'll see when I get to play it myself
