Shin Megami Tensei // World Is A Fuck, Kill Em All

I’ve honestly never had a problem with the AI in Persona 3, as long as you set up their tactics. The most common example I see is Mitsuru using Marin Karin instead of healing. Why do you have her on heal/support? That’s not her job. You have Yukari and the MC for that. If you’re at a point where you NEED Mitsuru to heal you before either of those two get a turn, you probably didn’t have yukari on the correct tactic, (Which is always heal/support) from my experience.

That’s true. I can’t say I recall the AI ever being truly incompetent for me, but admittedly it has been a while since I played P3. But the nice thing about the AI is that you don’t have to rely on it that much anyway because you have several personas at your disposal to make up for its inadequacies.

Oh, yeah, totally. I’ll take the convenience of having it over the immersion of not having it almost every time. It’s just that not having it isn’t a deal breaker for me like it seems to be for others I’ve heard across the internet.

I never had much of a problem with the AI either, but I also don’t think it’s terribly immersion breaking to have complete control over your party. They see you as their leader, so it makes sense that you could shout out a “Mitsuru, use Mabufu!” and she would.

It’s more like a benefit to immersion that your party members handle themselves not that immersion hinges on it.

As someone who never owned a PS2, I kind of feel awkward talking about SMT sometimes, as if I wasn’t part of the “right” era. I’ve had a few Nocturne fans look awkwardly at me for liking IV and IVA, for instance, and I can’t really say they are wrong or right for that as I’ve never experienced Nocturne myself.

I’ve pretty much enjoyed every game I have played, though (all of the DS and 3DS titles, plus Persona 4 Golden). I’m also the one-woman fanclub for wanting to bring back Jersey Devil from Soul Hackers as a frequent representative of the Wilder race.

Oh, and La Llarona should come back as well.

…And pretty much all the unloved Soul Hackers demons in general, really.

My first SMT experience was Persona 2: Eternal Punishment. It was a sequel to Persona 2: Innocent Sin, which wasn’t actually ported on PS2 either because one of the final bosses was Hitler, because it included a homosexual romantic interest and this was the 90s, or some other reason. This doesn’t make EP incomprehensible - rather, it gives the game an engaging strangeness. The characters have no idea what’s going on with this “Other Side” stuff, and neither do you. It also has a female protagonist (which was pretty rare at the time), while the rest of your party includes a cop who dresses like a mod, a nihilistic hacker who attacks enemies by flicking Qi-infused coins at them, and your best friend/flatmate Ulala. Ulala is super awesome and I love her arc. In fact all the characters have great arcs, and I think that more than anything is what hooked me on the game and SMT in general.

Ulala is the best character in a game that is chock full of awesome characters. I like the new Personas just fine (well, 3 was kinda ehn IMO) but the Persona 2 duology will always be my favorite.

that’s odd, cause when I played IVA I felt a REAL callback to the Nocturne vibe. If you can find em I’d heartily recommend the two Digital Devil Saga games and Nocturne, they’ve aged fantastically

A female protagonist is still rare for MegaTens, unfortunately. I’d love to see more games in the series break free from the teenage male protagonist and have stories from other perspectives.

As a small consolation prize, IVA at least let me stomp the cosmos beneath my heel in one of three nice dresses (unfortunately, the picture I took was of the final area, so I’ll blur that as a precaution!).

I’d like to see more SMT stories centered around adult characters and their issues, that was the aspect of P2:EP that really drew me in.

Seeing Tatsuya and Katsuya’s initially strained relationship from the perspective of the adult big brother burdened by the pressure of being responsible was cool, and they manage to portray Ulala and Maya’s chemistry as roommates really well despite the latter being a silent protagonist.

Strange Journey also has adult characters, but their interplay mostly falls into symbolic gestures representing the alignments they stand in for.

2 Likes

I’m in a bit of an odd place with the series, since I love the games but have never actually beaten one, nor even come close. The furthest I’ve gotten was Sector Eridanus in Strange Journey, but I got so frustrated by the teleporter maze and item hunt therein that I restarted my save file just so I wouldn’t have to see it again for a while.

Somewhat appropriately, my character’s alignment wound up unintentionally changing to Chaos during my adventures in Eridanus.

Strange Journey is, well, strange. I loved the game until I got to about where you are, looked up a guide on how to proceed, accidentally saw what was coming next and decided my sanity wasn’t worth it.

Have you tried SMT 4? I found it to be very playable. I pretty much marathonned it, which I almost never do with game these days. They added a lot of quality of life stuff to the fusion system. Barring fusion accidents, which are incredibly rare, you see exactly what you’re going to get, and you can choose which skills get inherited.

I have SMT4 and SMT4: Apocalypse, but I’m not particularly far in either yet. I love the fusion mechanics and how much I can customize the MC’s stats and skills, but the scouting system is a bit of a pain.

SMT is one of those series that I think is really cool, but haven’t played that much of. I’ve got copies of Nocture, P3, P4, and SMTIV but haven’t gotten very far in any of them.

Doesn’t help that I also play these games very slowly for fear of dying because of one mistake and losing an hour or two of progress.

SMT4 Apocalypse doesn’t have that problem, thankfully. If you die you can just choose to come back right where you died before the battle.

1 Like

The first SMTIV is relatively forgiving, too. I mean, not as much as Apocalypse, but being able to buy your way back to life–even with an IOU if need be–is better than nothing. Plus, you can save anywhere in the field, so if you do suddenly die and it’s been a while since your last save, you can save again after reviving so you don’t pay for it more than once.

I actually had no problem with Sector Eradinus. The teleporting puzzle doesn’t permeate the entire sector; only a small portion of it. For me the biggest problem was always the dark areas. Like even after you can see in the dark they still refuse to get mapped.

I was actually surprised how long SJ was when people complained about Sector E thinking it would be the last or second last dungeon. Sector G was probably my favourite of them all and I loved how they separated the law and chaos areas with phase shifter.

Ah better introduce myself to this thread.

Hi. I’m a filthy Persona casual. Er, well, I’ve tried multiple SMT games (Devil Survivor 1 & 2, Soul Hackers and SMTIV) and only get about 20 hours in and drop out. Meanwhile, I can replay Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden on and on and on without cease! :sweat_smile:

I’ll just be lurking here…yep…just lurking.

No need to feel like lurking. I’m actually in the same boat as you except the opposite. I have played and completed so many SMT games but keep bouncing off Persona 3/4 despite loving their aesthetics.

I’m actually currently in the middle of my furthest P3P run currently, having just finished the Lovers boss shadow.