>Demons don't drop macca so you have to do repeatable quests and farm items>Exp is more easily attained from talking and fusion>Skills are gained from leveling demons>No defense stat so combat is both sides seeing who can nuke who first>SmirkingWhat were they thinking? Like I'm not even mad, I'm just really confused about the design choices compared to the rest of the series.
>>692809820>No defense statIs a good thing. SMTIV unironically understood press turn's biggest flaw, the drawn out fights due to stat differences, and sought to make them fast-paced and semi-realistic duels where first strikes and proper preparation make all the difference.Macca is worthless other than for reviving on the spot, which in itself is worthless and an option added only for casuals.Skills being gained by level ups and experience being handed out for negotations which are a core part of the immersive SMT experience are both good changes.This game is kusokino misunderstood by midwits. The story asks you to pick up a few books too.
>>692811615I should also mention these things unironically make the game way more immersive than it has any right to be. You can't tank hits. What used to be party wipes due to hama/mudo now become black swan events at the hand of smirking demons you at least have the opportunity to control. Instead of artificial mazes you're dealing with Tokyo as one huge interconnected dungeon, and it's the best in the series, and SMTV failed to reach even a tenth of its greatness. Big bad demons lay out domains in order to wear out your morale and resources before facing them. Everything in the game, from questing to earning money to interacting with the world and its inhabitants, follows some sort of grounded logic instead of RPG tropes, and the game becomes impossibly more diagetic thanks to these changes. So on and so forth.If they hadn't cut out so much content and rewrote so much it would unironically be the best SMT game ever made, and the best game Atlus has developed. Shame they forgot how to make games like this.
>>692809820>Macca is worthless other than for reviving on the spot, which in itself is worthless and an option added only for casualsSo turning Charon down and just reloading my save was the right call?
>>692812396Hmm, you're kind of selling me on this. Maybe I'll give this series another try.
>>692811615>>692812396this, in fact I might actually play smt4 for a 4th time after I beat dds2
>>692814731That's what I always did
>>692809820>>Demons don't drop macca so you have to do repeatable quests and farm itemsi don't really remember ever being short on macca? game's easy anyway after medusa
>>692812396i started playing it then dropped it for 4a. then i dropped 4a for 5v.maybe i'll go back to 4a one day. i'm not sure i even liked it more than SJ tho.
>>692809820still need armor and weapons. just sell extra attack items. can sell some for a good price, and you'll be overflowing with them eventually anyway. by the time i got to the fire wall i had most of the available weapons and a few full, and half, sets of armor plus a shit load of accessories
What were they thinking? SMT4 is like a bad flash game compared to SJ.
>>692816165nta the only thing I believe 4a has over 4 is the quality of life changes, especially the fucking overworld, aside from that I prefer pretty much everything else in 4
>>692811615>>692812396I disagree and the opposite of everything you said it actually true.
>>692816295i was looking for something more in tone with SMTII and 4A at least gets right to it without having to traipse around virtual fantasyville first
>>692817907 I haven't finished smt2 but I will say the setting is interesting so far thanks to tokyo flooding in smt1 so I can see your point, it's just starting in tokyo rather than 3ish hours of mikado shit though I will say the final dungeon of 4a is far worse than any of the final dungeons in 4
>one stat is so broken it eliminates the need for every other statyep, it's SMT time
>>692818130What's the stat?
>>692812396Thank you for understanding. The actual GOAT soundtrack also makes this experience unforgettable.
>>692811615Macca is useful for getting Demons from the Compendium but I otherwise agree. Love how the game is balanced on the edge of a razor.
>>692809820No defense stat is not the issue, Nocturne didn't have a defense stat either. The issue with IV is that it's not balanced. Not that it was poorly balanced, they just outright didn't try. Skill damage calculations are through the roof but enemy HP pools are utterly nonexistent. Enemies use the same HP pool as when they're in your party and thus will always die in one hit, but they seemingly gave the bosses comparable pools because they all die in one or two turns. Anyway the actual thing that tears me up about SMT IV, it's that demons do not have unique stats, they all share the same handful of archetypes that have exactly the same stats at exactly the same level. It's maddening, demons of the same archetype of the same level will even be available at the same time so you can blatantly see this. Like if ever there was an SMT game that treats the demons like a dogshit afterthought, it's IV. Not even Persona is that bad. And don't get me started on the shitty fusion system
>>692809820>Demons don't drop macca>encounter>Stun Needles>demon is paralysed>FUNDRAISE>murder them for the EXP, tooIt's that simple.
>>692809820>No defense stat so combat is both sides seeing who can nuke who firstI actually like this about SMT IV desu. I love that you either beat a boss in 5 moves or get turned into mince meat on turn 3. It's preferable to fighting a boss for 25 minutes only to die to bad luck
>>692814731Hm... Seeing as you have a healthy supply of Play Coins... You can pay me in Play Coins, if you'd like.
>>692818481Nta but it's magic
>>692825686I think you are genuinely retarded. I've never seen any of the boss gimmicks in IV because they all die before their second turn. Become Mincemeat? Lol the only bosses that can do that are Minotaur and Medusa, the boss damage output is significantly lower than yours and is only a threat in the first few hours of the game when your HP is low, Lucy and Merkbah's almighty attacks are downright laughable
>>692825732>Just want to Reload save right before fight >Charon cutscene every time >Refuse Charon and he will be incredulous and argue with you instead of just going to game over What an infuriating mechanic. Good thing you stop dying so early in the game
>>692809820>>Demons don't drop maccaExtort them
>>692809820threaten to plunge their buttholes. they'll pay up quicktreat the game like its a prison simulator
>>692811615>>692812396Based as fuckSMT IV is beyond kino
You know, I'm kind of retarded when it comes to rpg design and I never finished it, but out of interest, why did removing the defense stat make the game so glass cannony?I would assume you could like, compensate for that by just upping HP more.
>>692809820I was never in a moment where I actually needed macca for anything, I always had as much as I needed from selling treasures and I hardly ever used negotiation to get money.
>>692826310They didn't. Nocturne also didn't have a defense stat and they were going off it as their template. The problem isn't the defense stat it's the non-existant balance between skill damage, I guarantee you the game was so rushed they just didn't measure their formulas versus enemy HP. And I can prove it with IVA which is just IV but actually does have balance and doesn't have this problem
>>692826310Because there's no mitigation stat and HP can't scale on the same ratio that stronger skills with buffs and debuffs doOn that note, Rakukaja/Rakunda are just straight damage modifiers in SMTIV
>Move Slowly>Aim Carefully>Clench Fist>CURSE THY ENEMY>CURSE THY ENEMY>CURSE THY ENEMY>CURSE THY ENEMY>CURSE THY ENEMY>CURSE THY ENEMY
>>692826521Rakunda is and always will be the best skill in all of Megaten.Well, besides Luster Candy, but you don't get that until late. so it's usefulness doesn't stick with you through a majority of the game.
>>692816371>the opposite of everything you said it actually true>fights aren't fastYou're retarded.
>>692826560Oh yeah that reminds me>Neutral route final boss cut out of the game and sold as day one DLC>instead the Neutral route just has you do an arbitrary number of sidequests then stand on a random spot in the map to watch the ending "cinematic" (worst ending I'm the series btw)>Hell, half the demons on the cover of the game aren't actually in the game, they're all day one DLC demons>And speaking of the cover art, Law side are the archangels (cut from the game) chaos side are a bunch of random midbosses with no story relevance and Lilith (who ultimately gets completely droped from the plot a few hours in anyway), like wtf
>>692811615>kusokinoperfect way to end a retarded post
>>692818481literally just attack so strength and magic
>>692809820You might be retarded OP
>>692826310I think that's what SMT4A did. MC still can do a shit ton of dmg, but now most bosses in that game just have more HP.
>>692811615Good game but the story is shit, don't kid yourself. That's not a bad thing though, gameplay should always come before story. Story "games" are for idiots.
>>692821393>Anyway the actual thing that tears me up about SMT IV, it's that demons do not have unique stats, they all share the same handful of archetypes that have exactly the same stats at exactly the same level.That shit bothers me too, but it makes sense they wouldn't go with this effort because of the high amount of demons in the game. For them to each personalize the stat build for over 400 demons is insane. Which is why SMT4A is pretty cool in that every demon has a build tailored to them with stats and skill affinities.
>>692826708nah it's sukunda or sukukaja that will always be the most reliable best skills for throughout a playthrough
>>692827419>story is shitI think V's story is shit whereas IV was just there & inoffensive in comparison.
>>692827580I wish they would've released IV again with the apocalypse improvements.
>>692828234I think both stories are just there and inoffensive. IV had better balanced human characters but the demon characters are trash, V has better demon characters but the human characters are trash. IV has a more interesting setting but has a schizo plot where things are introduced and dropped in the same breath while V has a much clearer through line behind all the themes and events but doesn't make great use of the setting. And both games do the same thing where a lot of the key details of the plot are hidden behind constantly changing NPC dialogue (although VV did make an effort to air a lot of those out in main plot cutscenes). Actually there's more overlap between them than there is difference, IVA is the outlier for having a terrible story.
SMTIV was shit
>>692812396>Big bad demons lay out domainsWhich are artificial mazes. Randomly generated too. Or do you mean 'mazes that have no reason to exist' when you say artificial?
>>692812396SMTV is actually replayable. IV was a great experience, but I can't imagine how braindead you'd have to be to replay that combat system. IV does ONE thing right. Worldbuilding/atmosphere. The rest is just weak.
