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Catalina posted:Actually, I've been wondering about Etrian Odyssey. Would it be worth trying, if I liked, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey? I don't know that much about EO, except it has nice art, and is a dungeon crawler like SJ...but since I've played Strange Journey, I actually sort of like GOOD dungeon crawlers with good atmosphere. As a proper dungeon crawler, the EO series is much, much better than SJ. You don't have the demon system, but there's a good variety of classes, the dungeons are well-designed (especially if you're diligent about mapping and look for secret passages), and it's occasionally quite difficult but not unreasonable. Even on the one or two floors per game that are teleport-based, the ability to mark on-map and in-game that teleport A goes to spot B makes it reasonable instead of incredibly irritating. On-map enemies, or FOEs, also make exploring more interesting. EO2 is essentially a revision and refinement of EO1 with a new dungeon and story, while EO3 completely changes the class system and adds some new systems, generally to the better. If you only get one, I'd suggest EO3, but I think EO2 is also quite good.
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Sep 7, 2011 22:58
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Devil Survivor 2 may not be the best SMT game, but I think it's definitely the most fun. You just get so absurdly powerful! Combining Omega and Touki demons in a physical team late game lets you wipe anything without Reflect Phys almost by default, and it's absolutely glorious. And there's so many teammates to choose from! If you're not playing the game with a team full of people who have twice as much Magic or Strength as they do their next-highest stat, you're playing it wrong.
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Mar 3, 2012 06:32
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As far as tips go: move the MC out of the first slot of the party if you're doing a physical build. Magic is better at getting press turns.
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May 12, 2022 00:58
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Neeksy posted:Nocturne gives way more variety with its locations and dungeons than V did. I'm not sure what variety even means in this context if Nocturne has more of it. Sure, the locations look more different, but is the game experience notably different between those? Because SMT V is all in various versions of a destroyed city, but the areas all have notably different feels in how you play them. The first is a more wide-open area to accustom you to traversal, while the second steps it up but still stays fairly straightforward before giving you the game's one mostly-wild area after its midpoint. Everyone who beat SMT V can tell you about the third area, Welcome To Verticality, and the fourth area is incredibly memorable for its weird handling of non-linearity. Plus the three (four?) "normal" dungeons, which stand out by virtue of being dungeons, with the second being the only real "gimmick" area with its wind mechanics. I don't consider purely aesthetic variety all that important or interesting, except insofar as it gives you landmarks within an area. SMT V is fine there, and I enjoy that it leans so whole-heartedly into traversing ruined cities. Would the game have been better if the third region had a volcano and the fourth had snow? Because I've seen way more of those elsewhere. SMT V just feels great to play outside its fights in a way I haven't gotten from any of the others. I really do hope we get more games like it, even if they're not main-line.
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May 30, 2022 21:26
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Tired Moritz posted:Yeah but not in early game where dampeners are most effective. And yeah I use items too but imagine if in Nocturne, they just gave you easy access to buff stones to deal with Matador instead of asking you to actually fuse the buffs on your demons. That sounds good, actually? Like, either way, you're using a resource. The difference is that if it's an item you need to use, then you don't run into a boss and get stuck for half an hour while you manually assemble a solution, you just discern what you need to do and do it. Most of the time when I run into something that's looking for a specific answer, then if I can hobble together half the solution and throw it at the problem until I luck into a win, I do. Because that takes about as long as the grinding-based solution, and I'd much prefer to confront the problem on a tactical level rather than a strategic one. And yeah, "fuse together the perfect demon for this situation" is a grinding-based solution. I see the ideal behind "solve problems by fusing demons at it!", except that these are also resource management games, so creating the perfect demon for a situation is expensive. In a game with reduced compendium costs or no limit on demon slots (skill slots or team slots, both apply), then sure, I'd be more enthusiastic about that sort of thing. But not if the alternative to Dampeners is running into a boss, figuring out the answer in five minutes, and then spending thirty assembling the answer to a problem I already understand.
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Aug 20, 2022 07:55
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NikkolasKing posted:To be a bit more serious, I'm gonna quote myself from...wow, over a year ago now. Something that's bothering me here: the "look at this meaningless world and give it meaning" viewpoint is existentialist, and Existentialism fundamentally exists within the context of an atheistic viewpoint. "Existence precedes essence." Sure, it's not incompatible with deism or other metaphysical frameworks that have one or more fundamentally uninvolved gods, but the point is that you can invest the world with meaning because you weren't ever given a meaning yourself. You are born free. But the SMT humans aren't born free, as everything with the Vortex World illustrates. The Reasons are outright anti-existentialist, in that they embrace the system of inherent meaning by seeking to imprint a new set meaning in the very building blocks of the universe. SMTIV's really the only existentialist one, thanks to Lucifer doing everyone a solid and killing God off-screen so that the Nahobino can destroy the whole system in the true ending and set humanity free. Thanks, Lucifer. You're a pal.
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Jan 15, 2023 00:20
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NikkolasKing posted:Existentialism is a broad term. You're taking it in an ethical direction when I was simply describing how human beings live and function. We can't live and function in a world where everything is random poo poo, we cope through the stories we tell ourselves, that the horrible things which happen to us happened for a reason, just like Chiaki did. I'm more pointing out that this part isn't true: quote:A Reason is a worldview and in that sense, every one of us in the real world has our own Reason. A Reason isn't a general raison d'etre, it's a term of art in the context of the Vortex World. Nothing that happened to her was "random poo poo," it was enemy action. Humans are left weak and helpless in the Vortex World so that they have to hitch themselves to already existing teams, and so that they can't rebel against the system. The Demi-Fiend is what happens when people don't have to do that, and it's not a coincidence that he's denied the ability to have a Reason. Even when Isamu and Chiaki become incredibly inhuman, they still qualify, because by that point they've accepted their place in things and moved from being victims to being collaborators. The Vortex World is an overt system of coercion and victimization. If the authors of Nocturne agreed that system is basically a microcosm for the life of humanity, I don't think returning to normal life in the neutral/"reincarnation" ending would have the uplifting narration or music at the end.
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Jan 15, 2023 01:27
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NikkolasKing posted:Out of curiosity, have you played Devil Survivor 2? A few pages ago now we talked about the ethics of Meritocracy or Egalitarianism because most of humanity is dead so it's not strictly brainwashing to recreate them differently. I think it's roughly analogous to Nocturne, especially since it even has a "reset button" Neutral Ending like Freedom where everyone is alive and happy again and Yamato/Ronaldo could be seen as Reasons. I mean, I also haven't heard many moral defenses of TDE, but that seems to me to be because TDE being morally right is self-evident the moment you agree that the Conception is a hosed-up thing to do, and doubly so if you interpret the Freedom ending as the Demi-Fiend losing his power. Especially since, as noted: studio mujahideen posted:The world has already been destroyed. Freedom is just using Kagutsuchi's power to buy it more time before the Great Will comes in and crushes it, with no one having the power to stop it. The only person killing everyone is, again, the Great Will. It offering you a chance to undo it's murders by accepting it as all-powerful doesn't make you responsible. TDE is just morally right in the same way donating all your excess money to charity is right, in that it's also a real big ask and failing to do so doesn't make you a monster.
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Jan 17, 2023 01:46
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Stux posted:
Personally I consider Christian Existentialism a separate thing because believing in the Christian god specifically seriously messes with the whole "existence precedes essence" concept, but taxonomy is complicated and I know that's not a majority position!
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Jan 17, 2023 07:16
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OzFactor posted:Hello demon summoning colleagues, I just got SMTV and have a couple mechanical questions. I have played all the other games so it's just new stuff I'm confused about. It's been a while so I'm mostly going off memory here: IIRC Essences are obtained after a demon finishes their level-up learn list. Essences are set and based off the individual demon, so a stat-maxed Onmoraki built like an endgame demon would still just give you Agi with their Essence. Those stat boosting ones increase those stats when the demons level up, but they have a cap. Unlike most SMT games it's fairly easy to keep old demons current with your protagonist, so they're not useless, but prioritizing them is still a bad idea. Increasing demon stock and max skills is better. The big Miracle is that eventually you'll get Knowledge of Tools available, which lets demons use items. However good you think that is now, it's better than that. Magic is workable but strength is better. One thing to remember for Strength MC in particular: you can change your party order to change who moves first every round. A strength MC is usually going to be worse at getting extra turns than your demons because they can hit fewer weaknesses, so having them second or third is usually a good idea.
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Jul 15, 2023 18:28
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