How do these compare to Nocturne and SMT IV?

This has been the year of Shin Megami Tensei for me. I played P4G, P3FES, then SMTIV and Nocturne.

Now I know Persona is its own thing now so I'll ask how the Digital Devil saga games compare to Nocturne and IV. Better? Just as good? I've already bought them on PSN because Atlus' sales will be the death of my bank account, but I wanna hear everyone's thoughts!

The original has a really meta ending I really enjoyed and the 2nd one was a decent follow up. I kept not knowing where to go in 4 and it was super annoying, the same issue I had with Devil Summoner where an intimate understanding of Tokyo culture and landmarks is assumed. DDS I personally liked more than Nocturne because it felt like a direct iteration on a lot of things Nocturne started, in the same way Devil Survivor iterates on a lot of the Persona stuff. I actually don't think I finished the second one so I can't say if it wraps up in a great way but I can for sure recommend the first DDS.

@bargainben: You kept getting lost in SMTIV because that game probably has the worst map system ever created by a human. I've also barely even touched Devil Survivor but how does it iterate on Persona stuff?

Also, I've heard DDS described as "Nocturne with voice acting" and that seems....correct, from what I've seen. I just hope the user interface is much better. Probably not. I hate not being able to view skill information like in P4 and SMTIV on all those screens where it would be useful.

If you like SMT they're worth playing, but they're not without issues. But the same could be said of Nocturne and SMT4. Overall I'd probably rank them all relatively close.

I was way into the first one, I thought it set up some pretty cool stuff, but I remember being pretty disappointed with the second game. I think my biggest problem is they paced the games poorly. The first game took its sweet time setting everything up, but the second game felt like moved like 10 times as fast, throwing major plot revelations and dramatic character moments at you left and right that it was hard to appreciate any of them. By the end I remember kind of rolling my eyes at some of the stuff that happened. Both games also suffer from some crazy long dungeons.

Still, I would recommend playing them for yourself. Especially now that you don't have to pay $70 for a used copy like I did.

It is kind of like Nocturne, but with more lively characters. Which I guess makes it more like IV... but with a better story.

Comparisons are unnecessary, if you liked P3 and Nocturne, then you'll like DDS.

Curious what else is on your roadmap? I played a bunch of SMT games from 10'-11' in the order of P3 -> P4 -> Nocturne -> DDS1 -> DDS2 -> Devil Summoner Raidou 1. Then later on SMTIV.

DDS does iterate on mechanics introduced in Nocturne in some ways, but in other ways its also kind of one of the biggest departures for the franchise. It's one of the few games where you don't recruit demons of any kind. Your characters are the demons, and they are fixed characters. However, they also give you much more freedom to customize those characters, letting you swap around any skills you learn any time outside of battle.

And no, you can't see skill information. P4 was the first game to do that as I recall. (Or maybe it was Raidou Kuzunoha.) The UI is slightly better than Nocturne, but only slightly.

Oh, I also feel like pointing out that I think DDS' characters are WAY better than Nocturne or SMT4.

So far I've played in this order. P4G, P3FES, SMTIV, and Nocturne. Now, I've tinkered with Persona 1 and P2 Innocent Sin but....I'm sorry, those games are uh...they're dated. Which is probably unfair to say because I've barely made any progress in them. I've fought battles and things are just so clunky in those. Feel free to disagree with me and tell me why I should start playing them again though. I've still got them on my Vita memory card.

I also have Devil Survivor Overclocked on my 3DS. I played about an hour of it until I got to the first battle and I realized I am so not trained for strategy rpgs. So what I did was I finished Fire Emblem Awakening to kinda get me into it, and now I feel much more comfortable going back into DSO, just not at the moment. Kinda busy with Persona Q and other games right now.

But yeah I've got DDs on my plate now to play....sometime. After that, I plan on playing I guess Soul Hackers? That's so long from now though. I definitely plan on playing all of them except for games before Nocturne. Those seem a little too dated for my taste. Once again, please nobody yell at me.

EXCUSE ME? That's insane, I thought demon recruiting was literally the basis of every SMT game at least past Nocturne? Wow that's....actually really interesting. So much so I may start playing these sooner than I thought. No demon fusion either?

Play what you want. :) I don't really understand the 'completionist' point of view. I played through all the SMT games that seemed interesting to me, except for Strange Journey. I want to give that one a shot sometime.

Strange Journey is the game that made me wonder if I liked dungeon crawlers so I played a few more. Turns out, I don't, but Strange Journey was good stuff. Think I ended up liking it more than 4. One of the more interesting story premises from the series I thought.

Social links are the main carryover, but they play a more significant role in that certain max social links are required in order to unlock specific endings. That's the other thing, having multiple bad or early endings in the game. And the general aesthetic and vibe from the playable characters is more in line with Persona, where SMT characters tend to be kinda not super relatable on account of normally not being from a contemporary setting where Persona and DS take place in the modern world as we know it.

Usually i don't mind getting lost in games but SMT4 made me certainly mind lmao. DDS is phenomenal, love the characters and the story btw. I found Nocturne much better as a game and the atmosphere was amazing, but SMT4 has an AMAZING soundtrack IMO.

DDS and DDS2 are cool as hell and DDS2 has the best soundtrack of any SMT related game.

@bargainben: I really want to WANT to play Strange Journey but it doesn't look super attractive to me visually when I see videos and screenshots of it for some reason. I'll probably give in and try it one day.

And what you said about Devil Survivor has me super interested in it now. I didn't know social stuff existed in any of them besides Persona. I admit I don't find the characters or story very interesting in Nocturne or IV, and yeah I know they're intentionally more minimalist. Still though.

Man, all these games have amazing soundtracks.

Both DDS games have pretty great soundtracks. Arguably the best in the franchise even. That right there is almost reason enough alone to play those games.

And no, there's no demon fusion of any kind, or even anything resembling it. It's a more traditional JRPG in many ways. (Except for the part where you're all canabilistic demons that is.)

Devil Survivor doesn't have a Social Link system per se, but it does have relationship system of a kind which can determine the direction the story takes, who lives and dies, and what ending you get. It's more like mix of S. Links and the SMT Law/Neutral/Chaos system, given that each character and their role generally falls under those archetypes. At least in the first game. Can't speak for the second.

Do paly the digital devil Saga ... personally they are my fav Shin Megami Tensei games ... also do play them in order because some stuff transfer from DDSaga 1 to DDSaga 2

They're basically Nocturne, only easier and with a more traditional story and without demon fusing. Instead, you buy spots on a grid. Both games also feel more linear.

I made it some ways through Digital Devil Saga 2 before getting fed up with the fucking story. I thought it got pretty dumb and the dialog was just completely stiff and wooden. Mechanically, though, both games are pretty great and well worth a shot if you like the combat in SMT games.

@frostyryan: @bargainben: I have nothing to say on the DDS games due to never having played them but I found SMT4's world to be a lot easier to navigate when I used an actual labelled map of Tokyo.

The dialogue being stiff and wooden is, well, part of the story
(also ofc the story is pretty dumb, that's part of it's charm!)

They're kinda like a way more story-heavy SMT III.

I don't think the story is dumb at all, in fact it's quite good and has a pretty great ending.

@aetheldod: That's cool but I'm wondering if that still works with the versions on PSN...

With the combat being easier and it being more linear that actually...is good to know. After playing SMT IV and Nocturne, I could use a breather. Those games beat you to the ground and demanded your attention.

It does as all your PS2 Classics saves are stored on a virtual memory card that acts exactly like a real one.

@frostyryan: The Digital Devil Saga games aren't pushovers either. Not being as hard as Nocturne still leaves a lot of room for remarkable difficulty.

@believer258: Oh I'm sure they aren't. I just meant a "breather" under the context of Nocturne. If an SMT game is easier and more linear than Nocturne, that's a breather to me. I never rage quit Nocturne either so that's a plus.

@believer258: @frostyryan: I don't know if I necessarily agree that it is easier. In some ways it is (especially in the fact that it's a lot harder to screw yourself over with poor builds), but I also don't think it's as easy to break the difficulty like in Nocturne. There's a few skills in Nocturne that completely break the latter half of that game. DDS felt like it kept a more consistent challenge.

Also, the hidden bosses in DDS put anything in Nocturne to shame. Ironically one of those is Demi-fiend.

@zeik: Having Makarakarn on multiple demons certainly helped near the end of Nocturne, hah.

And I barely made it out alive when fighting some of those optional fiends in Nocturne...I don't plan to fight a lot of optional bosses in DDS. and what's this "spot on the grid" stuff about?

I found Nocturne's hidden bosses to be kind of total pushovers with a little preparation. Beelezebub can't do shit if you have light immunity, for example. To be fair, some of the fiends could be pretty tough though. Relative to where he shows up in the game Matador is definitely one of the harder bosses in an SMT game.

DDS basically uses a skill tree somewhat reminscent of FFX's sphere grid. It's more linear than that, but every character does have access to the same set of skills, and you are free to go down whatever skill tree you want, regardless of whatever skills they start out with. For example, the main character starts with ice skills with a weakness to fire, but it's actually a good idea to head down the fire skill line over ice, because that unlocks fire nullifying passives to negate that weakness. (I still usually head down the ice tree anyway, because I'm a little OCD about building characters around their basic archetypes.)

@zeik: I beat Matador on my first try, without dying and it wasn't too difficult for me. He was the first fiend that showed up. Then I went on the internet and saw that he's infamous for being one of the hardest things in a video game ever pretty much. SMT games are weird.

@frostyryan: Actually that's how it went for me my first time too, but strangely after playing it again he became a much bigger dick, spamming his stupid evasion move over and over that even having Sukunda wasn't enough to negate it. The press turn system made evasion buffing/debuffing super OP, because one miss can really fuck you over.

I enjoyed this games but they are very different from the core franchise for sure. The cutsceney nature and way they tell the story in this series is more akin to Final Fantasy, though far more interesting. I still thought they were pretty good games, some parts can get a little grindy though, if I recall.

You gotta play them back to back if you do, one goes directly into the otherone in such a way.

They're a lot more accessible and story driven - there's no demon fusion which is kind of a bummer, but the systems there are pretty good (though the whole human form/demon form thing isn't really used to its full potential). SMT's take on Final Fantasy (at least in terms of story presentation). It's a really cool story and I recommend playing through them - I finally tackled DDS1&2 this time last year and loved it. I really love the amount of intrigue and the way DDS2 follows up hard and fast with answers.

It is the best game about a band of cannibals you will ever play.