First impressions so far?

@superkenon: That place doesn't matter. It's been in about every single trailer for the game. It's a known area of the game.

When you can access K's Tavern you'll be able to do it. It's a mission called "Experience of the Afterlife". It's actually not really a mission. It warps you to a whole new area and you fight these higher level monsters. They don't give much EXP, but drop items that give you a ton. Certain ones drop items that sell for a bunch too. Basically you can potentially break the game. I'm still trying to figure out the weakness of the guys there though. So far nothing seems to work, but I have been able to win some fights, despite the level difference.

But yeah you can just warp to that area whenever you please it seems.

Does that demon have to be in your active party, or can it be in your reserves? Also that works all the time?

This is my first core SMT game - I've played my own little Endurance run of Persona 4 (what else would you do when the swine flu hits for two weeks?), tried P3 on PSP and figured out I'm not going to like it unless I'm playing FES on the big screen, and I've put about 30 or so hours into Devil Summoner 2: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon, played a ton of these guys' Etrian Odyssey series, and I've gotta say, SMT IV may be my favorite of the bunch.

There's a story, but like with Etrian Odyssey, you're not there for the story, you're there for the combat mechanics - and the negotiations/fusions in this case, which I loved in DS2 and friggin' adore here. The first time a Griffin congratulated me for picking the right hole to dig, because "THAT YOUR GRAVE," I was all-in. I'm avoiding all guides (even the one that comes with the game), and if I get a shitty ending, so be it. Good endings are for New Game +, which exists. The other samurai, right from the get-go, don't need to be "fleshed out" in that Persona "Come on, just give me the next card level" way - they seem much more like mirrors for your character, testing your own Gygax-like tendencies. The combat has an amazing balance of speed, simplicity, and strategy, and it's a nice touch to have those bigger portraits of each character below at all times - unlike EO, where your guys are usually just a text box, and you see them once their turn's up. You worked hard to get those demons on your team, it's gratifying to see the whole crew. Not every demon looks that great, but it becomes part of that character. Fuxi shows up and you're like "huh. Okay. You can sit in the back until I've got a fusion thing for you, bird-thingy." And then it gains a level, and I'm just imagining this ridiculous-looking awkward character just being like "uh, hey, I learned something!" Whatever Fuxi, that's great, thanks dude.

I really liked that tutorial stage that kicks your butt. You're new, you're in a cave with demons, they can break you in half, and the mechanics make it pretty clear. So you figure out you have to save a lot, you get lucky with negotiations, and you feel like you've gone through some crazy rite of passage, which fits the narrative. I love games that let you be ridiculously stupid and fling yourself into a battle you shouldn't be in, too. Yeah, you'll probably die, but there's this sense of risk involved that a lot of more hand-holdy RPG's miss out on.

So far (and I'm at the point where I can get past the 3rd st.), I'm a big fan. The game doesn't fuck around, but there's a lot of lore and interesting conversations around all this awesome combat, negotiation, and fusion unlike Etrian Odyssey, which just plain doesn't fuck around, end of story.

@kishinfoulux: They can be in your reserves too. You can't have two of the same demons summoned, so it always works. You won't always get an item or healing, but they'll always leave from my experience.

@ezakael: Thanks, I didn't think easy would be that much better but it definitely is. I'm bad at rpg's and was getting frustrated with some of the demon negotiations. Which was kind of a bummer since I think that random / dialog tree aspect is cool. Failing a negotiation which would forfeit my advantage, then all my demons would get nuked.

I should probably still play some of the atlus games in my backlog

lol, are you me? Swine flu + Persona 4 = Weird experience.

This game is super dope

Yeah I started putting it to use. It's pretty handy, especially when they heal you. Maybe I missed it, but it's odd the game doesn't inform you of this. Seems like it could be handy for avoiding battles.

How's recruiting demons going for everyone, in terms of success rate? I've started to stand my ground a bit more, in regards to handing things over. If they ask for something I don't want to give I don't give it. Surprisingly it doesn't just end the convo. I just give them stuff I have an over abundance of, or feel comfortable with. Also "cheating" them seems to work almost every time for me surprisingly.

I'll add my experience as someone who has played the Persona games but no main series SMT games before. I bought this game last night (last copy at my Gamestop!) I wasn't planning to buy it yet, but I wanted in on the eshop credit (Animal Crossing was calling my name!) Loaded it up last night and... the next thing I knew it was 5 am. Seriously, this game owns me.

I had knowledge of things like the different skills and how the elements work from Persona, which was really helpful. The difficulty level... well, it's harder than Persona definitely, but being free to save wherever you want makes it much less frustrating. I am enjoying the challenge. I thought I would be bothered by the 1st person battles, but to be honest I don't even notice it. They are very well done imo, and much more fast paced than they could be in 3rd person (appreciated in a difficult game.)

The game is really pretty on my 3ds xl, though some of the characters are a little jagged/strange looking. The 3d effect is nicely done. The soundtrack is really good, very dark.

This is the best rpg I've played this year, definitely!

Well it's been in every game with the negotiation system to some degree, so it's possible they just expect people to know about it. Or they just want you to figure it out yourself. I actually learned something new about negotiating last night. If you successfully negotiate with a demon that's higher level than you they'll call in a "friend" to join you instead that's around your level. (In previous games they would just leave or wouldn't even negotiate with you at all.)

As for negotiating itself, it seems to me that most demons actually don't like you being a complete pushover and giving them everything they want. Once I started refusing anything but their smallest requests I've had very few failures.

^^^ Yeah that happened to me when I tried to recruit Chagrin (that little yellow mole thing). He was a level or two higher and he summoned a Gryphon instead to join. I wonder if the monster they summon is random or a specific one associated with each one.

My impressions are I wish it was on the Vita because after seeing how good P4G is this game looks incredibly dull.

@sooty said:

P4 has been my favorite MegaTen game up to this point. I'm not far enough to say this with any certainty, but the more I play the more it feels like SMT4 could take that spot.

Just curious the page for this game has some DLC listed... is that included in the retail version? Or just not on the eShop quite yet? Any help would be great.

Besides the pre-order costume DLC there are 4 DLC's currently available. 3 of them are free for the first month and are mostly armor pieces. (The White Samurai Armor is quite good and lasted me for awhile.) The other one costs $1.99 and is basically a grinding DLC for easy exp. (It also comes with a palette swap of an early demon.)

In what ways? Graphics? Story? Gameplay? All three of those are pretty damn good thus far.

And what's the point of comparison? Persona 4 Golden? That game is far and away a tonally different beast. If SMTIV were a Vita game, it wouldn't stylistically look any different than it does now.

I'm level 49 now sitting at 33 hours in, went mostly magic with even agi/luck. Just made it past the first 'major' alignment decision I'd say and things are getting real weird. Personally this game's shaping up to be one of my favorite SMT games. I'm not the biggest fan of the intro but it's kind of cool how much the game opens up later. Since I made it to a certain area (Tokyo), the game's been going up and up for me with the only two things bothering me being: Charon's 10 second death speech and physical demons having low mp pools. Not that big of a deal over all.

The save anywhere feature is nice. For me the new fusion system is much better than previous games. Nocturne is one of my favorite games but I love that I don't have to skill cycle to get what I want, don't need to clutter my party with fodder, and I can just do a non-specified search and see what there is to make overall instead of pairing demons individually.

Also glad to see that the game doesn't pull any punches. I've had quite a few encounters where an enemy seemingly wrecks my party but by staying calm I was able to turn it around and come out on top. Hell one boss in particular died to a demon I thought was kind of a drag on my party.

The story's been good too. It's held my interest so far and I really want to see it through to the end.

I only played the first five minutes and it served to remind me how shitty the 3DS hardware is. Those cutscenes are HORRIBLY artifact ridden. If it wasn't for professor Layton and Phoenix Wright I woulda chucked this system... Not really, but it does make me wish there was a Vita version.

Having played a decent chunk of the game now, I'm very confused why so many reviews were complaining about the lack of story. SMT tends to have fairly minimalistic story, so that's what I expected they were complaining about, but the amount and pacing seems perfectly fine so far for any RPG. Maybe it completely drops off in the second half, but I didn't get that indication.

I just had my first "Macca Beam" experience in this game with a Nekomata. Bye bye half my macca. :(

I just started this an hour or so ago, so I'm only on like the third quest. I was very on the fence about this game, especially with the increased price, but the Fire Emblem deal convinced me.

This game is hard as hell. I knew that going in, and I suspect learning the systems and getting used to a pretty different type of RPG combat will soften it up a bit. I've been browsing the strategy guide a bit, and it's pretty obvious this game gets super deep as it progresses. I have a feeling this'll be a game where I play casually until something eventually clicks and then I become obsessed.

@zeik: Yeah I definitely don't have any problems with the amount of story in the game, but some of the writing is god awful. I don't really understand how great localizations like Persona 4 can come out of the same company that made SMT IV. Still loving the game, but I wish it felt like human beings wrote the dialogue so I could enjoy those parts as much as the part where I'm playing it.

@evanbower: I can't say I know what you mean. The writing seems mostly fine from what I've seen. Not particular better or worse than what I remember from Persona, especially considering Persona certainly had it's share of cheesy or overdramatic dialogue.

I've played this game for about 10 hours already so I wouldn't really call this a first impression but it feels like an old style SMT game. This is not a bad thing as I really like the old SMT stuff like digital devil saga and nocturne which this game reminds me a lot of. I like the DDS style battle system. If you get a good engagement I find that it is pretty easy to take advantage of your enemy's weakness' and never take a single point of damage. On the other hand its the most frustrating thing in the world if the enemy gets the drop on you.

I agree whit a lot of what people have been saying about the difficulty of the game. I've had to restart boss battles that I should of won because one missed attack or lucky crit from said boss would put me instantly in a spot where it was impossible to win.

All in all I like it so far. The story is pretty good (so far. I don't know what it's like later in the game) and I quite like the main cast of characters. I'm looking forward to seeing what else SMT IV has in store for me.

@eirikr:

There are no words for how stupid every quote in this image is.

I've actually managed to pull out a win quite a few times against bosses where I thought it was hopeless. If you're resetting instead of actually fighting to the end you may be giving up too easily.

No I usually stay until the very end. It just sucks when you are so close to winning and something goes wrong and you just wipe on the bosses next turn and there is nothing you can really do about it. I've pulled myself out of plenty of sticky spots as well. I've just noticed that the difficulty can take some hard swings at times.

I agree - I think there is plenty of story. I care about story in the sense that I want there to be a cohesive story. I don't need it to be Persona (which I also love) because this is a really different game. I feel like the story is interesting, and I want to see how it ends up - enough for me.

Honest, 5 hour in question: is Minotaur impossible or do I just suck?

I'm bufuing like crazy, answering the dialogue choices correctly, and tarukaja-ing when necessary, but he still just eventually getting cheap one shot deaths. What's uppp?

EDIT: Nevermind, I did it. Nothing to see here folks!

What's your team set-up like? Often when a strategy fails it's usually your demons that need an adjustment. Granted, I recall just barely winning when I fought him, so I would expect to lose several demons regardless.

Also, don't forget you have items you can use. It might be obvious, but some people hoard them needlessly when this is a game where you should be using them.

Yeah I think item usage made the difference! Also I was trying to find a line-up that worked for the entire battle when constantly switching demons out seemed to work much better. Thanks!

EDIT: Also, glad I stuck with it. Things get kind of awesome story wise afterward.

I'm nearly seventeen hours in and I'm certain that this game deserves way more attention than it seems to be getting. The only real criticism that I can level against it is the tutorial section; the rest of the game is difficult, but not as impossible as the tutorial makes it seem. There are a few other little nitpicks, but no game exists where there aren't any nitpicks. Story, combat, dungeons, demons, fusing, graphics, music, all of it is coming together to make this game engaging and fun.

And where the hell did the story complaints come from in the reviews? The story so far has been interesting and great and well-explained. One of my nitpicks is that the archaic dialogue with which the samurais speak comes and goes, but otherwise it's been better written than Persona 3 and 4.

I'm not that far yet, I've only just hit Tokyo, but after looking through the guide a bit it seems like Atlus is giving the middle finger to Physical/Gun users. Most bosses seem to either resist/repel one or both. I usually go Melee exclusive when it comes to SMT games, so I'm curious if I should just start putting stats into Magic even though I haven't touched it yet. Any thoughts?

I kind of feel the opposite actually. I started out with a large focus on Magic, but as I got farther I started focusing more and more on Dexterity, because it's by far the most versatile stat and guns are just really useful. Not only does it boost the damage of your physical and gun skills and normal gun damage, but you can also equip elemental bullets on your guns which effectively work the same as spell of that element, except modified by your current gun. (So if you have a multi-hitting gun you'll have a multi-hitting elemental attack.) On top of that, in spite of being an elemental attack the damage is still buffed by Charge rather than Concentrate.

I don't recommend completely ignoring magic, because it's always useful to be able to exploit as many weaknesses as possible, but I definitely don't feel like physical/gun attacks get shafted. There aren't that many bosses that I've encountered that resist both. (As a matter of fact, the boss I was just fighting that kicked my ass several times was taken down primarily by one of my physical demons doing like 1200 damage as opposed to my other demons hitting his weakness for like 200-300.)

I've been buffing Agility with one point every level, might change that over to magic and slowly increase it overtime while increasing Str/Dex by two each level. Didn't know that you could load elemental bullets into guns. They haven't shown me that yet but it sounds rad. It still sounds like you can make incredibly game breaking main characters which is good if you ask me. Games like Nocturne kick your ass for the longest time but by the end of the game nothing can stop you because you've become such a powerhouse and it's a great feeling.

i'm about 5 hours in and so far yes, the first part of this game will kick your butt. You just have to take it slow and save often and once you get a decent party going it gets more manageable. Awesome game so far really liking the style and tone of the game.

@joeyoe31: I don't really think Strength is worth pumping up that much, since it primarily affects your standard attack. (And slightly affects your skills.) Granted, your standard attack can be useful with the right weapon, but it's definitely the stat I've been ignoring over others. I'd say luck is a much more useful stat. In fact, if you're primarily going physical/gun I'd say it's your second most important stat, because you want to get as many criticals as possible.

Right now my MC is definitely my strongest character, but part of that is because I've given him all my incense, which you get like crazy in this game. I need to find out if incense carry over during fusion, because I feel like I should be giving some to my demons to even things out a bit.

@kishinfoulux said:

It seems like it might just randomly choose a demon that you have encountered before but isn't already in your party. I encountered this exact same situation (tried to recruit a higher-leveled Chagrin), but he gave me a Lham Dearg (warrior demon with arrows and swords stuck in his body). I had just about every other demon that I had already seen in my party at that point.

I'm not sure if things have changed, but Strength was crazy good in Nocturne(and Devil Survivor for what that's worth). Power Charge and a strong physical attack destroyed bosses. Especially if you had Rakunda, Tarukaja, (and fog breath for funsies).

It definitely kicked my ass earlier than Nocturne did. I am still only about 6 hours in, so once I got a handle of the combat things went pretty smoothly.

I was not aware that the cut-scenes were more like still images shifting around. I was wondering how people felt about that. Is it because of the size of the rest of the game?

@yi_orange:

Yeah, it has changed. Str isn't nearly as good as it once was, because it doesn't actually affect your physical skills all that much. Dex is your go to physical stat now.

@bear: Both the times I've done it it's been a demon I haven't met before. If you're doing it early in the game there probably aren't a lot of options though.

I might just drop Str altogether. Dex and Magic might become my main focus with Luck and Agi getting a point every once and a while. I have to think about it for a while though. If anything I've pumped up my Strength for as high as it might need to be for the rest of the game. Thanks for the help.

Look like I found myself an early ending. I'm pretty tempted to use this chance to start a New Game+, because I was locked into the Law path and I didn't really want to be. Plus I can unlock Expert difficulty. Decisions decisions.

@zeik: Law path gets you a cool statue though.

Glad I read these posts before I went further down my strength path. Who wouldn't want to be strong, I asked myself.

GOTY

@zeik: Oh, I didn't know that. That's incredibly lame. Do you think Dex is actually a substitute for it or am I basically gonna be forced into magic if I want to be a productive member of my team?

@yi_orange: Yes. In fact, Dex is probably a better stat than Str used to be, since it benefits a lot more than just physical attacks.