Megami Tensei Topic

[Zendervai]

Persona 3 kind of turns into a slog because of the sparsity of story sections. Atlus set out to make a variation on the rogue-like (at least that's what it seems like to me) and they included the really spaced out story.

[Monsoon]

The story in Persona 3 always felt weird and disjointed.  The Social Links and the story segments (basically monthly set-pieces in dungeons that take about 10 minutes apiece to run through) are totally separate and those monthly set-pieces seem totally separate from Tartarus until January.  Hell, Tartarus is basically optional until January, even though the game encourages you to hit those checkpoints before each full moon. 

In Persona 4 the narrative is more closely tied into the dungeon crawl, and the rescue deadlines add a great deal more urgency to it all.  Social Links and basic plot serve each other a little better because there are more plot-important S.Links to be found (namely the Dojimas and your party members).  I think that preferences about the plot and characters of P3 and P4 are totally subjective, but P4 is absolutely the better game because of its more interconnected narrative framework, dungeons, and Social Links. 

And to chime in on the earlier conversation, I don't care if Persona 5's story is darker or not.  I don't think a story's "darkness" is as important as interesting character struggles, good dialog, and a pace that serves the gameplay.  I'm *extremely* pumped for Persona 5 and it will be a day-one purchase if it comes out for a system I own (*crossing fingers for PS3 & Vita cross-play*), but I could care less about it having a darker tone. 

[Bleaker]

I hated a lot of P4's dungeons. The only ones I really liked were

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the Secret Lab and Heaven, and those aren't till way late in the game.

I will agree that it is a better game in terms of having more plot related Social Links, Dojima and Nanakos being the highlight. However the Social Links outside of your crew aren't anything to write home about. I can't even remember the names of the two sports guys, or the drama club girl, or even that nurse at the hospital!

While P3 didn't give you a lot of story, what it did give you was damn good. The kind of desperate nature of the last month, and how lost the group kind of got there in the middle. I don't know why people hated the ending. I thought it was really, really good. It doesn't need the Answer for it to really make sense either.

P5 should abandon both the characters of P3 and P4, and return to the darker storylines of Persona past. Yeah, not everyone can do dark well, but this is Atlus. They constantly do it well. I also want social links to influence the story. If your in a relationship with a girl, or you discover interesting information about someone, that should influence the story. P3 innovated the series, P4 improved upon the formula, P5 should innovate once again.

[Taelus]

Bleaker, I changed your post to include a hidden section, you spoiled a dungeon for me, and P4G is still pretty new. Try to keep an eye on that, please.

And to chime in on the earlier conversation, I don't care if Persona 5's story is darker or not.  I don't think a story's "darkness" is as important as interesting character struggles, good dialog, and a pace that serves the gameplay.  I'm *extremely* pumped for Persona 5 and it will be a day-one purchase if it comes out for a system I own (*crossing fingers for PS3 & Vita cross-play*), but I could care less about it having a darker tone.  

I agree with this 100%.

[Annubis]

BTW Taelus, once you're done with P4, you really should watch the Himmdaisy comics dubs. They are even more awesome than sliced bread.

Part1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mUTQKMRLYQ

Part2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbmOdo9qW4A

Part3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qR_LM4nQ7w

Part4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-C6khcmGnss

[Bleaker]

Bleaker, I changed your post to include a hidden section, you spoiled a dungeon for me, and P4G is still pretty new. Try to keep an eye on that, please.

Sorry Taelus I'll try not to do that again.

[Taelus]

No harm done!

And I will definitely take a look at those comics. Right now I'm at the part

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with the hot springs, just did the culture festival, which was hilarious.

[Zendervai]

I don't know if anyone would be interested, but I got my hands on the DemiKids GBA titles and I'm doing a liveblog of them over here:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/lb_i.php?lb_id=13639677930B33214700&i_id=13639889190I47117000&p=1

As far as I can tell, the games are kind of rare and they're possibly the only games labelled with Shin Megami Tensei in Japan, but not in North America.

[cj_iwakura]

They are labeled with SMT in North America. Dark Version's a great game, too.

[MeshGearFox]

DemiKids Light and Dark are alright, and I definitely liked them (Dark was the better of the two afaik), but Red/Black and White were a LOT better.

(Red/Black were two versions of the same game ala pokemon. White was a sequel).

The gameplay isn't too different, but the narrative content is a lot better, and so are the worlds. Never got too far in White, but Black goes into some pretty dark territory. Thematically it's not that different from a normal SMT game, only everyone's ten, so it backs into some deliriously f'd territory.

I don't think Dark and Light ever get as apocalyptic as RBW get. Dark gets closer than Light does, though, iirc.

I have scripts for Black and White lying around if anyone wants them. They're text files but they're formatted well enough. Wouldn't be hard to figure out the menu commands if you're familiar with how SMT games play, though the elemental system is weird. Gun attachments might be trickier to figure out. Demon convos are pretty random like in SMT1 so just do whatever.

(I think these were the first SMT games I ever imported. I bought 1, 2, and Innocent Sin after Nocturne came out).

Okay so my big problem with Dark and Light:

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- Two of the important characters get killed off at the end, without much lead up, but they get revived after you beat the end boss for no real reason.
- The time holes aren't a major threat at any point in Light, and they never are explained or make a lot of sense.
- The partner demons get like no character development, but they were developed characters with backstories and everything in RBW.
- Actually Jin and Akira don't get much characterization either, whereas Black had... fuck, Setsuna? finding out that his dad was Satan and trying to save his brother and the character was just more personally invested in the plot.
- Demons have combo attacks except they're never really useful at any point because it's impractical to get the demons necessary for them.
- The game kind of looked /bad/ on the original GBA screen. Looks fine on the DS, though. Though that's true for most GBA games, really.
- There's no real unifying theme to the story, like there is in pretty much every SMT game.
- They're also both really easy. BRW weren't HARD but they weren't quite THAT easy. Then again I only finished Light, and Dark's supposed to be considerably harder.

They do have some really nice music though, and a lot of the settings are really neat. Also sudden nostalgia bomb feels.

I mean honestly I do think they were good games on their own, it's just that after playing the originals a lot of shortcomings that didn't bug me started bugging me.

(I also liked Revelations: TDS, because it /felt/ like FFL2. BRW felt a lot like FFL2, too, I guess, which is maybe why I liked them more).

[Starmongoose]

I gave the Dark version a twiddle some time ago and it didn't really grab me. Is the sequel more of the same or is there something actually worth playing for?

I might give it a go if there is a vast improvement.

[MeshGearFox]

I gave the Dark version a twiddle some time ago and it didn't really grab me. Is the sequel more of the same or is there something actually worth playing for?

I might give it a go if there is a vast improvement.

The sequels to Light/Dark were Fire/Ice. Apparently they were pretty good, but never got any sort of translation.

[Starmongoose]

So what are Red, Black and White then if they aren't Fire and Ice?

Never mind I did some googling. Red and Black were for the Gameboy Colour.

[cj_iwakura]

So what are Red, Black and White then if they aren't Fire and Ice?

Never mind I did some googling. Red and Black were for the Gameboy Colour.

Pretty sure the hilarious anime was based off Red/Black, too. Light/Dark also got a sequel in form of Messiah Raisers, which also never got localized. :(


Not only does Dark have a better story, it's also much more challenging. Well, in that Light has no challenge at all.

[MeshGearFox]

I don't think that Dark and Light were storyline-sequels to RBW in any sense, by the way. White was a story sequel to RB; Fire/Ice were story sequels to D/L. Beyond that think they were totally separate entities.

Also yeah there's Messiah Risers but I have no idea where it fits into the storyline.

I THINK I remember hearing that Fire/Ice was about one of the characters in D/L getting impregnated with a new universe or something. It sounded immensely odd.

Really love it if Atlus did a proper translation/remake of the first three for the 3DS, though.