The Shin Megami Tensei/Persona Thread

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Digital Devil Saga 2021
 
How likely is it that SMT V will eventually be ported to PC?
 
I meant to post this much earlier but there's going to be a new PV dropped about SMT 5 on Atlus' channel in a little over twenty minutes from now.
Edit: added English version.
The trailer looks good but god damn if it isn't laggy as all hell. I guess that's what you get with a Switch game but I wouldnt be lying if I said I wasn't nervous for performance. The overworld looks nice and I really appreciate the monsters in the overworld being to size (unlike another Switch exclusive!) I'd kill for a PC port or something though. I also like the final song that plays, I think it's nice.
 
The trailer looks good but god damn if it isn't laggy as all hell. I guess that's what you get with a Switch game but I wouldnt be lying if I said I wasn't nervous for performance. The overworld looks nice and I really appreciate the monsters in the overworld being to size (unlike another Switch exclusive!) I'd kill for a PC port or something though. I also like the final song that plays, I think it's nice.
How likely is it that SMT V will eventually be ported to PC?
just get RyujinX and enjoy a decent framerate.

As an aside, that school uniform is the school uniform from SMT:If. Unironically the last thing I was expecting to see a direct reference to.
 
I hope the new smt revamp order because, at least since smt3 the game heavily pushes chaos as the better alternative like some edgy faggot.
I mean, you have to go through the struggle of categorizing the SMT3 endings into "law" and "chaos" since AFAIK the game doesn't do that for you (I've read that any of the Reason endings qualify as Law), but SMT4 definitely doesn't push chaos as the better alternative. Think about it: you go to a Tokyo's whose alignment is chaos, and the reality is literally a constant power struggle where the top guy establishes their own "law" until they get bumped by the next guy. It's pretty clear that "chaos" can only be upheld in transition, to begin with, because of its inherent instability.

If anything, between the difficulty in getting the Neutral ending, the additional content that's there, and the fact that it doesn't end in mass bloodshed/obliteration if you don't think about the chunks of Firmament that must have fell on a lot of people, I'd argue it pushes non-White neutrality like a dirty centrist... even though the White are technically right.

...and SMT4A's choices of value are "dark neutral" and "light neutral". There's not really any push there that isn't "did you like these characters or would you rather make them fertilizer".
Beat Apocalypse last night. Last boss was tough.

What is people's problem with this game? I always see them ripping on the story. Is it because it's not as bleak as the others and it gets a little "friendship is magic" at times?
"Bonds" wasn't wasn't so much about "power of friendship" as it was about "accepting the human experience for all its strengths and weaknesses, which includes needing to cooperate in order to accomplish sometimes monumental tasks" in contrast to Anarchy's "reject humanity and search beyond"-- I think this was best personified with Asahi's pre-awakening monologue above all of the other pre-awakening monologues that also contribute to this purpose.

I think it's particularly the Western audience that's extremely allergic to anything that even remotely smells like "power of friendship" because they consider it trite-- frankly, I've softened on the commonality of the idea considering that Japanese society probably legitimately needs messaging like this.

As someone whose SMT exposure is limited to mainline SMT and Persona, I would say that the tone definitely smacks of Persona post P2 at times. I preferred the character dynamics of SMT4, but those of SMT4A are definitely more colorful for better or worse (there's at least two spots of romcom antics which is glaring, and the dynamics in general don't mesh all too well with the fact that Tokyo is a hellscape and has been that way for nearly three decades).

As an aside, that school uniform is the school uniform from SMT:If. Unironically the last thing I was expecting to see a direct reference to.
Well, the pants, anyways.

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How likely is it that SMT V will eventually be ported to PC?
the fact they ported SMT 3 makes it a lot more likely. SMT4 is way too '2d' for them i think to even though i really enjoyed the story/plot reveal that game brings. The upscaling of 3 already being in 3D makes it an easier sell vs something more akin to a 'story book' style game.

the 5 story looks awesome. Very similar to what 4 presented us it seems but with the main character being alot more 'the guy' vs 4 which made you feel like one of the gang.
 
Might be old news but I finally found out what the final dungeon music in Digital Devil Saga refers to (it's listed as Spider's String on the OST.)

The Spider's Thread, an old Japanese Buddhist short story about the Buddha lowering a spider's thread into Hell so that someone could climb out. That's actually pretty fitting for the game.
 
As someone whose SMT exposure is limited to mainline SMT and Persona, I would say that the tone definitely smacks of Persona post P2 at times. I preferred the character dynamics of SMT4, but those of SMT4A are definitely more colorful for better or worse (there's at least two spots of romcom antics which is glaring, and the dynamics in general don't mesh all too well with the fact that Tokyo is a hellscape and has been that way for nearly three decades).
There's a reason for this. This blog in general may be enlightening:


And for why SMT's story tends to be so formulaic for lack of a better word:


It really does seem to be devolving into some weird Japanese-supremacist-humanist masturbatory fanfic with production values.
 
How likely is it that SMT V will eventually be ported to PC?

For the foreseeable future (i.e. within the next 5-10 years)? Unlikely as all hell because SMT is a valuable IP and the mainline series (with the exception of Nocturne) has been exclusive to Nintendo consoles in one way or another for literal decades at this point.

Let's say... 10-15 years from now when the relevance of SMTV is lessened thanks to future games? Quite likely and possibly fairly easy too. SMTV is built upon the Unreal Engine, so odds are that it would be ridiculously easy to port to PC and mod too. The reason why Atlus bothered porting Nocturne to PC in the first place is because it's an old ass game with a huge cult following dating back almost two decades. They'd be stupid to not release it on PC at some point.

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In other news, I decided to quit drinking at Weenie Hut Jrs and try a Dex build in vanilla SMT4. Gotta say, Minotaur wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought he'd be with a Phys/Gun build. Although then again... I've beaten SMT4 with Magic so many times to the point where even if Flynn has no magic on him, my other demons will all have Bufu at the very least to maximise Press Turns.
 
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