Shin Megami Tensei IV *SPOILERS ABOUND*

Huh. In SJ the black DEMONICA was far stronger than the normal one, but in this game it's the other way around. What an odd reversal.

Jack's Squad came in with more preparation and weaponry than the original group did, which was sent in to study it. Not to mention the suits themselves in SJ adapted to the user and became stronger as a result, something that doesn't exist on the suits in IV.

I find the people of Mikado to be unbelievably creepy on the Law alignment. The way they cheerfully sell out people to be publicly executed and the Archangels have a cruel taste of irony where they have people prove their loyalty by trampling a image of the Black Samurai underfoot.. It also seems they've employed brainwashing cause one guy who was reading books lost interest in them when the Archangels took over and became just a working drone afterwards.

For the most part the Monks at the Monastery seem to be the only ones who are completely unchanged, though like Hugo they are scared of being executed by the Angels and fellow men. Also, I like that one Samurai came to the conclusion that God let demons into the kingdom to test them as a Demonoid in Infernal Tokyo mentions it was God's Scheme that lead to the opening of the Expanse in the past as well.

The execution stuff is pretty grimly hilarious all around. The creepiest one, I thought, was the guy who snitched on his own son, then adopted a replacement, as though that's something you can replace. Someone's been reading Job.

What a day, what a day, for an auto-da-fe! That'll probably be a chapter title in the liveblog.

Yeah that one is definitely the worst. I kinda wish to hear what the young boy has to say concerning his new "father". I heard the Father regrets and realizes that what he did was terrible on Neutral.

I ended up feeling bad for the female Monastery Monk. She's sad cause almost all the prentices have disappeared, even Isabeau who she spoke of fondly at the beginning of the game when she mentioned her being from a family of monks. Then there's the Armored Samurai who's expecting Flynn to return to a celebration in his honor for whatever noble deed he's about to do to get rid of demons for good.

I also found there to be something hypocritical in what a Angel in Naraku says about not getting close to humans, when the Archangels appeared in mankinds dreams, placed themselves as their leaders, and pretty much made the demons disappear from the kingdom while leading people to faithfully follow their new lords without question and obey God. It seems they've already passed the distance the Power spoke of.

edited 18th Sep '13 8:08:03 PM by OmegaRadiance

Well, the Archangels did do one good thing: they abolished the caste system. In both this game and II, YHVH, despite what a tyrant he is, seems... bizarrely intolerant of classism. It might just be the closest thing to an onscreen (ie. not in the manual) redeeming quality the guy has.

And yet, only the worthy are to survive in the world of Law in Strange Journey, and the Messian's Cathedral, where only their most devout may live, was the one place spared from the second Great Flood.

To be fair to SJ, it seems like there are a whole lot of "worthy" there. Billions of people are still mentioned to be alive in the Law ending.

I just think it's strange that YHVH says everyone else can go hang, but people he actually likes discriminating against one another is apparently out.

edited 18th Sep '13 8:13:44 PM by HamburgerTime

Technically the Archangels didn't abolish the caste system originally since all Four set it up. Lucifer mentions that Tokyo Millenium itself was against God's wishes. Gabriel didn't hear God's voice until long after they had set up that system and around the time they set up the whole Messiah project.

The Angels aren't against a hierarchy or caste system unless God tells them to be against it. That's why they support Yosuga, which is a strict hierarchy based on strength. The entire heavenly host itself is a caste system with the cannon fodder at the very bottom and the strong ones like the Four, Metatron, Satan at the top.

Which ones of the story-related DL Cs would you guys recommend in order of importance?

I can say for certain that the DLC for the Archangels and Masakado's Shadow are more story-important than the ones for Ancient of Days or Sanat.

Whew...I finally finished getting all the endings, from Law to Chaos, and the Bad Ending. Apart from Chaos and Neutral, why do I feel...unsatisfied?

Wait, you were satisfied by Chaos?

We never actually see any hint of YHVH in IV outside of Ancient of Days, and that's in an alternate universe. Who knows what his angle is here?

In Neutral, he's so distraught over selling out his son that he loses the will to live and decides to stay in the soon-to-be-gone Mikado while everyone else evacuates.

Maybe he dislikes the competition.

edited 19th Sep '13 10:45:39 AM by JotunofBoredom

I can actually see it. In both this game and SJ it's made fairly clear that Law and Chaos offer a permanent solution in the long term, whereas Neutral allows you to save more lives but strongly implies that the solution will be either temporary or not necessarily taken to heart by the people who need to. As I said before, I could see someone siding with Law or even Chaos on those grounds.

Interesting to hear the dad makes an about-face like that; I mentioned Job earlier because the dad's rationale seemed to be similar to that story, where God compensates Job for the loss of his kids by... giving him "better" kids! I'm sure this made perfect sense 3000 years ago, but nowadays it's seen as one of the skeeviest bits of the Bible, along with the conquest of Canaan and the bits about stoning gays and people who lose their virginity before their wedding night to death.

Well the influence of the angels is a big part of the dad's mindset.

FINALLY put Pluto down. I think I got lucky in that he pretty much just used basic attacks the whole fight... only one Vulnera (seriously, FUCK THAT MOVE) and no Sunny Days in sight

I've not seen anyone throw around the idea of Mikado being a representation of Edo (Old Tokyo).

There's a decent amount of social commentary in there- I think Atlus isn't happy about Akibahara becoming the Maid Cafe District.

So, what do you guys think about demon recruiting in this game? I can't tell if I like it for giving you unlimited chances at a given demon and effectively doubling the amount of recruitables (due to the LIGHT-DARK axis being gone), or am annoyed by it due to the questions being completely randomized this time.

It's not even randomized. Certain questions have a higher chance of working on a certain personality/type of demons than others, just like in previous games.

IV has the easiest recruiting system I've ever seen. Even getting quests from them is easier, unlike when I have to talk to a hundred of the same demon personality in King Abaddon just to get a quest from them.

I have noticed some seem to work more often than others, but the margin doesn't seem nearly as much as in SJ.

And yeah, getting quests is easy. The vast majority I get by accident, seriously.

edited 20th Sep '13 10:01:55 PM by HamburgerTime

One of the problems I had was talking to foreign demons in KA, who have to be talked to several times before they are even understandable and recruitable, then you have to go through the whole process again sometimes concerning the same demon.

This is why I curse Mada and everything about him.

So, remember when we discussed in the main thread that maybe a future game should have "light and dark" endings for each alignment to balance the moral dilemma a bit more? I was thinking a hidden "points" system like in IV might be a good way to implement that. I was concerned that if the "good" endings were easy to get it'd mess with the tone (SMT should be dark, after all; at least I think so), but if you sort of "hid" them in a narrow point range, like with Neutral in this game, I think that might just work. Opinions?

It is not a bad idea.