Shin Megami Tensei Series

DDS is the most narrative driven non-Persona MegaTen game I've ever played, save for maybe Devil Survivor.

Also, how is "not cutscene heavy" a complaint? Not only is it relatively cutscene heavy for a MegaTen game, but games shoving cutscenes down my throat left and right is a huge JRPG turn-off for me.

The fuck are you on about? P5 absolutely has a story and development for some characters. It may not be good but it exist.

Edited by Chariot on Feb 23rd 2021 at 12:57:35 PM

Maybe the sequel has an amazing story, I wouldn't know. All I can tell you is the first game did nothing to make me want to learn about the deep, dark secret of Serph's group. None of them receive enough focus or interact enough to make me care about them.

Do you really think they were compelling characters in DDS 1? Because I'd almost be willing to at least rewatch all the cutscenes on YT to confirm or correct my memory of the game because I absolutely do not recall any of them getting much character development or doing anything to make me care about them.

I meant having inflated and incorrect expectations based on hype and talking to people online. My apologies for not clarifying.

Edited by Nikkolas on Feb 23rd 2021 at 3:06:14 AM

They were absolutely compelling.

Just because YOU think they aren't doesn't mean others think the same as you.

Oh wow, it IS Tuesday.

What makes them compelling, though?

What scenes or moments in DDS 1 made you think Heat or Serph or whoever was a fascinating character?

I think some of you are taking things too literally. It seems obvious that Nikkolas means "a thin story" (which is true), not that DDS literally has no plot.

If someone means "a thin story," then they should say "a thin story," not "no story." Thin story =/= no story.

Yeah, Nikkolas has a storied habit of being pretty hyperbolic in the tone of their posts, and I honestly wish they'd drop it, because half the time it causes this kind of reaction from people legitimatley not wanting to deal with it instead of producing any kind of interesting discussion, but I guess some things don't change.

I can understand the feeling a game has "no story" even though they do have one strictly speaking, though. I've been utterly baffled at how thin SMTIV was on it's own plot once you get to tokyo and how little it seemed to be invested in building up the conflict between jonathan and walter and make about Strangely little of it's setting of "tokyo but it's been underground for years after nukes almost obliterated it and citizens from a rebuilt medieval world discover it" premise.

Edited by Yumil on Feb 23rd 2021 at 1:27:00 PM

One thing that helps Saga is the NPC characters are always updating their dialogue after a plot event. Like the early Personas your party will be in the safe rooms, and it helps flesh things out.

Like a lot of the unnamed embryon crew have a lot to say beyond the stock tutorial advice. They ask a lot of questions regarding the logic of the setting and are as confused as you are. There's a lot of small but very consistent bits of world building that ties the Junkyard together.

I'm sure I mentioned this before (heck, I think it was one of the past times when Nikkolas brought it up), but I didn't find DDS 1 particularly interesting on its own either. Pretty much the only character I was invested in was Gale and I either was spoiled on or quickly figured out the nature of Junkyard, so I wasn't interested in that mystery (I was interested in the "past life" mystery though). However, DDS 2 recontextualized what was going on (and it did it very early on) and now this and P2 duologies are my favourite SMT stories.

@Kara Not that you really have a large selection to choose from for "best MegaTen dualogies"

Persona 2 says yo. We also got the two pairs of Devil Summoner games, and the two Devil Survivors. Or the two Digital Devil Stories. Or the paired Devil Children games. Devil Devil, Devil Devil.

Finished Triangulum. Even though I was favouring the "get rid of Administrators" ending, I went with Alcor's, both because I don't trust such an idealistic game to portray Yamato's ending as anything less than perfect and because I got Alcor's ending last time, it just felt right to support him this time as well. And hey, we now have matching hoodies!

I liked the story, it felt on par with the Septentrione arc, and it was definitely an improvement over Overclocked's 8th days. My only problems with it are repetitive dialogues (first half has "Yamato, Saiduq" in every other sentence, second half changes it to "Astrolabe, Administrative Authority") and inconsistent characterization (Miyako in particular is all over the place). Things are also a little too convenient at times, but hey, we only have so many days!

It's a bit of a shame we didn't get new costumes for entire story, despite having some new designs (MC in uniform looked so funny). Would have been a nice change.

While DeSu2 in general has a forgettable OST for me, I loved the map track during Triangulum fights. Also, unlike with Overclocked, I wasn't bothered by the fact that there were instrumental versions of the old opening despite not having said opening. Not having it as a plot important song must have helped.

The only thing I knew about this story before starting was that Miyako wasn't fully human. At first I assumed she was Yamato in dra— ahem, Yamato's sister that was mentioned elsewhere (artbook?), who got possessed by something, but the game quickly made it clear that she is her own character. I guessed the "this is the third world!" twist right away, though I thought the protagonist was missing from the second one because he was left behind to do something important, while Yamato switched places with him in the third world because obviously things didn't work out without him around. So learning that it was simply because he protected Alcor and now Yamato expresses his eternal love for him by repairing his data was kinda anticlimactic. And man, this chapter amped the already Ho Yay-tastic relationships between Yamato, MC and Alcor even further. Who would have thought that Yamato secretly yearned for a threesome with his two best bros on some tropical island while his newfound sister did all the hard work? Too bad for him, Aramisaki is my one true love!

The battle with Arcturus was really tedious. It wasn't hard, but the fact that you needed to waste 3(?) turns on Yamato doing scratch damage was annoying. Though it ended up being unintentionally hilarious because he missed on his first full powered turn and then the cutscene proceeded like things were going according to plan. You aren't fooling anyone with that smirk, Yamato.

So yeah. Liked it overall, will replay both campaigns later.

P.S.: Something that bothered me was the use of the Dragon Stream in Akasha Stratum and against Canopus. Isn't the Dragon Stream something born from Earth? Can you really use it outside of it?

Yamato can basically do whatever the hell he wants as long as he says the Dragon Stream is doing it.

What are your thoughts on the designs in IV and Apocalypse? I remember that several guest artists had contributed several interesting designs to those games.

Shinohara's were probably my favorites aesthetically for an interesting attempt at interpretation of the demons he was assigned.

Nirasawa's style is too flat to really stand out imo, though I do like Doi's revisions on Nirasawa's stuff.

Amemiya's designs are just too cluttered

I don't remember which of the guest artists' kid complained that the designs were too complex to draw, but that's the funniest possible anecdote about these designs

I like to imagine the sprite artists looking at Amemiya's designs and going, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

The art book reveals that Yoshihiro Nishimura (Omoikane, Yaso Magatsuhi, and Pluto) actually made little models of his demons which was pretty cool.

Edited by ComicX6 on Feb 28th 2021 at 3:15:12 PM

Shinohara’s kid.

DDS 1 does have a relatively more thin story but the thing is, the game is not trying to engage you like a conventional cutscene-heavy and character-focused JRPG initially. It's more like something resembling Nocturne where the general atmosphere and sense of mystery is what's supposed to hold your interest, and IMO it was really good at that because I was invested in the larger world and story that was being presented and enjoying the atmosphere and turn-based combat and progression. The characters start out relatively robotic and stoic but that's totally deliberate because their emotions have been suppressed, gradually their emotions awaken and they become more fully fleshed-out and we learn more about them as people, especially in DDS 2, and at that point it becomes more like a conventional JRPG like you'd expect once the cards are out on the table.

If you weren't into DDS 1 it makes sense you wouldn't be interested in continuing with DDS 2 but a lot of people enjoy DDS 1 as it is for a variety of reasons to the point they didn't feel their time was being wasted, so it just sounds like unfortunately you went in with the wrong set of expectations about the experience and the strengths of the game didn't work for you. Shame because IMO the DDS duology are easily my favorite Atlus RPG's.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Feb 28th 2021 at 7:45:47 AM

I'm still hoping that Nocturne HD opens the door for them to get the remaster treatment as well. I would really like to play them.

The only real complaint I guess is that I'd like a proper difficulty selection in an updated release. The game's a little too forgiving with how easy it is to customize characters. And the way resistances now work, casting them as party-wide buffs opens up the Nocturne system in interesting ways, but the enemies aren't harsh enough to take full advantage. A lot of times I find myself failing a Hunt skill more than getting in any real trouble.

Alchemist Code JP has released its Nocturne HD event.

Have no faith in it coming overseas even with IV and Apocalypse events doing so in another gacha. Or all the Purrsona ones.

So to like the two people on the planet who have read them, are the Quantum Devil Saga books good/worth a read?

I like it and have both. Since the rest will never get translated despite the work the translator did.