Shin Megami Tensei IV comes out today (in NA)

[osed125]

famousringo said:

Soriku said:

Wait till you hit Tokyo. What were the other SMT games you've played?

Just Strange Journey. I put a fair amount of time into that one, obsessively collecting demons, but at some point lost interest and didn't return. I don't remember finding it as frustrating as this one.

It seems substantially harder to negotiate with the demons this time around, and levels just don't seem to make any difference. I was level 8, failed to recruit a level 2 demon, and suddenly half my team was wiped out. It seems ridiculous that any unit in the game is two shots or one lucky crit away from death at all times, and that most battles can be won with the enemy never taking a turn.

But I seem to have hit my groove after defeating Navarre. I still think there are all kinds of ways this game could be better, but I do find that I want to keep playing. Maybe it's just stockholm syndrome.

I do agree with you on this. Recruiting demons is really a pain in the ass, mostly because there's really no hint as to what to answer to them (there are some obvious ones like the Dwarf which ask me like where to go and "A cave" was one of the answer), and failing to recruit a demon can result in one's death. 

The point of battles is to figure out the demons weakness, I had to retry some bosses because without knowing there weaknesses it was pretty much impossible to beat them at the level I was, I guess this could either be fun or a pain depending on how you look at it.

But overall I'm enjoying this game a lot, I have only played Persona 3 and Devil Survivor (on the DS) before, so was already familiar with some of the mechanics of the game, which for newcomers might take a while to get used to.