| iLikeEggs said: Just wanted to chime in and say i'm glad you played SMT4. I definitely agree with you regarding the paths and the endings, but I still loved the game. Like you, I also really liked being thrown into Tokyo after going through all of Naraku. It was really special. I also think the world map was a little too clunky, especially compared to Nocturne. The series is weird for me, since I usually really focus on an RPGs plot; but with the mainline SMT games (and spinoffs), i just find the gameplay (and the fusion, if available, just like you said) so satisfying and well-done that I am okay with flawed or more simple plots. The press-turn system is so fun because it's fair for the player and fair for the enemies since they will take advantage of your weakness(es) and exploit them just like you would to them. My favorite game in the SMT universe is SMT3:Nocturne on ps2. It's the only rpg I have played that made me feel as satisfied as when I played Chrono Trigger and FF6 (my favorite rpgs). The gameplay is the same, the music is sublime (go listen to some), the world is fantastic, the game is aesthetically gorgeous and still looks good to this day, and the game has wonderful dungeons (something I found very lacking in SMT4). Unfortunately, like Nocturne, story is not as satisfying as the world/gameplay. Also, fusion is not as refined as it is in SMT4 (understandable since Nocturne is from 2003). If you have a ps2, you really should play it. |
When I said that SMT IV seemed like the best place for me to start my SMT journey, I was actually directly thinking about Nocturne. I was always much more interested in it's world and aesthetic than with SMT IV before I played it. Still, I think it's clear that the gameplay has gone through a lot of polish since Nocturne. While it will be much easier for me to get into Nocturne now that I have a grip on the combat, I think that the random encounters and inability to save where you like would have been extremely frustrating for me had I played it before IV.
Nocturne is the SMT game I want to play the most, aside from the vaporware that is SMT x FE, so I will play it at the first chance I get. I want to play it more that Persona 5, because I'm still not sure that I'm the target audience for those games. I don't have a PS2 though, so I don't know how soon that will be, lol.
I'm the same though. The battle system is usually my least favorite part of any JRPG. It's not the plot nessecarily that hooks me into JRPGs, but the atmosphere. I was attracted to Nocturne and SMT as a whole because I liked the atmosphere they oose. JRPGs usually all have this unique flavor to them, usually because of the tone of their stories, that I really enjoy. I just don't like the recent turn to high school anime magical-girl drama that some of the newer popular JRPGs seem to be now. I never associated JRPGs with anime, but now they are pretty much seen as identical. And I love anime, but that's not what JRPGs were to me. They weren't anime with dungeon crawling and turn based combat; they were role playing games created in japan.
