Hiku said:
Well, I don't know if I'm aware of just how critical you are of the game. I think the only post of yours I've read about that was one you wrote in the other SMT Final topic. But judging by that one, we seem to have very similar feelings on the game. Enjoying the story and characters (in the beginning). And also how you attribute the law vs chaos system to why you didn't like the characters later. I feel that is a big reason for me as well. For example, I feel like they accepted their allignments along with their extreme methods too easily, without the hesitation and questioning that I came to expect from them. And much of their character became very one tracked and focused on that somewhere around halfway through the game, and there wasn't really anything like the scene of bonding on the castle rooftop again. Where we differ in that post was that you said you loved the game, and the atmosphere. And the atmosphere was one of the biggest things I loved about Shin megami Tensei 3, so that I was disappointed in it in SMT4 is also a big reason for why I can't say that I ended up liking the game. |
How exactly did the atmosphere disappoint you in comparison to Nocturne? I can obviously only get a small understanding of its atmosphere from the footage I've seen, but outside of the superior visual design of SMT3, I'm curious as to what you found so disagreeable about the one found in IV, as I thought it was the game's saving grace. It's probably, above everything else, the single thing about the game that made me "get" why people are into the franchise, and why I'd consider myself a fan of it now. From the absolutely outstanding soundtrack, the great localization, the well directed voice acting, the premise, and the setting, I thought it was all done remarkably to set a very effective tone that permeated through the game until the very end. The personalities and dynamics between humans and demons, the level design, the way the game built it's tone and world through the imagery of a ruined Tokyo, the often cynical but equally as often hopeful remarks of its citizens, and the subtle nods up in Mikado to the world below was, in my opinion, expertly done.
I think that's why I was so disappointed by how the story eventually played out. So much that surrounded it remained consistantly good, so it was all the more frustrating that they dropped the ball so hard. Walter and Jonathan ended up being casualties to the Law vs. Chaos mechanic, but characters uneffected by this mechanic, AKA everyone else, was at worse likable and interesting and at best engaging to the end. Skins, Issachar, Nozomi, Kiyoharu, Tayama and the Asura-kai, The Black Samurai Yuriko, Kaga and the Ring of Gaia were all great and well written to the end. I'm not sure what you feel was unresolved about Akira. I felt that he was one of the most fleshed out characters in the game.
I had an issue with Mikado's poor execution in the game too, since after the reveal there was pretty much no reason to go back there, and jumping back and forth would have been cool, on top of actually being able to physically explore it.
I truely feel like most of the issues that I had with the game were directly influenced by Walter's and Jonathan's role in the game and their influence on the way the story was structured and concluded. Even from the box art, it's clear how heavy handed this opproach is with Walter looking evil on the left black side and Jonathan looking holy on the right white side. Looking at the art for IVf, that doesn't seem to be the case at all with this one, with all of the characters mixed in together in a much less segregated way. Literally just eliminating the idea of a law or chaos protagonist at all would make the game so much better already.