That was my problem with SMT IV as well. I played the game using the choices I would normally pick...and suddenly everyone was dying and I destroyed the world. I only bothered to look up Neutral Path later...and the requirements to achieving that just didn't seem fun to me at all. I still want to do it someday...just need to build up the motivation.

Of the five SMT games I've played, IV was probably my least favorite. Not that it was bad, just that I enjoyed the others more. I thought the paths were set up better in the Devil Survivor I and II. Instead of having a 'morality meter', you basically build up relationships with your companions and NPCs, which allows you to choose different paths at a certain point of the game. I believe you always have the Law and Chaos paths (or equivalents), but you can unlock additional paths through your relationships in the game. This might be too straightforward for some people, but I much preferred it over having to monitor my Law/Chaos points. 

Still...what I've heard about this game seems promising, and I did enjoy IV enough to keep my eye on this one, for what's it worth.

It's not really worth it, to be honest. If you did most of the sidequests, then the only content that you didn't experience was fighting the boss of the alignment you sided with. The neutral ending is so anti-climatic that it doesn't end even after you've defeated all the bosses that are required: you have to return to this non-descript, somewhat out of the way place you've visited a few times already (no new enemies, events, or obstacles appear; it's just like the previous dozen times you've stopped by), at which point there's a thirty second conversation, a thirty second video, and the game ends.

The Hope ending isn't worth it.

An SMT game ending with some happy fun times, and I'm supposed to believe it? So the ceiling is gone, then what happens? Nothing. No punishment from YHWH, no Lucifer suddenly appearing from the depths of the Underworld, nothing.

You don't even get to fight the two villains working together to ensure humanity is wiped out once and for all, heheheheheh

I think I sprang a nosebleed, sorry

Wh-wha...that sounds incredibly anti-climactic, and even more unsatisfying if I'm investing dozens of hours into trying to achieve it. I wanted to see an ending where the girl doesn't kill herself, but that doesn't really seem worth it.

Ah well. Hopefully Final does it better.

I can agree with story and main cast complaints as it felt like throughout the game that they didnt want to commit to any one story line and deided that after most every major decision, things would just carry on as usual for the main cast. but I dont thnk all of the story was trash as talking to side charectors and no names gave me a very good idea about the state of the world and how it got there and I found that to be incredibly intriguing and interesting (the actual plot itslf should have been doing this but oh well).The law vs chaos mechanic I feel like is a rather easy fix in the sense that they should take out the hidden values or remove the two choices completly as I dont see a point of having these two decisions before me if the game isnt willing to tell me what is and is not affecting the scale on which they increase. I did not know though that they said they were fixing the over world though so yay on that note. Oh and when I said over world I was talking about the map as I found the on foot exploration sections of the game to be incredibly fun to explore and am in agreement with you that they should make that the primary way of moving around the world of IV:final. Lastly I will have to disagree with you on the smirk mechanic being a minor issue I found it to be one of the worst systems introduced in SMT IV and I'll probably go into more detail as to why that is tomorrow cause I am sleepy and cant properly express how bad of a system it is right now.

Neither do I. I think most of it was great. I think the last 33% was bad, and most of it was because of how drawn out it was because of the LvC mechanic. I hated the false endings, too.

I don't think the game should tell you anything about how your decisions effect the world if it keeps MvC. What is even the point of having a morality system if you're told when and how it effects the world? That's not how morality in real life works, and it completely shatters any sense of immersion when a "choice" icon appears to baby you into a binary, black and white decision with binary, black and white conclusions. That's such a big reason why Walter, Jonathan, and to a lower extent Isabeau, are all ruined by this stupid mechanic. They get boiled down into training wheels to let the player know what path their decisions align with. If you pick law, Walter disapproves, Jonathan reasures, and Isabeau just stands there. If you pick chaos, Jonathan shakes his head, Walter pats you on the back, and Isabeau just stands there. Such a fucking lame way to force an already shallow mechanic into an otherwise expertly put together game.

If I were in charge, the game would have had only one ending, but there would be major points through out the entire game in which your decisions organically effected the world in a tangible way, with the game being entirely devoid of any hints that these branching paths even exist, so that they actually feel like consequences instead of choices. Main characters could die or not, villians could live or not, and they would all effect the tone of that unified ending depending on who is there. This way every player's experience in the game would still be different, but it wouldn't negatively effect the writing.

I honestly beat the game never really even paying attention to how smirk effected my battles, so that explains my apathy towards the issue.

I'm hoping they fix that damn map. Im playing SMT4 right now and my biggest complaint is how that map doesn't help you navigate at all x.x I never know where the hell I am

If that's the case, I wonder if I should just skip Untold 1 and go straight to 2. I have both of them... x ) Although I really enjoyed what I played of 1.

Thanks to the utterly labyrinthine world map, I truly feel sorry for anyone who failed to unlock the ability of flight before they took on a certain side quest.

Flight is amazing, it cuts my travel time to a quarter or even less than if I had to deal with those blasted random encounters and the map layout. Too bad you can't land anywhere.