I don't dislike it. It's just it felt kinda weird being all dialog-less. So when they talked it was weird. Plus you get to see character emotion/expression easier with it closer on their face

But that was only because it wasn't voice acted, right?

I suppose. If they make really good character models I guess I wouldnt mind

Defence stat.One(or basically THE) reason that i didnt love SMT IV was the total lack of a defence stat.Sure you could improve it a little with a spell, but thats it.Without it, is really hard to tell your charachter growth, and makes leveling less exciting.I personally think that defence is really essential in a RPG, and tge lack of it is a cheap trick to make battles harder, because you die faster and is much harder to defend against an enemy(I personally feel that is as a cheap mechanic as when enemies scale up as you level.It KILLS the leveling up system)

What Im trying to say is, without the defence stat, it is way harder to feel that you have grown in your journey and became stronger, since the first monster you encounter deal the same damage as you first encounter them.And that kills the joy of playing an RPG by a good margin.

Have you ever seen anything of Digital Devil Saga? I was thinking it would be more like that, but in HD.

I haven't played much of it. I would love a free camera movement

 More free than in SMT4/A

Having a tutorial that does not destroy the player would be nice. I mean, I can't beat the fucking tutorial of this game! I get demons that either get my life and run away, or are too weak to defend me from other demons, and the character can't fight for himself if he wants to get a demon. I feel my gaming selfestime crushed everytime I try to actually beat the tutorial.

Spemanig, you said I didn't need to grind! You said it! But I don't even have the chance!

You're not gonna want to hear this, but I feel like it would be against the vibe of this series to be inviting. I felt the same way as you the first time I played SMT4 - couldn't make it past the tutorial an put it away for over a year.

Then one day I just manned up about it and spent a few hours just learning all of the mechanics and metagame. Part of it is actually paying attention to and heeding to the tutorial, I definitely didn't. Press turns are important, buffs/debuffs are important, and fusing demons is literally the most important.

If you're stuck at the tutorial boss, it's because you're not taking to heart what the tutorial is teaching you. If you're playing SMT4, it's not a hard boss fight. You just have to know what you're doing. If exploiting a weakness grants you one extra press turn, and you have four party members, at least three of them should be using a "super effective" move to maximize the amount of press turns you get. If that's not the set up you have, fuse demons until it is.

If the boss is gaining press turns on you because of a weakness you have, fuse that demon out for something that resists/absorbs/repels that element. Use buffs and debuffs. They're borderline broken in these games. So are press turns. My strategy for SMT4 was to only us magic demons, because magic is OP, and just fill all the slots with the four elements, buffs, and healing.

You should never need to grind. Just fuse stronger, better demons. You can even raise the demon fusion level cap to fuse demons far beyond your level. Near the end of the game, I was fusing demons like 13 levels above me.

There is a boss in the tutorial!? I haven't gotten that far! XD