My character took a dump and improved their luck by a point. I’m still trying to unpack that.
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But your main character isn’t. Someone got their fiber ratios just right.
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He managed to shit and having his ass clean after talking a dump.
No more beating helpless dogs for me:
I stole one of these and got one as a rare drop in the same fight. The few times being lucky pays off almost make it worth my character being sorta useless.
The game just keeps on a steady upwards trajectory in most all aspects. This collection of characters is something. Every new character I come across is just as neat and interesting as the last.
Heismay: 
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Excellent. Man’s best friend just got friendlier.
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The good thing about that is that you can retry every battle to steal the big items from enemies. A dirty tactic, I know, but I feel the game encourages you to do this and to use some mechanics to truly start the battle or get the objects you want.
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That’s a good thought. I haven’t had the need to yet, but resetting to ensure a steal could be useful.
Game, I’m already spending so much time in the back row that I started receiving my mail there:
It’s no longer the back row, now it’s the bunker.
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It’s the safe space for sure. I’m on my fourth big dungeon (yeah, I’m totally playing it), and well, the moments you have to defend YOU DEFEND YOURSELF, and if you’re not careful you get the SMT experience xD
So, as for the things I’m having. Some impressions:
First, I’m realizing the conversations are getting more and more irritation. This tends to happen when you don’t know about politics and have to dumb down the characters’ opinions, but it feels like your character is playing some sort of a Biden/centrist figure in which he’s perfect and completely nuanced and the rest of characters are parodies of “Kill the rich” and the like. I feel this is getting annoying because I feel certain characters like Louis could be the representation of fascism, but the characters are mostly about vibes rather than content outside of the important ones.
As for the combat, I love it. It’s getting difficult, and the lack of mana objects make completing dungeons in a one go difficult. Of course, there’s also moments where you could speed up your social links, so it gets rewarding on some points. Also, as you improve on your social links, there are some abilities that makes the cruiser more profitable to use (you can have an ability to cook and not spend all day doing it, for example).
As for archetypes, I’m trying to build my MC into a support character using a class that is given to you in Martira, and I’ll decide whether this goes physical or magical. Then I want Strohl as a physical bulldozer, Hulkenberg as a Magic Knight, and then Heismay for an agility debuff character. The idea is to have a strong support character with some buffs, a magical/healer tank, and a powerful mage with healing skills. Maybe I’ll change my mind and move my MC into a magical ability user, but I’m not completely bought by the idea.
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I’m also navigating the 4th dungeon right now, I’ve definitely been playing this game like a degenerate.
4th dungeon: Didn’t see another SMT IV twist coming, makes me wonder if these games possibly exist in the same universe. This might be one of the the biggest darn dungeons I’ve ever played. Things got real, real fast here. If I didn’t have the previously mentioned bunker this place would probably be pretty scary. I had a decent stock of mana items and two mana accessories and I’m still feeling a resource crunch. 4th dungeon is wild.
Also my main character has gotten hooked on bath salts in a bad way.
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As for the dungeon:
I watched in Internet that this was a reference to Etrian Odyssey and it’s a very explicit one from top to bottom, so I know I’ll end up playing the saga. I didn’t play SMT IV, but I also thought that at first, and I agree with you that the dungeon has been looong and hard; in fact, I think the switch of dungeons from Brilehaven has been a fresh change. You believe things were hard in mana susteinance due to what you experienced early, and then you have a fast boss rush and then this.
Also, I have experimented with the Masked Dancer achetype. Having something else work differently from other archetypes and being something of their own is something I’m down for future installments of Atlus’ games, as it’s something that breaks the routine of having to only level up your archetypes up to level 20. So far I have like 8 masks and I feel we’re about to get something more, but I feel the 3rd and 4th dungeon have been so far my favorite moments in the game alltogether.
As for the rest, I ended up one link story (the Strohl one) and I’ve been focusing on advancing those as much as I can, and I’m considering what to do with my main character for a while. I am focusing on learning the Seeker archetype slowly, and I’ve given him Cleric and Commander/General, but I don’t know if I did it right or now. I’m considering whether he would be a magic user or a physical user, but I’m undecided.
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More 4th dungeon: The name they give to the city after the dungeon is as clear a reference to Etrian Odyssey as possible, but I’ve never played any of that series so anything beyond that would be lost on me. Now I’m wondering if they are just making connections to a slew of Atlus games.
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I’m at the second town, in the neighborhood of like ten hours of playtime. I’ve kind of gotten into tinkering with the classes to cover for elemental weaknesses and things like that which has been welcome fun. I appreciate that there isn’t really an all in one class.
There’s more than one town! Yay. That was the only thing that was really going to bug me for a long time and it was quickly answered. The thing I appreciate is how I can actually take my time on off days and even do side dungeons. Whereas I militarily did something every day in all the other games in a way that made me lose interest on replays.
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What in the heck is going on with this game?
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Just like SMT1
I’m hype for this game even though I will not play it for a while if not years from now.
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You’re in no rush. On one side, I feel it’s a fun game as hell if you liked games like SMT: Nocturne and Persona 3 Reload (although I feel it inclines a tad better on the right side), with, I feel, other JRPGs I didn’t play (maybe Etrian Odyssey? I don’t know, so I’ll leave it aside and play those games later).
I’m at 55 hours. I feel I’m reaching the endgame and I didn’t have enough time to invest into social links and other things as much as I would have wanted. I feel I’m going to replay this in a slower pace because the game is as fun as what I had in Persona 3 Reload, but I feel I haven’t gotten as much juice as I wanted. But as for the game, it’s JRPG unadultered fun with some things that rub me the wrong way.
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The game has plenty of overt and subtle nods to Atlus’ past, so I think you’d definitely get a kick out of it for that alone. It’s a fantastic game on its own merits too though.
The Etrian Odyssey connection is what had me from the initial announcement of the project years ago. I like Etrian Odyssey way more than SMT. But I like SMT/Persona enough. I have put many hours into many SMT games without ever finishing one, but I’ve finished three EO games and played countless more for hours too. But yeah, this is one of those instant classics I know I’ll play years from now. SMT1/2, Devil Summoner on Saturn, Persona 2, maybe 3 or 4, are all higher priority, I will probably blast through and have a big SMT phase, crowning with Fantazio as the final crown jewel.
Thinking about nabbing those bus posters
The more I truck on, another vibe/influence I get a lot of is Star Ocean 2. Just in the ways that there are so many little stats and numbers that you can make increase, and how those increases synergize and play off other things, how some are given to you at just the right time to make an automatic, planned increase feel earned, how you have options to play with the others, and how there’s always, always something to chip away at
But while Star Ocean feels like everything is happening in a menu (a satisfying one, though), it all feels like it’s happening actively here. It also pairs up with very classic-feeling JRPG dungeons that seem like just enough and this added feeling of “yes you can” and “don’t worry about that” smoothness that really makes it hit in the act of playing. Why not show me blips of treasure on the map so I can focus on getting to them instead of the tedium of making sure I look at every corner of a sameish stone dungeon? So many times, I’ve thought, “huh, I’m not sure if this’ll screw me over” – especially in terms of the time management stuff, which can be a stressful type of system – but the game always respond with “we got you.”
Like recently, I didn’t feel that it was explained if I wanted to make a long trek with my ship, would I automatically return to base from the first destination and waste a day? I rolled the dice, and afterward, the game said, “hey, we wrapped that up, where to from here?” instead. Because that’s nice and makes sense! That’s what I’m feeling with this game systems-wise – it’s nice and it makes sense
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