Reincarnation of the Eastern Wonder Goddess (A Megami Tensei thread)

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

Soooo, I'll ask some questions to get the ball rolling, but feel free to skip out on them and post  more questions or any other MegaTen related thing.

1) What's your favorite Megami Tensei game?
Mine is either Shin Megami Tensei 1 or IV.

2) What is your favorite Megami Tensei track?
Some of my favorite tracks are Omega (from Megami Tensei 2 and Majin Tensei) and the Law theme from SMT 1.

3) What Alignment do you frequently side with?
I frequently side with the Neutral alignment, but Chaos often acts as my second choice. Law does have merit, but the means that Law factions often use is downright hateful (In my opinion).

4) Something I'm interested to find out about, How would you feel about a Touhou Fangame with Megami Tensei mechanics (E.g: Press-Turn battle system, Negotiation, alignments etc)?

Edit: I accidentally labeled 2 questions as "question 2". Remember chums, proof-reading is a useful tool.

[Zengar Zombolt]

Soooo, I'll ask some questions to get the ball rolling, but feel free to skip out on them and post  more questions or any other MegaTen related thing.

1) What's your favorite Megami Tensei game?
Mine is either Shin Megami Tensei 1 or IV.

2) What is your favorite Megami Tensei track?
Some of my favorite tracks are Omega (from Megami Tensei 2 and Majin Tensei) and the Law theme from SMT 1.

2) What Alignment do you frequently side with?
I frequently side with the Neutral alignment, but Chaos often acts as my second choice. Law does have merit, but the means that Law factions often use is downright hateful (In my opinion).

3) Something I'm interested to find out about, How would you feel about a Touhou Fangame with Megami Tensei mechanics (E.g: Press-Turn battle system, Negotiation, alignments etc)?

First for metatron a qt

1)SMT4, DeSu2. I'm interested on the Raidou Kuzunoha games, too.

2)I'm all about freedom of choice, so Neutral>Chaos>Law(>White) for me.

3)Press Turn-style battle needs to be more popular, definitively. Ailments being so useful too. I dunno how negotiation would work in a touhou fangame tho, unless you had multiple clones of people ala touhoumon. If so then please let me fuse everyone

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

First for metatron a qt

1)SMT4, DeSu2. I'm interested on the Raidou Kuzunoha games, too.

2)I'm all about freedom of choice, so Neutral>Chaos>Law(>White) for me.

3)Press Turn-style battle needs to be more popular, definitively. Ailments being so useful too. I dunno how negotiation would work in a touhou fangame tho, unless you had multiple clones of people ala touhoumon. If so then please let me fuse everyone

I've heard a lot of good things about the Raidou games. Kinda surprising actually, I didn't think that SMT mechanics would translate well into an Action-RPG (Why did I throw away my PS2? ;__; ). DeSu2 seems like an interesting game, I'm probably gonna wait for the Record Breaker version to come out though, what do you reckon?

As for the fangame idea, it's all still in very early pre-production, so thankfully nothing has really been decided yet. For Negotiation and fusion, I'm thinking of having most of the enemies as more generic foes like fairies, tengu, kappa, etc, and having the more noteworthy characters as boss battles, who you can fuse after defeating them.

[Sahgren]

Soooo, I'll ask some questions to get the ball rolling, but feel free to skip out on them and post  more questions or any other MegaTen related thing.

1) What's your favorite Megami Tensei game?

2) What is your favorite Megami Tensei track?

3) What Alignment do you frequently side with?

4) Something I'm interested to find out about, How would you feel about a Touhou Fangame with Megami Tensei mechanics (E.g: Press-Turn battle system, Negotiation, alignments etc)?

1) Devil Survivor or SMT: Nocturne.

2) I don't really have one.  :ohdear:

3) Neutral > Chaos > Law typically. Though it becomes Neutral > Law > Chaos in the DeSu games, where the Law people are legitimately trying to look out for others.

4) I'd be for it as long as you don't preserve random skill selection from fusions. I don't feel like spending 2+ hours trying to roulette up the perfect character again.

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

1) Devil Survivor or SMT: Nocturne.

4) I'd be for it as long as you don't preserve random skill selection from fusions. I don't feel like spending 2+ hours trying to roulette up the perfect character again.

Aaahh Nocturne, another reason why I need to buy a PS2. I played it a very long time ago (around the time it was first released in Europe) but didn't get very far, I lacked the patience needed to play RPG's. 

I hear ya, I was so pleased when I found out that SMT IV gave you more control over skill inheritance. No more fusion related wrist cramp!

[Garlyle]

1) Nocturne or Devil Survivor Overclocked.  Possibly Digital Devil Saga, P3 Portable, and Strange Journey as special mentions.

2) Nocturne's final boss tracks, SMT4's main theme and Masakados DLC boss track, A Land Bringing About Life from SJ (Or well most of the SJ soundtrack really)

3) Neutral.  Maybe rarely Chaos.  Fuck Law.

4) I'd be down for it.  I'd actually kind of worked on one at one point.  Or something loosely like one.

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

2) Nocturne's final boss tracks, SMT4's main theme and Masakados DLC boss track, A Land Bringing About Life from SJ (Or well most of the SJ soundtrack really)

3) Neutral.  Maybe rarely Chaos.  Fuck Law.

4) I'd be down for it.  I'd actually kind of worked on one at one point.  Or something loosely like one.

2) Aaahh yes, Masakado's boss theme is godly (pun unintended), hell of a way to finish the game. I haven't listened to many tracks from Strange Journey, but the ones I've listened to are really good (E.G: Chaos and the boss theme).

3) Indeed, they're not exactly doing a good job if they're giving The Nihilist route a compelling argument (Then again, Chaos ain't exactly helping either).

4) That sounds interesting, can you tell me more? O__O

[Garlyle]

4) That sounds interesting, can you tell me more? O__O

Oh, yeah, sure.  It was supposed to be set in Nagano, where basically the border of Gensokyo got torn and yokai started pouring out and basically wrecked the city; and now the area's basically a wasteland with the remaining human survivors trying to deal with the fact that monsters everywhere.  It was meant to play a lot on more twisted and disturbed aspects of Gensokyo's mythology.  Although initially you were fighting to just survive against lesser yokai, you'd eventually find out

Spoiler:

they all fled Gensokyo because of an emerging war between the faiths of Byakuren, Miko, and Kanako that had become increasingly heated and violent.  Which faction you sided with - or if you chose to refuse them all - would lead to the second half of the game playing out drastically differently

.  Its design actively lacked in dungeons or random encounters deliberately, so certain traditional SMT aspects weren't there (such as demon negotiation; your party more resembled Digital Devil Saga's style), but it had some stuff I'd like to revisit.

Too bad apparently the only notes I salvaged from my old laptop are months out of date, but maybe I'll return to it at some point.

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

Oh, yeah, sure.  It was supposed to be set in Nagano, where basically the border of Gensokyo got torn and yokai started pouring out and basically wrecked the city; and now the area's basically a wasteland with the remaining human survivors trying to deal with the fact that monsters everywhere.  It was meant to play a lot on more twisted and disturbed aspects of Gensokyo's mythology.  Although initially you were fighting to just survive against lesser yokai, you'd eventually find out

Spoiler:

they all fled Gensokyo because of an emerging war between the faiths of Byakuren, Miko, and Kanako that had become increasingly heated and violent.  Which faction you sided with - or if you chose to refuse them all - would lead to the second half of the game playing out drastically differently

.  Its design actively lacked in dungeons or random encounters deliberately, so certain traditional SMT aspects weren't there (such as demon negotiation; your party more resembled Digital Devil Saga's style), but it had some stuff I'd like to revisit.

Too bad apparently the only notes I salvaged from my old laptop are months out of date, but maybe I'll return to it at some point.

That sounds like a really interesting premise. I know that the plot of Hopeless Masquerade had something of a religious war/skirmish, but I guess it couldn't expand too much (Seems like a pretty dark premise for a mainline Touhou game). If you ever return to the project, I'll keep an eye out for it.

[CF7]

1) What's your favorite Megami Tensei game?

2) What is your favorite Megami Tensei track?

3) What Alignment do you frequently side with?

4) Something I'm interested to find out about, How would you feel about a Touhou Fangame with Megami Tensei mechanics (E.g: Press-Turn battle system, Negotiation, alignments etc)?

1. Eh, i dunno. Likely DeSu 2, followed by Strange Journey and Persona Q.
2. Persona Q - Laser Beam.
3. It really depends on the game. But more often than not chaos.
4. Sounds interesting. But fuck press turns mechanic. Fuck it hard.

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

3. It really depends on the game. But more often than not chaos.
4. Sounds interesting. But fuck press turns mechanic. Fuck it hard.

3) Right on.

4) WHAAAAT!?...Nah, I'm kidding, mate. Just curious though, why don't you like the Press Turn System?

[Garlyle]

4) WHAAAAT!?...Nah, I'm kidding, mate. Just curious though, why don't you like the Press Turn System?

I'm not the one being asked but I can sort of see where the issue is.

A lot of SMT games have combat that is already won or lost before the battle even begins.  Got party members weak to what the boss is going to throw at you?  Yup.  Enjoy that.  Or vice versa - a single person who can null Ice when you're facing a boss with Mabufu.  It's not necessarily a bad thing to have emphasis placed on elemental weakness, but it is important to note that some systems were more game-warping than others.  Persona 3/4's One More (and especially vanilla P3's knockdown and losing a turn effect) tended to result in most battles being completed without enemies ever getting to act - or wiping you as a result.  But Press Turn can be the most ergregorious example of hyper punishing a player for a mistake in planning (especially when going through an area the first time), because losing entire actions is massive.  It can have an extremely system warping effect whereby, like I mentioned, combat is already won or lost before it even begins.  And then it's kind of an extra slap in the face when you're first encountering things and trying to figure out what does or doesn't work.

That said I'm mostly fine with it because that's largely what I signed up for.

SMT4's added Smirk RNG can go die in a fire though as it just aggravated the issue.

(For the record, the game I worked on did have an elemental exploit system.  It was a lot simpler though - if you hit an enemy's weakness, it also caused the remainder of your party's actions against that target to be more effective for the turn.  I think the emphasis on elemental advantage in SMT is a good thing; it's just a matter of how massive that impact is that can end up warping the game).

[KazuyaTheSummoner]

I'm not the one being asked but I can sort of see where the issue is.

A lot of SMT games have combat that is already won or lost before the battle even begins.  Got party members weak to what the boss is going to throw at you?  Yup.  Enjoy that.  Or vice versa - a single person who can null Ice when you're facing a boss with Mabufu.  It's not necessarily a bad thing to have emphasis placed on elemental weakness, but it is important to note that some systems were more game-warping than others.  Persona 3/4's One More (and especially vanilla P3's knockdown and losing a turn effect) tended to result in most battles being completed without enemies ever getting to act - or wiping you as a result.  But Press Turn can be the most ergregorious example of hyper punishing a player for a mistake in planning (especially when going through an area the first time), because losing entire actions is massive.  It can have an extremely system warping effect whereby, like I mentioned, combat is already won or lost before it even begins.  And then it's kind of an extra slap in the face when you're first encountering things and trying to figure out what does or doesn't work.

That said I'm mostly fine with it because that's largely what I signed up for.

SMT4's added Smirk RNG can go die in a fire though as it just aggravated the issue.

I guess I can see the issue. I remember plenty of times in SMTIV when one of my party members (I'm looking at you, Walter) would keep on blatantly hitting a boss's absorb/reflect element, causing them to Smirk slap me back to Charon. Oh, and don't even think about auto-battling, unless you're 250% sure the enemies won't just reflect the attacks.

I do like the system in lengthy battles though (E.G: Lucifer, Merkabah, Sanat and the Ancient of Days) since it encourages the use of buffs and debuffs, and it motivates me to use a tactic that doesn't consist of almighty spamming. ^^;

[CF7]

Yeah, pretty much what Garlyle wrote.
I think the modified version of this was used best in Strange Journey. Instead of getting an extra turn, MC and the demons of the same alignment as MC used All-Out-Attack for free on enemies. It wasn't that game-breaking, since the damage was just okay. It helped in random battles and boss battles alike. And enemies couldn't use it at all. And considering how ball-busting-hard SJ is already, i'd say it was for the best.