Megami Tensei battle rates

[Nev]

If FFX has too many battles for you, just never even consider playing a Megami Tensei game.

I played Persona (that's one of them right?) but never finished...mostly because I killed the teddy bear, saved over my game, then realized there was NO fucking way I was starting that over from the beginning so I could see the good ending...

Enjoyed it much though. The whole modern-day fucked-up-hallucinogenic alternate universe thing was badass. It was kind of nice to see characters that seemed like normal kids instead of pure-as-the-driven-snow heroes too.

[Tortolia]

Yeah, Persona's a Megami Tensei game.

Word has it the US version had the encounter rate cut signficiantly from the original. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

[Nev]

It actually wasn't that bad. The battles were fun too - it had a neat system where you talked to the monsters beforehand...each one of your characters had certain conversational skills...the girls could flirt with male monsters, the "cool" smooth-talking guy could bribe them...each character had like four conversation options you could try. If it worked, you could get experience and items without having to fight the monsters at all. It also had the only black character I've ever seen in a Japanese RPG, which was pretty cool.

Only reason I didn't finish is the dungeons were real and true mazes and took a long time (not like FF "yeah I'm a dungeon" straight-line art exhibits), so when I found that I was irrevocably en route to the bad ending, I couldn't take the thought of doing it all over again. I was like 35 hours in or something. Did you play it?

[Tortolia]

Several times. I may replay it now that I've played a much broader cross-section of Megami Tensei games (Persona 2:EP, SMT 1, SMT 2, SMT: Nocturne) to see if I enjoy it better.

Demon negotiation is one of the hallmarks of the series, as are ungodly complicated mazes, some form of minion/ability fusions, and a ridiculous battle rate.

[Garford]

Yeah, Persona's a Megami Tensei game.

Word has it the US version had the encounter rate cut signficiantly from the original. Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

From Henry LaPierre's Persona FAQ,

1. The voice actors are different, the Japanese version's actors do not
sound like bratty kids. :) Except for Alana and Chris ;)
2. The snow queen quest has been removed from the American version. This
quest adds an entirely different storyline in which to play the game.
It is also way beyond frustrating to finish, as some of these dungeons
can take you upwards of 16 hours to finish with no proper save feature.
There are also glitches that may occur during the quest(once I had the
game show the starting persona demonstration cinema just as I was
getting to the 8th floor of tower two, only it used my currently
equipped personas. After this the characters were formed on top of
each other and Alana was invisible. A quick re-formation cleared the
problem up, but after 16 hours, that kind of thing can really annoy you).
3. The American version has an abundance of television references, from
General hospital & Star Trek, to the Beverly hillbillies.
4. Names were changed(this was a given).
5. There are significantly less random battles in the American version,
upwards of 3 to 4 times fewer.
6. The demons hit points were lowered in the American version.
7. Prices on items were lowered in the American version(Yen to Dollar
conversion).
8. Due to the fewer battles, the experience gained from a battle was
raised.
9. The American version seems a lot easier. Due to fewer battles, and the
extra experience, there isn't enough risk in between level raising(in
which you get full HP and SP back) for it to get overly difficult.
10.The controller setup was changed.
11.Mark is now an African American, and his hat is different. Other
characters graphics were altered as well.
12.There is a "now loading" screen on the American version.

Persona was easier compare to its original form, but its still quite brutal in terms of time needed to complete it.

[Tortolia]

Yeah, I remember the final dungeon taking me about 4 hours to get to the final boss, and not a save point anywhere in sight. Certainly spiced up the final battle, that's for sure.

16 hour dungeons and 3 or 4 times the encounter rate? Oh yeah. That's vintage Megami Tensei right there.

[Nev]

I liked the US encouter rate really very much as it ended up. Localization team gets thumbs up from me! 3x4 times the encounter rate sounds like an encounter every other step.

Interesting that there was no black guy in the Japanese version.

I miss that game actually. I had a Fool persona...some level 50-something I think...got it on an accident while merging other cards...I forget which one it was, but it rocked. Maybe it's worth another playthrough.

[Tortolia]

I liked the US encouter rate really very much as it ended up. Localization team gets thumbs up from me! 3x4 times the encounter rate sounds like an encounter every other step.

Sounds about par for the course, yes.

[Garford]

I liked the US encouter rate really very much as it ended up. Localization team gets thumbs up from me! 3x4 times the encounter rate sounds like an encounter every other step.

Interesting that there was no black guy in the Japanese version.

I miss that game actually. I had a Fool persona...some level 50-something I think...got it on an accident while merging other cards...I forget which one it was, but it rocked. Maybe it's worth another playthrough.

Well, Mark is the only black guy in the game if you noticed..... IIRC, encounter rate is around 3-4 square once for the Japanese ver and around 10-11 square for the English ver.

Persona however is not that hard once you get nuke more and holy word or worst, Bistrike. If main character and Mary is fast enough, can pretty much end the battle in 1 round with nuke more/holy word even in the Avidea world.

To Tort,

Is SMT 2:If translated by any chance?

[Tortolia]

No, Aeon Genesis has only translated Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2. Soul Hackers has been an active project of theirs for quite a while, as has the original NES Megami Tensei, but who knows when that'll happen.

Apparently SMT:IF was going to be an ungodly nightmare to romhack, so that's why they haven't really taken on the project.

/threadjack

[SineSwiper]

I hope you know that this is probably going to discourage me away from playing any Megami Tensei game.

[Don]

I have no love for any game that has an insane encounter rate without a way around them (like FF8 or FF10). The whole point of added technology and in particular store space is that we're supposed to no longer need artificial things like stupidly big mazes with an encounter every 3 steps to keep you playing longer.

Granted a lot of time what people put in to count as length (50 gazillion hours of gameplay!!!) doesn't look any better than a stupidly big maze with a zillion encounters, but that's no reason to praise going back to the stone age. I won't say high encounter rate is automatically bad but that's deinitely not something I think that makes a game good.

So far as attrition goes, I think it should be in RPG but the lack of attrition is not a lack of encounters, it's the problem that most RPG now you can trivially get all your HP/MP/whatever back to full right before the boss. Also it's a bad misconception that your party is supposed to be beat up when you get to the boss. Like the RPG manga, Dai-no-daiboken, say, the good guys ALWAYS strive to have their best character at 100% HP and 100% MP when they get to the last guy because doing anything else would be extremely dumb. You're supposed to use your unimportant guys to slog through the endless horde of minions while leaving your elite killing team in full shape.

And for stuff like going through X hours until you finally get to a boss. That might be exciting but it won't be necessary if bosses are actually challenging in a meaningful way. This is probably where RPGs should look into MMORPGs on creating difficult, meaningful encounters that you can get better at. For just about every RPG I've played, whether you're going to win or not is determined before the battle even started and you never get better at an encounter. The only decision is how many Megaelixir equivalents you're willing to burn for this encounter. There is no such thing as refining your strategy save for trivially easy adjustments (like put some absorb elemental thing if boss uses some elemental attack, or put immunity to status X attack if that's what the boss uses). Final Fantasy Tactics is the only game that ever came close to actually refining strategy in a battle. While it is easily cheesed, there are quite a few options you can try for a particularly difficult battle and it's good to figure out what works and what does not until you finally win.

[Julius Seeker]

I have no love for any game that has an insane encounter rate without a way around them (like FF8 or FF10). The whole point of added technology and in particular store space is that we're supposed to no longer need artificial things like stupidly big mazes with an encounter every 3 steps to keep you playing longer.

I totally agree with this statement. Even though some of the games I really love do have random encounters. Anyways, I believe that there should be a lot of other ways in games now, besides battling, to improve characters. Final Fantasy 8 had a few ways, then they scrapped it and cloned Final Fantasy 6/7 when they did FF9, but they need to take it a lot further than they did in FF8 (which had cards, books, weapon construction, draw points, refinery...). For example, it would be cool if a system were designed where side-quests added to stats, perhaps working one of many various jobs could increase skills and raise money, doing mini-games (such as the cards), or finding books in libraries and various other places to learn new techniques (like Zell in FF8). There's really a lot that can be done, they just need to put their minds to it. Final Fantasy 8, if they remake it, I believe would benefit if they added in books that would allow refinery of certain types of magic; because, as it is, learning Curaga refine at the beginning of the game can really unbalance the early portion of the game. Using FF8 as a base, they could make some very interesting new types of RPG's, especially if they take a few notes from RPG's such as Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, and others of that type.

[Tortolia]

Well, to be fair, the Megami Tensei games have spells to reduce and/or eliminate (the exact function depends on which game in the series you're playing) random battles.

Only one I can think of that functions oddly is Nocturne, since that's just a massive reduction in encounter rate. The other games have a spell that eliminates all random battles with enemies lower level than you, so it's not a flat out "no battles evar", but given that the minions and/or Personas you can use are based on levels, it's not like FF8 where you can ignore random battles and still be asskickers. You need to level, though bosses give a shitton of exp.

They're old-school dungeon crawls with lots of fighting and lots of exploring. They've never really represented themselves as anything else. And no, they're not for everyone, though if you can buy into their style, they're awesome.

[Don]

There are some games where the battle engine becomes the game itself. Grandia, Diablo, and presumably Gauntlet (I never played it but can't imagine it not) fits into this scheme. However even Diablo tries to advertise itself as something more than just mindlessly killing enemies for 60 hours even though that's basically what it is, so clearly there's supposed to be something more beyond an endless marathon of killing stuff even if it is pretty cool.

I actually would like to see side quests that can actually hurt you, like if you go out and help village repair a bridge while the evil boss is making his great spell he succeeds the spell and becomes 3X more powerful. Such as Star Ocean 2 where you can get the harder version of Indalecio through a simple side event (of course, you should have the option to take back your choice so that you're not irrecovably punished for not having a strategy guide).

[Garford]

A RPG is not only about the battle system. It's a combination of plot, environment and finally battle system.

What you guys are complaining about are games that existed on the SNES. Current SMT titles by far do NOT have a high encounter rate.

SMT is release in 1992, 13 years ago. SMT:If is released in 1994, 11 years ago. Persona in 1996, 9 years ago.

The original Japanese version of Persona is probably the last "high encounter" SMT game in the line. I don't recall SMT3: Nocture Maniacs or DSS having that high an encounter rate.

SMT is one of the first RPG I played that has encounter influencing items and as I had mentioned before, they last for a good duration.

There is only 1 main character for SMT, which is you, the hero who somehow came across an ability to summon monster. The hero is a one man army fighting against heaven or hell to put the plot in ultra simplistic terms. Last I check, the image of hell is a place full of demons and the likes. Think of it as a corrupted version of Pokemon

There isn't any unimportant guy, it is just you, your bunch of demons vs the entire world.

SMT has off hand 2 kinds of physical attack (Guns/Melee), 10 kinds magic attacks (Fire, cold, wind, lightning, earth, holy, curse, nerve, mind, almighty) and 3 kinds of support (healing, buff, debuff).

Monsters can be weak, immune or absorb any attack forms. In SMT it is far from trivial to recover everything before the boss and boss fight are challenging and tactics work since buff/debuffs actually mean something, along with the different avenues of attack.

You don't gain much abilities by fighting. SMT has always being about talking with demons and forming contracts etc with them. Sort of like Pokemon I guess.... You collect demons, fuses them up to make new demons, which is where the bulk of spells etc come from. Battles pretty much just levels your main character so that he can summon more powerful stuff, while hiding in a corner.

As Tort has mentioned, it is not a series for everyone. It is targeted at a very cliche market even in Japan. If you like games with a good plot about the occult, in a modern day setting or like dungeon exploration, SMT is suitable, else, ignore the first few games. SMT3 onwards are more for the general RPG player.

I play SMT mainly for its plot and the Persona line has one of the best music in any RPGs, creating an enjoying atmosphere to me.

[Tortolia]

Garford nailed it.

No series quite has the general ambiance of setting that SMT/Persona does. It's what drew me to it and kept me going. And it's what makes the games worth a look, regardless of your attitudes towards RPG battle systems or dungeon layouts.

[SineSwiper]

For some reason, I was reminded of 7th Saga. *shudder*

[M'k'n'zy]

If anyone else is interested in MegaTen I have a board that I post on that is dedicated to MegaTen games. http://www.popanime.net/megami/phpBB2/index.php

[Tortolia]

Bookmarked. Thankee.

[M'k'n'zy]

Anytime, I'm one of the mods, so I figured I would advertise ^_^ I am also the top poster

[Garford]

I've been lurking there since Kuzunoha.net

[M'k'n'zy]

I just joined up on this newest version. Like the group tho.