Is there any reason not to go down the magic stat route when it's heavily reliant on exploiting weaknesses...

is there any reason not to go down the magic stat route when it's heavily reliant on exploiting weaknesses? Is this thr same for all smt games? Dx,ST, and Agility seem useless

Dunno about SMT4 but in every other SMT game going full physical for the main character is ideal because not only is physical versatile as fuck, there are abilities which make it impossible to be resisted.

You can't even cast spells as the MC in SMT1 so magic stat is practically useless in combat.

Physical isn't bad, but magic is better early on and continues being good throughout most of the game. You'll be able to hit weaknesses and get more turns constantly, while with physical you have less chances for that to happen unless you crit. Physical does get a very strong weapon that destroys everything with damage output if you dump a fuck ton of points in strength anyways .

Dx actually contributes more towards all types of physical damage than St does.

For phys builds you mostly want to split between Dex, Ag and Luck, for dem crits.

In pic related magic was so broken that going physical was just plain stupid.

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Fuck off

Physical was best for long range attackers. You could give someone a dragon and a Kishin and they could destroy two teams in one turn with literally nothing lost.

I said a ton of strength was required to use the weapon and not that it was best

Physical builds were fine, but because of the nature of the skill crack system you could only have one usable physical attacker on a team due to the lack of good physical skills. Since there were so many good magical skills, though, there was no limit to the number of magical characters you could reliably use.

Nothing was more broken than an MC with Holy Dance and Dual Shadow, and a Kishin and a Tyrant, one of whom had Shield All basically guaranteeing an Extra for MC later on in the game. Up to 20 fucking Holy Dance hits in a single round if you're lucky, doubled with the Kishin skill, AND the enemy's turn delayed.

This.

Going physical in DS2 worked fine for me, though. Multi-strike is sexy as fuck.

Physical is fine apart from a few bosses and it crits for a retarded amount of damage, you can get Heat Wave at 20 from Arcangel and its last the whole game and one shots pretty much any random encounter. Really you can go/do anything, game easy enough as it is once you hit Tokyo apart from a few bullshit bosses near the end or if you try David early. Fiends take far too much effort to spawn for a shitty reference.

In 3, you went physical for secret ending because Lucifer will tear your anus anew because magic scales pretty poorly till at a really, really high level where it rebounds hard. In 1 and I think 2 the mc can't even learn magic, so magic would only up magic resistance.

Lol
Garuda+Multi Strike+Pierce+Drain Hit+Phys Reflect= Highly mobile, team wiping vampire. Demons with Phys Reflect as an innate or passive are the only ones to survive, as Tetrakarn/Wall only reflect 1 hit. Even bosses are gone in 1 or 2 uses, with the exception of Lucifer.

How far from the end was I ?

Phys Dex build is the most powerful in SMT IV, not that it matters since the entire game is so piss easy.
Why are you even playing the worst game in the franchise?

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I'd say you were a good 2/3 of the way done, depending on which ending you wanted. Been a while since I played it, so anyone who knows better, feel free to correct me.

This is one thing I fucking hope they've fixed in Apocalypse/final. I really didn't like the way demons were balanced.

And those balanced ones were just weird.

That's why I prefer the "magic uses MP, physical skills use HP" system. It allows physically-focused demons to spam their most useful skills (as physical demons tend to have large amounts of VIT) and use their few MP for buffs or other utility skills, while magical demons carry on as normal. Plus, it adds a little strategy into the mix (though only a little), in that you have to weigh the risk of using HP for a physical attack versus the reward of the extra damage. Otherwise you often end up with a demon that hits really hard for 2 or 3 rounds, then does nothing but auto-attack.

Physical receives better buffs in the long run (Pierce), and typically has stronger-hitting attacks.

Magic can hit weaknesses, but good luck finding very many bosses who even have a weakness.

In short, Magic is for instant gratification, through destroying random encounters. Physical is for playing the long war and eventually reaching a point where absolutely nothing can resist your attacks.

Plus Physical tends to leave you with more skill spaces to play with. With Magic, you'd probably end up grabbing one of every element, along with an Almighty spell for something that resists everything. With Physical, you want a single target skill, a multi-target skill, and an almighty-physical skill.

imo, it's pretty balanced

Yeah I absolutely love that system. Which is why I was so disappointed when I noticed that phys skills used MP. I don't know if Final went back to that or not though, but I sure hope so.