Horsemen of the Apocalypse? They do my laundry

Finally finished this piece of shit. It took almost two times longer than the first one, and I ignored most of the case files. I did spend my time getting all four horsemen of the apocalypse though.
After all the improvements over the original you would expect this to be much smoother sailing, but no, this ride was just as bumpy as the first one, if not more so.

It's true that combat system was greatly improved, and while demons' AI was simplified being able to have two of them at once kinda justifies it. Story was less grandiose and much more personal than the first one, but had more nuances to it and went some dark places at times.

What I do hate with all my heart is conversation mechanic. Dear fucking god.
Same applies to all other conversations as well. You'd think you can just memorize answers for specific demons, but no, they always react differently to the same shit. This is pure RNG bullshit.
In Raidou 1 catching a demon was a matter of skill. You beat it down, weaken it with proper elemental attack, all while not killing it, and then run up to it and catch. Pure gameplay.
Here? Enjoy your fucking dice rolls faget. I know it's a trademark feature of SMT franchise, and thanks for reminding why I played only few of them. Fuck this "feature".
This alone was a huge determent in overall enjoyment of the game, since fiddling with the demons is major part of it.

Another problem were bosses. In Raidou 1 every boss fight used standard demons as base, but added specific aspects and gimmicks to it, forcing you to use game's mechanics to your benefit. And they didn't repeat.
In Raidou 2 80% of all story bosses are fucking giant crickets with same 3 attacks and different color palettes that all you need to do is wail at. What the fuck? I guess they spent all their budget before doing the bosses part.
Another minor issue is game now full of reskins. Every single new demon has a reskin or two. In the first game I think only Orthrus had one in form of Cerberus.

So yeah can we have SMT thread? Tell me about your experiences with the franchise.

Also posting some screenshots in PNG format, hopefully this will trigger a bunch of autists.

Demons being assholes is in character though, but dialogue isn't really a strong point of Raidou 2, other games had more to it (like INT affecting dialogue for SNES ones and the dialogue skills in Nocturne).
Raidou 2 had the best fusion system in the series though, with the amazing gem based fusion accidents and passives being completely inheritable and in a different list to active skills on demons. OP I hope you took advantage of fusion accidents and got some insane hidden passives.
Too bad we'll never see this system come back ever because of P4G shitty limitless inheritance spreading to SMT IV and retards seeing this as a good thing.

...

Good, the last one was great.


There are an absolute fuck ton of those. I think you need 3 or 4 playthroughs to complete all of them, as some are alignment locked AND NG plus locked.
Don't those fuckers just jump you out of nowhere Nocturne style?

That's been the case since Nocturne (for instances the majority of the hindu and japanese goddesses are the same model base), they're usually just better about hiding it.

No I didn't allow Victor to fuck with my fusions outside of working on Horsemen, because every time he spawned me some shitty zombie or slime.
I did however purposefully give my demons resistances covering their weaknesses and fed them magatamas to boost their stats to retarded levels. In the end my skelebros were beating the game for me, they were basically unkillable.

They do. First one took me by surprise and fiddled my diddle pretty hard. His horse being major trypophobia trigger didn't help either.
At the final dungeon they weren't much of a threat though. I expected game to throw all four at me or something.

This is why you save every time you're about to fuse. This has been the rule since the SNES bro.

I remember that the first couple have some really exploitable shit you can do to take them down, but I can't remember what it is.

Elemental weakness. You can stunlock white rider with Ice and red rider with something similarly simple.
Black and Pale don't have any weaknesses while you fight them, but as party members they do.


Well duh, I spent like 2 hours reloading for Pale rider.

Also posting my favourite track.

Do you even Lu

Yeah I sure should spend another 20 hours on making the game that I already effortlessly beat even easier.
Oh fuck that, I'm done with it. Demon capture system bothers my backside too much to replay this whole fuckfest again. I'd rather play Raidou 1 tbh.

the raidou games aren't very good.

halfway through you're already tired of the linear, simplistic gameplay, and pushing yourself just to complete the story. and once you do that, you don't really want to touch them ever again.

i can't understand how people put up with them all the way through a second playthrough for Lucifer.

Artstyle, setting and music is what drives SMT games, not the gameplay. And Raidou isn't exception.
Also it's literally the only pair of games that lets you play in 1930s japan, while being exposed to magnificent Kaneko's designs and Meguro's music. It's so fucking unique it's not funny.
Real time combat helps, as sluggish as it is, since it's a welcomed departure from SMT standard turn-based thing.

That being said NG+ is really fucking shitty. I can understand resetting your level and maybe removing your demons, but taking away your swords and materials is real fucking kick in the teeth, as it doesn't give you any "plus" in this NG.
Yes you can buy registered demons right off the bat, but the good ones cost so much, you might as well get them legit, it doesn't make any difference since your money are also taken and you won't be able to afford 60k demons until you start meeting them anyway.

Today is the first MegaTenOnline Memorial Day.
Hard to believe it's already been a year.

R.I.P.

And nothing of value was lost.

MMO or not, it was the richest game in the franchise. The hotbar combat may not be everyone's cup of tea, but the game had a mountain of content, mechanics and overall player freedom that would put a lot of WRPGs to shame.

Tell you what. If you ever played Imagine and a modern MegaTen title side by side, you'd know how depressing it is. It's like going from Daggerfall to Skyrim, if not worse.
The way this franchise is going, the next MegaTen game would be wishfully lucky to have a fraction of a fraction of Imagine's gameplay content (demon loyalty, day/night cycle, 10-piece armor, uninstanced combat, etc.)

Granted, SMT Imagine had its flaws. But the retards who (((localized))) the game amplified the flaws tenfold, and unfortunately scared most players away from the vastly superior version. In the end, the game never got very popular, and now we're stuck with Yamai and Ishida plotting a new way to screw us every year for the foreseeable future.

Is there any functional way to play it?

that's the fucking point

Don't bother
Its just a tiny group of autists pushing the meme that Imagine was a good game
It was literally a cookie cutter MMO with an SMT skin. Even if you love MMOs you'll find nothing in it to enjoy.

???

Generally speaking, since all demons of one kind are supposed to represent the same mythological being with its respective personality, they should probably all have roughly the same outlook and responses as one another barring one having gone through some pretty drastic circumstances.

I think that's even how it was in the first SMT. I'm pretty sure I remember memorizing a few dialogue trees for some demons, and they almost always (not 100%, but pretty high) reacted identically as long as you followed the same dialogue path.

Apparently there's some Chinese bootleg of the old English servers. I'm afraid playing it would probably feel like trying to eat a hamburger that's already been eaten and excreted by two different people before you.


Not true. If it were, I would have dropped it day one.
The game was surprisingly true to the MegaTen formula (though of course it had to have some accommodations to be a functional MMO)

Are you retarded?
don't answer that

My post doesn't say any less than yours.
Maybe if you could specify why it felt cookie-cutter to you, we could get a proper conversation going. Too much farming for you, perhaps?

Whell this is disappointing. Does anyone else feel that in-game iterations of Kaneko's designs don't do them justice?