Atlus What's the appeal of Megami Tensei?

[Maxie]

The appeal is an extremely unique and dark setting (at least extremely unique in RPG's,)

Anime high school except in Hell, yay!

...Nah, hard pass.

That only applies for Persona, not the mainline games.

Given that Atlus has flipped belly up and unironically got into gacha development, we can conclude that their portfolio is more or less complete and we shouldn't expect anything more anytime soon (the Etrian successor franchise developed by the Persona team seems dead to me, given that they re-release Etrians instead lol)

At this point, Personas are the mainline games, with the actual mainline SMT5 having flopped horribly, and most every offshot being dead on some outdated Nintendo console

 

[WhiteShark]

Given that Atlus has flipped belly up and unironically got into gacha development,

Let's be fair, every single Japanese dev of a certain size or larger has a gatcha game. It's inevitable. Everybody wants that mobile money.

At this point, Personas are the mainline games, with the actual mainline SMT5 having flopped horribly, and most every offshot being dead on some outdated Nintendo console

In terms of popularity, sure. Doesn't change how things are categorized. Interesting that SMT5 did so badly. I didn't pay attention so I wasn't aware.

 

[perfectslumbers]

In terms of popularity, sure. Doesn't change how things are categorized. Interesting that SMT5 did so badly. I didn't pay attention so I wasn't aware.

It didn't do badly. Sega released a statement saying:

At this point, the marketing of each title has been very successful and the sales status of “Shin Megami Tensei V”, which was just released recently has been quite good.

 

[mondblut]

Anime high school except in Hell, yay!

...Nah, hard pass.

That only applies for Persona, not the mainline games.

Come again?

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Apart from obvious one:

1. There is NO other series that is so much moar than sum of its parts, it's not just a one or two, nor even a ten but literally a dozens of worthwile games with common lore, mechanics, references etc. the entire experience is completely uniqe.
2. It has best Doom RPG ever (Strange Journey)

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Wait!

No DOOM GUY.... it ain't DOOM RPG! It is a wannabe even if before doom existed. Let's rip n test this bitch wide open.


Now for a DOOM VN.




Or.... a novel


I'd like a little better voice actors tbh (shrugs)

 

[Lord of Riva]

Anime high school except in Hell, yay!

...Nah, hard pass.

That only applies for Persona, not the mainline games.

Come again?

It's true in SMT 5 but it has basically no impact. It's not true in the Mainline for all games. In Persona though it's just part of the setting.

 

[Cross]

The appeal is an extremely unique and dark setting (at least extremely unique in RPG's,)

 

[Frank Capicoli]

The appeal is an extremely unique and dark setting (at least extremely unique in RPG's,)

Ugh not dark enough. The box art needs to be pitch black like my heart to truly deliver how dark and edgy of a series it is.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

My titty detection senses are tingling.

Nipples or caps? You be the judge. No! My fingers could judge better. Turn that frown upside down. I see those hands clasped in prayer.

oh lord, please may I have my massive tits massaged while i get fucked out of my mind.

Amen."

How much fucking is in these games. Giant penis demon chariots and nude bitches etc? Eh? Demon sex tease?

 

[Dishonoredbr]

The gameplay is really good and some of the games have interesting stories and themes that most JRPGs lack.

 

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

Wait!

No DOOM GUY.... it ain't DOOM RPG! It is a wannabe even if before doom existed. Let's rip n test this bitch wide open.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Does anybody else hate the turning animations in the Super Famicom MegaTen games? They must've put a good amount of effort into implementing them, only for it to make the game feel worse than Wizardry over a decade prior. They're not in the Famicom games so I don't know what possessed them to add them in the SFC releases. The games are so slow with them.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

Anime high school except in Hell, yay!

...Nah, hard pass.

That only applies for Persona, not the mainline games.

Come again?

What's your point?

 

[WhiteShark]

High school student protagonist != anime high school game. I don't know about V but in Nocturne the fact that he's a high school student is almost entirely irrelevant, serving only to establish his two friends and teacher as important NPCs. I don't recall even entering a school building.

 

[Tweed]

The high school student aspect is irrelevant in all the mainline games. It's hard to turn in math homework or date your school crush when the entire world is in ruins and if you haven't killed your friends over ideological differences before the game is over then it's not a Megaten game.

 

[qwertyuiop666]

its the dark souls of jrpgs

 

[LarryTyphoid]

The high school protagonist bit is probably an artifact of the original Megami Tensei novels, which star a high school student. That, and to relate with the series' probable target audience (Japanese highschoolers). If you don't like that bit, I think there's a spinoff series called something like Last Bible which is more standard fantasy. I don't know how good those games are but they're there.

 

[dreughjiggers]

I found a translated copy of the first Megaten short story, but I put it down after a couple pages. Protag gets his shit kicked in by this manipulative cunt's boyfriend. I'm guessing she and the protag are reincarnations of shinto gods.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

I found a translated copy of the first Megaten short story, but I put it down after a couple pages. Protag gets his shit kicked in by this manipulative cunt's boyfriend. I'm guessing she and the protag are reincarnations of shinto gods.

I read the summaries on the wiki. The protag later kills the cunt and the boyfriend with demons. She wasn't the reincarnation of a Shinto goddess, that's another girl who becomes protag's girlfriend later. That girlfriend kills protag at the end of the trilogy when protag gets baited by demon whispering into going berserk and killing a bunch of people who were crowded around his public execution, but it's implied that she's going to revive him before the story ends.

Honestly, just from the summaries, the novels seemed like they had way more interesting stories than any of the games. That's only natural, though, when you have a concretely defined protagonist instead of a silent one.

 

[Lucumo]

1. Kaneko. His demon designs remain iconic for a reason and there's a certain creepiness to them that makes it not look stupid. It's the good kind of anime/japanese influence.
2. Areas were unique for the time. Most jrpgs were fantasy based, so post-apocalyptic tokyo helped it stand out.
3. The games were willing to experiment. Persona 3 was very different from P2 which was very different from P1 which handled itself differently from smt:if. DDS and nocturne are very different experiences even though both use the press turn system.
4. 

If you mean why did Persona 3-5 take off, it's because it had highschoolers and tried to be relatable similar to why slice of life anime is so popular.

Mostly this. And Persona 3 is sharp decline while the first three games are good (the original Persona has blackwashing in the US release though).

As for the main series, I've never played through any of the games. Got really far in SMT but work at that point left me with very little time which wasn't good for slogging through a dungeon late in the game. So it eventually fizzled out.
(IIRC, doesn't your mother explode in the beginning of the game and a demon comes out of her body?)

Also:

 

[dreughjiggers]

I found a translated copy of the first Megaten short story, but I put it down after a couple pages. Protag gets his shit kicked in by this manipulative cunt's boyfriend. I'm guessing she and the protag are reincarnations of shinto gods.

I read the summaries on the wiki. The protag later kills the cunt and the boyfriend with demons. She wasn't the reincarnation of a Shinto goddess, that's another girl who becomes protag's girlfriend later. That girlfriend kills protag at the end of the trilogy when protag gets baited by demon whispering into going berserk and killing a bunch of people who were crowded around his public execution, but it's implied that she's going to revive him before the story ends.

Honestly, just from the summaries, the novels seemed like they had way more interesting stories than any of the games. That's only natural, though, when you have a concretely defined protagonist instead of a silent one.

I'd give them a chance again, if they were all translated. For the curious, here's the first Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...pbnx0eXNub2N0dXJuZXxneDoxZDUxNjEzNzU2NzE5YjJl

That isn't ackshully the translation I found last year. The one I found was translated by a native English speaker, because he thought the translation at hand was too close to word-for-word. His version did have a good flow, I can't vouch for the one in the link, which I take is the original.

They could be cool for the sole fact Aya Nishitani played with (now) old ideas about the internet. Which fell close to the mark, according to the prologue.

Here's the second book's cover:

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

He looks didgusted she is nude. I guess pink ain't his type.

 

[Tweed]

My favorite demon is Beelzebub (Fly Form), what's yours?

 

[Frank Capicoli]

My favorite demon is Beelzebub (Fly Form), what's yours?

Charizard.

Shit...

I mean Pixie.