SMT/Persona dialogue choices

yeah, if only persona had the dialogue options of a western rpg.

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>Post is talking about Shin Megami Tensei games specifically
>Devil Survivor screenshots

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I thought that even in Japan Devil Survivor had the Shin Megami Tensei title.

>yeah, if only persona had the dialogue options of a western rpg.

>fallout new vegas: complete gameplay freedom, including the ability to kill every npc in the game and tackle the game's challenges in numerous different ways, shaping the narrative as you see fit

>persona: 99.9% of dialogue responses are inconsequential, there is almost no room to go of the strict rails the game puts you on. Your mascot sidekick literally forces you to go to sleep at numerous points in the story.

Nice cherrypicking.

Good thing the OP doesn't cherrypick, huh?

Savage

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>SMT
>The player cannot initiate dialogue with NPCs
What the fuck?

No, Megami Ibunroku.

It's not really mainline SMT is the thing, which is what people usually refer to when posting SMT.

That's how you argue on Yea Forums, point out hypocrisy while ignoring your own.

The SMT games are about gameplay, you know the thing that's always lacking in WRPGs.

Killing NPCs in NV does nothing other than lock you out of quests, it's meaningless.
And telling your questgiver "WHOOPS THEY'RE ALL DEAD LOL" is just a failsafe, it's not "shaping the narrative as you see fit". The world is still driven by questlines

>Good thing the OP doesn't cherrypick, huh?
Are you seriously arguing a jrpg offers more interactivity than a wrpg on average? Sure, you have utterly dumbed down stuff like Fallout 4 and Mass Effect, but even the most hardcore jrpg has nowhere near the same interactivity as an average wrpg.

Ah so it's basically a spinoff series like Persona. Ok, that makes sense.

>Persona: an actual narrative. Beginning, middle and end. Complete structure with intentional moments of tension that take the player on an emotional rollercoaster. Interesting and complex characterization throughout.
>"Sandbox" experience instead of a story. Just make it up in your head lol. No pacing because zoomer can just wander off whenever.

Depends on if you want a well paced narrative (jrpg) or a storyless sandbox experience (wrpg)

The first two weredefinitely not. Good plot, awful gameplay. Nocturne and IV: Apocalypse are basically the opposite while IV is just mediocre at both. All of them have sick music, though

>The SMT games are about gameplay, you know the thing that's always lacking in WRPGs.

>simplistic menu-based systems
>better gameplay than WRPGs

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>Ignores the question
Hmmmm...

>Are you seriously arguing a jrpg offers more interactivity than a wrpg on average
No, where'd you get that from? I'm saying OP is blowing it way out of proportion, probably because he's not confident in his own argument. Otherwise he wouldn't have to use such ashitty example.

>Depends on if you want a well paced narrative (jrpg) or a storyless sandbox experience (wrpg)
This is a false dichotomy, considering there are also linear story-driven wrpgs that still offer far more freedom than Persona.

WRPGs do indeed have absolute garbage gameplay. Its the reason you never show it off because in your heart of hearts you know as well as I that they play like complete dogshit.

Daily reminder to not reply to WRPG-Kun.
No, you're not achieving anything, as soon as this thread will hit the archive another will sprout with the same exact image macros, the same exact cherrypicking and the same exact "arguments", you're only feeding the cancer that's killing this board and any proper RPG discussion.

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Keep the board clean, be a good user, do what hotpockets addicts do not care to do.

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>>Ignores the question
Ignore what? How can you even prove the OP is cherrypicking when there are arguably no jrpgs with a fleshed out decently dialogue system? You're asking the OP to prove something that doesn't even exist.

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>Nice cherrypicking.
says the absolute king of cherrypicking.
also, nice job moving the goalposts away from dialogue options now that it's been proven that wrpgs aren't any better.

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>wrpg dialogue "tree"
>you can choose what to ask from NPCs!
>so you ask everything
>you can choose what to say to NPCs!
>it's just yes/no/idon'tknow in different flavors

What's the point

>Still ignores the question
HMMMM...

>Its the reason you never show it off
Wouldnt that prove the opposite? People tend to only make webms of notoriously awful things.

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It's especially bad in bioware rpg's where npcs are just walking exposition dumps.

Because SMT isn't about meaningful dialogue, it's about stupid shit like pic related

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This. No RPG gets the RP part right, or at least as right as something like tabletop does.

Dialogue choices are probably the gayest thing ever. Probably even gayer than RPGs as an idea.

>>it's just yes/no/idon'tknow in different flavors
Look at the image in the OP. What you describe is the case for the jrpg, where the responses are literally 'I think so/Probably not/I don't know' which are all expressing some flavor of the same vague non-answer. By contrast, the wrpg example in that image has far more distinctive and fleshed out responses.

Nice cherrypick from the tutorial

>People tend to only make webms of notoriously awful things.
I agree.

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>wrpg gameplay
*press start*
*watch movie*
>smt gameplay
strategize a whole team full of demons with a broad coverage of different null/repel/drains and useful skills, conserve your resources, make sure to continuously buff your party and debuff the enemy

SMT skills are way too one-dimensional, though. Elements are reskins of each other, buffing skills are mostly party-wide and so on. They added some complexity woth affinities, but at the cost of physical skills costing MP over HP, so kowphys skills are just another element, the only difference being whatvstat you use for calculations. They also removed vit, which sucks.

>strategize a whole team full of demons with a broad coverage of different null/repel/drains and useful skills, conserve your resources, make sure to continuously buff your party and debuff the enemy
So pretty much the same thing you do in every party-based wrpg, except way more boring, since SMT doesn't even have a fraction of the spell/ability variety of something like D&D. How is this supposed to be remarkable?

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>SMT/Persona combat
>hit enemy weakness
>essentially auto-win any encounter
This is such a stupid system. You're already being rewarded for targeting the enemy's weakness by making them take more damage, and (I think?) having a greater chance of landing the relevant status ailment (i.e. freezing an enemy that's weak to ice). The only thing the Press Turn system does is artificially elevate one strategy above all others, by rewarding you even further with free turns/free attacks, making all other strategies inferior by default. It's a complete no-brainer to exploit it, with no downsides or risks, so why wouldn't you? The result is that it ends up greatly reducing combat depth. I don't know what it says about the people at Atlus that they thought anyone needed such strong incentive to do something as straightforward as 'hit the weak spot of the bad guys'.

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>imagine being such a buttblasted weeb that you download dark sun (probably illegally) for the sole purpose of making a webm of the tutorial battle

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SMT should honestly just take the teambuildingof Etrian Odyssey. It'll be hard to make new EO games without the DS for map-drawing, so SMT should just absorb the best parts of EO.
>The only thing the Press Turn system does is artificially elevate one strategy above all others
It speeds up regular encounters once you've figured them out, which is good design, in my opinion. It also makes enemies you've never seen before more dangerous the first time around since they can smirk the shit out of you

>So pretty much the same thing you do in every party-based wrpg
no, because you're actually playing a game instead of watching a movie with social justice themes.

Holy shit that's awful.

>no, because you're actually playing a game instead of watching a movie with social justice themes.

youtube.com/watch?v=9vgKlh0F_fs
youtube.com/watch?v=f9WOFNRc_kk

>more than 43 hours of cutscenes
>not a movie

Imagine being a butthurt WRPGfag with no argument as to why its even remotely good gameplay, oh wait you don't have to imagine that.

>replying to shitposters when there are other people making perfectly fine claims

>he's so mentally retarded that he takes on the enemy head-on instead of just casting an entangle spell and then safely picking of the enemy from a distance
You were too stupid to figure out such a basic tactic, and this is supposed to prove that wrpg combat is bad? Good job on undermining your own argument.

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I'd agree except persona 5 is incredibly easy as persona goes and I dont think I've used any buff through the whole story, since you can just cheese most encounters by exploiting the weaknesses and trivializing the fights. Divinity OS2 has really good gameplay and minimal cutscenes, on top of being a really good roleplaying experience.
You could just be honest, and say you enjoy the theming and characters of smt, but implying the game is super deep and tactical is just kidding yourself. Its just as shallow as every game on the market, because we've reached a point where companies don't need to make games that challenge anyone in any way, they can market to people like you so you still for them and lie to yourself that the gameplay is deeper than it actually is, just because you hold a loyalty to the brand.

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>basic tactic is completely unnecessary because the game is piss easy
Great game design.

considering it takes about 100 hours to finish p5, you're still getting 57 hours of pure gameplay, which is more than any wrp"g" can offer. japan always wins, baby!

d:os can also be cheesed just as much as persona, for all the "deep" combat you can literally go through the game without using 90% of it

>Purpose to emulate pen and paper rpgs
vs
>Purpose to emulate Dragon quest

Hmm derp a derp why are they so different????

Fucking morons.

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>d:os can also be cheesed just as much as persona
At least cheesing D:OS is actually fun, since it involves interacting with the environment in numerous different ways rather than just selecting things from a menu.

>n-no you suck
>play the game like a braindead 12 year old hunter leveling in world of warcraft

I can’t believe the denial of these weebs that will recognize virtually 100% of their games feature linear presentations that unfold entirely unchanged regardless of your actions, but then turn around and call western rpgs with entirely mailable experiences and narratives, not to mention gameplay mechanics that couldn’t be performed on a fucking tv remote, “movies”.

>At least cheesing D:OS is actually fun
Oh yeah, Terrain transmutation your pocket lava field instakill for the 200th time is so fun.

>WRPG
I'm saying this as someone who played a similar amount of western and Japanese rpgs, but what you wrote is bullshit . Everything you described there extremely varies from game to game. There is a reason why the few wrpgs with actually meaningful dialogue choices are praised so much, saying that WRPGs in general "strike a prefect balance" in these things is utter bullshit.

otherwsie, dialogue choices are obviously not something japanese rpgs or games in general give much attention. It's part of the pros and cons of a more linear and a more open world game design, neither is necessarily worse than the other, it's all about execution. Same goes for the quantity of the dialogues and text in games. A game with less dialogues can also feel more focused, while a game with a lot of text can feel bloated in a bad way too.

Ofc, Japanese games in general will always end up being lot less realistic than western games, which is pretty much always where the "japan has bad writing" observations come down to.
There is just no point in arguing about how 'western video games have better writing than Japanese ones', it's the same thing as arguing about western movies/comics/etc in general vs Japanese media. There is such a huge cultural difference between these two regions resulting in different tastes. Japanese people can obviously immerse themselves into much less realistic fictions than westerners, things that we consider "stupid" thus badly written and immersion breaking can be something that the Japanese can easily immerse themselves into, thus calling them "objectively badly written" is a questionable statement.

Ofc there are also the views here that rpgs HAVE to be realistic, since RP stands for role playing, which pretty much translates to simulation. The thing is, RPG in video games just refers to the game having a focus on character leveling/building progression (the thing tabletop RPGs invented), but not actually to realistic, simulator-like qualities

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why can't western cucks make games like this?

having more mechanics in a game in itself doesn't make the gameplay better designed or deeper.
It is all about the balance. Giving a lot more options to a player can easily simplify the game, and I've yet to meet a single wrpg where their overbloated game design wasn't reeking of obvious as fuck exploits and ways to cheese the game.

>having more mechanics in a game in itself doesn't make the gameplay better designed or deeper.
>wrpg where their overbloated game design
I would hardly calll basic tactical features like distance, movement and friendly fire 'bloat'.

If anything, jrpgs tend to be far more bloated. For instance, if you look at a classic WRPG like Baldur's Gate, 95% of the spells don't even deal damage. Instead, they have some non-direct effect like turning you invisible, creating illusions, summoning creatures or creating long-lasting environmental hazards (Stinking Cloud, Grease, etc.)

In jrpgs on the other hand, most spells are superficial variations on the same thing (Fire1/Fire2/Fire3/Fire4, Ice1/Ice2/Ice3/Ice4, Bolt1/Bolt2/Bolt3/Bolt4). This is actual bloat, because there are more spells than your typical wrpg, but less VARIETY between spells.

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Why has no one mentioned that dialogue choices actually do affect your alignment and which route you take in SMT games? Choices in Persona that matter are usually about dating or whether you get a Bad End or not.

>Persona 5 has like 20 or more hours of cutscenes
>Divinity 20 max

20 minutes max
Divinity can give you 100 hours or more.

>Why has no one mentioned that dialogue choices actually do affect your alignment
Probably because the alignment system in SMT games is complete nonsense. Playing Strange Journey again recently I was reminded why. For example, when first meeting a couple of important characters that are your superior officers, you can choose whether to shake their hand, which makes you more lawful, or whether to refuse to shake their hand, which makes you more chaotic. But where is the logic in that? How does not being a complete autist make you more lawful? Chaotic people can't be social?

The next dialogue choice that affects alignment is equally nonsensical. A character asks you if you are anxious about going out to research the mysterious phenomenon:

"Feeling relaxed, are we?"
• I've been trained. (Neutral)
• Deep down, I'm praying. (Law)
• I'm not afraid to die. (Chaos)

Again, what does this have to do with law vs chaos? Can a chaotic character not be afraid, or can a lawful character not be fearless? I could go on, but it would be pointless. Virtually every dialogue choice in the game is equally nonsensical.

A game that actually handled shifting alignments logically was Planescape: Torment. In that game, if you lie, bluff and break vows, it makes you more chaotic. But if you tell the truth and make vows (and uphold those vows), it makes you more lawful. That actually makes sense.

The alignment system in Megaten is abstract mumbo jumbo pretending to have some deep message about human nature. It really is literal nonsense. They ripped off the alignment system from D&D without understanding what those alignments meant.

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Because they have different focuses.
WRPGs tend to have "mash click" to win combat where 80% of the outcome is decided by what level you are.
And the enemies are usually humans, humans with a fancy skin color or generic Tolkien/Star Trek derivatives.

While Atlus games try to be more tactic and have a vast catalogue of creatures to fight and "recruit".
I'm sure someone is gonna put an epic arrow on this statement, but there really is no denying that WRPG combat is the tip of the iceberg, while Atlus combat at least goes bellow water level in comparison.

>20 minutes
>Ultimately, there are more than a million words and 74 thousand lines of voiced dialogue
kek

The Law alignment in SMT has always meant law as in God’s law, as in it’s the aligment for YHVH and his angels. Neutral is humanity, Chaos is the old gods and demons and old way of life and nature. The alignment scale is Angels/Humans/Demons in these games. I know the idea of different games using different alignment systems is weird to you and your anti-jap autism but it’s okay user.

You’ve never got far enough in any of those games to actually see how your alignment alters the game with all the different story routes. Don’t talk shit about a game without actually playing it kiddo

who the fuck compared planescape to smt?

>D&Dlet has the audacity to talk shit about alignments in other games.

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when joker was revealed for smash, you got bootyblasted and called him a "generic anime swordsman." stop pretending you've ever played a megaten game.

>D&Dlet has the audacity to talk shit about alignments in other games.

>SMT fan talking shit about D&D alignments
>when SMT ripped of its alignment system wholesale from D&D

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>who cares if it was done better, it came first!
loling at you
Also you're wrong.

>When Persona has one million one sided lines despite the 42 hours of cutscenes.
lol

This guy’s got it, the theme is always demons and angels but the combat is what is deep.

>I know the idea of different games using different alignment systems is weird to you and your anti-jap autism but it’s okay user.
That's not the issue I have with SMT's alignment system. Even if we agree that SMT's alignment system has its own distinct philosopical bent, it should still be internally consistent within ITSELF. But that's not the case, because SMT games have too little interactivity to allow for a consistent alignment system to take shape through interactions. Those examples exemplify it perfectly. Law/chaos/neutral scores are assigned essentially at random, with no rhyme or reason.

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The only thing they “borrowed” were the words Law and Chaos though? The actual alignment system is completely different. You just want to complain.

I must have missed the part in D&D where being lawful or chaotic explicitly means becoming YHVH or Lucifer's fucktoy.

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>>when SMT ripped of its alignment system wholesale from D&D
>Lawful in SMT is the same as Lawful in D&D
Oh WRPG-kun, still trying to talk about games you never played once, do you?

I can kind of see this. They don’t explain it at all either, all these dialogue points are usually completely hidden in the background. Devil Survivor’s Law/Neutral/Chaos are very different from Nocturne’s, which almost only serve as colors while your ending is actually chosen by your ideals and what you want the world to be.

>The only thing they “borrowed” were the words Law and Chaos though? The actual alignment system is completely different. You just want to complain.

megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Alignment

>The concept of alignment is based on the Dungeons & Dragons alignments. In the Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) fantasy role-playing game, Alignment is a categorization of the ethical (Law/Chaos axis) and moral (Good/Evil axis) perspective of people, creatures and societies. The earliest edition of D&D allowed players to choose among three alignments when creating a character: Lawful, implying honor and respect for society's rules; Chaotic, implying the opposite; and Neutral, meaning neither. Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) introduced a second axis of Good, Neutral and Evil, offering a combination of nine alignments. The D&D Basic Set retained the system of three alignments, keeping it through the D&D Rules Cyclopedia.

why are they so short

>Lawful in SMT is the same as Lawful in D&D

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alignment_(Dungeons_&_Dragons)
>Law implies honor, trustworthiness, obedience to authority, and reliability. On the downside, lawfulness can include closed-mindedness, reactionary adherence to tradition, judgmentalness, and a lack of adaptability.

megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Alignment
>This alignment is associated with God, order and peace. In the game, it is represented by the Messian religion and the colors blue and white. The Law alignment promotes order and safety, but taken to an extreme, it leads to dictatorship and elitism.

>literally the same thing in different words
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. GET FUCKED WEEBS

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>refused to shake hands
>YOU ARE A DEMON IN THE FORM OF A MAN AND A THREAT TO MANKIND ONE I CANNOT LET LIVE I SWEAR ON MY LIFE I WILL STOP YOU

And again, the only thing they took were the words. The entire concept of an alignment in the games works different. Just because a .fandom wiki explains what Law/Neutral/Chaos is a reference to does not mean the actual developers sat down and said “Ok we are going to use the law and neutral and chaos from the Official Dungeons and Dragons Rulebook ok ok everyone”

>And again, the only thing they took were the words.
Why are you ignoring this post:

that completely BTFO's your silly argument.

>Law
>promotes order and safety
The people of Tokyo sure felt safe when god nuked them.

>a trivia section of a fan made wiki that doesn't source a game, artbook or interview
I mean I could ask you to source the games, but that'd involve you playing them
Same goes for you. You're also conveniently forgetting there's no good-evil axis in SMT, or that humans are inherently neutral. Or that being lawful/chaotic involves being complicit in genocide, and that disagreeing would bring you closer to neutral.

where does law in d&d refer specifically to YHVH and angels. law in d&d could be lawful neutral and work for a warlord. a d&d aligment applied to smt could mean a lawful evil demon pixie working for a chaotic evil oni. checkmate, you have autism, peace out

and when Thor nuked them too lol

Persona is anything but tactical, the gameplay is reduced to buff/debuff and target your enemy weakness until all your party can all attack in a cinematic. Where’s the tactic in that?
I wouldn’t say things like Underrail are the epitome of tactical but at least there you can laid traps/hack the enemies security system have to change your ammo depending what kind of enemys you are fighting and the most important thing is you can choose what kind of build you want to play and that makes you to experiment.

>where does law in d&d refer specifically to YHVH and angels.
Motherfucker how are you this retarded?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Celestia

>Celestia is the ultimate in law and good. All aspects of Celestia are beautiful and perfect; it is where the souls of many creatures of lawful good alignment go to after death. It is home to numerous celestial creatures including various types of archons, the petitioners of this plane.

>the same thing in different words
do you have enough of a grasp of the english language to know that different words can make all the difference and certainly do in this scenario?
that single piece of text explains why praying is a lawful option and using simple reasoning you can deduce that chaos would be the opposite, therefore, not being afraid to die makes perfect sense to be a chaotic option.
sorry that your autism brain cannot handle the simple fact that the allignment system is both functional and different to dnd's system.

>I wouldn’t say things like Underrail are the epitome of tactical but at least there you can laid traps
This is not exactly noteworthy. Almost every wrpg lets you set up traps or other types of environmental hazards.

I can't think of a single jrpg that allows this.

Why is this?

I've only played SMT4 so far, and haven't actually beaten it, but what do you mean "no true role playing"? The morality system, unlike many, many other games I have played, actually makes it so there isn't a path of least resistance. You have to make hard decisions, even if your answers are a simple Yes/No, it does just as good of a job as full sentences.

I will admit this mentality is moot if you're gunning for a specific morality, but if you're actually role playing, it's pretty engaging.

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>You're also conveniently forgetting there's no good-evil axis in SMT

>image being this ignorant
That's because SMT ripped off the 1st edition of D&D, which had no good-evil axis either, only a law/chaos/neutral one. In other words, this only STRENGTHENS the argument that SMT ripped off D&D.

I don't play SMT for dialogue.

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I'll unironically defend SMT dialogues.
They are sharp and concise. They balance well the tone between grimdark edginess and bits of weird humor.
And there's the case of SMT IV (not Apocalypse) which was not as minimalistic as other games and it had suprisingly good writing. I mean stuff like ambient dialogues in Mikado/Tokyo were done well.
They balance well exposition. It's not obnoxious like in Pillars of Eternity but you can dig to find some golden nuggets.
For choices.. well, you gotta understand the convention. These games are not about shades of gray like every wRPG made after Witcher 1 (and Witcher is the only one that does it well). They have very clear and distinct conflict. But you don't get dialogue options like "Cure cancer" or "Rape the baby". Some of these conversations are vague but they still reflect you and your path. It misses the scale-of-gray nuances that OP pic mentions but it's not bad because of that.
If there's a bad thing in SMT writing in general - I'd point toward neutral path. It's often jerked into oblivion as the only good one. IV and og SJ suffered from that. Also, middle path kinda turns other choices into extremities nobody sane would choose. This is why I think SJR is a significant upgrade as it unfucks law/chaos while providing "wrong" neutral ending as well.

never knew anything about this mount celestia but sounds like a heaven for lawful goods while law in smt means YHVH or Demiurge in particular. YHVH isn’t some religion that hardly effects gameplay, it’s an enemy that is constantly fucking with you

You expect me to believe they ripped off a version made in 1977 when making a game in 1992?
And I still haven't heard a decent comparison between SMT and D&D. Law/Chaos inherently involves abandoning your humanity in SMT, that's the whole point of the series and the alignment system in general.

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>You expect me to believe they ripped off a version made in 1977 when making a game in 1992?
Why not, considering modern jrpgs still use the same gameplay mechancics from wrpgs from 1981?

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I'm glad you've accepted that DQ combined two decent WRPGs into one actually enjoyable game.

Pic related lets you.

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>Law/Chaos inherently involves abandoning your humanity in SMT, that's the whole point of the series and the alignment system in general.
So just like D&D then?

>A fanatical Mercykiller who is lawful neutral, Vhailor's drive for Justice is so strong that it enabled his soul to remain long after he had died and his corpse rotted completely away. He now inhabits his suit of armor and does not appear to recognize that he has died. He simply doesn't think about it - and why should he, when there are so many criminals in the Multiverse to bring to justice?

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>Pic related lets you.
Oh yeah, I remember Nina's trap spells.

Sadly, you can't set up ambushes before combat,

Furthering this, it hammers home that neither side are explicitly good or bad, since it takes the extremes of both. Do you think that the weak should deserve some protection, and the humans down in Tokyo at the very least have marginally safe ground and power? Then you're gonna have to be OK with preserving the status quo, keeping the rich on top in untouchable while the common man struggles with providing food for his family, both in Naraku and in Tokyo, as well as farming children's brains to feed demons.
Do you believe that the status quo is unfair repression and that everyone deserves a fair shot? Then you're gonna have to be OK with throwing everything into chaos, which will involve the massacre of innocents who simply are not powerful enough to hold their own.

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are you going to acknowledge this post
or continue arguing about minor details that mean absolutely fuck all?

also, say they did "rip off" allignment from dnd, does that mean they HAVE to stick to EXACTLY what it was in dnd?
no, it doesn't, they're free to do with it as they please and they did, while making it perfectly consistent with itself. you're just refusing to admit that because it isn't as complex as dnd's system which is unsurprising as smt doesn't have room for that level of roleplaying, nor is it intended to have it.

>also, say they did "rip off" allignment from dnd, does that mean they HAVE to stick to EXACTLY what it was in dnd?
No, but the discussion hasn't been about that. So far, the last dozens of posts have consisted entirely of delusional SMTfans being deeply in denial and flat out refusing to admit that SMT took blatant cues from D&D.

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Okay now imagine if every single mildly lawful person must choose between becoming a lawbot or a normal person. And if they decide being a lawbot is stupid and not doing it they no longer qualify as lawful and are kicked right back to neutral. That's SMT. You can find out why things are that way by reading further up the thread.

>Consoletation
>Enjoyable
lol

You obviously haven't played Ultima and Wizardry, the first few games in those series are just not very fun.

>Its the reason you never show it off
People don't show it off because wrpg gameplay isn't flashy bullshit but is instead actual fucking rpg gameplay. The growth of your characters, planning out upgrades, finding unique and varied shit which allows a variety of actually different actions, exploring a world filled with crazy shit like actual people to talk to with more than one line of dialogue. JRPGs are just about stat gets big so I can flashy attack with large number.
Dark sun was on the worse side of WRPGs at the time and what you showed is STILL better than its contemporaries on the JRPG side.

For Wizardry at least it depends on the version.

Wow, I didn't know dark and light were DnD?

considering that you insisted that smt's system makes no sense in this post while insisting that it is nothing more than a rip off that doesn't make sense because it doesn't follow the rules of dnd's alignment system i think it's safe to say that you're shitposting or seriously retarded.
especially since all the other posts have been telling you that it isn't a rip off of dnd's system due to these differences.

WRPGfags like this shit?

>You obviously haven't played Ultima and Wizardry, the first few games in those series are just not very fun.

>Dragon Quest, a game made by a succesful company with access to professional employees and resources (Enix) and building on the foundation of numerous rpgs that came before it is more polished than Ultima, a game literally made by a teenager in his basement
Well duh. Even then, DQ came out long after Ultima 4, a game that actually stands the test of time and is far better than contemporary jrpgs.

Gameplay and graphics don't have to be flashy for people to discuss actually playing games. Dwarf Fortress threads are full of screenshots of people actually playing the game in question instead of jerking off over its excellence while never once demonstrating they've even played it.

>WRPGfags like this shit?
At least those character sprites are actually animated, unlike the completely static character sprites in SMT Strange Journey, despite Atlus having access to a biillion times more resources and far stronger hardware.

I still can't believe how lazy they were.

You are all kinds of shameless. You're willing to defend the graphics of that shitpile purely because it's animated and the game you're arguing against isn't. You honestly remind me of a used car salesman

SMT has a ton of enemies with much larger sprites. Even then they're still somewhat animated.

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Story exposition and conversations are boring garbage. Dungeon crawlers are the only good type of rpgs.

>Persona
>Good gameplay
I literally burst out laughing because this caught me off guard so badly. All you do is run through empty corridors and then attack the weakness when you encounter an enemy. I don't get why Yea Forums worships this nothing series so hard.

>I don't get why Yea Forums worships this nothing series so hard.

That should be pretty obvious.

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this graphic has resetera all over it. sorry persona is too "problematic" for you, maybe you should stick to your sjw movies.

here we have the battle of 2 strawmen.
note how neither user will get any further than insulting the other, further bolstering their own beliefs.

The dungeons “design” in 3 and 4 is atrocious. In 5 is batter but the gameplay is still bad I felt Persona 5 way more cinematic that the previous games too.

>I felt Persona 5 way more cinematic that the previous games too.
Because it literally is:

>First, some stats I find interesting. Let's look at the cutscene/playtime ratio of modern Persona games (3, 4, 5). Total cutscene time is taken from BuffMaister's movie versions on YouTube. I feel this is a reliable source since the same person is making the edits, hence the same editing philosophy should be used on each. Total playtime is taken from howlongtobeat.com’s 'Main Story' category. Links included below.

>(total cutscene time / total playtime) = percentage of time spent in cutscenes

>Persona 3 FES: 10hr44min/81hr14min = 10.733/81.233 = 13.21%

>Persona 4 Golden: 21hr48min/69hr46min = 21.8/69.767 = 31.25%

>Persona 5: 43hr28min/96hr16min = 43.467/96.267 = 45.15%

>Truly these in-game philosophical texts have brought me closer to illumination
Name 1 game where this is true so I can play it right now

The ultimate irony is that casuals love these games specifically for the reasons that this image is criticizing. They love the kitschness, but not the gameplay. Notice that whenever JRPG's are being discussed, it's only the really superficial things being talked about, like the art, the music, the "characters", and so on. JRPG fags mostly care about presentation, not content. They're dull and stupid people. The fact that you don't understand the point of this image exemplifies your mindset perfectly. And JRPG fans that use movie as an insult is laughable. Again, these are the games that pioneered the linear and scripted "movie" games that you see today. Again, presentation is God for casuals.

>neither on a mechanical nor a narrative level
>changing story paths, in which you encounter different fights and endings, is neither mechanical nor narrative
wut
You're just a retard who complaints about games you don't actually play.

>They love the kitschness, but not the gameplay. Notice that whenever JRPG's are being discussed, it's only the really superficial things being talked about, like the art, the music, the "characters", and so on.
WRPGfags literally never talk about the gameplay of their games or even post screenshots of it. What you said applies to them as well.

this is why

>Didn’t see the “CRPG revival” threads some user spam last week.
They were comfy as fuck and at the same time there were some good discussions.

>muh weebs
Why are WRPGfags so obsessed? Literally the same buzzwords every time.

They were impure, smartass

>wrpgkun makes seething threads every day
>even the laughing stock of the jrpg community makes gameplay threads

literally nothing to play meanwhile there are 5 jrpgs coming out this month alone

>Notice that whenever JRPG's are being discussed, it's only the really superficial things being talked about, like the art, the music, the "characters", and so on.
the characters are pretty fucking important in a story-based genre. also, music and artwork get talked about for every genre because video games are an audiovisual medium.
>JRPG fags mostly care about presentation, not content.
incorrect, gameplay gets discussed all the time with jrpgs. pokemon has a whole competitive scene built around its combat system. smt is legendary for its unforgiving boss fights that filter out the casuals. there's constant debates among jrpg fans over whether turn-based combat or action-based combat is better.
basically, you're just talking shit about a genre and a community that you know nothing about.

they resent jrpgs for not promoting their desired western political agendas. that's literally all it boils down to.

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Unless there is some unknown wrpg that allows the player to recruit the enemies as well as/or uses real world mythology, folklore, and occultism as it's main theme I see no reason to stop playing SMT. Megaten is unique enough that it can stand on its own despite its flaws. I can't think of any game that uses mythology as meaningfully as megaten.

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>Why are WRPGfags so obsessed?

>a single wrpg fan who keeps spamming these threads
>thousands of jrpg fans show up everytime to SEETH with rage and post hundreds of replies to any such thread

>Why are WRPGfags so obsessed?

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Then why have them in the first place?

>as well as/or uses real world mythology, folklore, and occultism as it's main theme
Uhh but user, don't you know that has nothing to do with gameplay??

as an smt chad, the only other series that lives up to what i like about megaten is digimon. it's not the exact same, but it comes closer to scratching that itch than anything else.

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>Unless there is some unknown wrpg that allows the player to recruit enemies
Mount & Blade

>as well as/or uses real world mythology, folklore, and occultism as it's main theme
Uh, modded Mount & Blade?

death end re;quest was pretty good, actually. i wish there were more games with that billiards-like battle system.

>rpgs
>caring about gameplay
videogame rpgs are just for losers who don't have other autists to actually play tabletop games with.

>he says when every Jap game forces you into hours of cutscenes/tutorial before the game even properly starts

That's WRPGs. Bastardised tabletop games for people who can't get a group together. Only a few actually rise above playing through a premade campaign

Don't worry, digital tabletop sessions are becoming more viable.

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>Unless there is some unknown wrpg that allows the player to recruit the enemies
Virtually every fantasy wrpg has this in the form of summoning/necromancy/mind-control magic.

>uses real world mythology, folklore, and occultism as it's main theme

>What is Darklands
>What is Vampire: The Masquerade
>What is King of Dragon Pass

Besides, this is such an absurd statement. EVERY RPG in existence uses real world mythology, folklore, and occultism in some form.

>Megaten is unique enough that it can stand on its own despite its flaws. I can't think of any game that uses mythology as meaningfully as megaten.
Can you explain how Megaten uses mythology in any meaningful way?

>I can't think of any game that uses mythology as meaningfully as megaten
King of Dragon Pass exists.

In Megaten demons are the actual entities, not just in name. In rpgs you may see a character or creature named Shiva, in Megaten it's actually Vishnu himself. While many games incorporate minor references to mythology Megaten will use it as its central focus and often represent various real world figures in a way that is both faithful to their spirit while still feeling sort of modernized. Pic related is a great example. In Diablo, which is a great game, Baal is just used as the name of a demon. In Megaten Baal/Hadad appears as the real Caananite god.

Attached: Analysis of Baal's design.png (1016x2388, 1.34M)

tell me

This is why Kaneko is a god tier designer.

>In Megaten demons are the actual entities, not just in name. In rpgs you may see a character or creature named Shiva, in Megaten it's actually Vishnu himself. While many games incorporate minor references to mythology Megaten will use it as its central focus and often represent various real world figures in a way that is both faithful to their spirit while still feeling sort of modernized. Pic related is a great example. In Diablo, which is a great game, Baal is just used as the name of a demon. In Megaten Baal/Hadad appears as the real Caananite god.
And how is that meaningful in any way, considering SMT/Persona games still have bogstandard jrpg plots that revolve around god-killing shenanigans? SMT/Persona games use mythology precisely in the shallow way like the games you're criticizing.

Compare that to something like Darklands, which is all about interacting with the occult, to the point that your characters can go on literal witch hunts? That's how you make a game where mythology is meaningfully explored.

Talespire its probably vaporware at this point

Can you name a combat focused JRPG where you can avoid all combat like Age of Decadence and dallout (is difficult but possible) and can even avoid the final boss like Arcanum?

>to the point that your characters can go on literal witch hunts
>That's how you make a game where mythology is meaningfully explored
Witch hunts were nothing but a way for the church to assert further power and threaten any woman who proved to be a threat to their structure. They're interestingly historically but having no real relation to religion.

>where you can avoid all combat
I believe in a game like Chrono Cross you can get away with fighting only bosses and run from any enemy but I can't think of any where you can avoid every single boss.
>and can even avoid the final boss like Arcanum?
Metal Max Returns, you can technically end the game minutes after starting it if you want to.

I don't get why you would avoid combat to such a degree in any game though. At that point reading a book makes more sense really if you are going to avoid any engagement or management aspects of the game.

>Can you name a combat focused JRPG where you can avoid all combat

Any jrpg with visible enemies?

>Metal Max Returns, you can technically end the game minutes after starting it if you want to.
Non-standard game overs hardly count as 'finishing the game'.

How can you have a combat focused RPG where you can avoid all combat? Fallout is different because it's not fully combat focused, and even then your options are quite limited

>How can you have a combat focused RPG where you can avoid all combat?

>what is Deus Ex

Not combat focused

>How can you have a combat focused RPG where you can avoid all combat?
There are plenty of combat-hevay wrpgs wwhere you can avoid most encounters by casting an invisibility spell.

>wwhere you can avoid most encounters by casting an invisibility spell.

By that merit Pokemon counts then, since you can use repel and walk around trainers.

>Witch hunts were nothing but a way for the church to assert further power and threaten any woman who proved to be a threat to their structure
>They're interestingly historically but having no real relation to religion.
>a way for the church to assert further power and threaten any woman who proved to be a threat to their structure
>no real relation to religion

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most isn't all and there aren't plenty

But in lore they aren't, they're literally created from the expanse due to humanities belief in them

>Not combat focused

>Levels are filled with enemies
>Hundreds of weapons, augmentations and items that have an offensive use against enemies
>Not combat focused

What? You go back to your father, tell him you're done hunting, and however many outlaws you hunted will basically determine how far you got in the game.
>and can even avoid the final boss like Arcanum?
I forgot about this but in Dragon Quest VI if you beat the game's super boss early he will be impressed with your strength and go kill the final boss himself.

>By that merit Pokemon counts then, since you can use repel and walk around trainers.
No, because those wrpgs have visible enemies that patrol around. Reducing random encounters in jrpgs is something very different from that.

Yes

hate newspaper

Witch hunts had nothing to do with the beliefs or practices the religion endorsed, it was just to assert power. Saying they had no relation was incorrect, I will admit that, but that's a small aspect of the religion and not something that remained a core aspect of the religion.

>A combat focused RPG where you can avoid combat
That would either be a point of trivia, or a waste of a good combat system.
Unless by combat focused you meant, "Has a combat system".

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>autistic shitposter template thread N° 459
>532 replies and 65 images omitted

Cut him some slack, he's actually arguing. You can't say that about most shitposters nowadays

>due to humanities belief in them
Yeah, like real life. Gods in mythology were created by civilizations to explain aspects of the world that they believed couldn't be explained otherwise. It's the exact same in megaten.

>That would either be a point of trivia, or a waste of a good combat system.
You do realize the entire point of role-playing games is letting you play a variety of roles, such as choosing between combat or stealth?

>copypasta full of bullshit and cherrypicking
>arguing
You're more retarded than him

>What? You go back to your father, tell him you're done hunting, and however many outlaws you hunted will basically determine how far you got in the game.
Yes, and that's the definition of non-standard game over. Plenty of games do what you describe, but that hardly counts as finishing the game

Also, how does 'hunting outlaws' count as finishing the game while avoiding combat, which is what user asked examples of?

>a game is good if you can skip 90% of it
Wrpg fags sicken me

jrpg (FF9) gameplay
>select summon
>watch movie
>does some damage
>game provides option to skip animation
wrpg (bg2) gameplay
>strategize a whole team full of anomen with a broad coverage of different sling bullets and useful shields, conserve your potions, make sure to continuously cast death ward and quicksave

Most modern WRPGs don't really offer meaningful choices anyway. Good WRPGs died years ago.

>JRPG
>not cutscene simulator
Tell me, how are shit like Star Ocean 5, SMT4, DQ11, and OT not anime when they shove hours of cutscenes into your face and the gameplay is secondary and recycled from 30 years ago? And I have never seen people discussing anything but waifushit when talking about these games because there's literally no gameplay to be discussed.

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I think the institutions that govern a religion are the most concrete part of a mythology.
For example, I feel like it's extra neat when Abrahamic religions are used in fiction because Abrahamic religions still have institutions that keep them relevant and maintain canon. Discovering and understanding those institutions can be interesting and aesthetically pleasing in and of themselves too.

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>Most modern WRPGs don't really offer meaningful choices anyway. Good WRPGs died years ago.

>blocks your path

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>I have never seen people discussing anything but waifushit when talking about these games because there's literally no gameplay to be discussed.
I have never seen you post a single screenshot of any of the games you claim to have played.

>And I have never seen people discussing anything but waifushit when talking about these games because there's literally no gameplay to be discussed.
someone earlier in the thread literally linked you to a gameplay-focused thread about a jrpg that just came out recently. you ignored it because it didn't fit your shitposting agenda.

If I stay here and argue with someone that seems genuine but retarded then I still feel like it has meaning as it's still discussion. Even if he does the whole "I was just pretending to be retarded XDDD" then I still win as he had no argument.

>SMT combat
>deep
See . I gues buff, debuff, and heal is such a mindblowing concept to weebtards. Watching too much anime really can rot your brain.

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Can you actually explain what makes Dark Sun better than FF6? Or are you just going to act superior about games you've obviously never played in your life?

I don't know if you're the original guy but the argument was that some guy was saying that Megaten using the real entities of various mythologies "didn't have to do with religion really" which is what i was arguing against.

Having a theme involving the higher power(s) of a religion and a theme of how a religion operates are both equally important. When I said Megaten uses religion in a way different from other games I stand by it, I don't know any other game that analyzes the gods and figures and incorporates them into the plot.

>Tfw Persona 5 and FNV are two of my favorite games
Damn it feels good to enjoy video games instead of being a contrarian for internet points

Then that RPG just has a combat system, it's not "combat focused".
I mean, if you think of a game that's not just combat focused, but also stealth focused, maybe conversation focused, and purportedly many other focuses as well then this hypothetical game actually sounds pretty unfocused to me.

I wouldn't call it a theme, they just take names and images from various mythologies and toss them into the games in a meaningless way because they need ideas for enemies/bosses.

>What is Age of Decadence

smt combat is far deeper than "press start, watch movie," that's for sure. most of the casuals who slurp up shit like nu vegas and mass effect would probably ragequit the matador fight in nocturne. how can the west possibly compete?

>in a meaningless way
The demons form the entire way the world in the game works, how you create your party, and what alignment you join? How is that "meaningless"? Demon design is highly prioritized as well so that they accurately represent the entity, if they just needed a name to use they wouldn't care as much about the designs.

You just look like an idiot who has little understanding of the series.

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Oh yeah, I lost the plot.

>I lost the plot
What does this even mean?

Yeah, it's completely meaningless. They take baphomet and throw it together with norse mythology, hindu mythology, just whatever they feel like. You're basically saying "they made a story for the game," no shit sherlock, it's a derivative one with nothing interesting to say.

lost track, lost sight, derailed

> How is that "meaningless"?
Because the games only use the mythology theme for aesthetics and other superficial window dressing, not to explore any sort of meaningful themes. How is this such a difficult concept to grasp for you?

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>Yeah, it's completely meaningless.
>it's a derivative one with nothing interesting to say
So you're just presenting your opinion as fact, cool. Stop being a faggot who thinks his opinion alone matters.
>They take baphomet and throw it together with norse mythology, hindu mythology, just whatever they feel like
So like any game that references mythology? Are you retarded?

>not to explore any sort of meaningful themes
Who are you to say a theme is meaningful or not? The entire point is that you look at each alignment presented, the mythology is used to symbolize different concepts and the player is to decide which one is best.

If I really wanted I could shitpost some bullshit about Myrkul being meaningless but I'm not going to sink down to your level.

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>Who are you to say a theme is meaningful or not?
Literally your entire argument so far, spread over half a dozen posts has been 'the demons are faithful to their mythological inspirations'. That's it. You have yet to give an actual example of how SMT/Persona uses mythology in a way that is remotely compelling.

This is a wider issue with SMT/Persona: the games are all style over substance, and whenever they try to tackle some theme, they devolve into completely abstract mumbo jumbo.

Contrast that with something like Planescape: Torment, which literally takes place in the multiverse, yet steers clear of world-saving shenanigans (unlike SMT/Persona) and instead opt to tell a more grounded story about the cost of personal and spiritual redemption. What's notable about PST is it has a strong theological/religious bent, like how factions like the Dustmen draw from the Nirvana concept of Hinduism, but unlike SMT/Persona, the game doesn't beat you over the head with it. Instead, it's subtly woven into the narrative and world building,

I should really write that analysis on nocturne I've been meaning to do
Well not here. This thread is a trashfire

The alignments draw aspects of various religions. Chaos uses teachings from different Asian religions like Buddism and Hinduism. Meanwhile Law draws from Western religions like Judaism and Christianity.

Digital Devil Saga uses Hinduism as it's entire main theme. Various plot points and character arcs are based off beliefs, ideas, or stories in Hinduism.

>This is a wider issue with Planetscape the games are all style over substance, and whenever they try to tackle some theme, they devolve into completely abstract mumbo jumbo.
>Contrast that with something like Shin Megami Tensei, which literally takes place in the multiverse, yet steers clear of world-saving shenanigans (unlike Planetscape) and instead opt to tell a more grounded story about the cost of personal and spiritual redemption. What's notable about SMT is it has a strong theological/religious bent, like how factions like the Chaos draw from the Nirvana concept of Hinduism, but unlike Planetscape, the game doesn't beat you over the head with it. Instead, it's subtly woven into the narrative and world building,
See how easy I was able to change your "argument"? You're not really proving a point either. Most of the shit you said was wrong anyway. SMT takes place in a multiverse. None of the mainline games have you save the world, none of them even have happy endings really. Only in Persona do you actually "save the world". Mainline is nothing like that but you're blinded by your autitistic hate boner for it.

>None of the mainline games have you save the world
"Rebirthing/destroying/recreating" the universe or whatever is literally the same thing, it's still world-saving shenanigans, just presented in a more pretentious fashion. The games are still about a teenage boy having power of the entire universe, just like Persona and most every jrpg.

My point was that if you really want to tackle philosophical themes in a meaningful way, you have to be willing to tell stories on a smaller scale, to do those themes justice. SMT/Persona games flat-out refuse to do this.

>See how easy I was able to change your "argument"?
Yes, by flatout lying. Planescape is a much more smaller-scale story than any SMT game. I ahve no idea why you would be in denial about this.

>>Contrast that with something like Shin Megami Tensei, which literally takes place in the multiverse, yet steers clear of world-saving shenanigans (unlike Planetscape)

>has to make up fake shit about wrpgs to make his jrpgs look better
THE ABSOLUTE STATE OF WEEBS

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Since you're the same person I'll just reply to you as one person.

>"Rebirthing/destroying/recreating" the universe or whatever is literally the same thing, it's still world-saving shenanigans
>Yes, by flatout lying
This happens in one (1) game you retard.
>The games are still about a teenage boy having power of the entire universe, just like Persona and most every jrpg
Most of the protagonists die horribly, one is cursed by god to relive life and die horribly with no memory if anything happening.

Stop making up bullshit and then accusing me of "lying"?

>you have to be willing to tell stories on a smaller scale, to do those themes justice
And what exactly makes you so knowledgeable on story telling? Literally all you've argued is "Planetscape is not as typical as other rpgs so it's automatically good". You keep saying Planetscape has good themes but not actually talk about what any of them are.

The truth is, you haven't played either game probably, you could probably give two fucks about either game, you're just looking to shitpost.

>Most of the protagonists die horribly, one is cursed by god to relive life and die horribly with no memory if anything happening.
That's a headcanon and you know it

The games do make some statements about various broad concepts, but the monsters you meet along the way being randomly chosen religious and mythical figures doesn't really add to that or broaden it, it's more often just placed inside the already established thematic framework. "We have Chaos, Law and Neutral... Where are we going to put Susano-o, Tezcatlipoca, Goblin, Prometheus and Odin again...?"

Not that there's anything wrong with that. The demons are just fun, stylish designs and they fit in perfectly fine.

You are literally told in game that the protagonist of SMTI was killed as he refused to help The Center and was killed for his defiance, dying alone in a forced cave in.
They do though. You have unrealistic expectations and expect every encounter to play out as some deep story. The fact that you encounter demons who rebelled against YHVH or ancient gods demonized by Christianity/Judaism provides a context for what the faction is about. Chaos is made up of figures that are seeking to rebel against the order that has been deemed "natural" by YHVH. It's not absolutely perfect but it's intent is clear.

That's moving the goalposts, he died alone in a cave, he didn't get
>cursed by god to relive life and die horribly with no memory if anything happening.
which was the one I was referring to which was why I quoted it specifically.

I believe he was talking about aleph with that

You never said you were referring to The Hero. I was talking about Aleph, he is the one cursed by YHVH. The Hero still dies a shitty death alone in a cave and forgotten beside some statue of him. Demi-fiend too has a rather shitty fate. In the True Freedom ending Lucifer tells him that YHVH will seek revenge for his actions and in the TDE it's not even known if they won. The SJ protagonist also ends up as either a slave to YHVH in law, a mindless monster in chaos, or left wondering if what he did actually mattered in neutral (it didn't matter and more schwarzweltz will appear).

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And that's what I'm saying, it's headcanon. Hijiri was cursed with that in nocturne maniax (it wasn't even his role in the original nocturne so I doubt it was planned), it's a fan theory that he is aleph but it isn't canon.

I was not and was never talking about the smt1 protag, that's why I quoted
>cursed by god to relive life and die horribly with no memory if anything happening.
specifically. That's the part I'm calling headcanon, because I'm talking about the smt 2 protag and no one else but you keep bringing up everyone but him.

That's a big part of what I said. The demons are just no-name members of an already predefined faction. Most don't have clear roles to fill and even less do it in a way that reflects their own lore. My expectations are in check. Again, I'm perfectly content with they way they're handling it, I get it, it's not a character driven series. I just want to leave it at that and not give the series too much undeserved credit, which in my opinion, is what you were doing.