Should I play SMT Nocturne/Lucifer's Call as my first SMT game?

Nocturne is one of the best games ever made,DDS 1 and 2 are just pretty good.
To OP,try Shin Megami Tensei I and II on SNES before Nocturne.

Playing 1 or 2 first is a great way to get burned out before playing. The gameplay didn't age well user.

You can go DDS -> Nocturne -> DDS2

Nocturne is great, but I'd recommend IV as a starting point. If you don't have a 3DS, Nocturne's a fine starting point too.

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>The gameplay didn't age well user.
Which is why you play them first.

DDS for simple to get into, simple to understand mechanics. It's weird because you don't recruit demons, but actually eat them for EXP. It's more of a traditional JRPG but with the same atmosphere as the rest of SMT mainline.

IV series for in my opinion the cleanest mechanics. Fusion isn't a mess of invisible inheritance rules making you take 3 hours to fuse demons, non-random encounters, snappy combat and stellar OST.

Nocturne is the starting point of 'modern" SMT. Yes it's not the first game in the series but it's the foundation of what everything else was built off of. It's got some problems like the encounter rates + teleport puzzles really padding the game length and two of the five stats in the game doing almost nothing (luck doing literally nothing on hard.) The boss fights are really fun though since they save the gimmick fights for the end and most of the rest just play out as supercharged regular demons, so it's not like Persona where everything is an HP bloat and it allows you to try fun tactics out like draining all the MP from bosses since buffs are god tier.

You'll have to look up Magatama's though because that system was horribly designed and they fixed it in DDS. Go physical if you want to finish the Amala dungeon and get TDE, since the super boss basically relies on you using a physical ability to kill it.

Or just play whatever looks interesting to you. In this case, Nocturne.

Dds is fucking trash and boring, Gameplay and story wise

Don't start with DDS, people just say to start with it because it doesn't have negotiation of fusion, but negotiation and fusion aren't overwhelming mechanics so you don't need DDS to ease you into it. Also, DDS just isn't that great in my eyes, so Nocturne's just more worth playing for that, DDS is still worth playing, but not as much as Nocturne is

No. You don't get a newcomer into the worst gameplay of the series. You get them into something that gets them hooked then tell them to try out the classics later.

sure, think of it as satanic pokemon but difficult
if you want a more normal jrpg though, try digital devil saga 1

I like the Girimehakala design where he's just an elephant more, I was a bit disappointed to see they went with the bipedal design in P5 seeing as that probably means that's what they'll use in SMTV or any other MegaTen games going forward too.

I would recommend IV first but I really hope you know Tokyo well. They should've patched the world map be like the map in 4A. Going back to SMTIV from IVA is a fucking nightmare

yes

DDS is pure kino, the hell you're smoking?

One other starting point which I'm a bit surprised nobody recommended is Strange Journey. It gets you used to all the freaky shit that's happening and eases you into the mechanics. It's handheld as well so you can take it on the go.

>then tell them to try out the classics later.
Only for them to drop it even sooner?

Listen user. The whole point is getting them into the series. Getting them to play the frustrating ones first is just going to get them to drop it. I don't know how to make this clearer to you.

Stick to Persona. The SMT games are garbage.

>The whole point is getting them into the series.
And you're not going to get them into the series doing that, all you're going to do is breed a whole new group that thinks they know everything about a franchise when they've only played two games.
There's a reason why the term nocturnebabby exists.

I agree with him, DDS feels like an attempt to reach out to a wider audience that loses out on a lot of what makes SMT fun to me as a result of doing so, its story is the most melodramatic schlock I've seen in any MegaTen and the only engaging character was Gale. It's not an awful game by any means, and parts of the story are good like the first games setting are the origins of the Embryon in DDS2, but on the whole it's really forgettable as MegaTen games go for me. It does have some of Kaneko's and Meguro's best work though.

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Use Estoma in every Megami Tensei you play.

SMT1 and 2 are the only games where I regularly used it. I should have used it more in Raidou 1 though.

Sure.
And before you get stuck, pic related. Also debuffs of course.

>but what is the best build for MC?
WORLD OF STR

>but how about the party?
ABSOUTELY DON'T GET RID OF THE FRIENDLY PIXIE OR WHATEVER YOU EVOLVED/FUSED HER INTO. Basically make sure you never part with the demon in the first slot.
Keep at least one healer with Mana Refiill, if you can have all elemental magic it's nice, buffs are definitely necessary, debuffs too and more WORLD OF STR. Honestly don't worry so much, you can always get new demons if yours are shit. You will eventually find what you lack either in the wild or by fusing.
Fiends are the best demons.

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Luck doesn't do shit in Nocturne unless you play Hardtype.