『SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI』Protagonists Support Thread. (Awaiting Reincarnation...)

[PSIGuy]

"Standard price" isn't really a thing for Japan, but it's the same price as, say, Xenoblade 2 or Persona 5 Royal is in Japan more or less. RPGs tend to cost more there.

edit: actually it's a bit more expensive than XB2 is

 

[SNEKeater]

I'm so hyped right now.

 

[ThatShadowLink]

Spoiler

I hope we can find out who's doing the music, although all of ATLUS' composers are good, so it doesn't really matter.

Spoiler

Ryota Kozuka and the same band of composers that did IV is very likely. I think Shoji Meguro is busy and Kozuka hasn't gotten a chance to make his "Nocturne", since so many songs from IV are remixes of I and II songs and had to evoke the same feeling as the first three games. The original songs he was able to do for IV and IV Apocalypse are fan-favorites.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

Spoiler

Ryota Kozuka and the same band of composers that did IV is very likely. I think Shoji Meguro is busy and Kozuka hasn't gotten a chance to make his "Nocturne", since so many songs from IV are remixes of I and II songs and had to evoke the same feeling as the first three games. The original songs he was able to do for IV and IV Apocalypse are fan-favorites.

Spoiler

Yeah, that's what I'm expecting (and hoping) will happen. Although, I certainly wouldn't complain if Tsuchiya did some songs in a similar style to Persona 1, since the series hasn't really had anything in that style since.

 

[Megadoomer]

For Shin Megami Tensei 3, are there any skills or Magatama that are absolutely necessary? By my understanding, if you discard a skill, there's no way to get it back, and I don't want to risk discarding something important.

Currently, my protagonist has Life Bonus, Mana Bonus, Ice Breath, Tornado (other party members have lightning and fire covered), War Cry, Rakunda, Fog Breath (to decrease enemy stats, since that seems super important), and Media (in case I run out of healing items, though other team mates have those spells). I'm just wondering if there's anything that I'll need badly, or any of my current skills that are useless.

 

[Shroob]

For Shin Megami Tensei 3, are there any skills or Magatama that are absolutely necessary? By my understanding, if you discard a skill, there's no way to get it back, and I don't want to risk discarding something important.

Currently, my protagonist has Life Bonus, Mana Bonus, Ice Breath, Tornado (other party members have lightning and fire covered), War Cry, Rakunda, Fog Breath (to decrease enemy stats, since that seems super important), and Media (in case I run out of healing items, though other team mates have those spells). I'm just wondering if there's anything that I'll need badly, or any of my current skills that are useless.

What kinda build are you going for the MC? Physical or Magical?


Physical MC is normally the best in Nocturne since you get some pretty broken-ass skills later.


Don't worry too much about early game skills, since later-game Magatamas will replace them, but out of those personally, I'd keep Tornado, Fog Breath, War Cry and Rakunda around for right now, maybe get Counter too.

 

[SNEKeater]

For Shin Megami Tensei 3, are there any skills or Magatama that are absolutely necessary? By my understanding, if you discard a skill, there's no way to get it back, and I don't want to risk discarding something important.

Currently, my protagonist has Life Bonus, Mana Bonus, Ice Breath, Tornado (other party members have lightning and fire covered), War Cry, Rakunda, Fog Breath (to decrease enemy stats, since that seems super important), and Media (in case I run out of healing items, though other team mates have those spells). I'm just wondering if there's anything that I'll need badly, or any of my current skills that are useless.

I went with a physical build for Demi-fiend. I kept an AoE Magic skill for him just in case for most of my playthrough, like Tornado. I'd discard Life Bonus for something better, at least based on the point it seems you're in the game considering the skills you have now.

If you decide to go with a physical Demi-fiend Focus is a must. And even if you decide to do a mix of magic and physical attacks, Focus would be still nice to have.

 

[Shroob]

Oh yeah.


Can someone remind me how to like, fuse a demon while keeping it the same every time, but giving it new skills?


I wanna get Daisou-bro and give him all the good skills, but I can't remember how to do that.

 

[PSIGuy]

Oh yeah.

Can someone remind me how to like, fuse a demon while keeping it the same every time, but giving it new skills?

I wanna get Daisou-bro and give him all the good skills, but I can't remember how to do that.

You can use Mitama fusion to enhance a demon and give him skills if he has spare spots. If he has all 8 skill slots filled, he's stuck that way.

To make a Mitama, you first need to make Elements. Elements are made up of two demons of the same race.

Erthys
Any 2 Fallen
Any 2 Jirae
Any 2 Brute
Any 2 Night

Aeros
Any 2 Fairy
Any 2 Divine
Any 2 Beast
Any 2 Wilder

Aquans
Any 2 Yoma
Any 2 Snake
Any 2 Femme

Flaemis
Any 2 Holy
Any 2 Seraph

Mitamas are made up of two Elements.

Ara Mitama
Aeros + Flaemis

Nigi Mitama
Erthys + Aeros

Kusi Mitama
Erthys + Flaemis

Saki Mitama
Aquans + Flaemis

Make sure to inherit skills you want Daisoujou to inherit along the way.
Then, when you fuse a Mitama with Daisoujou, he will get a stat boost based on the Mitama (Nigi grants Magic which will be most useful, I think) and the ability to fill his remaining skill slots.

Hope that helps. Make sure to save each step of the way and plan it out.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

For Shin Megami Tensei 3, are there any skills or Magatama that are absolutely necessary? By my understanding, if you discard a skill, there's no way to get it back, and I don't want to risk discarding something important.

Currently, my protagonist has Life Bonus, Mana Bonus, Ice Breath, Tornado (other party members have lightning and fire covered), War Cry, Rakunda, Fog Breath (to decrease enemy stats, since that seems super important), and Media (in case I run out of healing items, though other team mates have those spells). I'm just wondering if there's anything that I'll need badly, or any of my current skills that are useless.

Yeah, as other people have said, it's really dependant on what kind of build you're going for. Everyone says physical's better, but other than the final boss of the true demon ending, both are completely viable.

For a magic build, you can get better elemental attacks later in the game from later Magatama, although some of them can be pretty expensive. You can get almighty skills as well, but you need to get every magatama to get heavy almighty damage with megidolaon.

For physical it doesn't really matter up until you get the nirvana magatama. Up until you get that, I usually just keep lunge, and then replace it with divine shot once I get nirvana. Focus is practically required for an effective Phys build though.

It doesn't really matter though, there isn't a right or wrong way to play the game, and as long as your party covers other members' weaknesses, you should be fine.

(Also, it's probably not a bad idea to do so, especially in the early game, but I don't know if I've ever actually used buffs with the Demi-Fiend, I usually just leave that to party members. Now I'm wondering if I've been playing the game wrong. Having buffs is good, so if your party members don't have them, I'd at least keep them until you get a party member with good buffs / debuffs).

 

[ThatShadowLink]

If you go for Physical I highly recommend you grab Focus from the Kamudo Magatama as soon as you can. Never get rid of it, it makes your next phys attack do 2.5x damage and if you stack that with party attack buffs and enemy defense debuffs you can do thousands of damage per turn by endgame.

 

[Megadoomer]

What's the advantage to going with a physical build? My concern is that (at least from my experience with Persona 4 and 5) physical attacks eat up your HP pretty quickly, and I prefer to keep that as high as possible.

 

[PSIGuy]

HP is easier to restore than MP since lifestones are plentiful but chakra drops aren't so much. You can score criticals against any enemy not immune to phys, giving you extra press turns. Regular attacks don't cost anything and are often enough to get the job done. STR also scales better late game, but magic is incredibly good for most of the game.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

What's the advantage to going with a physical build? My concern is that (at least from my experience with Persona 4 and 5) physical attacks eat up your HP pretty quickly, and I prefer to keep that as high as possible.

Later in the game you can also get a skill called "pierce", which means all physical resistances are ignored, except repel, I think, so you can use physical skills on nearly any enemy in the game.

Also, as PSIGuy said, HP is a much less limited resource than MP, and even if you have more MP you can just use that to heal.

 

[ThatShadowLink]

You can get away with a magic build for anything but TDE, the boss of which requires a strong Phys build. And yeah I'm less than halfway through the game and doing 900 damage per regular punch (with proper setup) so uh physical is very powerful.

 

[PSIGuy]

God, I've been getting excited over the prospect of actual SMT stuff in Smash. I should be content that SMTV news is all-but-confirmed, but I can't help getting my hopes EVEN HIGHER. entity rem lezar for SMTV
One week to go, either way.

 

[Megadoomer]

I'm starting to feel like the game is actively trying to prevent me from saving after winning the second Dante fight. I've tried that fight three times - the first time, the game crashed as I was entering the area where I have to evade Dante.

The second time, I died to an instant death spell on my way back. That was my fault - I had Gaea equipped (which is weak to light and dark spells), but I didn't think to unequip it because I figured I could beat enemies that had those spells quickly enough.

The third time, I made sure to change the Magatama to one which nullified light spells and had no weaknesses, and yet a darkness spell still instantly killed me on my way back, even though I was under the impression that those spells are supposed to be extremely inaccurate.

I know that I can beat Dante, but it's frustrating when I can't make it out of the Labyrinth to save because an instant death spell hitting one specific party member undoes all of my progress.

 

[Shroob]

I'm starting to feel like the game is actively trying to prevent me from saving after winning the second Dante fight. I've tried three times - the first time, the game crashed as I was entering the area where I have to evade Dante.

The second time, I died to an instant death spell. That was my fault - I had Gaea equipped (which is weak to light and dark spells), but I didn't think to unequip it because I figured I could beat enemies that had those spells quickly enough.

The third time, I made sure to change the Magatama to one which nullified light spells and had no weaknesses, and yet a darkness spell still instantly killed me, even though I was under the impression that those spells are supposed to be extremely inaccurate.

I know that I can beat Dante, but it's frustrating when I can't make it out of the Labyrinth to save because an instant death spell hitting one specific party member undoes all of my progress.

Yep, Labyrinth of Amala is made to be hard as nails to an unfair degree sometimes.


I did the first Kalpa not terribly long ago, and after I cleared it, on the way back to save, Sati spawned, who was level 42, and moved first, one-shotting my entire party with Maragidyne.

I had to do the entire floor again lol.

 

[PSIGuy]

If you just want to make progress, you can turn the difficulty down to Merciful after beating Dante just so you can get to a save point, and turn it back up for actual gameplay. I had something similar happen with an endgame boss, who I fought about 10 times, beat four times and died after beating to an ambush three times.

 

[Shroob]

It may be a bit cliche, since everyone does it, but invest in Daisou-bro. He's normally considered one of the best demons in the game for a reason, since he has an aoe heal, and his basic ability gives him mana out the wahoo. Give him something like Makatora and he'll be an amazing MP battery.

 

[Megadoomer]

It may be a bit cliche, since everyone does it, but invest in Daisou-bro. He's normally considered one of the best demons in the game for a reason, since he has an aoe heal, and his basic ability gives him mana out the wahoo. Give him something like Makatora and he'll be an amazing MP battery.

Sounds good! I'll need to look into how to get him, and I'll need to find a Deathstone. (I had one earlier, but I used it to create Matador)

 

[Shroob]

Sounds good! I'll need to look into how to get him, and I'll need to find a Deathstone. (I had one earlier, but I used it to create Matador)

I'd go for mainly a bunch of buff/debuff skills on him and Makatora if you can. Dekunda/Debilitate are good too but those are more late-game skills iirc.

 

[Megadoomer]

I beat Shin Megami Tensei 3!

I went into the final battle with Demi-Fiend (who focused on physical attacks and debuffs, though he had Tornado in case an enemy was immune to, automatically repelled, or absorbed physical attacks), Dante, Matador, and Daisoujou. Matador and Daisoujou weren't able to survive the final boss's second phase (he was sending out attacks that did 400-ish damage every two or three turns, and they had about 400 max HP), but they did what they were there to do (buff my team's attack and accuracy/evasion, and keep them alive), so rather than constantly reviving them, I switched them with Black Frost and Pixie (the powered-up versions found in the Labyrinth of Amala).

I got the Freedom ending, since that seemed like the "best" one (and given that I needed to switch the game to Merciful difficult to get past Trumpeter and Beelzebub, I figured that the final boss for the True Demon Ending would be even harder).

I liked the game - the cast wasn't exactly memorable (though some of them were hammy, especially Hikawa and Hell Rider), but I went in expecting the Ninja Gaiden of RPGs where the slightest screw-up means death and found that (outside of a few bosses) it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Once I figured out a strategy for Matador, that served me well throughout most of the game, though it helped that I used a guide for getting around some of the dungeons, as well as finding the Fifth Kalpa and the door to upgrade Pixie/High Pixie.

 

[Adrianette Bromide]

I beat Shin Megami Tensei 3!

I went into the final battle with Demi-Fiend (who focused on physical attacks and debuffs, though he had Tornado in case an enemy was immune to, automatically repelled, or absorbed physical attacks), Dante, Matador, and Daisoujou. Matador and Daisoujou weren't able to survive the final boss's second phase (he was sending out attacks that did 400-ish damage every two or three turns, and they had about 400 max HP), but they did what they were there to do (buff my team's attack and accuracy/evasion, and keep them alive), so rather than constantly reviving them, I switched them with Black Frost and Pixie (the powered-up versions found in the Labyrinth of Amala).

I got the Freedom ending, since that seemed like the "best" one (and given that I needed to switch the game to Merciful difficult to get past Trumpeter and Beelzebub, I figured that the final boss for the True Demon Ending would be even harder).

I liked the game - the cast wasn't exactly memorable (though some of them were hammy, especially Hikawa and Hell Rider), but I went in expecting the Ninja Gaiden of RPGs where the slightest screw-up means death and found that (outside of a few bosses) it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Once I figured out a strategy for Matador, that served me well throughout most of the game, though it helped that I used a guide for getting around some of the dungeons, as well as finding the Fifth Kalpa and the door to upgrade Pixie/High Pixie.

If you have a save before the final dungeon, you can go get TDE. I think you mostly get a cool cutscene and another final boss out of it really but it's more content for you.

 

[SNEKeater]

If you have a save before the final dungeon, you can go get TDE. I think you mostly get a cool cutscene and another final boss out of it really but it's more content for you.

I personally think the TDE boss makes it worth it. It's one of my favorite bost battles in a JRPG.

Though it can be really hard specially if you're not well prepared lol

 

[TheLamerGamer]

I'm actually feeling pretty good about an SMT rep's chances, although I obviously wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get one.

Also, I regret my life choices:

 

[Adrianette Bromide]

I'm actually feeling pretty good about an SMT rep's chances, although I obviously wouldn't be surprised if we didn't get one.

Also, I regret my life choices:
View attachment 319144

People talk about this Puzzle Boy and... it scares me even though I have no idea what it is and frankly, I'd like to be surprised myself.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

People talk about this Puzzle Boy and... it scares me even though I have no idea what it is and frankly, I'd like to be surprised myself.

The purest representation of pain and suffering I've ever played in a game. That's all you need to know.

 

[ThunderSageNun]

with the release date supposedly leaked, I don't expect much SMTV news today, maybe the game will get a direct a few weeks before it comes out, but who knows.

 

[Lyncario]

The trailer was so good.

 

[Idon]

LET'S
****ING
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[ThunderSageNun]

they proved me wrong, awesome. Man the monsters in map look nowhere as irritating as in IV, that's great.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

The game looks really good. I'm glad they seem to be doing an open world as well.

The Japanese trailer was a lot better though:

 

[amageish]

Absolutely loving the look of SMTV. Protagonist design is the perfect balance of edge and sleek and everything about the world seems super cool.

The menu icons being directly lifted from Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE is objectively hilarious though. They work perfectly fine; it's just funny seeing assets from everyone's "favourite" comedy idol JRPG hanging out in the grim world of SMT.

 

[Idon]

Atlus really saved everything for this one trailer, huh?

Well I suppose that's fine, it paid off in the end.

God, I'm beyond pumped.

 

[PSIGuy]

Looking good. New demons, old demons, follower demons, a giant stone Decarabia, a Surt the size of a building...

 

[ThatShadowLink]

Yo that looks so good. I screamed live on stream.

 

[SNEKeater]

LET'S
****ING
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

LOOKS AMAZING DUDE.
I love everything. The aesthetic, the design for the MC, the UI, the combat...

 

[Idon]

Well boys, you know what time its...

Unfortunately... we don't even have the game "out" yet so this may take... a while.

 

[TheLamerGamer]

Well boys, you know what time its...

View attachment 319415

Unfortunately... we don't even have the game "out" yet so this may take a while.

Anime swordsman time. But with added hair. Lots of hair. (I absolutely love the design though, definitely better than Nanashi)