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Just stuck this on the Retropie, I'm going to try digging in tonight. I'm going to try not to look at any guides or anything, but I'm kinda bad at RPGs so we'll see how that goes!
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Jan 31, 2022 18:25
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So there's three walkthroughs listed on GameFAQs. Two are incomplete and they're all from nearly twenty years ago. The one that doesn't say incomplete has an error pretty on telling you to visit room 2-G when you actually have to got to 2-H. But otherwise it's been pretty helpful so far.
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Jan 31, 2022 19:00
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Gonna be giving this a go. I've always wanted to love JRPGs but never stick with them long enough to beat them. Hopefully posting along with y'all will help me stick with it!
apophenium fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jan 31, 2022 |
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Jan 31, 2022 20:13
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I've always been interested by the Shin Megami series and If... looks weird as hell, love it apparently the best part of the game is in new game + mode though so there goes that 20 hour estimation
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Feb 1, 2022 00:05
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 Let's see if I can stick with it.
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Feb 1, 2022 00:25
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 Posting for posterity.
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Feb 1, 2022 01:02
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Not a bad movie. Ended up watching it after I played The game.
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Feb 1, 2022 01:03
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Walked into the boss room at the end of the first dungeon full of confidence and got absolutely slammed. Back to the drawing board.
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Feb 1, 2022 02:09
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I forgot all about the Persona spells where the names tell you nothing about what they do unless you already have them memorized. I should just start taking notes or something. Edit: Oh never mind your little wrist computer will do that for you once you get it upgraded at the start. Same with items. wash bucket fucked around with this message at 02:19 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 02:10
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I've been using the LP on archive to guide some of my play, it is somewhat vague with direction - this is where the GameFAQs guides come in use. https://lparchive.org/Shin-Megami-Tensei-if/ And I found some maps on a guide, unfortunately it is from the instruction manual which is entirely in Japan but hey I found them helpful to navigate the school and get started with Reiko's path. I might denote what dungeons are on what page... school is on Page 72. https://archive.org/details/shin-megami-tensei-if-...-official-perfect-guide/ I'm playing on the SNES Online app on Switch entirely in Japanese which I can't read. At least I have played some SMT and know the skills demons normally have. I'll be liberally using guides and Wikis as much as possible. I'm sure the run will end prematurely and I'll fall back on the Let's Play to fill the gaps. I agree with the tips given by an earlier poster die intentionally to gain buffs for the protag and human party member. Protag is best built strength, human party member magic. You can enlist Yumi immediately (most difficult since you miss a dungeon and will be under-levelled in end game), Charlie is on the third floor and Reiko is in the Music room after you've spoken to everyone at school - I hear her path is the best so I'm attempting that. Jack Frost is hidden in the school and is an excellent early game demon. woofbro fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 04:24
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Here we go
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Feb 1, 2022 05:13
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"Summoning minions costs money and they use up Magnetite as you walk." So that explains the number in the upper right of the screen that started going down with every step. At least there was a character in game to explain that to me eventually. Edit: Also if I'd known a boss was behind that door I'd have made some different decisions. wash bucket fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 23:36
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woofbro posted:I agree with the tips given by an earlier poster die intentionally to gain buffs for the protag and human party member. Protag is best built strength, human party member magic. The first, and least spoiler-y, is about general skillpoint build strategy, and it is absolutely worth knowing that the main protagonist never gets spells, and so you almost certainly want to make him a physical build. And your human companion almost certainly wants to get a magic build. This is a common fact of life in most of the early SMT games, so I don't know if it even counts as a spoiler as just basic gameplay information. And the second point which is slightly more spoiler-y but also mostly just poorly-explained core gameplay: once you (and your human companion) get a guardian--a demon that serves as a sorta prototype persona--you also get a guardian gauge. Then whenever you get whacked, you get a new guardian, and the level of the guardian depends on your current level and how full the gauge is--the more full the gauge, the stronger the new guardian. The gauge resets when you get a new guardian, and fills slowly as you gain experience. And continuing the above with some strategy: this means that it is usually worth intentionally dying when your guardian gauge is full, and intentionally letting your human companion die when their gauge is full. Because that's the only way to get better guardians. Really the only downside to doing this is that unless you're following a guide (to predict what specific guardian will result) then you're rolling the dice on what skills the guardian has, so you can sometimes end up with a higher-level guardian that's actually slightly less useful. I've put all that poo poo in spoiler tags out of an abundance of caution, but all of this is nuts and bolts gameplay stuff that you really ought to know.
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Feb 2, 2022 00:51
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SubG posted:Yeah, there are two points here and both are definitely worth knowing and really aren't particularly spoiler-ish. Thanks dude, I'll have to do more research on this guardian gauge, I have no clue how it is intended to work. I'm just rolling with whatever I got until I black out again.
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Feb 2, 2022 01:09
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McCracAttack posted:Edit: Also if I'd known a boss was behind that door I'd have made some different decisions. This is pure distilled oldschool RPG experience right here. 
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Feb 2, 2022 02:10
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Mode 7 posted:This is pure distilled oldschool RPG experience right here. Mild first dungeon spoilers: I tried to climb up there for another go and somehow my Jack Frost minion got one-shot'd by those fuzzy things that hang out with the goblins. I think it cast hama, the exorcism spell that works good on zombies. Anyway, getting them revived was an expensive slog because the only way I could find to do it was the fountain at the start of the dungeon which cost like $2,400. This game is interesting in a "video game archeology" sense but I wouldn't call it fun so far. I guess that's kind of the point of these play along clubs: try something you wouldn't normally play. Even this is better than what I usually do which is stare at my hoard of games wondering what I should play until it's time to go to sleep.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:23
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Mode 7 posted:This is pure distilled oldschool RPG experience right here. Like the original Megami Tensei title is just a single huge dungeon, and it does the thing where you can encounter poo poo in random squares in the dungeon before you can do anything with them, so you end up having to backtrack through huge stretches of the dungeon to re-visit random, unmarked, spots in the dungeon to pick up things that you couldn't get the first time through. That's pretty hardcore oldschool RPG poo poo. But not counting poo poo like that, I think the third dungeon in SMT if... the most oldschool RPG/rear end in a top hat DM poo poo in any megaten game. You can make it almost trivial by by fusing a demon with Estoma (like unicorn), or by just loitering in squares that have already been dug (because you never get encounters in them) but if you're going in spoiler-free it's a one of those not-even-hard-just-bullshit things that are the quintessence of oldschool RPGs.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:49
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McCracAttack posted:This game is interesting in a "video game archeology" sense but I wouldn't call it fun so far. I guess that's kind of the point of these play along clubs: try something you wouldn't normally play. Even this is better than what I usually do which is stare at my hoard of games wondering what I should play until it's time to go to sleep. Yeah, there's a bit of an "eat your vegetables" aspect to this thread in that regard. I'll definitely craft some beginner guide for the next game, with some links to similar videos if they're available. I never intended this to be a "get good" zone, but difficulty and a lack of QOL is gonna be inherit to these old JRPGs. Also I had the same thing happen to my Jack Frost. I'm rethinking next month's game because YouTube ain't got poo poo on it.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:58
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Ironically the other two SMT games on SNES are very easy.
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Feb 2, 2022 02:59
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glad I'm arriving a bit late because y'all are great warnings for early traps, lol
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Feb 2, 2022 03:07
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Well, I've tried and bounced off two Persona games in my day and everything about Shin Megami Tensei seemed impenetrable to me. So I'm glad this thread created a sense of occasion for me to at least dabble in a bridge between the two I didn't even know existed.
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Feb 2, 2022 03:07
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Detective No. 27 posted:Yeah, there's a bit of an "eat your vegetables" aspect to this thread in that regard.
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Feb 2, 2022 03:14
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Cool idea! Just started tonight and, yep, got fuckin floored by the first boss, but I appreciate the hint earlier about the benefits of dying to get some stat boosts. I walked into the gym at level 3 or 4 for my partner and I and yeahhhh that just wasn't happening so I bulked up to 7 and finished the fight in a few seconds (lol). I'm trying to do as much as I can blind, and I get the impression that I should explore every single corner of every map to find important, essential, or otherwise good items/equipment? Like others here, this is my first SMT game and to be honest I'm not terribly interested in the Persona series but this has been an interesting start, even if the dungeon crawling is basic by modern standards.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:43
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Yeah I joined this and the Gameboy club not as in trying to find games to beat and master, but more expand my tastes, get a better understanding of older games and explore ones I may have never noticed or touched before. I'll definitely keep trying at least a few minutes every day until the month cycles over for sure. That's the benefit of having these on portable devices I can just load it up and watch TV in the background or something.
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Feb 2, 2022 05:39
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SubG posted:Just wait until people start reaching the third dungeon. Thank you for this info. That would have made me want to quit. (Thought I'd join in late too, got smacked down by the boss and have started to wonder how much grinding I'll need to do. The Phantasy Star-type of spell names isn't helping either)
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Feb 2, 2022 05:42
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SubG posted:third dungeon stuff  Oof. Yeah I might not have time to finish many of the games we play but I'm enjoying trying something that I likely never would have otherwise. Also I'm quite enjoying the music.
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Feb 2, 2022 08:11
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I may put this game on my 3DS and try playing on my breaks at work, I'm extremely unlikely to finish the game but at least I'll participate in the thread. Fortunately it's not my first SMT so the most confusing part will be the protagonist's not-Persona.
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Feb 2, 2022 08:59
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SubG posted:Do Breath of Fire II next. Breath of Fire is an oddball orphaned JRPG franchise that's got a lot of things going for it, and the second game is an absolute fuckin' minefield of obfuscated and hidden gameplay decisions that are aggressively hostile to the un-spoiled player. Or alternatively, don't do that
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Feb 2, 2022 09:05
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Finally started playing, as I just started my two days off this week. Probably won't have too many interesting reactions, though, as I've actually played this game before now (I am a big ho for SMT).
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Feb 2, 2022 13:57
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Hrm, my device to play this decided to go to the big shenzhen in the sky, so I might be late to joining
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Feb 2, 2022 14:25
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Barudak posted:Hrm, my device to play this decided to go to the big shenzhen in the sky, so I might be late to joining We'll be here when you're ready! SNES save files are pretty easy to move around so if you wanna start it on your computer or whatever you can always move the save file to whatever device you replace it with. Holy hell these zombie boy and girl fights are bullshit. They don't hit very hard but they keep summoning more and more and they love to poison.
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Feb 2, 2022 14:48
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Zombies are bullshit but I found a couple of things that work well: 1.) I've had better than average luck talking my way out of fights with them. 2.) The exorcism spell (I think it's hama) will pretty much one-shot them.
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Feb 2, 2022 16:55
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McCracAttack posted:Zombies are bullshit but I found a couple of things that work well: In SMT if... hama is a light/"expel" elemental instant death attack--it either one-shots whoever it hits, or it does nothing. Later megaten titles sometimes handle it differently (elemental damage with a chance of insta-killing) but in the early ones it's always all-or-nothing. Mudo is the dark elemental equivalent. Death-type enemies (zombies, loa, and so on) are usually weak to hama and immune to mudo. Angels and that kind of thing are usually immune to hama and weak to mudo. Enemies that are not resistant or weak to them are usually insta-killed about 25% of the time.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:07
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I didn't even think to use Hama because it wasn't ever useful in early game Persona/SMT.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:10
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If we’re gonna do breath of fire, do IV because it’s gorgeous 
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Feb 2, 2022 23:05
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If you want an easy, short one to contrast with SMT can I suggest Mario and Luigi on GBA.
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Feb 3, 2022 00:59
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I just remembered one of my favourite things about SMT if..., or at least the Aeon Genesis fan translation (which is what I assume most people in this thread are using): "Rasta Candy". Rasta Candy is a consumable item in SMT if.... It applies all the basic buff effects, so it's equivalent to rakukaja, sukukaja, and tarukaja together. In the original it's ラスタキャンディ, or roughly, Rasuta candy. I assume the guys who wrote translation guides (long before the patch was available) didn't understand the gimmick in the name. The earliest English translation guide for if... appears to be satsu's from 2002, and it includes "rasta candy". And, to be fair, "ラスタ" is sometimes used to refer to Rastafarinism--the original Devil Summoner has a ラスタマン or Rastaman enemy who is supposed to be a zombie from Jamaica, for example. Anyway, when the term eventually received an official translation it was "luster candy", which is a little clearer but also disappointing. When I first encountered the term I thought it was implying like 420 apply buffs every day or something, which is clearly much more entertaining than the reality.
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Feb 3, 2022 01:58
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The first boss area doubles as an easy grinding area after you defeat them. It's a guaranteed encounter and gives you the option to duck out if you don't want to fight anymore. It goes Ask->Fight->Ask. The fights are mostly the same mooks + a couple new ones
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Feb 3, 2022 02:00
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TheHoosier posted:The first boss area doubles as an easy grinding area after you defeat them. It's a guaranteed encounter and gives you the option to duck out if you don't want to fight anymore. It goes Ask->Fight->Ask. The fights are mostly the same mooks + a couple new ones This will be gone later. SubG posted:I just remembered one of my favourite things about SMT if..., or at least the Aeon Genesis fan translation (which is what I assume most people in this thread are using): "Rasta Candy". I can't remember if If... used Orbs or Beads but in the other ones that really hosed me up. I didn't use any for the longest time not knowing what they were. All the healing items in the old game are very confusing, I ended up just making a Txt file of the common ones and never try using any of the esoteric poo poo
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Feb 3, 2022 02:14
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Just beat the first boss! Pro-tip, buy the Gonz Pistol for your MC.
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Feb 3, 2022 02:16
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