>>20244120>tfw fell out of love with SMT with SMT IVI really loved how atmospheric SMT 1/2/Nocturne were and that's what I expected with IV, but what I got was SMT with Persona sensibilities. I couldn't stand having Walter and Jonathan yap at me constantly. I wanted to kill Jonathan immediately because he was a prissy little suck up, and I wanted to kill Walter later when he became a retard.
I felt like they wanted to write a side game but made everything a superficial reference to SMT1. The Mikado setting was interesting until they completely abandoned it and made Tokyo the main setting. Strange Journey was really fucking good because it was a SMT game without the usual setting, and it kept the tone and setting consistent until the end. The series staples were also fairly refreshing. Lucifer was a woman, the wise men were used instead of the archangels, the representative of the angels was just as evil as everyone else, and the neutral ending had more consequences than just killing both the chaos and law guys. When you look at it next to Nocturne, it was just as much of a departure from the older games as Nocturne was from the entire rest of the series. Strange Journey should have been considered SMT IV.
I'm kind of wary of the series after SMT IV since that game felt so hokey and didn't stand on its own merits. I hope we see more departures like Nocturne, DDS, and Strange Journey. Persona is having its tits milked off and Devil Survivor is an absolutely wonderful series that does nearly everything right, but I don't see that spark I used to see in Atlus anymore.
Oh well, I still have Fire Emblem. Oh wait, Awakening was just as bad as SMT IV and was almost exactly the same: paying homage to the old games while also trying to appeal to a new audience but being a worse experience than anything else in the series. Oh well, at least I have Metal Gear Solid.
