Shin Megami Tensei IV has been on my digital shelf for a VERY long time now. I bought this game during the pandemic and played it for a few hours but got carried away with other things and had to drop the game. I enjoyed what I played but it wasn't spectacular. What do I think about it now? It's a hard 6/10. Maybe a 7 if we're being generous but this is such a big step down from Nocturne.
The base mechanics of SMT 4 are solid considering they're based on Nocturne's. Where the game goes wrong is the smirk status. I'm not a huge fan of it, basically you get increased evasion and attack if you land a critical/exploit an enemy weakness/void an enemy attack. The problem is that getting a smirk is totally random. The only consistent time I've seen a smirk proc is when a crit lands which in it of itself is a random chance already. You can't exactly plan around whether or not you or a boss will get a smirk so it just adds another random rng chance for you to instantaneously lose a boss fight if you get unlucky with getting crit. Literally the only time a boss will hand your ass to you to this game is if you get majorly fucked by rng (or let Walter's stupid agi spamming ass cook ever again), You can't even really play around with it defensively because you lose smirk and therefore the evasion boost if you get another turn which is likely considering the only way to proc smirk are ways that give you more press turns.
Talking about bosses, in this game I can't say they were particularly impressive. The first 2 main bosses are borderline unfair at times, Minotaur especially is just a coin flip depending on which partner you have with you. Medusa can also be tough but she's a little more fair than Minotaur was. But after that? I can barely remember any of the bosses in this game they're all so uninteresting and get absolutely steamrolled by the average dex/gun build. While I can't lie and say there isn't fun to be had in clicking stun needles or myriad arrows and seeing big numbers fly on screen, it is a little disappointing for a series that's known to be difficult. I never had to stop and craft a specific team to counter and pile drive a boss to dust like other megaten games, in Smt 4 I just clicked charge and a multihit move and saw the bosses go down with ease.
I want to talk about alignment real quick, not a huge fan of how this game tackles it really. What alignment you get is based on dialogue options you pick throughout the majority of the game and you probably aren't going to get neutral route unless you keep track of your options which I think is a little lame. Also on the neutral route the game forces you to do around 18 supposedly optional sidequests without telling you what those 18 quests even are, it totally kills the pacing of the game for 0 reason. Only around 5 quests they hold you at gunpoint to do are actually unique and interesting.
All in all, I just think SMT 4 just lacks that impact as the other Megaten games I've played have. The most standout moment is entering Tokyo for the first time and hearing the beautiful yet melancholy overworld theme for the first time. https://youtu.be/qDsDYCI3fyc?feature=shared Outside of that banger I can't say a lot of this game is very memorable at all, but that's just me. The story itself is actually pretty decent, The game hard pushes neutral route but I think that's the point. You need a balance between law or chaos. The game has a moment where it shows you what the law and chaos route endings would look like for the citizens of Tokyo which is actually pretty cool so add that along with entering Tokyo for the first time to the list of memorable moments of this game. The pacing would've been better if neutral route didn't ruin the pacing with 18 random sidequests but the ending was decent enough outside of a somewhat disappointing final boss. Also while I may not have enjoyed all the random pngs that make up this game's enemies, all the designs are usually really great and take inspiration from the demon's roots in it's mythology it's neat! Also I hope the guy who redesigned demons like Omoikane still works at atlus cause his demon designs are literally so cool and awesome to look at.
The base mechanics of SMT 4 are solid considering they're based on Nocturne's. Where the game goes wrong is the smirk status. I'm not a huge fan of it, basically you get increased evasion and attack if you land a critical/exploit an enemy weakness/void an enemy attack. The problem is that getting a smirk is totally random. The only consistent time I've seen a smirk proc is when a crit lands which in it of itself is a random chance already. You can't exactly plan around whether or not you or a boss will get a smirk so it just adds another random rng chance for you to instantaneously lose a boss fight if you get unlucky with getting crit. Literally the only time a boss will hand your ass to you to this game is if you get majorly fucked by rng (or let Walter's stupid agi spamming ass cook ever again), You can't even really play around with it defensively because you lose smirk and therefore the evasion boost if you get another turn which is likely considering the only way to proc smirk are ways that give you more press turns.
Talking about bosses, in this game I can't say they were particularly impressive. The first 2 main bosses are borderline unfair at times, Minotaur especially is just a coin flip depending on which partner you have with you. Medusa can also be tough but she's a little more fair than Minotaur was. But after that? I can barely remember any of the bosses in this game they're all so uninteresting and get absolutely steamrolled by the average dex/gun build. While I can't lie and say there isn't fun to be had in clicking stun needles or myriad arrows and seeing big numbers fly on screen, it is a little disappointing for a series that's known to be difficult. I never had to stop and craft a specific team to counter and pile drive a boss to dust like other megaten games, in Smt 4 I just clicked charge and a multihit move and saw the bosses go down with ease.
I want to talk about alignment real quick, not a huge fan of how this game tackles it really. What alignment you get is based on dialogue options you pick throughout the majority of the game and you probably aren't going to get neutral route unless you keep track of your options which I think is a little lame. Also on the neutral route the game forces you to do around 18 supposedly optional sidequests without telling you what those 18 quests even are, it totally kills the pacing of the game for 0 reason. Only around 5 quests they hold you at gunpoint to do are actually unique and interesting.
All in all, I just think SMT 4 just lacks that impact as the other Megaten games I've played have. The most standout moment is entering Tokyo for the first time and hearing the beautiful yet melancholy overworld theme for the first time. https://youtu.be/qDsDYCI3fyc?feature=shared Outside of that banger I can't say a lot of this game is very memorable at all, but that's just me. The story itself is actually pretty decent, The game hard pushes neutral route but I think that's the point. You need a balance between law or chaos. The game has a moment where it shows you what the law and chaos route endings would look like for the citizens of Tokyo which is actually pretty cool so add that along with entering Tokyo for the first time to the list of memorable moments of this game. The pacing would've been better if neutral route didn't ruin the pacing with 18 random sidequests but the ending was decent enough outside of a somewhat disappointing final boss. Also while I may not have enjoyed all the random pngs that make up this game's enemies, all the designs are usually really great and take inspiration from the demon's roots in it's mythology it's neat! Also I hope the guy who redesigned demons like Omoikane still works at atlus cause his demon designs are literally so cool and awesome to look at.