You need to understand that Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is my favorite game of all time. There's precious few games I can say are as masterfully executed, especially in the JRPG genre, and indeed even within its own series. As a consequence, my expectations for Shin Megami Tensei IV were probably unreasonable from the start, but even after a repeat playthrough I find myself walking away with the same basic assessment I had on release: SMTIV simply lacks the edge and polish of its predecessor, and frequently feels torn between two schools of thought on what Megaten can and should be.
This is made apparent as soon as the player enters Naraku, the games "tutorial" dungeon. It's a trial by fire, where it's far too easy to get ambushed and decimated by overly aggressive enemies that seek to train the player through punishment. SMT has a reputation for being "difficult," but I would argue that they're actually quite fair, you just can't skate by with your brain shut off like you would in some other JRPGs. And yet, even coming back to it with many more Megaten games under my belt, Naraku still feels... off. This dungeon culminates in two boss battles: Minotaur and Medusa, both of which sport absurd health pools and dish out insane amounts of damage. Fusion is your friend, and you'll need to spend some time working out a team tailor made for these encounters, and even then you'll feel like you get by on the skin of your teeth. Nocturne has Matador, sure, but by contrast he exists to affirm the importance of press turns and affinities, whereas a sizeable amount of the Minotaur fight feels like dumb luck.
You'll likely game over a lot here, and quickly be introduced to a new mechanic where you can pay to resume the game at the point you died. This is handy if you haven't saved in a while, but considering you can save whenever you want, it's really quite pointless (unless you're going Fiend hunting, but that's not really worth getting into here.) Sitting through the game over screen just to load a save is interminable, and it's much faster to just close the game and start it again. However, after you claw your way through Naraku and descend into Tokyo proper, you probably won't need to worry about it as much, because the game suddenly, on a dime, becomes a cakewalk.
It really does feel like someone somewhere messed up some numbers. The boss encounters following Minotaur and Medusa have, like, a third of their health. You also get a lot more options for what demons you can recruit and consequentially fuse, which makes it much easier to turn the tables and start steamrolling the game. Your victories post-Naraku don't feel earned, and this in turn only validates any notion you had of the early game being unfair. SMTIV never finds its middle ground, and as such lacks the finely balanced challenge of prior games. It is both discouraging for new players with its horrendous opening, and borderline dull for returning fans.
This lack of balance is present in the games visuals as well. Demon designs were sourced out to several different artists, but there doesn't appear to have been any effort made to keep designs cohesive. This results in a lot of decidedly un-SMT designs which are wonderfully grotesque but at odds with returning art from Nocturne. And then there's just a ton of low quality art that is blurry as hell. The main cast of characters, conversely, feel like they should occupy the same space as one another, and while not all of their designs land with me personality it is at least something to latch onto when the game is otherwise giving me aesthetic whiplash.
The player is given a slew of side quests to fulfill as they explore Tokyo and Mikado, the game's primary locations. Navigation between the two is handled entirely differently. Mikado can be explored by simply selecting where you want to go from a menu, whereas Tokyo serves as a proper overworld map. Between the two, I favor picking from a menu. Not because I think it's inherently better, but because Tokyo is just a pain to navigate. There's very few open areas, movement is mostly restricted to roads that are laid out like a maze. Anytime I got a quest that asked me to find like, five piece of a demon or something, I could feel my body physically rejecting the thought of fulfilling it. When you're in dungeons, enemies appear in the world like they do in Persona or SMTV. I have nothing against this, though I do think it's a little odd that demons who are drastically underleveled still chase you down.
On both playthroughs I got the neutral route, the first time intentionally and the second time entirely by accident. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the protagonist awakens after a brief absence to find the world isn't quite how he left it, and the forces of chaos and light are in the final stages of preparing their armies for an all out assault that will forever change Tokyo and Mikado. The tension is palpable, but before you round up your crew and put an end to the old gods and their eternal war, you need to do a bunch of boring fetch quests! Hooray!
The pacing dies on the spot, and frankly I could not be bothered by that point to see my second playthrough to the end. Just a big "no thanks" from me. I evidently forgot about this after my first playthrough, totally blocked it from my memory. I'm sure six years from now I will repeat this process all over again. This is my curse.
The story is fine, at least! I like the characters well enough. Walter is a good lad, though I do think his immediate adoption of "might makes right" is a bit silly, they don't build up to it well. But it's fine... it's fine! It was the only part of the game I found myself getting invested in. It's fine!
The music is also incredible. The boss and mid-boss themes sound appropriately strange and vicious, and the rest of the soundtrack does an equally good job of setting its own identity from other SMT soundtracks. It really hits its stride when you get to Tokyo, and the tracks used for the end bosses do a good job conveying how much is on the line.
SMTIV is the one mainline SMT that I outright dislike. Most of my playthrough was spent questioning the games balance, art direction, and wondering what development was actually like. I'm sure there's a story there, because this definitely feels like a step down in quality for Atlus, and a game that I liked no more on my second playthrough than the first. If anything, I liked it less.
This is made apparent as soon as the player enters Naraku, the games "tutorial" dungeon. It's a trial by fire, where it's far too easy to get ambushed and decimated by overly aggressive enemies that seek to train the player through punishment. SMT has a reputation for being "difficult," but I would argue that they're actually quite fair, you just can't skate by with your brain shut off like you would in some other JRPGs. And yet, even coming back to it with many more Megaten games under my belt, Naraku still feels... off. This dungeon culminates in two boss battles: Minotaur and Medusa, both of which sport absurd health pools and dish out insane amounts of damage. Fusion is your friend, and you'll need to spend some time working out a team tailor made for these encounters, and even then you'll feel like you get by on the skin of your teeth. Nocturne has Matador, sure, but by contrast he exists to affirm the importance of press turns and affinities, whereas a sizeable amount of the Minotaur fight feels like dumb luck.
You'll likely game over a lot here, and quickly be introduced to a new mechanic where you can pay to resume the game at the point you died. This is handy if you haven't saved in a while, but considering you can save whenever you want, it's really quite pointless (unless you're going Fiend hunting, but that's not really worth getting into here.) Sitting through the game over screen just to load a save is interminable, and it's much faster to just close the game and start it again. However, after you claw your way through Naraku and descend into Tokyo proper, you probably won't need to worry about it as much, because the game suddenly, on a dime, becomes a cakewalk.
It really does feel like someone somewhere messed up some numbers. The boss encounters following Minotaur and Medusa have, like, a third of their health. You also get a lot more options for what demons you can recruit and consequentially fuse, which makes it much easier to turn the tables and start steamrolling the game. Your victories post-Naraku don't feel earned, and this in turn only validates any notion you had of the early game being unfair. SMTIV never finds its middle ground, and as such lacks the finely balanced challenge of prior games. It is both discouraging for new players with its horrendous opening, and borderline dull for returning fans.
This lack of balance is present in the games visuals as well. Demon designs were sourced out to several different artists, but there doesn't appear to have been any effort made to keep designs cohesive. This results in a lot of decidedly un-SMT designs which are wonderfully grotesque but at odds with returning art from Nocturne. And then there's just a ton of low quality art that is blurry as hell. The main cast of characters, conversely, feel like they should occupy the same space as one another, and while not all of their designs land with me personality it is at least something to latch onto when the game is otherwise giving me aesthetic whiplash.
The player is given a slew of side quests to fulfill as they explore Tokyo and Mikado, the game's primary locations. Navigation between the two is handled entirely differently. Mikado can be explored by simply selecting where you want to go from a menu, whereas Tokyo serves as a proper overworld map. Between the two, I favor picking from a menu. Not because I think it's inherently better, but because Tokyo is just a pain to navigate. There's very few open areas, movement is mostly restricted to roads that are laid out like a maze. Anytime I got a quest that asked me to find like, five piece of a demon or something, I could feel my body physically rejecting the thought of fulfilling it. When you're in dungeons, enemies appear in the world like they do in Persona or SMTV. I have nothing against this, though I do think it's a little odd that demons who are drastically underleveled still chase you down.
On both playthroughs I got the neutral route, the first time intentionally and the second time entirely by accident. Without getting too deep into spoilers, the protagonist awakens after a brief absence to find the world isn't quite how he left it, and the forces of chaos and light are in the final stages of preparing their armies for an all out assault that will forever change Tokyo and Mikado. The tension is palpable, but before you round up your crew and put an end to the old gods and their eternal war, you need to do a bunch of boring fetch quests! Hooray!
The pacing dies on the spot, and frankly I could not be bothered by that point to see my second playthrough to the end. Just a big "no thanks" from me. I evidently forgot about this after my first playthrough, totally blocked it from my memory. I'm sure six years from now I will repeat this process all over again. This is my curse.
The story is fine, at least! I like the characters well enough. Walter is a good lad, though I do think his immediate adoption of "might makes right" is a bit silly, they don't build up to it well. But it's fine... it's fine! It was the only part of the game I found myself getting invested in. It's fine!
The music is also incredible. The boss and mid-boss themes sound appropriately strange and vicious, and the rest of the soundtrack does an equally good job of setting its own identity from other SMT soundtracks. It really hits its stride when you get to Tokyo, and the tracks used for the end bosses do a good job conveying how much is on the line.
SMTIV is the one mainline SMT that I outright dislike. Most of my playthrough was spent questioning the games balance, art direction, and wondering what development was actually like. I'm sure there's a story there, because this definitely feels like a step down in quality for Atlus, and a game that I liked no more on my second playthrough than the first. If anything, I liked it less.