Not particularly enamored with this one although I can certainly understand why many are, since it allows for those kinds of conversations that frequently feel impossible in 2023, the kind where you and your friends or coworkers come together to talk for hours about the choices you made at a particular juncture and what happens if you pick option C instead of option B, you know what I mean - conversations that are much rarer when a modern game's sense of mystery can be completely dispelled within 10 hours by front page reddit posts and scores of "articles" reducing each dialogue prompt to Baldur's Gate 3: How To Get THE BEST Companion Cutscenes. The #general chat in my Discord server has people I haven't spoken to in years coming out of the woodwork to talk about the results of character creation, about the companions they've romanced and killed, about all the ways their characters lost an eye, and they all seem pretty content with the breadth of discoveries that this game enables.

For my first 20 hours, I was basically the same - there's a lot of fun to be had in poking around these early areas with the horniest party of all time (despite that fact) and chatting with rats, cats, and dead guys. In these early chapters the game best supports my preferred playstyle: a big circuitous route around the map, looking at everything as I drive past but only stopping to drink deeply from a select few side stories. Push further into the main story, though, and find yourself woefully underleveled because you grew tired of these fights 10 hours ago. It's never so difficult as to completely block you from progressing, but it's easy to feel that your punishment for not seeking out each and every side quest is being forced to initiate every fight from the (admittedly cumbersome) stealth or spend the whole fight herding enemies into a big circle so you can use your Level 3 AOE Spell of choice to meme the encounters until they're finished. I have no experience with D&D or this particular ruleset aside from other video games, but the adherence to such a system and its limits are obvious when you spend forty hours playing this game just to unlock a single cast of a spell that these developers would've given you immediately in their last game. It's a pace that works pretty well for weekly tabletop adventures with a group of IRL friends, but feels a bit too slow and unrewarding when I'm sitting alone, staring at a menu of unappetizing "roll advantage"/"create difficult terrain" spells as a reward for my once-nightly level-up.

What's kept me playing are the settings and companions - the mind flayers are arguably the least interesting part of this whole deal, so while it sucks that the main plot so prominently revolves around them, the side quests are generally well-crafted enough that one or two of them would be a satisfying enough adventure to fill the entire night on their own. I do wish that the companions would Talk Normally for five minutes but they've done well enough in telling some of the companion stories (Gale is a particular standout) that they can create genuinely affecting moments if you look in the right places. Not all of them are told so well, and some of the companions feel deeply artificial as a result, but generally speaking I can understand why a player might recruit any given companion not named Lae'zel to their party. For the most part, I'm also fond of the party chatter - every once in a while you'll get a nice bit of banter that feels like the result of actual role-playing with friends, whether it's a joke or a short flavorful exchange revealing how two companions interact or a story that fleshes out someone's background. It's not as personal as it could be if it were your real friends bantering with you, but it's a fun approximation and it's deployed tastefully.

Ultimately my grade for the experience is a big ol' shrug and the word "Sure?" written exactly like so. I think the lipstick looks fantastic even if it fails to produce miracles for the pig that is 5th edition rules, with its awkward magic system and glacial level progression and a litany of boring buffs. Compared to the average person I'd be considered a "hater" of Divinity Original Sin 2 but it felt so colorful compared to this! I love killing bosses by shoving them into a pit as much as the next guy, but much of this experience feels like the developers are skillfully wringing every drop of charisma that they can from the source material and hoping that the player doesn't notice that "the chill druid left and now the mean druid is being mean, go fetch the chill druid" feels a little trite. I'll be doing my best to hit the end credits, but if I don't make it, know that I'm probably out there starting a new save on Tyranny instead.

Far too early to speak on this with any authority, but some early thoughts:

• As with Divinity: Original Sin 2 the potential for roleplay immediately crumbles if not playing as an origin character. Especially damning since they are all locked into a specific class and race except for the Dark Urge.

• Dialogue options being marked by skill checks and background tags deflates them. It would be more fitting for certain options to have the checks/tags but not convey this to the player until it is time to roll. If I see an option tied to my one-of-like-six background choices, I effectively have to pick it so I can get Inspiration. As for the checks, I can prep the face of the party with Guidance, Charm Person, Friends, what have you. Which itself leads into...

• Despite being a four-member party game, the other three characters might as well not exist for the purposes of dialogue. If you're lucky you'll see one of the origin characters milling about in the background of a conversation, but the person/people I'm playing with are forced to listen and suggest options. So just like with real 5E, it's best to have one person do all the talking since only one person can anyways, further displacing non-faces from the story they are meant to be involved in.

• Origin characters all talk like they're YouTubers, falling into a pillow at the end of a sentence, a permanent vocal sneer tainting each word (except for Gale). There is no space for subtlety in their characterisation either, their MacGuffins and driving purposes laid so bare like the Hello Neighbour devs trying to get MatPat's attention.

• Without a DM to actually intervene, to interpret the players' wishes, anything requiring interpretation is simply gone. Nearly every spell that isn't a very simple effect or damage dealer? Absent. This leaves players with options for what colour of damage they want to do, or what one specific action they might like to take. Creativity spawning from these bounds is incidental, not intentional.

• The worst part of 5E, its combat, is not improved in the slightest here, and if anything is actively worse. One of the great benefits of the tabletop setting is that the numbers are obfuscated. Statblocks need not be adhered to. Players typically don't know the raw numbers of a creature's health or saves unless they clue in through what rolls succeed for saves, or keep a mental tally of damage done before the DM says they are bloodied. The DM has the option of disclosing information, but here the player is forced to know everything. Every resistance. Every hit point. Every stat point. Every ability. Combat cannot be creative as a result because the whole of its confines are known the entire time. You even know the percentage chance you have to hit every spell and attack. It makes it all hideously boring.

• If spells are going to be one and done boring nothingburgers, the least Larian could have done was not have some of them, like Speak with the Dead, be tied to a cutscene that tells me a corpse has nothing to say. I get it, the random goblin body I found probably isn't a font of lore, but do you need to take me into a scripted sequence of my character making a concerned face with their fingers to their temple as I am told for the eighteenth time that it has nothing for me.

• When spells are being learned, there is no indication as to which are rituals and which are not, nor are there options to sort or filter choices. With so few choices maybe it doesn't matter.

• Despite a bevy of supplementary sourcebooks giving players countless options for their characters, you're stuck with primarily the base text. Perhaps it would be unrealistic to wish for every subclass, every spell, every feat, but not knowing this narrow scope beforehand meant my hopes for, for example, a College of Glamour Bard or a Hexblade Warlock were dashed. Without the spells that make those subclasses interesting, however, I suppose they might as well be absent.

• The 'creative solutions' of stacking boxes to climb a wall or shooting a rope holding a rock over someone's head are not creative, they are blatantly intended and serve only to make the player feel smart for being coerced by the devs into a course of action.

• The folks eager to praise Larian for not including DLC seem to have missed the Digital Deluxe upgrade that gives you cosmetics and tangible benefits in the form of the Adventurer's Pouch.

• As touched upon by others, the devs are clearly more invested in giving players the option to make chicks with dicks and dudes with pussies than they are in actual gender representation. This binarism only exacerbates how gendered the characters are. With no body options besides "Femme, Masc, Big Femme, Big Masc" and whether you're shaven and/or circumcised, the inclusion of a Non-Binary option becomes laughable if not insulting. Gender is expressed and experienced in countless ways, but here it comes down to your tits (or lack thereof) and your gonads. No androgynous voice options. No breast sizes. No binders. No gaffs. No packing. The only ways for me to convey to fellow players that my character is anything besides male or female are my outright expression of my gender, to strip myself bare, or hope the incongruity between my femme physique and masc voice impart some notion of gender queering. Maybe this is great for binary trans men and women, but as a non-binary person it comes across as a half-measure that seeks to highlight my exclusion from this world. More cynically, this, alongside Cyberpunk 2077 read as fetishistic, seeing the trans body as something for sexual gratification, rather than just that, a body.

I'll keep playing it, but damn if my eyes aren't drifting towards playing a real CRPG for the first time.

I remember, I remember the days. Back when I played it, it, SMT, IV. Such the days were, such were days, the days, back when SMT, SMT IV, IV, the IV, SMT IV... Back when I played it...

When I played it, this game, all I could think, all I could think, all I could feel, all I could think, all I could do, all my thoughts, all the days, back when I played, all the IV, SMT, SMT IV, my one thought, all I thought, one thought... "this game is not good! I do not like this game!" is what my one thought, my one thought whilst play, play the game...

If there were one thing, one thing I could highlight, one thing to say, one thought to think, one game, one game, one IV, SMT IV, it is just to think, just to say...

SMT, SMT IV, a game, a bad, bad game, one so foul, so poor...

My heart goes out to those who say, those who say who believe to say, to say the game has merit, to say there is something more, something more about, something about to say, to say good things, of good things one speaks, one speaks all well, all well should not, all well false realities...

And

Spoilers in the Alignment section, be warned. Rest are fine though.

The first SMT game many people including me played. As an intro game it's decent but if you've played other games in the SMT series there's no reason for you to play IV. Before I rip this game a new one let me talk about the things I did enjoy in it.

What I enjoyed
- OST is very good. Lots of memorable tracks
- The prologue of the game in Mikado is pretty good. Good introduction of characters and set up of the story.
- The side quests flesh out the world really well and the rewards are pretty good too.
- The new White Ending is super based.
- The stuff with the redpills and the perpetual reactor was cool.

What I didn't like

Story
The majority of the story is just stolen from SMT 1 and 2 but mangled up. This isn't a homage type situation where the game is paying respect to what came before, IV literally reuses multiple plot points and a character but somehow it does them worse. Most people playing IV didn't play 1 and 2 so this goes over their heads.

Even on its own merits, the IV story is not good. After the prologue literally nothing of importance happens for like 10 hours. It's like

Prologue -> 10 hours of nothing -> alignment stuff towards the end of the game -> game ends

Alignment
IV has the worst depiction of alignments in the series by far. Every game since SMT 1 has developed the alignments or tried something new in its place.

SMT 1 - first in the series and builds upon the alignments from MT2
SMT 2 - Vastly build on Law and Chaos at the cost of neutral not getting a lot
SMT if - no alignments but the story changes based on your partner.
SMT 3 - no alignments, you get something similar but new in the form of Reasons.
SMT SJ - Brings back alignments but makes the alignment reps except neutral relatable and understandable.

In SMT IV Chaos and Neutral focus on nothing new at all. The chaos ending is the same old "fight to live, live to fight" stuff, and it's a shame because chaos was introduced in IV with an interesting angle of spreading knowledge. Neutral literally took the whole helping Masakado regain his strength thing from SMT 2. Law is inconsistent, the higher ups want Mikado to learn and grow in their absence by making them study technology from Tokyo but they also want to maintain the status quo for some reason.

It's actually baffling to me how badly Isabeau was handled as a neutral rep. She's indecisive and unsure for a good chunk of the game. We could've gotten a good arc about her learning to be confident and stand on her own, it wouldn't even be that hard to insert something like that into the story. It would fit perfectly into the alternate Tokyos section, we could've seen Isabeau's reaction to how Law and Chaos affect the world and what her indecisiveness could lead to. Instead we get a headless chicken. I know IV likes copying SMT 1 but it didn't need to copy the helpless woman as a neutral rep.

Characters
The set up for them in the prologue is nice but after that they turn into generic alignment heroes. Walter starts off as a bro character and stays that way for the whole game except towards the end where he has his "What if rich people... bad?!?!" moment which was a bit stereotypical but hey at least they did something with him. Jonathan starts off as someone you might think is a goody two shoes but it's clear that he doesn't fully agree with the rules and the law and is willing to bend them if necessary. After the prologue he's just a regular nice guy. Isabeau starts off as someone who seems composed and competent but by the end of the game she's reduced to this helpless girl who can't make any decisions on her own and has to rely on the MC. Navarre literally disappears after the prologue and you never see him again unless you do the relevant side quest. Basically everyone sucks after the prologue except Walter who gets a tiny amount of development which is probably why he's a fan favourite. Pretty bad situation especially compared to Strange Journey which had good characters with understandable motives and actions.

Gameplay
Dungeons suck. In fact there are almost no dungeons in this game except for the domains(which are bland and suck ass), the reactor and the final 2 dungeons. Instead of dungeons IV just has these areas that are designed to look like real life locations like parks and buildings. They look nice for a 3DS game and their design does fit the type of place it's supposed to be but ya know, an SMT with almost no dungeons is just weird.

Combat is fun but gets easy after the prologue before ramping up a bit for the final bosses.

Conclusion
Game sucks, has almost no identity of it's own and nearly everything in it has been done better by other games in the SMT series. Listen to the ost and move on

I may not be the only person for whom Pyre is their favourite Supergiant game, but I don't suspect there are many of us.

As with any game from this studio the gorgeous visuals and Korb soundtrack are worth the price of admission. But I also love everything else. The cast are a joy. I love that winning or losing the basketball holy rites doesn't matter for progress but simply what it means for the characters. And a fantasy world with strange fantasy species and elaborate fantasy religions is the peak of my bullshit.