Just started this, what's better in this game, STR or MAG...

Just started this, what's better in this game, STR or MAG? I remember STR was absolutely worthless in IV while MAG was just so much better. Is it still the case here?

Str goy fixed.
World of str is best route again.

Just go magic. It's a game with press turn and smirk, str will narrowly edge it out at the end and only against enemies that have no weaknesses.

It's not like Dex wasn't an even better phys stat in IV.
Both are fine. Str was straight inferior to Dex, because it mostly affected just regular attacks, instead of physical skills.
With high enough luck you get crit every turn. Plus there's crit eye in IVA, but for physical skills only, while magic only crits when you're smirking.

Everything crits while smirking. There's Smile Charge, which gives you smirk. There's never a reason to crit eye.

If you go magic, you never need to raise luck and don't even need much agility. You're going to have a way higher magic stat than a str build's strength stat. You end up doing flat out way more damage way more often for most of the game and most enemies.

You don't need to pretend about WORLD OF STR just because it's alright. Fucking meme ruined ever asking or giving advice for this series.

>Boss weak to Ice
>Luster Candy x3
>Concentrate
>Smirk
>Glacial Blast

MAG is still objectively the best way to go.

FUCKKKKK I went all DEX because I wanted to use Guns, thought they would fix this

You must have played it wrong. MAG is helpful but by end game STR is the only way to go in IV. I used light and dark skills for a while in apocalypse before pouring everything into DEX at Sup Forums's recommendation, but I regret it, STR is the best.

Smile Charge costs a fuckton of MP compared to Crit Eye though, while having virtually similar effects. Crit Eye also gives you 100% accuracy with the next physical attack.

You have a fuckton of MP though. Especially as a magic build, where Energy Drain is able to do 500+ almighty damage while healing you that much and draining 80+ MP.

If you're gonna be wasting turns self-buffing, you may as well charge/concentrate and smile charge. It's just plain better than crit eye.

And then YHVH fucking Divine Harmony's all your prep work.

Is Apocalypse worth a playthrough? I loved my time with SMT4 but I've heard bad stuff from Apocalypse. What it seems to always boils down to is that the story is absolute dogshit in comparison and it only improved upon gameplay.

>SMT
>story
Good one.

Insuferable friends but you get the chance to kill them all

Is Stephen the most powerful character in SMT? He fights five Messiahs at once when he stops holding back.

If you liked IV, you'll love IVA.

Faggots just like complaining and know literally nothing about the series beyond fucking memes about killing your friends, as if that is 90% of the game instead of a climax.

they're all messiahs that got game overs though

bitch ass messiahs

He oddly reminds me of Stephen Hawking.

He only fought the ones that were shit and died, though.

Jackass didn't even let the summoners summon, except for Nanashi.

You don't say.

IIRC Crit Eyes 100% hit rate is better than Smile Charge on Apocalypse where everything fucking misses and using multi-hit attacks is suicide.

On other difficulties, or with single hit attacks like Akasha Arts, use Smile Charge.

The character has an Irish god as a stand. Luck is the canon build.

Seems to me like they're just faggots who only played Nocturne and SJ then thought every SMT should be like those two without exception.

>late game bosses
>weak to anything

They're weak to almighty

The Persona-esque party are annoying at worst. Some people like them, some people hate them, and luckily the game accommodates both groups.

Killing them all is the only way to save the world though. Otherwise you'll just get Aleph'd in a few years when YHWH regenerates.

The strongest attack in the game, Akasha Arts, is a physical attack. So Strength is the best endgame, especially because of the special story skill you get. Magic is probably more useful for most of the game though because free press turns. If you're playing on Conflict difficulty or lower then you can get away with any build. It's so easy to fuse amazing demons in this game so you can always get your party to carry you if your build doesn't work well on a particular boss

...

I guarantee Heroine or Hiroko in 1 and 2 would be reviled as shitty waifubait, and they'd say the entire section with the Puck and Hanoun in SMT2 was inspired by Persona.

>The Persona-esque party are annoying at worst
this, asahi's clinginess got annoying at times, her saltiness when toki came along was hilarious though
toki is the better girl anyway

Why is she so perfect?

Is there a stat reset cheat for these games? I want to experiment with builds on the fly, not waiting for new playthrough.

Wait so he was modeled after him? Holy shit.

Nope. GG if you wasted any points in the AGI trash stat.

The strongest attack doesn't mean anything when enemies aren't weak to physical, which means you have to rely on crits or wasting turns buffing to get smirks + extra damage/turns. Which likewise means dumping into luck instead of your damage stat, which means magic's strongest attacks will end up doing more because they'll have 80-160 more magic than a Str build will have Str, which will also be multiplied by weakness bonuses more often.

>brainlet STRfags think that STR is the best

No sweetie, MAG is supreme.

Most bosses endgame won't be weak to magic either.

It also depends how endgame we're talking about. I've beaten Twisted Tokyo until the fiends stop getting stronger at level 999. I did a lot of testing on this with 999 on every stat. All the fiends have weaknesses but a charged, smirked Akasha Arts will do more damage to David than a concentrated, smirked weakness Thunder Gods will

That's exactly it, though most of them didn't even play SJ, either.

It's just Nocturnefriends that cry the loudest. They're also the ones, unsurprisingly enough, that try to claim superiority to Persona. I love Nocturne but when you create that good a game it always creates elitism in a fanbase

100% MAG baby

The shit you fight at endgame isn't really weak to magic either but can still be crit just fine. Physical is just straight superior once you get access to Akasha Arts, it has much higher base damage than any of the strongest magic spells and is basically 100% crit rate once you invest enough into luck. Not that it matters much though outside of trying to do dumb shit like killing the higher TT cycle fiends as quickly as possible, everything else will melt regardless

>not LU

>though most of them didn't even play SJ
They will play the upcoming remake and try their best to claim Persona ruined another SMT game.

You literally cannot make an unviable build in either game
Just do whatever you want

>mag was so much better in 4
Dex was better. You can use elemental ammo if you REALLY need that extra press turn, can crit, get almighty skills, and the player better serves as a physical striker since physical demons split their points between Dex and Str while magic demons are just fine.

Plus, the gun with instant death chance ammo is a great trash clearer.

crit eye gives you smirk next turn though

With two turns of setup on both and the most absolutely unreasonable stats, the stronger move will do more damage. Crits and Weakness do the same multiplier, and magic can't hit a weakness AND crit at the same time.

You could have Thunder Gods'd the weakness for an extra turn and smirk, then concentrate, then Thunder Gods again. I'm sure that'd have evened out the damage and then some, along with giving you an extra press turn instead of all that prep.

I've done multiple playthroughs and I don't even know how much luck you need to get anywhere near 100% crit with that, but it easily cuts into your Str stat significantly.

I don't get how no one ever in any of these statistical circle jerks ever includes player stats contribution to base damage, how useful it is for the ENTIRE game and never hits a roadblock, or the extra press turns it gives.

Did you play Apocalypse? Basically every boss, up to and including the final boss, had elemental weaknesses.

I thought AGI is one of the important stats beside damaging stat (str/mag) and luk?

SJ is shit and a meme. DSJ will just be shit

>how useful it is for the ENTIRE game
But people were straight up saying Magic is better for the vast majority of the game. It's just a fact that physical outdoes it by quite a lot at the endgame, especially if you go above lv99.

>I don't get how no one ever in any of these statistical circle jerks ever includes player stats contribution to base damage
But that's one of the main reasons physical is stronger. It scales off of both Str (which has point for point the same impact as Mag) and Dex, which has slightly less impact but still significantly more than Str/Mag after you hit the softcap at 300.

Dagda
Vishnuu
Satan
YHVH before the power of friendship kicks in and makes him weak to even physical, making it moot

The tone of the game is pretty off, but it's still fun for what it is.

Bull fucking shit it's moot that he can become weak to physical.

That's a 1/8 chance for physical compared to a 3/4 chance for magic.

But the story is leagues better than SMT IV. It has much better villains.
The problem is that it has a persona-ish ending and an edgelord ending and so people tend to complain about the story because of it and about the characters because they are what makes it like that.

But just go play it, throughout the whole story it is much better than IV at everything.

Nice 4 examples (also forgetting vishnu is weak to light and dark after using his multihit moves). Let me provide a few:

Metatron
Mitra-Buddha
Inanna when she uses her spells
Apsu
Seth
Baal
Odin
Lucifer
Merkabah
All the fiends
Cleo
Mephisto

Man, that's a LOT more examples...

What the fuck Luck doesn't make magic crit ?

>Mitra-Buddha
You really don't want to hit that guy's weakness.

Magic crits while smirking and hitting an enemy's non-weakness.

Apoc's story is much better than 4's. For one, the plot moves consistently rather than short bursts and the villains are much more engaging and are more reasonable than 4's.

People don't like that there are a few happy moments you have with your crew (forgetting 4 also did the same) and exaggeratingly shitpost about all the minor flaws. The only real problems are that a lot was reused from 4 and the final dungeon is unnecessarily long (but not altogether different from earlier games' confusing as fuck dungeons so the only people who tend to really whine are underages). It's absolutely worth a playthrough.

Ok time to erase my save

I made a critical mistake

Odin was hard to beat even with his weakness to force. In fact hitting his weakness only made him stronger. That whole boss battle was designed to test the play to see who they will choose to held them endure the Concentrate, Will of Thunder, and Thunder Reign Combo.

Inanna's boss battle was way fun due to the banter.

If you debilitate the fuck out of him every turn you don't need to worry about that move where he stops his stats from decreasing since he should be in the negatives. The amount of time to set up a powerful attack is enough to put him at -3 so self righteous vow doesn't even matter

4 Mag/1 Agi master race.

People were more upset that Nanashi couldn't side with the Divine Powers and that the power of friendship was forced upon them by the plot. Sure SMT4 had a few happy moments, but the change in tone wasn't awkward.

Oh I know Odin is tough to beat (more on war or apoc, conflict odin is a joke) but I was posting examples of endgame bosses that have weaknesses.

Sick meme.
Apoc's story is very simple with basically nothing but the main plotline ever moving forward. It's extremely formulaic and boring and constantly having ten people following you around that suck your dick makes it feel more like a Persona game than anything.
IV had a lot of cool story arcs that served the world building while Apoc just kinda tells you to go fuck yourself and read through log files if you care, but on the other side holds your hand with constant over the top explanations for even the smallest twists and turns in the main story, it's pretty fucking condescending when it comes to that to be quite honest, the game treats you like a complete retard.
IV was a strong case for show, don't tell, in story telling. It relied heavily on the atmosphere and reading between the lines. Apoc is the polar opposite of that, while it has more of a main story line as a driving force behind the game everything else went to complete shit

Siding with the divine powers was all that I really wanted

I like SMTIV's world building, but the plot itself was not built up well at all. They completely fucked up the law and chaos dichotomy with the first choice of Jonathan/Walter because Jonathan wasn't siding with Tayama in the slightest. After that Walter's characterization (and thus lead into the entirety of Chaos's forces) is fucking retarded.

Ultimately IV ended in the power of friendship winning against law and chaos and removing the dome for a very happy ending where everyone was living together, and they very much sucked your dick the whole way. But I guess that conflicts with your narrative, so whatever.

I'm about to start the old ass Nocturne, anything I should know about?

There's a massive difference in people starting to suck your dick after you have loads of accomplishments under your belt and your little crew of friends doing it throughout the entire game even while you are still fucking absolutely everything up at every possible opportunity because you are a cute little twink boy that can do no wrong.

World of STR

Fuck off, the very start of the game you're a goddamn casualry and it just so happens you're so amazing that you can overcome seasoned veteran samurai, with a group of other young samurai who all love you. You all overcome enemies no one in Tokyo ever dreamed of overcoming, like the Minotaur and Medusa. They constantly plea for you to join them.

Nanashi has a useless puppy dog childhood friend who's the only one unconditionally with him. He also happens to have become a fucking GOD, not that he just happened to be that strong despite being a kid like Flynn was the instant he picks up a shitty sword. He's granted inhuman power by a god who constantly is manipulating you and trying to play you against humanity, while everyone else wants to keep tabs on you and either kill you or use you to their own advantage.

No shit he's a wheel chair bound scientist named Steven who did a shit load of work with physics.

I wanted a DP route as well but to be honest I don't know what they would have done with it or how they could've written it, seeing as Krishna is a massive asshole and that's one of the reasons why he's such a cool character

>with nothing but the main plotline moving forward
And why is this a bad thing? You're phrasing what I think you're trying to say really poorly.

>game treats you like a retard
Name one point where the game overexplains a basic twist or a turn instead of stating it. This is what I'm saying, you people overexaggerate the flaws in the broadest of sense.

>4 relied on atmosphere, apoc more on story
Well, no shit. 4 barely had a story moving forward so it needed the oppressive, alien atmosphere. Apoc has a different but still serviceable atmosphere in the same setting and actually had a plot that moved instead of just stood still.

>Don't know how to write it
Krishna would have totally allowed Dagda to join him, and seeing how they would need a godslayer to take out YVHV regardless, they wouldn't need Flynn and just use Nanashi.

It kinda writes itself.

But Dagda was against Krishna's plan to begin with. He was always planning to double cross him.

Nanashi's a trash godslayer without Dagda, seeing as he straight up will just fall apart dead within minutes after Dagda leaves him.

Meanwhile they had the real deal with Flynn already.

This so much. In apoc, you have to earn everyone of your partners' respect bar asahi (which makes sense) and even then the majority of people either don't trust you or want to manipulate you. It fits in with the game's overall theme of 'being your own person' and doing what you want.

In 4, which has no real theme except for aping off of 1, Jonathan and Walter are immediately your best friends, people like navarre who hate you are obviously bad guys, nobody ever develops or changes except for walter's retarded alignment shift, and the story up until the first alignment split feels very much like a fun adventure with friends in a strange and unusual land. Even apoc threw in massacres, shesha, the angel and demon war with obvious signs all throughout the game to show that tokyo is an extremely dangerous place.

The game over explained how Inanna was able to revive herself in the Cosmic Egg, and why she needs her power back so badly.Granted, Inanna goes from mother rightfully pissed at catching her daughter stealing from her purse to bargaining with the same daughter. It also tends to over explain how the Universe works and why people hate YHVH's guts.

Dagda didn't want you to join Krishna, and Krishna wanted his original power back, which he couldn't do with Nanashi since he was already taken by dagda. He needed flynn.

They didn't overexplain any of those things. How the universe and YHVH work is explained very well by the time you infiltrate Tsukiji Konganji the first time and anything past that are Dagda and Krishna arguing about how it should be done. I don't even remember the whole Innana thing, unless you're talking about when nozomi explains why she's coming after you.

I feel like some people are missing the fact that Apocalypse is told from the perspective of the average Tokyo citizen, who had live with the demons for 25 years and need to be street smart in order to survive.

Yeah I don't worry about that move as long as I don't keep hitting his weaknesses anymore. For me the best strategy was to debuff him constantly and just keep hitting him hard, without hitting his weaknesses.

It's nice how even when Flynn's rallied them up for HOPE at the start, Nanashi and crew still would've all died pointless deaths if not for Dagda's intervention. Hell, neutral route SMT4 is just what happens without Nanashi taking Dagda's offer, so all of these characters are just dead in that happy ending.

Is this the series where holy dance is a mandatory?

Does anyone have the lawfag vs chaosfag I AM SILLY comic?

That's the tactics ogre of persona Devil Survivor

Nah, that's just Devil Survivor 1.

do not TOOT it

Ah okay. I just remember someone in another thread saying holy dance is a must but I wasn't too sure what game he was mentioning. There's so many damn games in this series.

Not sure where I should even start desu

One of the things Apocalypse did right was make Nanashi a low level scrub who worked his way up the ranks by taking on small jobs. Even demons treat Nanashi like a casual acquaintance, except for female demons who throw their tits at him, or wanna kart him around to make other female demons jealous.

>all the little stuff on ng+
>Dagda constantly smirking about situation with Sheesha or Odin/Flynn battle because he knows what's going on

The OG devil summoner himself.

I doubt even the Japs knew he was based on.

VENOMOUS RAGA

If you don't count The Axiom, yes he's canonically the strongest character, even if he wasn't fighting every messiah at thier fullest, that's still a situation any other character could end up being butt fucked in seconds, while he was still fine after the fight.

Besides I don't think you could actually 'kill' Stephen.

FUCK YOU

Start with SMT: Nocturne, SMT Strange Journey or SMT: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers. Those are the best mainline experiences. You could also start with IV but I wouldn't recommend it as it references previous games in ways others do not.

On the off chance you are a huge fan of both SNES RPGs, first person dungeon crawling and/or classic table tap role playing you might actually enjoy SMT I and II and could start with those. Obviously play I first, II is one of the only direct sequels.

There are a lot of other good spin offs but it's not always best to start with Digital Devil Saga or Raidou even though they are good.

If you look closely at the group of demons that appear the first time the Divine Powers make their entrance, some of them are bosses the party faces later in the game.

>starting with soul hackers
You want the man to kill himself or something?
It has some of the worst dungeons in the game and doesn't really help that ps1/saturn 3d didn't age really well.

Soul Hackers arguably has the best atmosphere and setting.

What the fuck is his deal anyway
He's in a bunch of games and doesn't really do too much.

I fucking hate all these weird behind-the-scenes characters they introduce in most SMT games only to never properly flesh them out.
The those faggots from SJ that are too abstract to even properly impact the plot