Shit like this is why SMT will never become a popular series

Shit like this is why SMT will never become a popular series.

Fuck everyone who defends this shit.

This is why shopping malls are dying!

And this is bad because???

Waaa I hate exploring waaaaaaa

If a dungeon crawler has automap it's way more playable for the average retard and you have no excuse

Shit like this is why SMT will never become a popular series.

Good. I saw what popularity did to monster hunter and all the others

Fuck everyone who defends this shit.

It's great.

You haven't beaten Strange Journey if you haven't fully mapped out every single area.
Redux even gives you that quest and rewards you with a shit ton of incenses if you do it.

Fully mapped out every area

I never finished the demiurge quest because I dicked around with using stat-ups and assumed they'd carry over in NG+. I hate that Fatlus games are never consistent with how carryover stats and items work.

Japanese Dungeon Crawler

Forces me to step onto every single tile in the game to get it "mapped"

Regardless if the tile is a trap that causes massive damage, or if I can simply see the tile and map it out myself.

Very low quality of life

based on classic DND

somehow making people use deductive thinking skills makes this bad

What happened to playing games? Why do you need to consume without thinking? We don’t need more FF smooth brain garbage

Why is this bad? This is what I want from dungeons in big budget 3d games, too. Dungeons aren't fun to explore if they are just safe little lines.

Because this is just a bunch of nonsense shat out onto grid paper without any rhyme or reason.
Actual quality dungeon design has purpose and an overarching theme rather than being pure chaotic crap.
Go play Wizardry Gaiden to see what I mean.

This has plenty of purpose and design, you're just a fucking retard. There is a sensible way though the floor in question, but you don't actually play RPGs, so you wouldn't know.

Bonus: Japanese Dungeon Crawlers only have a 33% chance of including a skill/ability that allows you to step on trap tiles without taking damage.

This has plenty of purpose and design

lol. lmao.
DRPiggies will slurp up literally anything because they themselves can't even identify when they're being bullshitted by absolutely dogshit design.

Not him, but can you tell me which game has a good dungeon and specifically what parts of that dungeon make it good and well designed?

Wtf you just sold me on smt

Mogs your EO clone dungeon in your path

How do you respond without sounding mad?

I can tell just fine. This isn't one of those cases. You're just a fucking idiot.

I wish it's lack of popularity meant I could get more dungeons like these instead of the threatless hallways of SMTV.

I wish the game had EO's map shit so I didn't have to walk on damage tiles for that shit

posts a game that is over 15 years old

do fucks really do love just playing the hits don't you
what have you been doing since 2020

This map is pretty approachable once you understand it's 4 small levels crammed into one.

Has any other good classic dungeon crawler come out since 2020

I fully cleared Strange Journey and I fucking DESPISE this map

Now now, no brain usage here. Iust get scared by lots of teleporters and call it bad.

Shut the fuck up, American dungeon crawler are far more bullsiht cough cough wizardry 4 cough cough.

the guy is saying the series is bad because it's like this, he clearly has no interest in classic dungeon crawlers
and smt has not been like this in nearly 2 decades
why is he making threads like this? what games has he been playing? does he even keep up with the series anymore? or any game?
it just seems like he's trying to beckon to a time when this game was more in the Anon Babble zeitgeist. just a nostalgia fags, but nostalgia for Anon Babble threads. as to why i'm saying he likes to "play the hits"

Can you name 1 single American-made dungeon crawler anywhere near the difficulty of Wizardry 4?

I'll wait.

for me it's making my own maps

confusing puzzle and encounters every 10 seconds

I wanted to enjoy the gameplay of nocturne but fuck that

Dungeons like these didn't exactly make the game popular either

EXCUSE ME! I DON'T LIKE THIS GAME SO YOU SHOULD STOP MAKING IT OKAY!

JUST STOP IT! STOP RIGHT NOW!!!!

What causes this brand of autism?
I don't like shmups or fighting games, but I don't piss and shit myself when a difficult shmup or hardcore pandering fighting game comes out. In fact I hope the people who do like shmups and fighting games get lots of cool games for them to play and enjoy.
What's wrong with just not playing a game if you don't like it?
No one in the world has enough time to play every single game that comes out anyway

What game is this one?
Strange reminds me of Ginza in SMT 1

Strange Journey is the exception not the rule.
All the modern SMTs are nothing like that.
(which is a bad thing)

yea, that's SMT 1 ginza and some other places

I was just wondering if there was something I missed

Tile based > Not tile based

the entirety of 4th Brane is skippable

I still don't understand this

This is literally THE image that makes me want to play Strange Journey

I bet you hate real life mazes too

This isn't as bad as it looks but yeah, SMT is a dungeon crawling series and if you think THIS is bad then please never play SMT If... You'll literally shit yourself and die from outrage.

I like this exactly because women and younger generations literally CANNOT play these games. Their spatial abilities are fucked and their brains short out even in games with automap and clear navigation. Most complex spatial challenge they can take is interconnected hallways ala metroid.

doesn't the game have a built in automap?

There's nothing hardcore about mazes. They're tedious. They're fighting your own sense of boredom. SMTfags are such fucking fags.

Why are you bitching about games you've never played?

I have played and dropped SJ. I completed IV and V because they're actual games.

4 has a shit ton of mazes though. They're just not grid based.

And not even half as tedious. Oldschool SMT is just masochism.

You completed them because they had way simpler level design that your tiny brain could handle.
The definition of filtered.

Tokyo backtracking is impossibly more tedious than your usual floor in SJ.

There is nothing that my brain couldn't handle in that maze, I just felt the tedium and the sadism coming from the devs. You can't feel that because you're a slave morality retard.

Sector E isn't even remotely as bad as anything EO makes you go through on the 6th stratum.

It looks bad at a glance but you're doing this first person and slow, uncovering the map one bit at a time, it's not that bad. I don't think I've ever been lost in a drpg and I have fuck-all for sense of direction.

claret halow's teleport maze

Shit was fucked up.

filtered by amala labyrinth

i did this shit when i was 13 anon

huh. so SJ really is the best one in the series. thanks OP!

EO's FOE puzzle spam and easy shortcuts are still baby shit in comparison to real blobbin'

This can't be happening. Difficulty needs to be carefully dealt out in just enough small doses to keep me engaged but never actually stump me or force me to sit down and develop a method through. This should be a straight line with occasional paths that branch back to the main line with zero dead ends or loops, with two minibosses placed directly after save points. Yesterday I saw a Sodoku that only had two numbers filled in at the start, what kind of sick f*ck would make such a tedious bullshit puzzle

if you played redux you didn't play strange journey

Map spell in MT1 has it show up in the corner so you can continue to walk around

Map spell in SMT 1 shows it in a different menu

What the shit were they thinking

sit down and develop a method through.

You mean walking into every dead-end? Incredibly hardcore gameplay.

The real problem is that you need a database for the demon fusion system.
It's supposed to be a handheld game that you can play comfortably on the bed, but every 15 minutes you need to get up to look up stuff on your PC.

Redux makes the story not retarded, so it's worth it.

b-but my por-

Don't care. The damage the game did to the series can not be understated and it's why the alignment paths are fucked in SMT4 as well. Thank god they course corrected.

b-b-but I like everything but neutral being shi-

Not a real SMT fan.

They fixed it in the PS1 port.

gee wiz when you gonna see one of the OG dungeoncrawler maps from Wizardry or so

Every single SMT player uses that GitHub resource, sick of them pretending otherwise. Yeah, following a resource for the entire fucking game sure is hardcore. You didn't do the code snooping to learn this, you fucking vultures.

redux is better if you play on the intended difficulty
sj is a broken simple casual game

Incredibly hardcore gameplay

this but unironically

just negotiate every demon and fuck around bro it's not hard
negotiations sucks baals though kinda wish every game starting with IV had desu's auctions

You really don't need to optimize demons that much until maybe meme aleph or shekinah.

baal

Fuck off, judaized retard.

Thread theme: youtube.com/watch?v=DVap9Z4Z82I
I got stuck on this floor for hours because of one of the scannable walls I've missed near warp 21 in that image. I didn't want to consult a guide whatsoever, but had to because I was just wasting my time. I think it had to do something with the rare forma right next to warp 21? idk that was years ago

Excuse you, I just guessed and fused/negotiated random shit until I ended up with some half decent stuff and just played the game with that.

What is the intended difficulty?

And you use it to find the fastest route to Matarukaja or whatever the fuck. You know it's true.

Expert.

Not trying to be argumentative, but why do you think it's Expert vs, say, Easy/Normal mode, or even if there's a harder one? (I haven't played it, but I own the game and was thinking of starting it up relatively soon.)

Do not believe his lies

I'm not saying impossible because that's NG+ only difficulty. If you're not playing SMT games on the hard mode whenever available you're not playing them right.

he didn't figure out how to fuse high level demons on his own with shit demons

just buy the cheapest demons and figure it out from there dude.

Impossible, but you'll have to do an Expert playthrough first.
Impossible has modifiers impacting demon co-op and making the critical rate higher all around. That leads to much better balance, though with the advantage of a fleshed out comprendium and some other bonuses the game can still feel too easy. Redux as a whole is better than the original when it comes to balance (you can solo bosses in SJ if you know what you're doing, and that's not intended), but Normal is nowhere near scary enough to actually bring out the game's atmosphere.
Usually other SMT games with difficulty settings devolve into press turn abuse, but the beauty in Strange Journey is that there's none of that and the system meant to sort of replace it forces you to actually explore the whole repertoire of demons available depending on what alignment you're on. I still like IVA because it's kind of like digital crack, but the game is pretty fucking dumb all the way through.

redux is better if you play on the intended difficulty

Normal mode instead of hard? I still need to get around to Redux but I usually play SMT games on hard mode when I can.

I know this will just be filed as cope but Wizardry was often actively fucking with people. Barely counts.

Wizardry 2

nice bait now kill yourself

I hear this bullshit all the time for almost every SMT/Persona. Let me tell you, as someone who has played a lot of these games on release, you never need to do autistic fusion chains for min/max demons and you don't need hyper specific demons outside of maybe super bosses. Basic pattern recognition and negotiating with shit demons that have abilities you want for future fusions go a long ways.

Interesting

you don't need specific demons for super bosses either because pretty much every demon in the late game is a rape machine all too easily built

The thing that prevents me from playing impossible is the forced 0% escape rate in a game that does not have trafuri. This is the dumbest shit atlus does on higher difficulties.

Strange Journey isn't even that hardcore when it comes to dungeon design. You can easily keep your party healed up, hardly any traps, random encounters are easy to avoid, etc.

Nethack is pretty up there if your eyes aren't glued to the wiki.

It also has the benefit of clarifying what a bunch of moves do, instead of just giving you a vague notion ("severe" damage, but it's actually less). When the game itself fucking lies to you, you need that resource to even know which moves are worth keeping.

just do hours of experimentation

No, fuck you.

We used to do hours of experimentation in front of our CRTs right after school. It was the best.

we

(((Narrative spinner))) detected.

Potato Flowers in Full Bloom came out in 2022

Really wish Steam's tags didn't suck so much. Why isn't there a DRPG tag? Why is the bullet hell tag the vampire survivors clone slop zone?

Over 1 million copies sold, not counting Vengeance.

The wind puzzle at least asks you to use your brain instead of just walking into all the dead-ends to confirm that they're dead-ends.

Outside of SMT V's unique moves what game has this issue? Usually the light, moderate, heavy, and severe fall within a ballpark range of damage (e.g. light will be 80-100, heavy will be 120-150, etc.), but the tier above is always stronger than the tier below or at the very least better than the move within the same category. For example severe from gun might be lower than severe from an almighty spell, but is better than all gun heavy attacks.

I even checked the wiki for a few of the games and this is a consistent thing for them.

The challenge in blobbers isn't so much singling out bad ends as it is keeping track of the right path through increasingly complex layers of bullshit.

Everything from If.. feels like a blur, but I remember the upper levels of the school being fucking torture
That and fusioning and gathering tons of magnetite until the fucking students are done digging their stupid fucking holes
I have Ginza's theme burned into my brain

Well, you see,

Everything from If.. feels like a blur, but I remember the upper levels of the school being fucking torture

Endless teleport mazes as far as the eyes can see.
I don't know who the level designer was for that game off the top of my head but I hope he got help and is in a better place now. Because dude was clearly lashing out about something.

This post makes me feel like you can't even hope to design a good DRPG without losing your kids in a divorce or something. Good advice.

Fucking endless
There is also those 2 IDENTICAL rooms with teleport tiles in the section where your map is disabled
I remember being baffled for so long on that shit
I still don't understand why I even liked If... most of my memories are of frustration
World of Greed has a fucking cool song though

is there stat and level drain i have only played 3 and 5

I still don't understand why I even liked If... most of my memories are of frustration

There's a lot of little cool things in there but yeah, I have zero desire to ever replay it.

I still never actually did Akira's route
It's the only thing I'm missing from the classics
Well and the OG devil summoner, IF THEY EVER FINISH THE TRANSLATION
I might have to learn spanish of all things since the spanish translation is the one that's closest to release

bro I just wanna crawl let me crawl in peace
youtube.com/watch?v=hfYDQIfoE1w

what's keeping the devil summoner 1 tl? saturn hacking? they shoud do the psp port anyways

only time I ever really use the fusion chart is if I NEED specific things, otherwise I just wing it.

SMT2 PS1 english translation WHEN? I just want better shop UIs man

Pff i would kill for a porting of the nintendo hostaged smt or just a new good old style dungeon crawling.

What are some games like this with huge tile based/grid based maps
Obviously SMT and EO but any others?
In game map or expected to make my own are fine. Ideally turn based if possible.

drpgs are their own genre
dungeon travelers 2 and 2-2 are pretty nice. 2 was even published by atlus.
elminage is also pretty good but pretty hardcore. stranger of sword city is pretty nice too or labyrinth of refrain/galleria if you want something milder

The term you're looking for is dungeon crawlers or bloopers.

My favorite dungeon crawler is Grimrock 2

Might and Magic series (before 6)

Class of Heroes 1 and 2 are on steam and Switch with better localization than the original PSP. Hopefully we'll get 3 too one day.

Why bother the famicom is the better version anyway.

the shop UI sucks shit. examine these nuts if you want to know how much damage they do bozo

A small flaw against litterally everything working perfectly and in any case better than the ps1 version. At this point look for a mod or some ui fix i can be sure there is something out there for someone who had your problem.

Hope SMT VI manages to include dungeons more like this

A giant female demon in SMT4 made me sleep in her lap and asked to unbirth me, therefore your opinion is irrelevant.

Jesus christ sh2 and smt V had really shitty (or none at all) dungeon design. They really need to change their mindset.

Why is it always Eridanus when there are worse sectors in the game? You'd think they'd use Grus or something.

Babby's first teleporter filter

You think the shitposters played the game? You're too naive anon.

Chiyoda is extremely labyrinthine. You got lost in it if you actually played it. They did change their mindset: the overworld is now the dungeon.

That's Strange Journey which isn't like other SMT games, though. It's Etrian Odyssey with a SMT coat of paint.
That's part of why I fucking love SJ though, because EO is based.

But this time it actually feels like an organic place that exists rather than a video game maze.

SMTIV already did the overworld is the dungeon thing and it kind of sucked there too. You can definitely have both. It'd be really satisfying to have both. It'd keep the game's design focused just like in 1, 2 and SJ, where it just so happens the overworld is also the dungeon and the dungeon is all that matters.

labyrinthine

Not really, it's more of a different height setup. The location is extremely small even if it's build over four or five macro zones they have 2-3 main roads with some easily spottable shortcuts.
The fact the overworld is the new dungeon is not bad as an idea but a labyrinth is no fun if i can see all the patterns and passages from bare sight.

SMTIV already did the overworld is the dungeon thing and it kind of sucked there too.

Except that was on a handheld, and couldn't be realized even half as much.

inb4 the Switch is also a handheld

It's half console and there are no meaningful console generations anymore.

It's probably when they were filtered.

That's Strange Journey which isn't like other SMT games, though

SMT3 baby, please....

IV's Tokyo actually feels like a dungeon, though. That visual abstraction actually lets designers go even more nuts. It's why grids are also good for dungeon design, for example.

IV's Tokyo is just a map without battles, so I don't know what the fuck you're trying to say. It isn't comparable to V's overworld which has battles.

Shit like this is why SMT will never become a popular series.

and thank god for that.

Oh my god how dare a dungeon crawler have a mazelike and confusing structure for you to figure out!

Puzzles, status ailments, navigational challenges, a complex layout that opens up the more you progress through the game. It doesn't have battles per se but it forces you into certain areas where you do see not only battles but come across organically with side quests, NPCs, etc. Unlike V's map everything about IV feels hostile and out to get you. Your only real break are teleporters you unlock for fast travel, and they're still not gonna get you through all the way..

Nigger, IV's map is literally just a world map ala Nocturne/V's Tokyo where you just move around and enter buildings. You fundamentally are not understanding the conversation we're having.

Neither are you. You're misunderstanding presentation for design, you think the difference between a google maps symbol UI and a character in movable 3D space is actually important or that it affects the way the designer can fuck with you. That's beyond naive. It's stupid.

You can't possibly compare V's multiple overworlds where you can have battles and IV's Tokyo map which is just a world map. V also has this in Tokyo. You fundamentally do not understand this conversation, and you are likely a chatbot. Final response.

*Real* dungeon crawlers must have.
Traps
Floor hazards
Teleport mazes
Slick rooms
Dark rooms
Abilities Comp off zones
Anything that doesnt have those in combo after the first qurater of the game, i cannot consider them dungeon crawlers at all.

You're saying absolutely nothing. If I'm a chatbot then you're a wall. You have no fucking idea of how to even design interesting navegational challenges for a player. Play IV again if you wanna find out how.

Something I miss about old school dungeon crawlers where you had to make actual paper maps, is just how much your could get disoriented by a trap spinning you around or dropping you to a previous floor. You could get dropped/teleported to an area you've already mapped out and not even recognize it at first. Even EO doesn't have this kind of interaction because it still tracks the direction you are facing and syncs the tile you are on with your completed maps

I forget trapdoors even if it can be considered floor hazards.

is just how much your could get disoriented by a trap spinning you around or dropping you to a previous floor.

Does Wizardry or whatever even let you know this happened?

You forgot one-way doors and hidden pathways you need items or a spell to see.

And good riddance to that.
Most of the classic games just gave you a spell to literally read your coordinates anyway so you know where you got teleported. It was a massive chore.

Something like this in a game with EO's mapping tools would be cool though.

I'll take your silence as a negative.

you silently fall to a completely different floor

this is okay

It's just masochism. Pretty sure Wizardry had a jew main dev, too.

True even if i am not fan of the hidden pathaways.

This really is beyond retarded, and only exists to allow for masochism. If you existed in this game, and you fell through the fucking floor, you would be aware of this. A good game would say "I just fell several feet." The jewish game designers decided you can't trust your own fucking brain.

Saying "jew" doesn't validate everything you say. Now please go back to /pol and fuck off retard. You were never a fan of this genre, why are you even here?

Complaining about me saying jew doesn't invalidate everything I said. Engage with the words I said, or accept your loss.

What like you get disoriented after you get spun or teleported and use a spell to realign yourself with the in game map?

The Llylgamyn games aren't that masochistic. You can use spells early on to track your position with a map that at least lets you know where you're standing and on which floor. You also get slight animations if your view shifts to one side or the other. Navigation is a challenge, but it's still a game and not really meant to be impossible. Beating those first three games should be a rite of passage for anyone actually interested in blobbers.
Beating IV without a guide should be something you aim to do once in your life if you truly value the genre.

t. jew

Yeah and you actually have to draw stuff manually instead of following your gay little dot on some uncharted paper like you had perfect spatial awareness in a dense and hostile environment. Where's the La Mulana of blobbers?

Basically it should never be a situation where you "realize" you fell floors, because that already keeps you from role-playing. You would immediately be aware of falling, so the game should tell you that.

There is nothing to engage, you are a retard that can't play a dungeon crawler without an automap. What do you want a prize? I can track a dark room with a trapdoor just following the lack of progress of an already explored room under me, if you can't tough luck, litterally your skills are inferior and you can't play anything of this genre before the 00.

they think that's complicated? old wrpg dungeon crawlers had NO casualbabby automapping feature (you got your sheets of math paper out and gridded by hand) and the developers would constantly put "fuck you" trapped tiles in which were intended to mess with your mapping. they didn't have rhyme or reason besides "fuck you, this is a good spot to mess with your perception"

gif(t)

not animated

Eridanus wasn't even complicated and people who post that image in the OP generally haven't played SJ. The later dungeons were worse since the budget ran out and they had to reuse old gimmicks in really unfun ways. Eridanus was probably the peak in terms of level design for SJ.

There is no justifiable reason to accept that you just got warped or fell through a fucking floor without any notice. You're just a masochist.

No, like you can tell. From an animation. The game already gets goofy enough with those !DARK ZONE! !!OUCH!! messages.

Name 1 (one) besides Persona Q ?

they didn't have rhyme or reason besides "fuck you, this is a good spot to mess with your perception"

literally a dead talent

Ok, fair. That's what I wanted to know.

Also you're not even a real nigga if you didn't write your own mapping software (or use emacs, fuck it) to draw maps.

I swear IVfags live in some alternate dimension where their game actually is this golden goose pinnacle of the franchise. Navigational challenges and puzzles? In the Tokyo overworld map? Not in any meaningful manner, unless you think "this section of the map is drawn in such a way that I can't make out which parts of it are traversable" is a navigational challenge.

literally a dead talent

Pretty sure that's the jew specialty.

I'm a proud masochist, and jews are my sadistic daddy!

Writing spells on silicon for others to interact with is literally one of the most jewish things you could do. Making occult campaigns using these nefarious kabbalastic ways about diving deep into the skull of jews and braving the darkness therein through a pseudo-stochastic simulation of combined goyim effort is also one of the most jewish things you could ever do. Making the fourth game in your wildly successful series of quantum-affecting antiantiparticle-led spells about a weak wizard, the villain of your previous games and clearly your jewish self insert, with a limited stock of golems braving Sheol itself and making you feel every part of it is also the most jewish thing you could ever do.
And you know what? That's kinda cool. Still not as cool as replacing the sprites in this formula with a bunch of sexy little girls and adding some random loot synthetic fent to all of it, but it's still pretty cool desu.
It's okay to hate Israel but like Wizardry. And some jews.

It's okay to hate Israel but like Wizardry.

Nah.

Yeah.

No, jew.

Would the Japanese like jews? Because alt righters and Wiz go hand in hand over there. Class of Heroes? Etrian Odyssey? Chudcore 101.

SMT is already a popular series, thanks to the faggotry that you just pointed out.

I want to make one myself. Just pure dungeon crawling. Not sure what kind of combat system would work the best though I was thinking of making it a solo RPG.

1.1 million without Vengeance, to be exact. Which is officially more than P3R and Metaphor

Anon you do know that that game is a literal meme that was made purely for the shits and giggles, right?

I mean, yeah, but that doesn't disqualify it. The guide is super good.

the overworld is now the dungeon.

except there are no hazards and encounters are easily ran past, and a full heal is but a singular press of the "bring me to the healing spot" button

nta but he's sort of right, older SMT games have dungeons seperated by the world map, and you need to travel through one zone to get to another. SJ and EO both have the structure of having a home base that you leave to go into the dungeon. the ship serves as the town you return to between dungeon crawls

Then make it less easy to warp. There is a middle ground between your autistic dead-end mapping that only extremely autistic retards like, and things that human beings can like. Am I wrong? Get mad.

This is kino

Yeah they need to innovate their gameplay a bit ay. Exp 33 really shows that, though even that game has aged gameplay.
I think Fire Emblem is the better example they have to look too. It and Mario for platforming. They have 3D games with no platforming really, other than SMTV which had a small amount (and it made it fun for me, though it was still kinda janky).

That said, Exp33 shows how NOT to do platforming because that games platforming is PAIN when forced (the beaches made this clear to me). SMT V was never like that. The platforming was lighter and smooth.

Ok, don't play this one, it's notorious in the community.

Exp 33 really shows that

Expedition 33 becoming a trendsetter would mean the death of turn based RPGs, the same as how Souls and Sekiro killed action games.

They're never even mentioned in the same breath.

I feel like Roguelikes swing between insanely easy and insanely hard depending on the roll, but fuck it, I'll allow it.

Yeah it's a neat game but I would really rather it not be the standard for RPGs going forward.

I just want monsters I can see in the dungeon and better platforming in general. Demi runs around like a robot and it's frustrating at times.

And things like investing in certain skills can make the game harder too because they make you do less damage eventually.

But it's the better game, it just has very silly writing at times.

I got up to oroborous and then lost interest
Idk how far into the game that was

Expedition 33 becoming a trendsetter would mean the death of turn based RPGs

Complete nonsense. It looks STUNNING.
But SMT already does better with the platforming and the parry and skill mechanics in Exp33 aren't that crash hot to me. A bit too simple. Then again, SMT's are a bit too simple too nowadays.

They have to get harder, much much harder.
And not SMT3 "let's scale damage inversely to how much you put into magic (is it magic that does that?)" harder, that's silly.

Took me two fucking hours before I gave up and used a map and I was still confused

or you could play a franchise that does what you want instead of demanding the dungeon crawler franchise not have dungeon crawls

What I do dislike are social link mechanics which don't really do much and the characters just sorta fuck around for a bit. I thought Exp33 had finally done that... but no it's even worse in that and it just becomes a fireside chat at some point.
You might as well not have it.

SMT V (orig) has... some of the most uncomfortable character interactions and plot developments I've experienced though. Not intentionally either clearly.
Some of the moments are so fucking funny. That was kinda missing in Metaphor because that was their most clean writing so far. Persona does this a bit though, just not as cheese as SMT V... that was something else. You couldn't even repeat that if you tried. Loved it.

persona 2

I like E33 but it does literally nothing to innovate anything. Timed hits on defense that result in offensive rewards was a thing in Paper Mario TTYD and the areas are also mostly just very nice looking hallways. Even the passive stuff is mostly just a take on Paper Mario's badge system. it's a very good game I do not contest that but people acting like it's some kind of revelation on the genre surprises me because it's most like one of the more casual and mainstream franchises in the space

There are no good JRPGs anymore, so you'll have to coexist with former FF/Pokemon fans and other such fags you don't like.

other such fags you don't like

we writing fanfiction about me now? either way I have a pretty big backlog so I'm not exactly too pressed to be constantly consuming new things