frogge

I think your assessment of the Neutral route as a general concept is pretty on point. I guess if you're the kind of person who assumes humanity will figure it out it might be optimistic? That's the best I've got.

If you're interested in other offshoots' take on Law/Neutral/Chaos and feel like adding more to that absurdly long backlog, Devil Survivor's a great diversion too if you've never played it - there's one neutral route in particular that stands out to me as a very firm non-return to status quo. (Also it's just a great game in general, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on with it beyond that.)

jami lynne @lynnedrum12/23/2022, 11:04 AM

it certainly is an AWFUL amount of SMT.... but tbh, especially for the first person ones, they make for pretty excellent podcast games. and yeah, i think the neutral endings as they are are very simple to write and make sound "good", even if they aren't ultimately suggesting anything in particular. it certainly would be nice if humanity figured it out. i am genuinely rooting for us. but its gonna take some real fuckin work and none of that has nothin to do with killing God and the devil and all of their friends.

interesting about Devil Survivor! I've got it on my 3DS and I've been hearing more and more ppl in favor of it lately. I think on the surface, the art style put me off of it for a while. Not that it's bad, but I'm pretty ride or die for Kazuma Kaneko and the tone his design lends to the series, so I always assumed those games wouldn't have the substance I really wanted from SMT. I'd be more than pleased to be wrong though! I'll have to fire it up sometime! thanks for reading!

Binary @binary12/23/2022, 1:32 PM

Of course!

For what it's worth, as much as I love Kaneko and what his designs do for setting the tone of the series generally, Digital Devil Saga and Raidou are MUCH more divergent from the core series and the kind of things it tackles than Devil Survivor. (Raidou has a WAY more lighthearted vibe in general. They're both great though.)

jami lynne @lynnedrum12/23/2022, 10:01 PM

oh yeah, I definitely expect Raidou to be pretty clownshoes, but its something I wanna stream (hot off finishing nocturne on stream) as a bit of a palate cleanser! DDS on the other hand, I know is a pretty different tone/fictional scope than standard SMT but the character designs feel so much like Kaneko firing on all cylinders that, even if I hear the second one drops the ball in some ways, I GOTTA get in there

Binary @binary12/23/2022, 10:12 PM

I love DDS. It's like Nocturne if everyone's the demifiend and has skill trees instead of Magatama, and it's got a definite vibe to it.

Semi-morto @metalhead12/23/2022, 12:46 AM

What a good read! I think the only game that actually tackles that question is strange journey redux, even if so slightly

jami lynne @lynnedrum12/23/2022, 10:57 AM

interesting to hear! i decided to go with original strange journey because I am Kazuma Kaneko faithful, but perhaps if I ever make time for a replay I'll have to check out Redux. the most i heard about it was that the additional dungeons were excessive and make an already kind of easy game even easier, and that the new endings weren't much to write home about. but you're the second person in the past couple days now to say Redux tackles this exact thing to some extent, so I guess I gotta at least see.

Semi-morto @metalhead12/25/2022, 1:34 AM

I do prefer the OG one, redux has some ... decisions i guess? That are kinda weird but overall it is an ok experience

jami lynne @lynnedrum12/25/2022, 6:08 AM

yeah i'm not sure who looked at strange journey and thought "man we gotta put a waifu in this thing" but they did do that. the UI changes are also rly strange to me. but idk you're def not the first person to say this addresses what I'm talking about to some degree so who knows if my SMT disease will let me get away with not replaying Strange Journey just after beating it

@Gabbb1/26/2023, 9:14 PM

The new dungeon is definitely time consuming, it's like another 50% of the game if you choose to go through it to get the new endings. But I do actually like the writing, lol. My one big criticism of Strange Journey is just that while the music works for itself, it does not work out of context as something to listen to as just "good music" like most SMT games and spinoffs tend to have.

jami lynne @lynnedrum2/1/2023, 8:16 PM

yeah it took me a while to warm on the soundtrack and did end up loving it in context by the end. but its hard to say there are bangers, aside from maybe the main boss theme. the arrangement of that track team ladybug made for SMT Synchronicity Prologue SLAPS tho https://youtu.be/k-wRN5GKrx0

@Gabbb1/26/2023, 9:11 PM

This is a really good post. Don't know if the version you're playing is Strange Journey Redux or not, but that specific version of the game more than any other SMT game that I've played is what really seems to be tackling these questions due to the remixed Law, Neutral, and Chaos endings you can find. It's the only time I've actually bothered to go back and replay the game myself to get all the endings instead of getting one naturally and then looking up the others online.

edit: SMT4: Apocalypse actually also does this, it does not even have the options to align with Law or Chaos, spinning off from an assumed Neutral route of the base SMT4 story with only "individualism" or "community" routes (dunno if that's what it calls these routes just the best way I can think of to summarize them. You could alternately frame them as "I hate these anime kids" or "I can at least tolerate these anime kids" respectively)

jami lynne @lynnedrum2/1/2023, 8:33 PM

thank you for reading!! i was playing Strange Journey (normal) but I've started poking around in Redux in my spare time... like a fool... we'll see but I do think it's interesting that so many ppl have cited Redux as addressing this stuff. I'm glad to hear positive stuff about it, because a lot of the sentiment about the extra content in that game is from curmudgeons. Apocalypse as well! I really wanna get to it! But I have to finish 4 itself first.

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