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But the existence of the "you" that you believe in is so tenuous - Shin Megami Tensei/Persona General

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Vanargand said:
>Myth is a mysterious youkai that appeared from the seas and gave a prophecy to a village "Every six months harvest will be the most abundant, but so will disease. Show the sick my picture

>Has a sidequest where its super curious about Idols and Nahobino works as the producer for a while

>Exclusive move is showing off under the spotlight


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rGW15eMWlc&ab_channel=BuffMaister
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They've also apparently said they'll be bringing back fusion accident exclusive demons? Which, if so - why, on God's green earth?
 
Playing SMT V Vengence, even if just for a little while reminds me that I have a one sided feud with a 93 year old feminist knitting expert.

(The works of Barbara G Walker form the basis of a lot of SMT's takes on mythology)
 
Sucal said:
Playing SMT V Vengence, even if just for a little while reminds me that I have a one sided feud with a 93 year old feminist knitting expert.

(The works of Barbara G Walker form the basis of a lot of SMT's takes on mythology)
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I didn't know SMT's worldbuilding was based on her work. Why exactly do you have a thing against her?
 
Look to the Left said:
I didn't know SMT's worldbuilding was based on her work. Why exactly do you have a thing against her?
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It is really really really bad both historically and mythologically.
I don't have the book in front of me, but off the top of my head

For example, it's got the Irish teacher of heroes Scathach as another name for the Norse Goddess Skadi.

Or that the word 'Bitch' became a naughty word because it referenced the most important title of the Goddess Artemis-Diana.
Or that Gorgon/Medusa/Athena were three aspects of an original mother goddess that Christianity tried to cover up.

'The women's Encyclopaedia of myths and secrets' is honestly worse then I can quote when I'm not at home.
 
The Women's Encyclopaedia of Myths and Secrets is a book that takes a feminist interpretation of a lot of mythologies, which in and of itself is perfectly fine and normal—it's just that Barbara Walker is absolutely terrible when it comes to making shit up, so she'll just Say Things without any real setup.

She claims that Scáthach was another name for Skadi, yes, but also claims that both are aspects of the goddess Kali from Hinduism, which she says is an aspect of "Black Cailleach", a celto-teutonic goddess that gave Scotland its name. There's also other stuff like claiming that effigies of Balder are burned in festivals in Ireland to this day which is where the Gingerbread Man came from, claiming that Nemain, a warrior-goddess from Irish mythology was a "Celtic Valkyrie", and that Cú Chulainn was an avatar of Baal-Zebul and a shapeshifting insect creature.

Very few of these are cited or sourced and very few of the citations or sources actually support her claims, but the book got used as a setup for some SMT stuff and it's pretty ingrained now. It's why Scáthach will often evolve into Skadi in games where that's a mechanic.
 
Question for those who have played SMT V: V. How significant do the new QOL improvements feel?

I slept on SMT V when it came out, and wound up picking it up on sale (cost bout $30-40) which turned out to be a few weeks before V: V was announced, with them hyping up improvements that also applied to the creation path. Because of that I was put off and didn't play since then (I was hoping they'd release an upgrade pack or something, which is not something Atlus does).

So now I'm trying to decide if I want to drop $70 on V: V, and the QOL videos are looking really appealing (especially things like reducing the impact of level, MC respec, demon passives and synergies, etc.)
 
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Huttj said:
Question for those who have played SMT V: V. How significant do the new QOL improvements feel?

I slept on SMT V when it came out, and wound up picking it up on sale (cost bout $30-40) which turned out to be a few weeks before V: V was announced, with them hyping up improvements that also applied to the creation path. Because of that I was put off and didn't play since then (I was hoping they'd release an upgrade pack or something, which is not something Atlus does).

So now I'm trying to decide if I want to drop $70 on V: V, and the QOL videos are looking really appealing (especially things like reducing the impact of level, MC respec, demon passives and synergies, etc.)
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I would say substantial. Arguably the main combat gameplay is unchanged. The lack of level scaling makes it a tad easier to cheese higher level encounters, the demon traits are minimally useful outside of a small minority of standouts. But for 99% of the game you'll be doing the standard SMT loop of Spyglass > Buff > debuff > spam weakness > Dampener the big attacks.

Biggest QOL improvement are the Magutsushi Rails. Think of them as basically shortcuts you unlock. They are very intelligently placed. In original SMTV there's an absolute truckload of side quests that require you to drag yourself to the ass end of nowhere what feels like miles away from any save points. In SMTVV if you get there first? No biggie. 99% of the time you'll just unlock a rail that takes you back to a central hub. Travel time went from one of the biggest headaches in SMTV to trivial. Save anywhere is also mega helpful since, again, SMTV had a ton of difficult fights that were far from savepoints so every time you died you had to do a near Dark Souls level of a corpse run. Now with save anywhere there's not that much more of an issue, now progress loss is solely because you forgot to save. Ironically I wish it had an autosave feature, cause sometimes I just forget. =P

The Demon Haunts are sorta okay, but quickly become a chore. They give you just useful enough rewards that it's optimal to use it, but not useful enough to get you excited, barring the rare +3 stat bonus you get from chatting with Aogami, which tends to occur after every major boss.

So long story short, SMTVV sands off the exploration frustration while keeping the combat more or less unchanged.

I will say, having played up through the new area, the 'improved story' stuff is not holding up. It's like... still SMTV. Everything's flimsy, characterizations are iffy, the story isn't just barebones it's not very interesting. Play it for the gameplay, not the narrative.
 
I was aware of her Scathath stuff from FGO, but Cu being a Kamen Rider in addition to a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist is news to me.:V
 
Grue said:
I was aware of her Scathath stuff from FGO, but Cu being a Kamen Rider in addition to a Yu-Gi-Oh protagonist is news to me.:V
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There's more stuff to it as well, but the thing that bugs me the most is that she takes a really contemptuous attitude towards the legends. To use Cú as an example again, Barbara Walker's interpretation is that Cú's death was a ritual sacrifice arranged by Scáthach, or Skadi, in order to bring forth spring from eternal winter. The exact terms used to discuss his death are things like "Later Irish writers pretended that Cú Chulainn was not ignominiously trussed up to his pillar as a sacrifice", and "therefore they invented the legend that, wounded and knowing himself doomed, Cú Chulainn tied himself to a sacred pillar..." and whatnot.

The implication that later Irish writers transcribing things like the Táin Bó Cúailnge in the heavily Christian monasteries were, in the 11th and 12th centuries, actively de-Christianising the Irish legends, of course, goes completely unexamined.
 
Complaining about The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets being influential on fiction is sort of like complaining about The Divine Comedy being influential. It just seems pointless.
 
As someone who is a huge fan of Cu Chulainn in Fate and here, I'm so glad they gave him a tool which makes me want to use him through endgame in Vengeance.

Gae Bolg is stupid busted. Medium Strength based Force damage, Pierce, always crits. Perfection.

Sorry Alice, but Idun's got a new Forever Friend on my frontline. It's free Press Turns!
 
The heal spells are named "Dia", the studio is made of a bunch of ex-Persona people, Hashino is working on it, there are not-Persona called Archetypes, it has Press Turns and Digital Devil Saga style combos.
 
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