I miss this art style

[TheShadowHatter]

Newer SMT/Persona games have abandoned this style, but I miss it. It's what gave Atlus RPGs that special flavor for me. I always loved that weird shaded upper lip and the other quirky things these human designs had. They set themselves apart from the same generic anime styles. Now, while their art/graphics have improved, they left behind this unique style and it makes me sad.

[mdesaleah]

The main artist behind this art style left the series right before SMT4.

He has done some other games, like designing Dante and Vergils DMC3 devil forms. And he also designed a boss in Zone of the Enders 2.

[TheShadowHatter]

Damn that is actually depressing to hear. That artist is the main reason I fell in love with SMT in the first place. Their art style was so unique and appealing to me that it was what set it apart from Final Fantasy (both being RPG series with reoccuring elements like monsters/dieties). I was looking forward to one day having a SMT: Imagine style game where we made our own character again but had an offline game experience. Man you just ruined my night with this lol not your fault obviously but damn that makes me sad.

[mdesaleah]

Originally posted by TheShadowHatter:

Damn that is actually depressing to hear. That artist is the main reason I fell in love with SMT in the first place. Their art style was so unique and appealing to me that it was what set it apart from Final Fantasy (both being RPG series with reoccuring elements like monsters/dieties). I was looking forward to one day having a SMT: Imagine style game where we made our own character again but had an offline game experience. Man you just ruined my night with this lol not your fault obviously but damn that makes me sad.

The last thing he did with Atlus was work on the initial draft of SMT4 and it apparently being massive (but has never been fully translated). Would love to read that someday, since that was used as the base for the game.

The last game with his demon designs and art style for characters was Strange Journey on the DS. (Strange Journey Redux replaced his character art though, so not the 3DS version)

[TheShadowHatter]

I wish he'd come back.

[141]

Based, the best one

[TheShadowHatter]

in my opinion the ONLY ONE! I still love SMT/Persona games, but they really lost the charm that games like this had.

[SkaaTerminator]

As much as I love his art style more than the others, he is never coming back. Doi has been doing a good job although I will always prefer Kaneko’s art. He literally left Atlus last year, he was mostly taking a back seat to the rest of the artists. He first did artwork in Digital Devil Story Megami Tensei 2 and last was Strange Journey with his character designs but fully last with Devil Survivor 1 with the final boss and taking a backseat until 2024.

[TheShadowHatter]

Yup it sucks he's never coming back because that means these designs will only be preserved with games like this and nothing more.

[chel]

it'd take a fella quite a while to work through the entire ps2 smt catalogue. personally had a great time with the raidou games.
the top lipstick era may be dead, but it was a generous one indeed.