How difficult is it really?

[Godzhilla]

Always heard SMT was a difficult series. My question is just how difficult and in what way?

Does the game do a good job at explaining its mechanics? Can I get through the story without a guide?

I'm comfortable with jrpg's and have played Persona. I enjoy Hard difficulty in Persona but haven't been interested in trying the difficulty above that.

[Scottdog]

If you beat Persona 5 on hard you'll be fine.

[:pensive:]

it's not as crazy as p5 where the MC is a literal god

but it gets close to that really quick.

[omgitsbees]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Godzhilla:

Always heard SMT was a difficult series. My question is just how difficult and in what way?

Does the game do a good job at explaining its mechanics? Can I get through the story without a guide?

I'm comfortable with jrpg's and have played Persona. I enjoy Hard difficulty in Persona but haven't been interested in trying the difficulty above that.

SMTV is really easy if you just want to experience the story and chill out while playing it. There are multiple difficulty settings and they range anywhere from no challenge at all, to brutal difficulty.

[Overread]

I think one big factor on difficulty is that this isn't a Pokemon style game.

So whilst you can defeat most area mobs with almost any decent combination and use of creatures, with some specialists; when it comes to the bosses and powerful monsters on the field you'll have to craft your team up for them. This means changing up the composition and being happy to recombine and merge demons into other forms to get different abilities and so forth.

This is very much less a game where you just pick a team of almost "whatever" as you go and where you can out-level things if they are a bit tough. You will get some periods where you will have to gather levels and so forth; but you're very much learnign to read the bosses and the abilities and designing your team around that.

I think people who don't grasp that and try to treat it like pokemon, find it a LOT harder or far far far more of a grind as they try to out-level the opponents.



So always be ready and happy to change up your team as the situation demands and be ready to lose to a boss so you learn how they perform before you craft up.

[CHIEF]

Probably unpopular opinion but I found SMT V to be much harder than avg. It's probably top 5 in difficulty imo and I've played thru SMT 1-4, P1-5 and various side games. Only game I think I got my ass kicked more was Strange Journey.

Most games are difficult because the maps are insanely evil but with V it's the combat. It's the only SMT I can recall playing with such extreme level checks. Also the min/maxing of abilities and exploitation of all the systems requires mastery on the level of DDS.

Curious what other ppl think are harder SMT games and why?

[Kiln]

If you liked hard in Persona start at medium in SMTV.
Persona games are basically 'SMT Lite' they give the player a ton of advantages the opposing team doesn't have, and broadly speaking the enemy composition and tactics in Persona titles are really pulling their punches, even in the super bosses.
In SMT, things are more symmetrical- the enemy can do everything you can, there are a LOT more mechanics to deal with, and more variable in every fight since you are composing the entire party not just the protagonist.

[Puns]

There might be some stuff that the game doesn't explain to you, but I believe the tutorials pretty much covers everything you need to know. If persona 5 Royal or Persona 3 reloaded is your benchmark for difficulty, then this game will push your ♥♥♥♥ in so far it might come out the other end.

[archonsod]

Opprinnelig skrevet av TSVStriFe:

Persona 3 (FES) wants to have a word with you on Hard. That game can be quite unforgiving, especially when the AI controls the characters :P

Yeah, but that's mainly because P3's AI was only slightly less intelligent than the average cabbage. You can pretty much get the same difficulty in any of the Persona or SMT games by simply closing your eyes and randomly selecting actions during a battle.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Godzhilla:

Always heard SMT was a difficult series. My question is just how difficult and in what way?

Pretty much all of the SMT/Persona style games have the same problem; early game when you've got limited options and are having to experiment to figure out what is weak to what they're hard. Once you've got it figured out though the combat largely becomes autopilot until you hit one of the gimmicky boss battles.
SMT just tends to be a bit less forgiving than Persona - turn up to a fight with the wrong mix of demons and you'll get slaughtered, often in one round. There's not really the same scope for simply brute forcing your way through as you can in Persona.

[Scorpix]

Everything depends from you, how hard it will. SMT wants from you to use all resources you have. Buffs, debuffs, using dmg type against enemy who is weak to it to get extra turns, even items are important.
If you are going to ignore any aspect of the fight you are going to have a hard time

[A.K.T.]

Since you've played P5, I feel like it's good to mention that the way that SMT is difficult is somewhat similar to how that game's Merciless difficulty works. Which is to say that Merciless is easier than Hard if you're using the game's mechanics properly and striking weaknesses, technicals, crits, etc. And if you don't do that you'll struggle a lot.

The core mechanics aren't that hard to grasp and it's explained well enough to figure everything out, so you don't really need to worry about being blindsided by unexpected rules. But if you slip up and make a serious error (ex. hitting an enemy's drain, exposed weakness to a boss element) the game will absolutely punish you for it.

I'd say P5 on Hard is a bit easier than SMT5 on Normal, and that'll probably be the difficulty you want to start on. Casual is easier than P5 Hard, and ends up having an awkward difficulty curve where parts of the game are very easy and others aren't that far off from Normal. Don't play on Safety because SMT5 Safety is immensely easier than any other Safety difficulty in any Atlus game. You deal 10x damage and take 1/10 damage, alongside some other really extreme modifiers.

[Frostea]

You know how in most RPGs you can just spam whatever your strongest ability is and heals and you’ll get through the game just fine. The only thing hard about SMT is that it doesn’t work most of the time. Because of the way press turn works, if you’re not buffing and exploiting weaknesses, the game will steamroll you because you better believe that the enemy will. And they play by the same rules you do.

[Daigoji Gai]

Grab a demon guide, level up and grind. Everything is a cake walk if you are prerpared and learn the game systems, especially elemental weaknesses and debuffs. The matama xp and currency boosts that come from pre-order dungeons can make it even easier.

[Demigod Dan]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Stoibs:

Bare in mind also that ATLUS 're-release' games tend to have soooo many crutches and caveats and borderline cheats to them that kind of skewed the balance significantly (P5R and P3R basically made the player into superheroes)

While that might not necessarily carry over the same here for SMT, my money is on it being even easier than the Vanilla Switch game.

Unless it's specifically advertised as a 'difficult' game for streamers e.g. Jump King or difficulty is a staple of its genre (souls-like) then we won't ever get difficult games anymore, ever.

What Stoibs here says is the future for all recent and future SMT releases. Lower difficulty = more purchases and investors / new direction for the SMT franchise clearly don't value the people who want this franchise to be unforgivingly hard (no, being able to switch to loweest difficulty possibly at any point in time and having those DLC cheats is not unforgiving for example). They want to try and tap into the Pokemon crowd money e.g. creature collecting, flipping assets of the same old demons as much as possible in a slightly different environment skin. That's what this franchise has become.

The whole post apocalyptic vibe it had going for it (there being a choice in this = immersion breaking) has been losing its appeal especially thanks to the extremely dumbed down forgiving difficulty options, so you're fine OP.

[Frostea]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Demigod Dan:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Stoibs:

Bare in mind also that ATLUS 're-release' games tend to have soooo many crutches and caveats and borderline cheats to them that kind of skewed the balance significantly (P5R and P3R basically made the player into superheroes)

While that might not necessarily carry over the same here for SMT, my money is on it being even easier than the Vanilla Switch game.

Unless it's specifically advertised as a 'difficult' game for streamers e.g. Jump King or difficulty is a staple of its genre (souls-like) then we won't ever get difficult games anymore, ever.

What Stoibs here says is the future for all recent and future SMT releases. Lower difficulty = more purchases and investors / new direction for the SMT franchise clearly don't value the people who want this franchise to be unforgivingly hard (no, being able to switch to loweest difficulty possibly at any point in time and having those DLC cheats is not unforgiving for example). They want to try and tap into the Pokemon crowd money e.g. creature collecting, flipping assets of the same old demons as much as possible in a slightly different environment skin. That's what this franchise has become.

SMT has never been hard for anyone with half a brain.

[JCKLNTRN]

It will punish mistakes, but isn't unfair.