Current Events > Whats a JRPG with a system as good as SMT's press turn?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The combination of press turn and demon collecting is so addicting

i don't get the appeal of press turn

you already get bonus damage for doing the bare minimum strategy, but you're rewarded with doubling the amount of turns you get
i don't know how anyone can say the series is hard when you have such a powerful and abusable mechanic that's greatly weighed in your favor
fusion is fun, even if it's abusable. it can be satisfying to see an op demon destroy something

i think devil survivor is actually a better take on the series combat. it's too shallow to really be that appealing in a long rpg and it really lends itself into the short battle format

i think grandia has really good combat, 3 in particular being the best, but it's way too easy for the most part and little things like unskippable animations detract from the experience. 3 ramps up in difficulty noticeably after a point which is a big reason i prefer it over the rest, but i really wish the games had a difficulty that really lets you take advantage of the great battle system

Octopath Traveler has essentially the same thing but instead of getting extra turns you deprive the enemy of turns. Under the right circumstances it's possible to stunlock an enemy for the whole fight.

Illuminoius posted...

you already get bonus damage for doing the bare minimum strategy, but you're rewarded with doubling the amount of turns you get

It's interesting because
1) enemies can do it too
2) Order becomes more important to maximize turns
3) Physical attacks don't tend to be nulled or a weakness like magical ones are which creates a different niche in the party for physical attackers

The series isn't always so hard as people say (looking at SMT IV) but generally it's not press turn itself that makes the games hard, but encounter rates and ambushes, macca economy for healing, the MC death = Game Over rule, and insta kills

Also it won't be so hard if you don't actually play on Hard

Tyranthraxus posted...

Octopath Traveler has essentially the same thing but instead of getting extra turns you deprive the enemy of turns. Under the right circumstances it's possible to stunlock an enemy for the whole fight.

Yeah I loved playing that game despite the bland stories

Doe posted...

encounter rates

really low for the most, and if you equip passives that reduce the chances of enemies striking first that's basically 90% of nocturne's difficulty gone. the fact that you basically always go first in 4 makes random encounters mostly a joke in this series, especially in apocalypse where you can just autobattle because nozomi just locks down everything with her ailments
estoma also dramatically lowers the encounter rate in nocturne, and the modern games have on-field enemies you can get a first strike on

Doe posted...

macca economy for healing

never actually an issue at any point in basically any game. money's really easy to come by, especially in strange journey where you can just kill some joke enemy search battles for insane amounts of money (kanbari most notably can be autobattled as soon as you hit carina)
pretty much all of your money is spent on fusion because there really isn't that much else to actually pay for. healing tends to be pretty cheap and items are not very necessary so you'll likely just keep mountains of macca at hand until you find a demon you want to splurge to get

Doe posted...

insta kills

in nocturne in particular, instant death both has to pass an accuracy check and a infliction chance, in addition to hitting the mc which has a natural hidden resistance to instant death. it's alarmingly unlikely for instant death to really fuck you over, and it's so uncommonly used by enemies anyways. i don't care for instant death but it's weirdly something the playerbase really latches onto despite instant death having tons of counterplay in every game, with some bosses like mithras being a total meme because you just use makarakarn and it literally cannot do anything

Doe posted...

MC death

if anything mc death doesn't really matter. mc is generally the best character in the game and defensively usually really good as well. outside of dumb things like ma and a very unlucky disaster cycle it's pretty hard for things to kill the main character first unless your build is directly hardcountered by the enemy, and even then in games like nocturne where you can reduce accuracy to 20% or lower and halve damage it's really hard to actually die even when the enemy actually does get extra press turns off a lucky crit/weakness exploit
if anything the series should remove mc death to allow the enemy to have even nastier tricks

Doe posted...

Also it won't be so hard if you don't actually play on Hard

it's never that hard anyways

smt is a skill check. you either play by its rules and utilize the very strong mechanics the games give you (sources, fusion, essences, press turn, buffs/debuffs) and breeze through the series or struggle because you're trying to fight a boss with terrible demons and you're not using strong options. it's not really that much more difficult than other rpgs. it just has a higher floor than other rpgs because it usually expects you to at least use press turn and buffs

edit: also i was wrong. stacking defensive options in nocturne reduces damage to 25% and not 50%, meaning that using a defensive setups makes it even harder to die than i thought

Illuminoius posted...

i don't care for instant death but it's weirdly something the playerbase really latches onto

Because it still happens to people, a lot. There's a part of the overworld in Nocturne for example where you can get attacked by triple Principality that all cast Hamaon. And since there can be a fair bit of space between save points in nocturne it just takes one proc to remove a lot of the player's progress.

Illuminoius posted...

if anything mc death doesn't really matter

Lol wut. The great majority of deaths in SMT games with mc death (and spinoffs like persona) is due to MC death, pretty much guaranteed since you'll likely have at least one demon whose affinities shrug off the encounter. MC isn't necessarily any more tanky than demons. In my replay of Nocturne recently I got killed by an Inugami while at level 30 or so because they struck first, crit my MC with feral bite and then attacked again.

Illuminoius posted...

(Macca) never actually an issue at any point in basically any game.

Between recruiting and healing in Nocturne macca economy is horrific in early game.

SMT IV comparisons aren't valid because it's a baby game

Grandia for sure.

I love cancelling or delaying enemy attack with well timed abilities.

A5modeu5 posted...

Grandia for sure.

I love cancelling or delaying enemy attack with well timed abilities.

This fucking love Grandia. Additions in legend of Dragoon are nifty

if you think 4 is easy, i don't know why you think nocturne isn't also easy

nocturne before the hd port didn't have fully customizable skill selection, but you could still choose all the op shit you wanted if you were patient enough. buffs and debuffs are also way more overpowered and you can basically autobattle a majority of the game, bosses included, once you set them up. it's impossible to run out of mp because mana refill is really strong, mp items are really strong, and mp drains basically fully restore mp because of how much they benefit from increasing your damage output
money is mostly annoying if you want to buy every magatama in the shop but other than that i don't remember a single time i've ever been stressed out over money for healing

burst damage is probably even more op in nocturne, since basically nothing in the game can really withstand a full turn or two of focus barrages because tarukaja and rakunda quadruple your damage when stacked. not like 4 really compares favorably when you can just rush dex or mag and just breeze through the game but let's not act like nocturne is that much more difficult, if at all

bosses notably rarely ever react to tetrakarn and marakarn, and even in the final dungeon they get completely walled by them. baal in particular will always try to turn you into flies in her first action so marakarn will literally lock her down the whole fight

Doe posted...

And since there can be a fair bit of space between save points in nocturne

you mean like 5 to 10 minutes? that's barely anything. the longest save drought in the game is maybe in the final dungeon but it still has like 5 or 6 different save points and many heal points

Doe posted...

In my replay of Nocturne recently I got killed by an Inugami while at level 30 or so because they struck first, crit my MC with feral bite and then attacked again.

i may have understated how impactful mc death is, but moments like that are just statistically really unlikely and people just get moments like that stuck in their memory when that's not how the game usually plays out. outside of ambushes, it's really hard to actually have your main character die first because the boss not only has to deal with a 75% damage reduction, but they also have to deal with sub 20% accuracy and they also have to specifically aim for the main character and land the hit multiple times in a row and hope rng is in their favor to actually kill them, and that's if the main character doesn't just null the attack

mind's eye reduces the enemy ambush rate by a third, and if you ever strike first you should never lose a single random encounter in the game. any good team will either kill them off before the enemy can act, or drop their stats so much that they can't do anything when it's their turn to attack. with how much of a nonissue mp management is in this game you might as well burn your mp every fight because mana refill/recarmdra/mana drain just fully restore mp so fast anyways

i can see why mc death is annoying but it's so easy to deal with that i really don't care. i think the series can actually buff enemies and remove it entirely to compensate and make for more interesting gameplay experiences by letting the enemy really go all out

i like this series but i wouldn't say it's hard. it's comfort food when i want a shallow experience and customization. it makes for great challenge runs because of how many variables i can choose to ignore to make the experience harder. i hope smt5 gets an extra hard difficulty that isn't as lame as 4's where they nostly just gutted your accuracy

You have derailed my topic

Tyranthraxus posted...

Octopath Traveler has essentially the same thing but instead of getting extra turns you deprive the enemy of turns. Under the right circumstances it's possible to stunlock an enemy for the whole fight.

This sounds like Opera Omnia. I like using Lightning, Aranea, and Terra, and all 3 have their own ways of keeping the enemy from ever getting a turn lol. Lightning is fast as fuck and her tool kit is based around getting her extra turns, Aranea knocks back enemy turns, and Terra has this broken ass shit that she can use 4 times per fight that gives her 6 turns in a row and doesn't use up her skills during the first 5 turns lol

This is a tabletop...but Shadowrun had a cool Initiative System. You get nd6 + I think Reaction; where 'n' is a whole bunch of race / stat / cyberware bonuses.

Then at the start of battle everyone rolls Initiative. Unlike dungeons and dragons Instead of just taking your turn and being done. Your turn takes a -10 Initiative and adds you back into the turn order. Repeat that process until everyone is at or below 0. I forget if you roll new Initiative at that point or just reset the tracker.

So you could get

Player 1: 22
Orc 1: 18
Orc 2: 11
Player 2: 7

Player 1 would go first. They make their move, then they -10 to their Initiative. Its now 12. Orc 1 takes their turn. Then Player 1 goes again. Then Orc 2, then Orc 1 again. Followed by Player 2. Player 1 yet again, and finally Orc 2 one last time.

But then you can spice it up with cool moves that cost Initiative. Want to do a body slam? Here's some bonus damage for -5 Initiative. Want to take time to aim your shot? You can have extra accuracy for -3 Initiative.

Uta posted...

This is a tabletop...but Shadowrun had a cool Initiative System. You get nd6 + I think Reaction; where 'n' is a whole bunch of race / stat / cyberware bonuses.

Then at the start of battle everyone rolls Initiative. Unlike dungeons and dragons Instead of just taking your turn and being done. Your turn takes a -10 Initiative and adds you back into the turn order. Repeat that process until everyone is at or below 0. I forget if you roll new Initiative at that point or just reset the tracker.

So you could get

Player 1: 22
Orc 1: 18
Orc 2: 11
Player 2: 7

Player 1 would go first. They make their move, then they -10 to their Initiative. Its now 12. Orc 1 takes their turn. Then Player 1 goes again. Then Orc 2, then Orc 1 again. Followed by Player 2. Player 1 yet again, and finally Orc 2 one last time.

But then you can spice it up with cool moves that cost Initiative. Want to do a body slam? Here's some bonus damage for -5 Initiative. Want to take time to aim your shot? You can have extra accuracy for -3 Initiative.

The Shadowrun PC games are pretty good, though I don't know if initiative works the same there. Dragonfall is IMO the best. Just has a better feel and story than Hong Kong, at least for me, but Hong Kong is absolutely excellent as well.

It also has some interesting skill economy management, especially if you're speccing your main character for something specialized like decking. And both games have pretty good difficulty.
Returns is okay. I think you can get all 3 in a pack, so you might as well just get the pack on sale and play it first.

man, been a long time since i saw an elitist in CE

bravely default has the brave/default system. you can borrow turns from the future, or save up turns and use them all at once. there are many ways to manipulate your turns and your enemies turns, and the enemy can do the same to you

Press turn is fucking terrific. I think it's not great in every game, like SMTIV horribly understood this system and just made it so press turn abuse basically meant that was the end of the fight. SMTV lowered general power level to the point where press turn does what it was supposed to, which was to provide a set of half turns where you can either choose to do dmg or do support. In a lot of RPGs, they have a bunch of support shit that has to be broken to be worth wasting a turn for. But press turn basically makes it so that you can get 1/2 of a turn by abusing a weakness and then using that half turn to set up something else that you'd not like to use a full turn for.

Like when was the last time in an RPG where you thought strategically skipping a turn was a smart move? (I'm not talking where passing a turn gives some like inherent damage bonus like in BD or anything like that) There's a clear penalty that you can't turn that half turn into a full turn even with a crit/weak hit. But the strategic benefit is so high that you'd pay that cost when necessary

It's a genius system, even though it's so simple. I think SMTV devs understand this system well enough. I love that you can still get half turns off a half turn turn. Some SMTs just make it so that you don't get an additional turn if you're on a half turn. I think that's an ok system, but SMTV power level is low enough where that would've been too much punishment

Press turn system isn't always great. But SMTV press turn is chef's kiss. Turn based either gets too stupidly complicated or too simple and loses most strategy, and press turn is this sweet spot in between. Also fuck SMTIV, but Apocalypse was really good. I forget what they did to mitigate the shittiness of how SMTIV's base handled their press turn and stupidly high burst potential.

^Yeah, the difficulty is off in IV and IVA, which is a shame, because theyre otherwise really good.
The main modifications IV:A made were nerfing smirk and adding demon affinities. Demon whisper was a totally broken way to acquire skills and the main characters in both games completely busted though. Its just so, so EASY to get ridiculously OP load-outs.
V seems to have learned those lessons well, and also expanded well on the demon-specific skills from Strange Journey Redux in a very satisfying way. Im not even through the second area yet though, so dont spoil me bros.

ElatedVenusaur posted...

^Yeah, the difficulty is off in IV and IVA, which is a shame, because theyre otherwise really good.
The main modifications IV:A made were nerfing smirk and adding demon affinities. Demon whisper was a totally broken way to acquire skills and the main characters in both games completely busted though. Its just so, so EASY to get ridiculously OP load-outs.
V seems to have learned those lessons well, and also expanded well on the demon-specific skills from Strange Journey Redux in a very satisfying way. Im not even through the second area yet though, so dont spoil me bros.

Unique skills pretty much stay very very good in terms of fun-ness and usefulness of a demon. They're still mostly on the unique fusions, but regular fusion demons can have them too. They're non-transferable, but even if they were by just the essences, I'm not sure if they would've broken the game considering essences can be hard to get dupes of on the fly. Unique skills on essences are pretty much just for that same demon to re-learn their uniques if you got rid of them for whatever reason. (and yeah Strange Journey is one of my favorite SMTs too so I'm so glad a pretty similar system is in this game. SJ essences were super broken though if you know to do a certain thing to low lvl demons)

They also balance it by making a skill of an equal power level be available later on. Some uniques don't have counterparts, like dmg/heal + buffs/debuffs, but you can pretty much expect most damage based ones to have a counterpart.

Also the nahobino exclusive skills are beautiful. They're not broken but they're just very very good.

Radiant Historia
Enemies are on a 3x3 grid and you can push them around to attack a whole row or column. Some are big or unmovable, you can lay traps & push them on it, you can move them off barriers and buffs... And trade turns to order combos.

legendarylemur posted...

Also the nahobino exclusive skills are beautiful. They're not broken but they're just very very good.

Profaned Land's the only time that dude emotes

legendarylemur posted...

They also balance it by making a skill of an equal power level be available later on. Some uniques don't have counterparts, like dmg/heal + buffs/debuffs, but you can pretty much expect most damage based ones to have a counterpart.

The biggest game design problem with SMTV is the best skills in the game are all on waifu demons (Golden Apple, Eluesian Harvest, Frolic, etc)

DoomSwell posted...

Radiant Historia
Enemies are on a 3x3 grid and you can push them around to attack a whole row or column. Some are big or unmovable, you can lay traps & push them on it, you can move them off barriers and buffs... And trade turns to order combos.

Problem with RH is that their highest difficulty in the 3DS remake is probably the worst thing ever because they specifically built it accounting for people buying their shitty DLCs. In the original, the game was a bit too easy, so it's too much one way or another I guess. I think if done right, they could've had a series with that same battle system though

Doe posted...

The biggest game design problem with SMTV is the best skills in the game are all on waifu demons (Golden Apple, Eluesian Harvest, Frolic, etc)

Eh lul I don't see anything wrong with it, mostly cuz I used Idun throughout my entire playthrough. You're gonna have to build a dedicated healer at one point anyways, and I don't think having another demon for the buffs and one for the heal with the heal charge is a major dealbreaker