MegaTen

Hi all! I'm planning to run a campaign of SMT Tokyo conception. Tell me, does anyone have maps of the areas that I could use during the campaign? I would be glad to receive any help.

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I got into SMTV:V a month or two ago and I think it's really fantastic. I have finished it twice (Reborn the second time so speedrun LOL). I played hella JRPGs in the PS1/2 era but basically gave up on them until now. I am now curious of what other Atlus/Megaten titles might be smart for me to check out. Here are reasons I think SMTV is exceptional:

1.) Combat where you can lose

2.) awesome superbosses

3.) it's not SUPER weeb (to be fair, Vengeance path sort of is... but CoC the story content is less in general and by extension less weeb).. idk it always makes me cringe. I'm an adult man in my 30s, married, so the teenager or and waifu stuff doesn't hit like it used to when I was a teenager. The super anime stylings is kind of what kept me away from this genre until now - but I can take the level SMTV is at.

4.) Rich build variety

I really like the "mathy" part of the game.

Which of these games is the best follow up (PS4/5)

1. SMT: Nocturne

2. Metaphor

3. one of the Persona games

Hi, I am new to the series and looking to buy this game physically for the switch, but the switch's performance is bad and I've heard that this game would be straining it. Alternatively I can buy it for the series x.

If anyone has it on switch, does it run smoothly? Or is it better to get on series X? The platform I choose in the end doesn't matter but I would prefer it on switch (my switch is old though)

Is it possible to get the octopus or is the turtle still the only option?

...Satan? The one with all stats over 100 that Mastema summoned? I guess he's also the only way to unlock level 150, so i must beat it, but i don't know of a good way to 😭

Hi there, first of all i wanna to warn you of the end game spoiler if you wanna play the game don't read it or you will be spoilered .. .. .. .. .. Ok so the most interesting for me are Atsuro and Naoya path so with of those is best one?

I'm trying to remember, where is the scene where Isamu rants about how Yuko prefers the Demi-fiend over him?

I SWEAR it must've happened between seeing him at the Mantra Headquarters (where he's still civil to DF) and again at Kabukicho Prison (where he drops his civility and abandons his feelings for her), but so far I haven't seen it in my second playthrough. I do remember coming across it in my first run though, because that was the moment I went from, "Oh, this guy only thinks she's hot, nothing more," to being like, "... Oh. He was serious about her."

Or maybe my memory is messing with me. God, I hope not.

Slightly confused about something in Vengeance's endings. If you go the Chaos route, obviously everything is destroyed, including the throne, and the mandala system after beating Lucifer. I just finished the Law route and was surprised to see that the mandala system also gets destroyed in that route too once you beat Lucifer. Does this mean that the throne remains intact, but no one can usurp it since the mandala system was destroyed? Or am I missing something?

Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson is a 1990 book that analyzes art across Western culture, from Classical Mythology to (of course) Emily Dickinson. In the book, Camille Paglia revisits the idea of the conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian impulses but with a unique twist.

For Paglia, Dionysian impulses are far more dangerous than the name might suggest, so much so that she renames them Chthonic, referencing the dark deities of the underworld.

We all know that in Shin Megami Tensei, Law and Chaos are typically aligned with Apollonian and Dionysian principles. Nothing new, right?

Well, not quite—because the games use fragments of Paglia's book in a surprisingly literal way.

Paglia is fond of analogies and small micro-narratives. In Shin Megami Tensei, these analogies are shown in very literal ways. How much? Paglia's extracts are outright the plot of many games.

Let's analize a case. One of Paglia's ideas is that Chthonic impulses are natural to humanity because humans are sexual creatures. Sexual reproduction ties humanity to nature—a tie that religion can tame but never fully erase.

After this conclusion, Paglia proposes a thought experiment: the only way to sever this tie completely and achieve a truly Apollonian (Lawful) existence would be to create test-tube babies in mass.

This idea manifests in Shin Megami Tensei II as the Project Messiah: humans created without sexual reproduction, designed with utilitarian purposes. Here, the forces of nature are definitively conquered, at least apparently.

This continues with Arcadia, a virtual reality based on the Elysian Fields and administrated by Gimmel, one of the test-tube babies that follows the Archangels' vision. The Archangels' plan with the Center was to eventually rule a rump state build only arround sustaining Arcadia. The Apollonian impulse at its worst becomes indulgent escapism from reality, the Hierarchies of society abused to fulfill this new parasitic role.

This Apollonian vision provokes conflict between Law characters. Satan himself comes to judge humanity, reincarnating into Zayin and representing the wrath of nature against the Archangels (Satan is the rare Law-aligned Snake).

However, the world of Eden build by Satan, Gabriel and YHVH continues the Apollonian theme. In Eden, knowledge (tied to nature and chaos, as it was eaten because the Snake) is abadoned, and people find happiness in fulfilling predefined social roles. It’s an orderly society without the need for a patriarch. Fittingly, YHVH is killed in the Law route, as he is deemed not “Law enough” for this new world, just like how YHVH had to defeat other gods to build a more Lawful/ Apollonian world.

Satan, with his serpentine and maternal imagery, represents something fundamentally incompatible with such a reality and is thus his fate is to turn into dust. This marks the “end of history” for the Law path.

This is just one of many examples, but there are more.

Persona 3 in particular has lots of it:

Nyx and Erebus are literal Chthonic Gods, the Night and the Darkness. Nyx in Persona 3 lore is the ultimate mother of all life, and because of that, her executor. She even follows the theme of Paglia of unwanted Menstruation as the erasure of individuality caused by Nature's whims, as the tragedy of Ryoji's character is that he will have to become Nyx and bring death to the world.

The reason why SEES have all Greek-Roman personas except for the Protagonist at the end? Because Paglia's whole thesis is that Classical Mythology was the best force supressing the Chthonic impulses until the arrival of Christianity, which continued the work.

Heck, for a individual character example: Aegis' character continues this theme. Aegis is a robot (ergo, a being born without need for sexual intercourse) and her ultimate Persona is Athena, mythologically born from Zeus' head and according to Paglia, one of the ultimate Apollonian beings, as she exists without the need for a conventional birth. Its fitting that she becomes the succesor Wild Card to the Persona 3 protagonist, whose ultimate Persona is the Messiah, another being who didn't need a conventional birth.

Strange Journey is of course, the ultimate Apollonian vs Cthtonic showndown, with Law and Chaos being at their most radical ever seen. Mem Aleph is introduced as the chaos counterpart of YHVH, later revealed as the Gaia from the Cult of Gaia, whose plan is the erasure of Humanity and compromising into erasing human superegos, turning humans into antisocial humanoids that are inevitably doomed to extinction... In contrast, Law is symbolized the Three Wise Men, the ultimate Apollonian beings, even being male to further contrast. Redux does reveals they are actually Shekinah, but even this might tie with Paglia's argument that their radicalism even compared to other Law reps is caused for them being women trying to fulfill a men's role (Paglia is very into gender essentialism, its her motif).

Now, lets move to Shin Megami Tensei V, especially Vengeance, which is frankly the SMT game influenced the most by Paglia’s ideas.

Even the base game provides a very literal take on Paglia's writing. Consider the Apsaras vs. Leanan Sidhe side quest, now let me quote from Sexual Personae.

Romanticism always turns into decadence. Nature is a hard taskmaster. It is the hammer and the anvil, crushing individuality. Perfect freedom would be to die by earth, air, water, and fire.

In the game, the demon supporting Leanan Sidhe's side is Ippon-Datara, a metallurgic spirit who sacrifices his own lifespan to hone his craft, and both of them argue that demons dying of exposure to the enviroment is actually freedom.

As a regular user of this subreddit, I can safely say that this one of the most popular sidequests of SMT, Having sparked much debate among players. Some argue that Apsaras’s actions—offering shelter to weaker demons—are actually bad because this causes that her followers develop a cultish view of her. But others argue that Apsaras's actions are wholly heroic and her worship is understandable because she did truly save her followers, making it a natural and rightful hierarchy...

The Marici DLC in Vengeance builds on this by revealing that Conception ("the Light of Creation") is not a cosmic whim but rather a desperate human cry for survival, the Great Will doesn't do this for the lulz, Humanity genuinely wants it because the alternative is to forever wander in darkness. This aligns with Paglia’s view that art and religion are defenses humanity created against nature.

Ultimately, Law’s core value is Hierarchy and Discrimination. But here is the important thing, these terms are morally neutral—they are tools, neither inherently good nor evil, both the Center and Eden require discrimination, even the will to live thinking in the future from the Messiah who sealed Nyx requires a strong sense of discrimination between light and darkness. Discrimination is how Humans became Sapient thinking beings able to defy Nature, its the how YHVH defeated the Old Gods, allowing humanity to build our modern world.

In the 21st century, we are often taught that hierarchy itself is the enemy and that prosperity demands equality, a which is defined as a lack of hierarchies. However, Vengeance’s Law ending challenges this, saying: "Screw that. I just want to make people happy, and I’ll kill as many Snakes as necessary to achieve it" and this is why Yoko summons Tehom.

Paglia wrote:

Every month, it is woman’s fate to face the abyss of time and being, the abyss which is herself.

This applies with both Yoko and Tao, the Goddesses of Creation of SMT V.

They embody the Abyss of life and death, which are one and the same. Life is death because both are rooted in nature. They are cursed for their powers, losing their individuality unless the paradoxical intervention of Horned God (the God of Law sealing Yoko or Nahobino's strenghtened connection to Tao) avoids it.

This is obviously a reference to pregnancy, a central element of Paglia’s thesis. Pregnancy makes women "slaves of nature", turning them into tools of biological reproduction. Male-led societies have devised ways to control this, from the concept of virginity (giving women autonomy over reproduction) to contraceptives, this is the paradox of the Horned God, they can dominate their goddess of Creation or empower them searching a equal partnership.

Even Metaphor continues the Paglia references, in its own way.

The game-over screen’s message, Fantasy is Dead, have many meanings. It is changed for the bad endings, becoming Fantasy is Ruined if Will sides with Louis.

And this matters because Louis is seeks to destroy social structures to eliminate discrimination—a goal the game acknowledges as valid...but with the side-effect that doing so would also annihilate human consciousness, as humanity is defined by its hierarchies. Which fits with Paglia's arguments that ultimately, its human discrimination which allowed human societies to develop, that The Patriarchy ultimately created the conditions that lead to Modern Society.

It’s fitting that Louis is stopped by Will, a purely Apollonian being born of a wish. Untainted by the contradictions of sexual reproduction, Will is the Apollonian defiance of nature.

Also, this also explains More's Bad Ending. His bad ending is the Arcadia of SMT II. Both More and the Archangels of SMT II are Law-aligned characters that have lost faith on themselves and the world itself, they consider the world impossible to save regardless of the effort or sacrifice, so they choose to refugee themselves into their own delusions and fantasies. More's bad ending is the 21th century, which in Metaphor, is the reactionary imaginary past. More's bad ending is when you get obsessed with 1950s comercials and RETVRN.

In conclusion, at least five ATLUS games—Shin Megami Tensei II, Shin Megami Tensei V, Persona 3, SMT Strange Journey and Metaphor—echo Paglia's Sexual Personae.

Theorizing Paglia’s influence in ATLUS is not far-fetched. She was widely admired in the 1990s, even by David Bowie (a known inspiration for Shin Megami Tensei’s Lucifer) putting her works in his recommendations. Her book also appeared in Friends, she was pretty big in the 90s.

The thematic and literal parallels between her work and SMT is impressive, for sure.

I love the devious little guy.

Yeah bros, 2 hours and 43 minutes of pain and agony, i really think the Varuna arm could be better, but i will color the other parts of the body before think if i will change it

If the SMT I, II, DeSu 1 and 2 protagonists had boss fights, what teams of demons would they use? We know Demi-Fiend has Pixie, Girimekhala and Cu Chulainn, etc but who would these guys have?

I’ve heard it’s a very difficult game. At times, you can spend 40+ minutes on a boss fight only to have your entire team taken out by what is essentially a role of the dice.

Being married with a kid, I don’t have time to keep trying the same 40 minute boss two or lore times.

So, how accurate is the description of difficulty?

Will restoring their memories lead to a bad ending or is it only something small? posting this on here also since megaten seems to be more active than persona

https://preview.redd.it/vb0w6vah334e1.jpg?width=2560&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7b93d631d759b50fe059084471f63c670b693529

i fond all the 199, and this one in particular bruh.