#matador smt

[danb0ii]

played some nocturne 2day..

[mitochondria-larson]

Suddenly remembered I had this gem saved in my phone

[leylinefount]

[thornytendrils]

"Buenos Dias, Fuckboy!"

Matador was pretty fun!

He was pretty difficult but contrary to how he is depicted he is very beatable, it felt really rewarding figuring out the best party and skills to bring to the fight, (the game actually has everything you need before you fight him!)

I fought him on hard so stuff in shops costing triple was a hurdle, but it's very doable

Nekomata, Uzume and Nozuchi are all immune to force which is his main move, Uzume is also a fantastic healer/mage for this point in the game.

The Hifumi magatama allows you to null force on Demi-Fiend as well, it's actually in the shop right before running into Matador!

The magatama you get for beating the first boss has fog breath on it, which is vital to being able to hit the boss. You could potentially get Dekaja to nullify his Red Capote skill, but the only way I saw to do that was through a Chatterskull (Lv20) and I got one just as I was ready to fight him.

You don't even need everything listed to beat him, but if you do it will be super easy!

Also the PS2 graphics do feel better than the HD remaster, love the scan lines from the emulator too super aesthetic.

[dailydemonspotlight]

Matador - Day 2

Race: Fiend

Alignment: Neutral-Neutral

March 21st 2024

Hailing not from mythology but rather real life bullfighting, Matador is a skeletal fiend who serves as the first major hurdle in Nocturne, as well as marking one of the first examples of a demon in the SMT series not originating in mythology.

Matador literally translates to ‘Bullfighter,’ and historically is a role played by the people in toreador bullfighting events who are tasked with fighting, subduing, and eventually killing the bull in question. Armed with a red capote with a muleta at the top, effectively just a stick with a red cape tied to it, the Matador is the star of the bullfighting show, a fierce opponent to the poor animal.

Contrary to popular belief, the red capote used by the Matador isn’t the actual way they rile up the bulls, and them hating the color red is a common misconception- bulls are actually colorblind! Instead, it’s the nigh-constant whipping of the muleta atop the capote that activates the bull’s fight or flight response, and they almost always choose fight. The reasoning of the red color is to disguise blood stains from battle, as well as tradition.

Bullfighting has been a historical phenomenon from even before Roman times, though it was popularized during the Roman empire’s reign as a form of ritual for the gods. The ritual soon became a common practice in coliseums, and eventually was used to mark the alliance between Rome and Spain circa 711 CE, thus causing it to become a rather common symbol of Spanish nationalism.

Matador in Shin Megami Tensei is an incredibly fearsome demon of the Fiend race, a race consisting almost entirely of Skeletons (and Alice, for some reason). His signature skill, Red Capote, works to raise his evasion to the maximum, a play on how Matadores in real life will drive a bull to attack their capote instead of themselves.

The style and flair Matador uses is common in real-world bullfights as well, flashy clothes used to draw the ire of the audience and make the battle with the bull appear as a performance as much as it is blood sport. The rapier wielded by Matador is a common show in bullfights as well with the intent of dispatching the bull, allowing the actual battle to occur without much contention- it wouldn’t be a fight without a weapon, after all.

Matador is typically one of the more specialized demons, one who leans towards offense and buffs above all, something incredibly fitting for the fancy style and role of a Matador in real life. His specialization in wind/force skills plays into this as well, as a Matador must use great amounts of force to battle with the bull, or, alternatively, they must ‘ride the wind’ in order to engage in a metaphorical dance of death with the animal.

His boss fight in SMT III is one of the most infamous battles in the series, and for good reason- it’s less a difficulty spike and more a difficulty spear. Due to your limited selection of demons and skills at the time you battle with him, the Menorah-desiring demon is a fierce to be reckoned with, to say the least, being one of the most absurdly difficult battles in the series, especially for how early in the game he is.

Thanks to Red Capote and Taunt, two skills which work in tandem to allow him to always hit a far weakened party that will almost never hit him back, the fight effectively communicates the importance of buffs and debuffs in the SMT series over most other JRPG games, as well as serving as an introduction to the Fiends of the series. The ability to use Matador later in the game, and his sheer strength, simply goes to show that this skeleton’s power wasn’t a mere one-off occurrence. Throughout the series, even beyond Nocturne, he appears frequently as a recurring, and incredibly difficult, boss battle.

Overall, this Skeleton, with his unique backstory, design, and skillset, makes his mark as one of my favorite demons in the series. A red flag means death, after all, and the blood shed by this demon to unsuspecting players (and bulls) should not go understated.

[hervygervy]

I got SMT III today, and everyone I’ve talked to irl about it says they all got stuck at the matador. I also nearly died at the stinking tutorial, so perhaps this is a sign of bad things to come. Wish me luck, gamers!

[silent-partner-412]

i kinda want to get more into shin megami tensei but also the fanbase surrounding those games is… a lot to deal with and i have a feeling talking about these games would be the opposite of fun

[parasitoidism]

"the hardest boss in smt iii is matador" "the tower of kagutsuchi is so difficult to get through" The biggest challenge I faced while playing nocturne was trying to navigate the shinjuku medical center absolutely delirious with a fever not having realized that there was a mini map I could look at

[cleophantom]

Kind of hilarious that the Dagda that's going to be in SMT V Vengeance is literally the same Dagda from IV Apocalypse.

Hopefully this means Xander Mobus will be coming back to the role (and hopefully ATLUS won't drown his voice in audio effects like they did with Kieth Silverstein's Matador in V)

[knightochan-official]

if you've played enough mainline smt you'll know why Pokemon games can't be "challenging" in the way some older fans want. In the monster collection jrpg format if the game is too precisely difficult the player loses a lot of their expression in favor of following the most accessible formula to bypass a challenge

like in SMT3 Matador is a great example of this. he mostly uses over level Force attacks and accuracy debuffs to teach you the game's two most important defensive systems, buffing/debuffing and immunity exploitation. Every team will be a little different, but the strategy that gets past him will use the same tools: one or two anchor demons that have an accuracy buff and Force immunity at that point in the game.

this isn't inherently bad, it's a fun mechanical team building puzzle, but the narrow solution space and limited player resources means SMT can't be expressive in the way Pokemon is - because in a turn based strategy game some expressions, that is, some strategies, have to be 'wrong'

[furryprovocateur]

i think something i've isolated about why SMT IV feels so easy compared to other SMT entries like nocturne, SJ, etc. is that basically every boss has some elemental weakness. like compare fighting matador in nocturne (no elemental weakness, actively requires strategy) to fighting minotaur (elemental weakness, less focus on strategy). they're both the first "hard" boss fights of their respective games (it depends on player skill and familiarity with the genre but generally speaking this is agreed upon and ykwim).

matador is very consistent to beat if you know the exact strategy to execute (buff yourself, use debuffs on him (but not too many), prioritize offense when he starts using taunt). he's still challenging and it's still possible to lose to him trying to execute this strategy, but, generally speaking, it will work the majority of the time to the point of losing being rare occurrences if you execute these strategies correctly.

compare that to minotaur. minotaur has a weakness to bufu, so basically the only thing you want to be doing is either slamming him with bufu and occasionally healing. buffing does help, but the more turns he gets, the more likely he is to get a crit and start smirking. if he smirks, he's likely to do damage that you either can't come back from or would require so many resources to fix that you're better off just restarting the fight (since you can save anywhere, including right before the encounter triggers). it's more a race against time with a predominant strategy of "you need to damage him asap and any time spent buffing/debuffing could be better spent slamming him with bufu". you could argue that matador has an issue with only having one viable strat, but you're not necessarily limited to "if you don't have bufu or media, you are actively a hindrance in this fight". it's just a less interesting fight imo.

[neomedievalist]

drafting in my mind a smt nocturne themed hanukkah sweater with the background of the labyrinth of amala and the menorahs and the designs on matadors jacket but society is not ready for that. Fangamer please hire me

[vgpony-mk2]

Difficulty is a weird thing to discuss in gaming for a lot of reasons like how wording can effect how if someone uses easier options or when damage values should be adjusted vs when level designs should be changed (like in megaman 9)

what I didn't think would pop up so often is people not knowing that just cause something isn't hard to them doesn't mean it isn't hard

WHAT DO YOU MEAN MATADOR ISN'T HARD. When I got to that skeleton the first time it kicked my ass a couple times and I'd beaten multiple smt games already. Either you built a team to cover your weaknesses, which is a skill you've developed, or you're looking things up ahead of time, which makes things easier cause you can prepare for the random bit of skeleton floor ahead of time. You're good at the game be proud of that.

Same with the people that say Cynthia in Gen 4 is easy cause her team is weak to ice. Buddy you have to get up to her fight to learn that, and at that point either you win or you get time to prepare for her with more knowledge.

Hell I even heard my own sister say that Dark Souls is easy. Sure it's not as hard as most game reviewers claim it is but I saw you rage your way through the whole game and that wasn't HARD. You where just shouting cause that's what you do when you play a Kirby level game.

[yurashimadepot]

As for writing this, I finished no-fusion runs on both SMT4 and SMT4A. Usually when you think of challenge runs like this you expect unnecessary difficult and/or tedious playthroughs for people who already finds the games' hardest settings a piece of cake but nothing could be further from the truth. I wholeheartedly recommend giving a try if you like these games because it makes the experience really fresh without making it frustrating.

You see, I like games with high party customization, which includes most "monster-catching" games including SMT, because of the freedom you have to tackle the game's challenges and its replayability. For example, most players will confront the infamous Matador boss fight from Nocturne with accuracy buffs to circumvent his skill that maxes his evasion but I've seen people basing their offense on Counter since counterattacks skip evasion/accuracy checks.

SMT4 was the first mainline game that introduced manual skill inheritance when fusing demons, and while I understand this was for the best I also noticed that this resulted in many players, consciously or not, making a team of physical oriented demon/magic oriented demon/healing demon and just fusing them into stronger versions of themselves, essentialy having a Dragon Quest party that changed appeareance every other dungeon plus a lot of fusion fodder. There's nothing wrong about playing like this but I felt it loses a bit of its charm and that was my main motivation to try these runs.

And what do you know, it was a really fun experience! You start seeing the demons as more unique entities and because of their limited moveset you'll be switching around them a lot more often, without a "main party". It helps a lot that these games have plenty of QoL features to acommodate this, with benched demons also gaining EXP, switching demons in battle costing only half a turn and demons being allowed to switch themselves with another demon. You feel more like a commander of a small army.

Speaking of which, I found the usually worthless "Bad Company" skill really useful in this run. Since everything is so fragile in SMT4 replacing your entire lineup with a single action can be a blessing for those subquests where you're forced to do battles that start with an ambush. Also a common strategy for bosses was starting with a weak lineup of demons with debuffs then using it to replace them all immediately on the second turn with your strongest guys. It's not as good in SMT4A since demons can actually take hits in that one.

Difficulty-wise, I played both games in the Normal difficulty fearing I might find it too difficult otherwise. I think SMT4 is perfectly doable in Hard. SMT4A is another story, since the last dungeon doesn't allow you to recruit anything there there's a big gap between the strongest demons you can recruit and the final boss, I don't think the last part of the game would be very fun playing like this in the higher difficulties.

So there you have it, hope this encourages at least someone to give them a try!

[sainthermelin]

I think the smt gods heard me talking shit about how I beat matador on my 3rd try and sent me thor