tamarakkoarchive

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (8/8)

the second aspect in smt2 that stands out: the crazy twist obviously

i still have mixed feelings over how weirdly written the law ending is but nevertheless the concept of an artificial messiah group was dope. they're pretty much what i'd like to see being explored in fanart the most

aleph felt linked to all these other lab creations and he must watch their fall caused by the fake roles assigned to them that in the end god would never truly approve of

i guess this must be why zayin got so convinced they should keep going even without yhvh

that being said, sadly aleph's connection to them is not really put as much weight as it could've been, he feels super detached because their interactions are very sparse, tbh i think it could've helped if all of them... were playable at some point like mt2 ryu or the smt1 friends. i was fine with the small amount of dialogue in mt2 and smt1 but smt2 is where i felt it ended up really diminishing the impact

i unironically ended up being more fond of the "what could've been" situation between aleph and our dead beth than hiroko lmao she has such an insane reveal behind her but the whole thing goes just "lol. crazy. anyway let's keep going"

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izanami randomly appearing to comment "oh you two remind me of my marriage that is fucked up but for entirely different reasons"

oof how could i forget to show earlier

aside his sunglasses form zayin also turns into this cool shape with six boobs. iconic

the theme connection between smt2 and smt4a that i finally could confirm from that interview was that even back then they did think smt2 satan leaned towards neutral despite being from the law route, with killing yhvh and all. that's why they made him neutral in smt4a

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and now for the third and last thing it's... finally the game where demon fusion gets fun but most importantly: where kaneko starts slaying HARD on demon designs. crazy amount of exclusive designs he was able to draw, a lot even beyond of what they could do relevantly with

alright let's go for the bad!

1. it's a replay nightmare. full of bugs. it somehow has a worse interface than smt1's. gotta mention AGAIN that you can't auto guns. by far the smt where you get lost the most and you gotta write down several passwords to enter locked doors

the dungeon design in smt1 wasn't super diverse either but smt2 it's just... excruciatingly boring. "shitload of doors with nothing" the game. you don't really have reason to fill the whole map because they don't put any reward whatsover be with items or npcs with information

2. THE SOUNDTRACK SUCKS period. it's the same composer from mt1-2 so my disappointment for how cheap the snes games sound in comparison is abysmal. they aren't improved much in the psx rearrangements either

instead of a final boss theme they use the same music from several major bosses (regardless of alignment) and it's just... this

compare it to the super special one from mt2

and now 3... this might surprise you guys since i just talked abt them being better at writing the law and chaos sides and to be fair this is on a subjective perspective but... i didn't like the alignment choices in this game

smt2 to me was essentially a game with dope worldbuilding and dope story concept all ready to be deliciously consumed on a plate but the execution ended up not feeling satisfying on the stomach

i think what made me like smt4&a way more than smt2 is that it showed more impact from the choices happening around the protagonist in a way that i could say "yeah this alignment makes sense for what he's feeling"

basically there's already very few relevant alignments choices and they went too far on making aleph an incognito for the player to insert their own thoughts into so the final result is that he ended up being awfully hard to read and sympathize with

guy is probably not even a year old, no hint of childhood, had fake memories but got them wiped (double brainwashing??) so he was literally a blank state with no humanity inserted into by the time he was found and taken by the gym uncle

he had no mercy in killing when he was a gladiator too so the likely options for aleph's personality is: 1. church tool (fake memories) 2. basically him copying the gym uncle and the normal citizens around him (after his memory got reset)

anyway i think you can guess where i'm going with this, a lot of the buildup to aleph has him either instinctly acting on the law side since it was what he was made for or he gradually replacing his default persona with feelings of compassion from living with normal people

the thiiiiing is, the biiiiiig problem i have with how the alignment system is written in some games that is ALSO a thing here is that when they want to make the player decide between law or chaos they don't discern between dark/light actions (aka being selfish or being selfless)

you'd think being a church tool would make aleph a cold-hearted guy. but no! remember the subplot with the workers in sweatshops? if you decide to release them from being incarcerated, it gives a LOT of points towards being law instead

the chaos side on the other hand wants to protect the underworld and the abyss residents from being exterminated but if you wanna join them you have to act like a selfish jackass in some instances like refusing to help hiroko, wanting to kill daleth or violently coercing demons

so tldr my frustration is that it was just really confusing why aleph would switch from law to other alignments. it got extra ?? with the whole "fake" yhvh and "true" yhvh thing. i don't think they even put down a proper explanation for why he'd prefer killing lucifer in neutral

like geez lucifer is so goddamn selfless in this era! he had his own agenda but prioritized giving help to the weak until the end instead of going on a rant of 'hurr the strongest wins'

man i can't stress enough that law was a big punch on the gut not only for zayin going 180º but also because the game gave you the impression you were gonna be "the kind law guy" and instead you got betrayed and forced to genocide the whole planet into oblivion

anyway that's what i fucking mean when i say aleph is hard to read 🙉 when aleph showed compassion to workers it was a buildup to abandon them in the limbo. when aleph was violent to mutants it was a buildup for him siding with them against the oppressors. like wtf

so yeah something something this game is biased towards being neutral since it was a sequel/alternate future to smt1 just like smt4a was to smt4. it's the best standpoint for how to make his actions make sense, whatever. aleph neutral hooray i guess

END

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (7/8)

finally moved my ass to finish the law ending and i.... i.... where do i fucking begin

okay guys so remember that the reason that i wanted to go through all the snes games was due to pressure of understanding the smt4a themes and then i went through the stage of finding a lot of aspects of mt2 and smt1 being done better than later titles

so... smt2 was basically the game that made me go "...okay, i DEFINITELY prefer the smt4 rendition of this" instead

~

i think the story is a lot more branched here so i'll have to see the rest of the routes to understand how everything went down but as of now all i can say is that i'm beyond appalled with how... awfully confusing the law side is

i'll try to summarize the whole route in green text form because again it's too much shit to put in screenshots

> be zayin > be goody two shoes that work for the church, unaware you're a clone > comes aleph, "church bad actually" > "shit he's right, i must side with the struggling people"

> try to convince everyone to rebel against the state's dictatorship, realize a lot of people are too afraid to speak up > decide to use myself as a shield, tresspass to fight the leaders and see a fake yhvh

> "oh i get it... the reason church bad is because the law guys are evil and fake. we must strive to be the Good and Authentic law guys instead" > "ALSO i remember now, i was originally a half-angel half-demon entity. that means i have the power to fairly judge everything"

> "anyway Humanity Is Full Of Sin And Must Receive Divine Punishment By The True God" > escape with aleph and hiroko and a group of selected people on a spaceship > shoopdawoop the whole planet > arrive to (the true) yhvh congratulating them

> "btw yhvh You Are Also Full Of Sin For Making Such Genocide Happen In The First Place And Now We'll Fucking Kill You For Last" > kill yhvh AGAIN >

me: hmm the massacre ending in smtiva has something to comment about nanashi and yhvh but i can't pinpoint exactly what me beating the law route in smt2:

so... before further discussion, let's just comment on this little aspect

>smt4 trio shares the naming theme with the smt1 guys (futsuo = average man = flynn/furin) (waruo = bad man = walter/waruta) (yoshio = good man = jonathan/yonatan) what if i told you... nanashi has a similar thing going on with aleph >the names of aleph & the smt2 eugenic babies are hebrew alphabet letters. yhvh is god in the hebrew bible

>you don't pronounce aleph. just like you aren't supposed to pronounce... yhvh >nanashi technically was found as a orphan and named as the jpn equivalent for John Doe... so if he stays with this name (which is preferred by his adoptive family), it'd technically turn out as he having no name of his own for someone to pronounce...

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me: fans often say smt2 is centered on law themes just like nocturne is centered on chaos. if demifiend went chaos because everyone was an asshole and he didn't have much choice, i wonder what would make aleph go to law me: me: lord HE'D BE A BACKSTABBING BITCH FOR ALL THE ALIGNMENTS

that initial plot point of the church being bad because of a fake yhvh giving the impression they were onto a less fascist law route and then zayin just keeps fucking changing his mind and puts both the humanity and yhvh on the same murder list like WHAT SIDE ARE YOU FUCKING ON

LIAR!!!!!!!!!

LIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAR

i'm going full higurashi rena at this dude. i can't fucking take this.

he says all this shit in defense of a being that he ends up nonchalantly effing moments latter. if yhvh was fascist then satan goes triple fascist

the funniest thing is that despite all my horror with zayin's character arc he STILL doesn't beat chiaki

to be fair what made zayin sting so much is that he goes from moderate conservative to labor activist and then to EXTREME eugenicist while chiaki on the other hand never gave us any expectation she cared for other people so the shock wasn't as big when she started spewing n4zi nonsense

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good news guys, there are chaos and neutral runs on youtube so that means i don't have to play them myself ❤️

okay since the struggle is over let's just look at the art. beth and hiroko. so since lilith gets rejected by the smt1 protagonist (adam) over the heroine (eve), i guess... kaneko this time wanted the protagonist staying with a canon bdsm gf?? COUGH i mean... his bdsm mommy

it's not that i hate slutty designs, but the tone shift caused by hiroko is REALLY too distracting for me lmao. i gotta repeat over a hundred times, this bitch 1. worked for the church 2. had a completely average personality

funnily the incest aspect would be the one thing that would make me invested in her relationship with aleph but after dr mekata dropped the bomb and she got mad at him, the game never.... touches on the subject again

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holy shit guys, just realized this is the sample that gave origin to the iconic fiend theme in nocturne

and smt2 is the first game w fiends in it! but they don't play this theme or any different one from the normal battle sadly but ngl they felt so irrelevant in smt2 that the music deserved its real debut in nocturne

dying at the name this streamer picked for hiroko

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man i'm so disappointed on both of these streamers not talking to overworld npcs that i'm pretty sure have different dialogue depending on the route. this is already a game with barely much written text damn

basically a plot point in the chaos route is that you gotta help astaroth return to its true form ishtar so the barren lands where demons are originated can go back to being fertile again and you see this little guy being born

but the fucking stream didn't talk to this npc! why do i know this scene exists then? because of a post i reblogged on tumblr 6 years ago and saved it on the tag which is why i could go back to get these

it me

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okay so i watched all the endings, read a smt2-specific interview with the devs, even reread the neutral route again in a let's play thread so i could extra check for stuff i didn't notice before so let's pass the judgement

what makes this title stand out individually in the mainline series? A: worldbuilding (it goes the deepest regarding how society with monsters and humans would work, the clash between different religions, the consequences with victims of war disasters etc)

smt1-2 are in a way the "must-play-to-understand-posterior-games" not necessarily for better characters or for better story, but basically so you can understand how certain key elements of the series work

a lot of explanation regarding why law and chaos don't mix together is left out in the other games. nocturne is almost empty on this matter, even smt4 where they play a big role you hardly know the full context of why they are fighting

hell SJ and smt4 go in such a superficial way that they end up making the chaos side severely nonsensical to understand. the lack of focus on the church causing the oppression on different religions undermines their cause a lot and end up just making them worse than the law cucks

for another smt2 tidbit, lucifuge is the fucker who created the demonic currency and it's even commented on how a messiah affects the economy

btw speaking of unspoke lore, you know a very random worldbuilding fact that is never brought up ever again? in mt2, they explain that guns = good for killing physical demons while swords = good for killing transcendent being like ghosts

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (6/8)

oh geez

he was sooooo easy he didn't dodge even once. and i'm pretty sure i reached him the earliest i could since i visited this place just a while ago. smt2 matador was still a little virgin

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smt2 is slightly harder than smt1 but i think it's mainly because you don't have much money to spend on better equipment (i'd rather only spend it for summoning since mag dries super fast so you'd prefer to only have your demons out for important battles) and you can't... use guns on auto. yeah don't ask me. but tbqh i've been pretty fine even with these things so lol

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HMMMM okay i got my prediction wrong. i got misguided into thinking zayin wasn't law because at first he was a blind follower then realized he doesn't condone fascism but he actually never switched alignments

when i started this game i was tempted to detail everything that was happening but the plot structure is a lot harder to figure out so i'm constantly under the impression things are not what they seem. i'm actually surprised by how much i'm getting wrong

I FINALLY REACHED THE FULL REVEAL SCENE AND WHEW it's no wonder i barely knew anything about this game because you just can't explain aleph's background and the way his companions behave without spoiling the whole ass plot and there's... a lot

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the absolute unit is here

idk if it's just the fantranslation but it seems they didn't make dick jokes in his debut

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hiroko learning teleport almost nearing lvl60... :) yeah fuck you too girl

we had no other partners aside beth to compare here but fuck it, i can't stop thinking how the heroines in the snes games suck at learning actual shit we need fast compared to all your male companions wtf

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big walltext because 4 screenshots aren't enough to put the whole context so you guys can understand me losing my fucking mind over the twist

HE'S JUST LIKE KNUCKLES'S FATHER IN THE SONIC COMICS, I'M SHITTING MYSELF

amazing

so THAT was the reason this mf stayed alive the most

now he's ready to go to a disco

the shadows on his eyes look so much like sunglasses in the sprite. dude is literally the cooler daniel meme

while the earliest kaneko artwork circa mt2 is where his stuff objectively could look better in redraws, i honestly think his smt/smt2 drawings in general all look better in his old style instead of when he tried to remake them using the nocturne shading for the psx ports

like, the nocturne shading is INCREDIBLE and looks amazing in games like digital devil saga or the raidou ones but they just don't fit the mood of 90's smt

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sometimes i sulk a little when remembering of smt4a's faults but then i see stuff like that ntr brainwashing scene or aleph doing this shit in front of his now-aware-mother and then i sigh in relief

i think i lost the count of how many fucking blondies are in this game. lucifer, hiroko, that governor, the abyss npcs, the fairy that hit a spell on hiroko, the fairy that is fucking daleth, now the lake nymph-LIKE ENOUGH!!!

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guys i tried to face lucifer two times and....... after all those games, right in very late smt2, it finally happened. i think i'm underleveled for a boss

like he can't kill me but i'm on the exactly same boat. i use everything i have but the fucker has so much hp all my mp drains out like poof. it just becames an eternal battle where no one can kill no one and it goes on until i give up

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (5/8)

so.... beth died while barely having saying a word, daleth was a psycho and became brainwashed by an elf and gimmel failed at crypto and got offed by us

guess there's not much space for doubt that zayin is unequivocally the best character from the lab human roster

i already commented on SMT1 getting the chaos side better than other games and it goes beyond in SMT2, even gaians are depicted with much less nonsensical aggressiveness

idk what to think abt hiroko, to her credit she's given a lot more dialogue than previous heroines but her relationship with aleph still feels random

out of nowhere we get everyone in the game agreeing they are a couple when there has been no scene whatsoever that even distinguished them going from strangers to barely close to each other which we at least got in SMT1

here's my idea of a retake on belphegor: he doesn't turn him into a bishie or anything and just stays exactly the same except now he's playing on his phone while on the toilet

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hooray we also visit the underworld in smt2!! it's the first time since pretty much the beginning that there are different bgms and graphics altogether, the agony in all those days stuck going through the same reused shit over and over can't be understated

the part where you have to help the japanese deities by building the body of masakado is the worst thing i had to endure in a smt game, even with a guide you just feel like screaming for help

imagine what i went through with MT1 and multiplay by 10 the number of items and locations

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don't you fucking lie to me, this is the nickelodeon slime pool isn't it

OUR WAIFU HECATE HAS RETURNED for both my amusement and dismayal she's the very first boss i got game overs because the bitch drops a lot of instakills

(remember how humans are inherently immune to light in the snes games? basically she's the first boss to act actually smart and go for mudo instead. i had zero protection against it ❤️)

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the animation of some sprites load a bit worse than others but this one takes the cake to the point it hurts my eyes

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i can see why people like to draw aleph with a smiley face, he has a lot of goofy negotiation options lol although in my case i see him as those manly 90s kuudere bishies that unintentionally act like a clown while keeping the serious face

aleph gets church fanboys throwing money all over him while barely trying

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only law gets normal water, if you're neutral you bathe in slime and if you're chaos go straight to the tomato soup

on this matter, i'm not worried about the options i'm picking because this time the most interesting routes for me are either law or chaos so i'm just going with whatever

that being said, this game is -awfully- biased towards law to the point i haven't been able to switch from it even once, the chaos healers are not only harder to find but they only allow your entry if you pay an 1k fee so it's quite an annoying expense in early game

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i'm used to how toned down the series turned out to be in video game form despite the novel it originated from but this scene specifically made me go "ok if this wasn't something tailored to be allowed on a nintendo console You Just Know he would say another word instead of kill"

mind break ntr monster ass

sadly the one (1) r-rated smt with actual eroguro we got doesn't have art done by kaneko but some other rando. it's not that bad-looking compared to other guests artists but 🥺 the one chance kaneko had of going all out… poof

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (4/8)

and then daleth receives the same spell on himself by another fairy that got a crush on him. where's the same slut energy as hiroko huh

something i noticed is that the fan translator didn't give an eng equivalent to any of the races (yousei = fairy) and to be fair this was translated in fucking may 2004 (basically JUST before the time nocturne got released in the west so they didn't have any model to follow)

and even discounting that, the text space was nightmarishly small in old games so attempting to translate only to get an even more confusing result wouldn't be very worth the effort

there's an article on this btw

gotta respect the hustle of brainwashing a rando to become your husband and help with your store

~

GUESS WHO I JUST MET

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okay so remember when i said SMT1 wasn't hard, just super slow to go through bc of its clunkiness

now multiply the clunkiness for around 6x and then you have SMT2

there's indeed an intent on making it more challenging on the player to walk through locations for story purposes but you gotta add this element on a map system that is already abysmally taxing because almost every goddamn dungeon looks the same

thinking about people complaining about the lack of complex dungeons in smt4-5 and i'll give that nocturne was just too good but after surviving the snes era you can't help but feel oh boy i actually don't mind simple layouts, i suffered for fucking enough already

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me: aleph probably needs speed or stamina to be a good dancer smt2:

me: WHAT THE FUCK

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the amount of places that you need to revisit in later points of the game are getting so atrociously hard to keep up with that even looking up a guide to see where your progress is at makes you feel like

the one (1) aspect they help you with is that there's a feature where you can mark dots on the map so at least you're not going full blind like in MT1

still annoying as fuck specially because our dear hiroko as of now still hasn't learned a teleport skill

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realized a bit late that you can actually cheat by making aleph drunk so you can have extra MAG to beat the dance contest...

slay king

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god i stayed stuck for several days because this GODDAMN npc gave me the false impression i couldn't go past him. the way i could've just.... keep walking to the door instead of turning back every fucking time like a tool

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amaterasu you sorta aren't helping making me sympathetic to your side

while gods being assholes is a staple in the series, shinto deities hit a nerve on me because their yamato PAWAAA through NIPPON blood blablabla xenophobic talk is excused in-game since obvious writer favoritism

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ok so i guess gimmel is our law guy and he wants to build his own land. he seems on the hippie side so he's probably attempting to use his priviledge for good

nvm DUDE WAS LITERALLY JUST DOING METAVERSE LMFAOOOOOOO

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (3/8)

angels treating aleph like their own personal clown

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oh look who it is!

hiroko (the other heroine with SLIGHTLY more personality than beth) broke the center's rules in order to find a missing boy and got put into jail, so nadja helps us find and release her.... and can you guess what she does next

SMT1 already had a bit of an ambiguous lolicon aspect going on with alice but i can't even have an excuse for what they went with nadja here. just this image playing

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aside the annoying amount of backtracking, regarding the difficulty i don't have much to complain because i got an unicorn with estoma very early on, random encounters are easy to escape from and hiroko isn't super useful but mm she does her job i guess

beth was essentially the same as hiroko so uh well i guess i don't have any reason story or gameplay-wise to miss her. my bad

the way none of the characters gave a fuck abt beth too lmfao the guy that killed her kept chasing you for like 4 times, forces a fairy to use a spell on you and instead hits hiroko and then we have a completely out of nowhere NTR scene

the guy's a fucker but his choice of wording is funny as shit i mean. i mean. 100% the outfit to go when you work for the church

HER PARENTS TOO. LOOK. THEY WERE SO PROUD OF HER

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we chase around the fairy dipshit that turned hiroko into a slut and i'm still losing at the name they gave to the damn item. might as well have called it Cuckold Sap

kaneko could've given the guy a little critter form like berserk puck but instead we get this peter pan cosplayer ass

hiroko goes back to normal and we get another funny scene. at this point i'm like "okay i guess daleth is this game's navarre"

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (2/8)

they let you name everyone like the standard for the old games but this time they'll drop actual canon names if you choose not to invent something of your own

they are a lot more mysterious about your companions in early game so as of now (lvl20s) i still don't know which is supposed to be which

so the gist is that aleph & cia are lab creations specifically designed to Serve The Church. if MTII hinted on the idea of working for the Law guys just a little, this time we go Full Biblical Protagonist Zone

aleph starts as law from default even before regaining his memories, with gaians shooing you and you being unable to recruit or use chaos-aligned demons

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from this point on, aleph starts living in the center serving the church and the funniest aspect about the center's bar is that not only they don't serve beer (I MEAN *cough cough* magical fizz), it's the only place where it serves YES YOU THOUGHT RIGHT the goddamn milk option

i know i talk a lot about drinks from the bars but it's something that you end up taking a lot of worldbuilding info. in the factory area where most of the population are workers, it's no wonder they fucking need alcohol to keep living on

something i felt was missing from MTII was details of how they were living after the city got devastated by demons. SMTII finally introduces the concept of breeding monsters specifically to eat

btw this is how the normal form of nandi looks so i'm guessing that like how demifiend is human x demon, deminandi is probably a normal cow fused with a demon to make it have more meat

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me: ah shit, i can't revive my best demons because i wouldn't have enough money to get beth (our designated boring silent heroine) a good gun

me 10 minutes after leaving the healer: UH

girl came to our party out of obligation, only said like two introduction sentences on the lines of "i'll follow you wherever you go 😌" and then two missions later kicks the bucket with absolutely nothing else said in-between

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i'm still early in the game but idk i feel the narrative pacing regarding your companions isn't... very good compared to SMT1. one of them that i don't even remember if we had met attacks us and the heroine that barely said a word dies and all i imagine is aleph going "???? ok"

the only characters i feel something for is the old guy trainer that leeched money off aleph (and occasionally showed a caring side) and the other old guy trainer that was gay and horny. forget the church and go back to being a gladiator aleph

🥺

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (1/8)

just like before i go in barely knowing anything aside similarities to SMTIVA (and our just finished MTII).

poor fan localizers fighting for their damn lives working on those tiny ass text boxes

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i'll go to the story tidbits soon but i gotta comment on something: even without playing SMTI-II previously i had the feeling SMT:If felt cheap when playing it some yrs ago and now that i'm actually experiencing everything that came before, uh... If is a VERY bottom tier megaten lol

like, it doesn't share the same excuse MTI had of being The Very First Title for lacking story or good dungeons. you guys saw just how good MTII was, and it was already the frickin second game!!

but all in all i think the worst sin of If was lacking originality for the soundtrack, almost everything we hear in it was originally from I-II 😩 since i played If first that's where my head associates a lot of bangers from these games to when it doesn't deserve this credit

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you start the game as a nameless guy without a memory in a city with its main entertainment being arena duels with your only support being a baldie full in debt that acts like a trainer/father figure-like and keen on making us a champion like we're in a warm boxing story

NO FUN ALLOWED

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this game introduces virtual battles in the main story which make a comeback in SMTIV in the form of sidequests. while you can't recruit demons in it, it's a very practicable way to grind

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game barely started and you already have to protect your ass from old men

where's the lie tho. look at him and tell me he isn't top3 on the list of ogeable protags. you're so close to feel his balls

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the demon negotiation part is a mixed bag. you don't get bored fast because there's a lot of varied dialogue and reactions, but thanks to the micro space alongside the bottom text box covering the upper one, it's hard to read and often you're left with nonsensical text

here's an example of what i mean, you barely have 1 second to read the whole thing before it gets abruptly cut

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😳

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as you get the title of champion and the story progresses, you have flashbacks to your companions and the twist of what you were originally hits in

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (9/9)

NOOOOO MY TOMODACHIS

lmao SMTIVA really had MTII as its base all over it

it amazes me how MTII was made before they defined the alignments into a rigid law-neutral-chaos system and yet i think it was able to grasp law and chaos much better than later entries

please don't tell me that it was the addition of neutral that caused things to get fucked up??? like "oh, we gotta make the demons look bad so humans can look good" like aw man. anyway boy i sure didn't expect to like this game that much! truly a hidden treasure

my complaint on the story is basically: while i 100% appreciate the take on chaos here, i think it only starts making sense for the mc to pick this side in very late-game

as far as how heroines traditionally go, i think asuka was pretty much the weakest i've seen, yumiko and the SMT heroine have fitting contexts that justifies them following the hero but asuka and takuma barely have any connection whatsoever

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anyway here's ryu in full artwork and SWEEET JEEESSSUUUSSSSS ????????

takuma decades after saving tokyo: my best friend ryu has been dead for many slutty slutty years

here's our asuka. she def deserved a more active role, her being a witch partner is a pretty fun concept to work with

and here glorious kaneko's 1990s style for the og release of the game

you can feel he always had a twink style but it'd take some yrs until he could do cute faces ngl i particularly like how androgynous asuka looks here

found out kaneko made a lot of extra illusts for the manual and i can't stop laughing at this one

man these go hard as fuck

rly wish they depicted battles, negotiations and just general dungeon activity more in artwork

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i 100% would have liked this better than what we got

yumiko in her 50s transferring her powers to asuka instead of the story just... randomly forcing you to rescue izanami again when we already did this shit in MTI

END

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (8/9)

see!!! this is how you do a chaos route!!!

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takuma not this again

how did this guy stay alive until now

aw! satan unfortunately didn't have 6 boobs here

guys It Is Time

what particularly hits on his dialogue in MTII is that aside the tragedy with ryu, we DID visit hell in this game and boy it sucked ass! takuma has full reason to give him the middle finger!

here's the godliest remix of the yhvh MTII theme that everyone and their grandma are morally obliged to listen to

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the subject of deities being eternally regenerated through the great will/axiom is something i have lot of interest on but we have yet to see a story going deeper on this aspect

~

oh so they went with an ending without demons on the sense they prob all returned to nature... it's like a mix between the two SMTIVA endings

remember the devil buster videogame (the machine ryu&takuma were playing at in the beginning and where pazuzu is freed from)? when you load it one last time, guess who shows up in the credits

i can forgive you being an asshole but for god's sake nakajima, anything but a gamer

and THAT'S IT for the good ending of MTII! since we're at it, might as well check the other ending and see if there's anything interesting

funnily you can automatically go for both good and bad endings only depending on the question yhvh gives to you but any mistake resulting in fighting the guys we befriended before would turn you to bad

the power of friendship!!111 but with chaos-aligned demons, i love this

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (7/9)

me: well it has been a harsh journey but asuka has finally grown to be a party member i can depend on MTII: nah

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me: fine i'll just sell it then store owner: it'll be 400 macca me: OH COME ON ~

time for beelzebub's village! takuma goes uber eats mode once again

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the dungeons in this game aren't nowhere as long as the ones from MTI but they sure compensated by making them Very Ass

~

i think the most annoying part of the nes/snes games that isn't commented much is that the fusion system is incredibly awful

i think MTII is the worst game on this matter so far because ironically it's the one that introduces elementals

not only elementals result from two demons of the same race here but also some other rule that they don't explain what it is and you can only contact with like?? 4 races in the field so you end up having barely any diversity at all

these are the highest level demons (all around 45~60) i was able to get and i can't fuse ANY of these into something better because i either get elemental salamander (lvl 38, i'm almost lvl 70) from the majority or a hanuman (already have) from like 2 or 3 of these

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wow! remember when we turned bael into a frog? i didn't know when i made the choice but not killing him was actually vital to being able to get the true ending apparently

i sure am shitting my pants from happiness because i'd have to go through the whole thing again if i hadn't

hmmm one true god hmmmmmm totally not a bald head guys

glory thee.... great healer + tiddies in one package

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lmao i got frickin stuck in a maze from a room that is completely dark so i have no way of knowing where to properly go unless i draw a map which is something i 100% have no choice because there aren't any available maps online

the worst one was having to draw a map one pixel at a time but i'm fine thanks

HOO BOY a game where the chaos side is totally in the right!!!!!!!!!!!

i love how it makes sense for lucifer's equipment to require intelligence (since he gives knowledge to humans) but from a gameplay perspective it's best that the takuma stay as dumbest as possible

honestly they... REALLY missed the mark by not making asuka able to equip those, it makes even more sense for her character since she's what pushes you toward this alignment in the first place

~

oh yeah this is also the first game where demons like girimekhala start having their lovely repel phys nature

rangda-chan in MT1 was absolutely harmless but in MT2 i rewind every time she appears ❤️

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (6/9)

demon world time

instead of selling all the armors in a single place MTII divides for gender and it's funny because the overworld graphic makes you think 'huh are those toilets'

guessing the MTII male armor seller is the first ambiguously gay npc in the series

~

~

damn!! i was excited to tell everyone how easy to navigate MTII is even if events get triggered in a non-linear way (like MTI) but this goes to shit once get inside the demon world

oh sweet! mora also descended to hell

uh............

the loud snort i did at this right after the shock from the plate from before

mora will reject everything but this one. snob ass

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DUDE SHE'S YOUR WIFE

~

i thought this game had close ties to the previous game but story-related deities from MT1 come back just as random enemies here?? even rescuing izanami again felt sorta random lol

~

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (5/9)

takuma: PFF YOU'RE NOT MY MOTHER *gets paralyzed again*

btw that's how the lady responds if you try to make ryu or asuka take the medicine instead.... what does that mean

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mora goddamnit!! that wasn't the turtle duel i was hoping it would happen

zaratan's stomach isn't big but can be a very unnerving dungeon because they kept the vore-like feeling pretty intense, with random spots taking a good portion of your party's health, the enemies not being the type that you can talk to and you can't escape until the end

~

lol since i've been rewinding a lot i haven't noticed until this dungeon but recarm in MTI/II fully heals the mp while in SMT1 it resets to 0 no matter how much you had before and SMT1 still is hilariously easier than any of them

but the quality improvements are very much real, i'd say at least this remake plays far better and faster than og SMT1 even

it's just that regarding enemy level, skill distribution, money earned etc, it's... genuinely very hard

at lvl40 rn and i still can't make asuka do much aside healing and defending herself because oh lord no healing items oh lord gotta save my mp and hp as much as i can

mora: 😑

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this scene but with american 1990s tv show sonic saying it

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bitch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i was 100% expecting this to happen obviously but a part of me is still sour at the game being 'oh do you wanna side with ryu your best friend? :)' and then 'oh actually you can't, follow this girl you never talked once from now on'

froggy

takuma: ryu PLEASE just tell me why the fuck did you you release lucifer again ryu:

~

forgot to mention but this is THE debut game of very well known idols

summer gacha alt jack and rubberhose pyro

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (4/9)

orgy goat time

goddamnit guys. no fun allowed

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haha look at that. i wonder if he'll just be there for the whole game

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THERE'S A FUCKING LAYTON-ESQUE PUZZLE

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good fucking job

OH................

TAKUMA NO!!!!!!!!!!

takuma's impairment would in theory skyrocket the game's difficulty since he's unable to do anything while constantly loses hp but as long as you keep screenshots of everything like i do it's quite fast to reach the location to fix him back in place

luckily i had a lot already saved so i didn't need to grind for money but still, it was only 5,000 macca while there are mid armor costing more than five times that dystopian future with affordable health care

~

i had this thought in my mind that takuma is a dumbass protag since the start of the game and this whole arc solidified it

takuma: *gets arm chopped off* D: takuma: *immediately goes back to try the same shit that caused him trauma before* :D asuka: uhhh takuma couldn't you have just idk... used a broom or smth

~

i went for the crazy drugstore lady again and just found out that while ryu silently lets takuma get stoned to his heart's content, asuka has dialogue where she gets pissed at him

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (3/9)

oh guess, asuka also has alcohol option in the bar

asuka and ryu happily chugging a beer while takuma silently sips his milk

to be fair after seeing the shitshow that happens when he gets high it's probably for the best

ACTUALLY this does makes sense in a way. the protag is the only guy that can manage the comp so it's equivalent of not wanting your designated driver to get wasted

~

turning on the game again and remembering that ryu isn't with me anymore which means i don't have multi-target magic nor... a spell to leave the dungeon anymore

this is the same SMT shit all over again, they took no pulls in making the heroines awfully useless in early game

the way asuka is threatening in the first meeting but becomes strong as a mosquito as soon as she's part of your party

~

MTII forneus looks like a fucked up hybrid of a manta ray, a bird and a... plane but in like, a super cute way

btw this is the first game in the series that kaneko worked on

goofyass monster era

tbh the one that started with ugly ass nonsensical monsters was our og hiroyuki kitazume guy (the one from zeta gundam fame) so to be fair kaneko was just following up with what they had back then, the one-headed cerberus that we have to live with until this day was kitazume's fault!!!

kaneko sobbing while submitting a three-headed cerberus begging for it to be used as replacement only for the one-headed design to keep being chosen out of tradition instead

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debut kaneko made the funniest-looking shit on earth

actually i'm pretty sure he had kazuo umezu as source of inspo for demon design so this def checks out here

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we save ryu's gf and she gives you back the ring he took from you lmfao "plss he's just being dramatic, you 2 go make up ok ;)"

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the queen has arrived

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WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO RYU

bruh we're already facing pazuzu??????

this is so funny i'm barely on lvl30 and the guy that kickstarted the whole game is already dead

~

quite literally the first time i'm able to breathe ever since separating ways with ryu NOT thanks to you, asuka

~

btw asuka also has an overworld sprite. you only see her when takuma is dead lol

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (2/9)

he'll literally get paralyzed and die if you keep letting that woman fill him

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THIS IS JUST LIKE MONSTER RANCHER

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oh gee

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the post-apocalypse shelter setting + guillible close friend as your partner really parallels smtiva

pazuzu even talks to you directly from the comp just like dagda

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i see, so you either side with your friend or with the heroine

asuka obviously is the most sensible option for an outside viewer but the thing is that 1. ryu is right about pazuzu helping them 2. takuma doesn't know her at all

lmao

~

big personal favorite, tsukasa masuko king also i wish the box image was available in higher quality because it's neat to see the main cast of both games together

hmm now that i'm comparing both, the og nes version sounds better

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the way it just began as a joke because of the names and then the game kept putting more weight into it and now i'm unironically seeing dgs ryu in takuma and dgs kazuma in ryu

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i thought that scene was a path intersection thing but the game isn't letting me do anything unless i go back and agree with asuka *reads a guide* okay guess i'll have to ditch ryu... MT2 trolling me w the illusion of choice

MF FUCKING TOOK OUR DOG LMFAOOOOO

top 10 worst divorce settlements

[tamarakkoarchive]

Megami Tensei II [SNES] livetweet thread (1/9)

behold the least known mainline protag aka the MT2 guy

i love 1990 kaneko era man. those beautiful curls

i'll be using the guidebook names, so we'll be calling him takuma and his partner will be asuka

i have close to no knowledge whatsoever about what happens in this game aside a few similarities to smtiva (and probably smt2 by extension) so i'm pretty excited

oh aside these two you can also name a male friend *looks up guidebook names again* ok so our third guy will be ryu

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MT2 fools you into thinking you already start on the action with asuka but actually you're playing a game... inside a game

funnily you cannot progress until you actually beat the inside-game thing which took quite some time

the twist: inside the videogame there was someone sealed inside, our pazuzu guy

the bad news: his design here is ugly as fuck

you know i was STRONGLY suspecting that since MT1 focused only on the side of demons, then MT2 would later show the lawful side and my hunch was right

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pazuzu: *talking to angels* fellas this guy's a gamer. let's take him to our side

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OKAY so remember when i joked about nakajima drinking? the bar is back BUT this time the drinks are apparently not alcoholic booooo and... for some reason only ryu has the magical fizz option

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you guys are together out of comphet while we are together because we are gamers... we are not the same

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man the shock i had upon seeing how the actual overworld looks like. this jump on details. i'm shitting my pants

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the series' very first introduction to terminals: a normal ass computer it's cute that the MT1 slots are still there

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there's too much stuff to say that would be hard to mention without walltexting but MT2 instantly won me over. game mechanics, worldbuilding, graphics, soundtrack, i'm loving every second of it

ryu baby where have you been all this time. goddamn multi-target magic in early game even. recovering from my trauma with yumiko

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OOOOOHHHHH mystery solved, magical fizz is not soda *whispers* it's Beer

umm guys... i don't think this store is regulated