After Gaston's introduction, Asahi expresses her annoyance at his attitude and "magnificence".
Asahi: What a Magnificent Ass.
When "Nozomi" (actually Napaea disguised as Nozomi) sends you a quest to meet her in Ameyoko Way with incredibly poor spelling in the quest description, she tells you to "pleez kum."
Not nearly as bad as in the original game (as their Artificial Stupidity has been mostly fixed), but your main partner will "helpfully" remind you after a battle with an unregistered demon that you should have tried recruiting it. They apparently aren't aware when your inventory is too full or when you tried but failed. Or even better, when you tried but they wound up killing the demon.
If your Assist Gauge is at max, your partners will automatically do their Assist Rush at the end of your turn, which means if you're trying to isolate a demon you want to recruit or save the assault for a boss, you'll find yourself in a race to defeat the enemies before your partners "help" you by wasting the entire meter.
Partners who cut in at the start of battle may end up killing a demon you wanted to recruit. Gaston is worst about this, as he also uses your Press Turns and can waste them by missing or having his attacks nullified or worse.
Anvilicious: The game is about as unsubtle as all get out about how the power of friendship overcomes all with Peace route choices.
Asahi. She's either a flat stock moe sister character who is out of place in the setting or a ridiculously determined, upbeat Nice Girl in a normally dark setting who goes through significant character development.
Toki. She's either beloved for her dark design, assassin aesthetic, general snark and yandere tendencies, or hated for regressing into a shallow, lovesick character who flat-out worships Nanashi and by extension the player. There's even a subsection of the fan who feels the former bits of her characterization are painfully edgy and trying too hard, but find the lovesick version of her endearing.
Dagda. Either he is an annoying hypocritical jerkass who tries too hard, or the sole voice of cynical rationality in a broken world, whose only sin is giving up too early or a Straw Character that turned unintentionally sympathetic.
Danu herself is just as divisive as her son. She's either seen as a controlling hypocrite or a benevolent protector looking out for humanity. Her actions in the Cosmic Egg, especially her creation of a new Dagda during the beginning of the Peace route, are also base-breaking. Some see her creation of a new Dagda as effectively brainwashing someone who dared to defy her, while others argue that it was a necessary thing to do since a happy ending was no longer possible with the original Dagda, or simply no Dagda at all. Implying by that extent that this was her way of avoiding the latterand not get rid of her own son completely.
Even YHVH, the Final Boss of the Neutral paths, is this. Either it's awesome that players get to face him for the first time in a few decades, or think that he's only there to sell a game with a story of questionable quality.
Best Boss Ever: Many are in agreement that Final BossYHVH and Ultimate BossStephen are two of the best bosses in the franchise. Both fight similarly with extremely overpowered skills, and to beat them, you have to use special skills to weaken their resistances. Stephen is a special case in that in addition to your regular party, all four previous protagonists form their own party to help in the fight.
Breather Boss: None other than Matador. Yes, THATMatador. No, seriously. After the Mamudoon- and Status Effect-spamming nightmare that is David, Matador's straightforward wail-on-the-enemy-with-Andalusia nature is a breath of fresh air. He sometimes screws up and uses Titanomachia or Mortal Jihad, missing and wasting Press Turns, and his weakness to Ice can be capitalized on majorly with Hallelujah, especially if he's learned Magic Compression. He's still a brutal boss, but noticeably weaker than David.
The nature and quality of the story is by far the greatest source of debate among the fans. Proponents love it for its greater depth and characters, presenting a story with a setting and characters that are refreshingly different for a Shin Megami Tensei game, fixing recurrent problems other games in the series have such as Flat Characters and Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. Meanwhile detractors hate it, finding it a mess of clichés, stock characters, Mood Whiplash, and a lack of subtlety, and feels like the story relies on contrivances to move forward. And while those elements may be refreshingly different to the series, and some detractors may even like the story in general, they nevertheless dislike that they skirt dangerously close to generic-RPG-ville and thus don't work as a MegaTen story in particular.
The Neutral Bonds Route. Depending on who you ask, it's either an exceptionally satisfying Earn Your Happy Ending for the cast you've grown to love, or an exceptionally awkward tonal shift. Tying into the above, the fact that it relies so heavily and blatantly on The Power of Friendship means many find it out of place in what is otherwise a more cynical series.
The Neutral Massacre Route. On the one hand, it's either the most tonally appropriate outcome for such a Crapsack World, with a genuinely interesting outcome to boot, or a route that's out of place from the rest of the narrative and tries too hard to be dark and edgy, since here you fight not just some of the other sides, but all of them, and less rational so much as a glorified "villain path".
One specific example is the design(s) for Nanashi. In the final game, he's a young fifteen-year old boy with a contemporary half-shaven undercut who draws his Dagda-given abilities from a Power Tattoo. An earlier concept of the protagonist is a man in his twenties who gets his powers from a transformed arm, and whose design was repurposed as Asahi's dad. A lot of the game's audience are teens, especially in its native Japan, for whom he was deliberately made to be a more "open-minded" teen as a better fit, and find him more relatable this way. His fans also like that he has a more fleshed-out personality and interactions than past protagonists to get behind. Meanwhile, other parts of the audiences, especially in the West where older protagonists are more commonplace, found this line of reasoning somewhat absurd and that the change in design is a form of franchise decay that robs the MegaTen series of its unique identity to become more like the Persona spin-offs and all the other JRPGs.
The redone alignment system. Detractors feel it removes the series' trademark moral ambiguity by having Law and Chaos be early bad endings clearly framed as completely in the wrong and one of the two rather offbeat Neutral endings being favored over the other. Supporters fire back that the difference for once is refreshing and that the characters offering said Neutral endings make some very good points about the sheerfutility of the traditional MegaTen narrative.
After the hell that is Krishna's boss fight, getting to fuse him much later in the game and using his notorious Raga skills — which are not nerfed when he's on your side — on enemies is immensely satisfying.
Did Matador piss you off in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne? Well, not only is he a pushover compared to his Nocturne incarnation and even relative to the other Twisted Tokyo Fiends, but you can fuse him and have him learn Andalusia, which turns out to be one of the strongest Physical-based attacks in the game due to being able to hit up to 12 times in a row. Now you can make your enemies know the Demi-Fiend's pain!
Battling and killing YHVH once and for all, in particular the part where you (and your party members on the Bonds Route) tear apart His divinity with well-placed "The Reason You Suck" Speeches.
Cliché Storm: A frequent complaint aimed at the game's story is that a lot of the characters fall into rather common molds and archetypes seen in most Shonen anime and the like, with nothing really done to set them apart from what has been done before.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Many endgame players will tell you that the best way to distribute your stat points is to put most of them into one of your damage stats, occasionally put points into Agility to keep attacks from missing and maintain a decent chance of enemies missing, and leave the other three stats alone. It is not uncommon for players to have at least 200 (the apparent stat cap based on the visual stat bars, although the actual cap per stat is 999) in their main offense stat before they even hit Level 50. Luck is largely viewed as a Dump Stat because it offers comparatively little benefit for raising it. Within these sorts of builds, it's quite common for Nanashi's Magic stat to be the focus, with elemental spells being whispered to him so that he can reap extra turns from most enemies, although Strength and Dexterity builds are also seen as acceptable due to Physical and Gun skills being cheaper to cast and his late-game Awakened Power allowing those attacks to always do full damage when they hit. In short, Magic builds favor an easier early- and mid-game while Strength and Dexterity builds are built for steamrolling the endgame.
The Great Will is not mentioned in the game or DLC at all. This was a mistranslation of what was translated as the Axiom, which the game more often portrays as an omnipresent cosmic force rather than an actual sentient being. Whether or not the Great Will is YHVH or not is still unknown. This error is partly due to the unusually long gap between the Japanese and English releases and the two having somewhat similar names (the Great Will is called 大いなる意思 while the Axiom is called 大いなる理); the rumor circulated and became known as fact in the west until the game was actually translated, and many still believe it.
It is a surprisingly enduring myth that the Bonds route leaves things unfinished and that the Massacre route acts as a permanent end to the cycle. This when in reality the two routes are a more standard good and evil routes respectively with the Bonds route ending everything in a neat bow with peace between everyone whereas the Massacre leaves things open with one tyrant simply having been replaced with another.
Complete Monster: Defense Minister Tamagami may not be a demon, but, despite him not appearing for long, his actions are responsible in a large part for the dystopian setting of the game. A deranged Japanese Ultranationalist who believed only his country was worthy of superpower status, he called upon demonic power to realize his dream. He forcibly removed the souls of prisoners and replaced them with demon souls to create the National Defense Divinities, which he intended to use to conquer Japan's rivals such as China. He overwrote his personality onto the mind of an innocent woman to allow himself to cheat death, and he created the Yamato Reactor, a perpetual energy device fueled by demonic magics, through which demons entered the human world and ignited World War III. As his last gambit, if his new body were ever killed, he performed a ritual to summon Izanami to exterminate his own people and remake Japan from scratch in his image.
Contested Sequel: The original game was already a somewhat divisive game and this one even more so, with people either loving it or loathing it with little in-between. Critics cite the ham-handed way the story and the series lore is handled in this game, while those who enjoy the game feel that the refined mechanics and overall quality-of-life improvements are worth putting up with the story elements. The game is even controversial among those who loved the original IV, particularly the reveals pertaining to the true nature of the Law and Chaos factions and the portrayal of both as more or less unambiguously evil.
Critical Dissonance: The game received glowing reviews from critics thanks to the large number of improvements the game had over its predecessor. The reception from fans, on the other hand, was a lot more mixed, with the story and characters being the biggest point of contention among them.
Ixtabs know two skills: Lullaby, which attempts to put the party to sleep, and Eternal Rest, which kills all sleeping combatants, without fail. They also like to appear in pairs, and love to pull off that combo for a Total Party Kill. Also, to rub salt in the wound, the dungeon where they are found prevents you from being revived by Dagda. Hope you've saved recently.
Several horde encounters classify as this because not only can they take a significant amount of punishment before going down, reinforcements can also appear, forcing the player to fight them up to 4 times in a row without rest if they are particularly unlucky. Running isn't an option either. This gets complicated if the player also needs to expend a significant amount of MP just to take out one horde.
The lower floors of the DLC Farthest Reaches of Twisted Tokyo contain Mot, as seen in Nocturne, as a possible random encounter. Any Nocturne player will tell you how bad this version of Mot is, and this game's version packs Guardian's Eye, Makakaja, and Antichthon, making him slightly tougher than Nocture's Mot. If you get ambushed by that demon alone, prepare to have half if not most of your party wiped out right away.
Designated Villain: While the game treats Inanna's overbearing nature towards Danu and her desire to get her powers back as selfish and destructive, some fans found her situation to be sympathetic and see her desires as simply not wanting to be forgotten.
Disappointing Last Level: The final dungeon, YHVH's Universe, is widely considered to be the worst dungeon in the game. Reasons range from being absurdly large, no recruitable demons, reused bosses, boring teleport puzzles and coming across as just plain bland in design.
Krishna has found quite the fandom with people finding him one of the more charismatic characters in the game, often looking the other way even as he sacrifices all of humanity for his own goals.
Massacre route Nanashi and by extension Dagda gets this treatment from some fans, ignoring their acts of selfishness and pointless cruelty and instead portraying them as some kinds of heroes that does what is necessary even when all evidence point to the contrary.
Ending Fatigue: On the Bonds route, following the events at the Cosmic Egg, most of the games plot threads have all been resolved only for Stephen to appear and tell them to fight YHVH. What follows is a massive but ultimately linear final dungeon with no recruitable demons and long Info Dumps up till the Final Boss. The Massacre route suffers from some of the fatigue as well, mostly thanks to the same massive time-sink of a dungeon, but still isn't hit as hard due it still having plot threads that get resolved and more consistently well received Boss Banter.
Hallelujah is the most well-received of all the party members. Due to his usefulness in combat, especially after he Takes a Level in Badass (Wards off status ailments, casts Enduring Cheer, prevents the ever-annoying Lost status and later learns True Bufudyne and True Agidyne), and him being a complete and utter bro to Nanashi. In fact, even people who voice their distaste for the story still find him a highlight of it. That's why some people actually like pairingNanashi with him instead of Asahi.
The Divine Powers are well-liked for being a colorful antagonist group who raise some very good points about the futility of the Order Versus ChaosForever War. Many were bummed that you can't side with them.
Satan's depiction was met with unanimous praise, owing to his personality that was on display, his overall role in the story, and having one of the more fun boss fights. His design is also very much praised, compared to how he looks in previous games consistently for some.
Esoteric Happy Ending: While the writers comment the Massacre ending can be taken as a good ending, more than a few fans disagree with this, considering Nanashi and Dagda to be no better than YHVH after what they do. Some fans also see the Bonds as this, due to the countless hypocritical actions of Danu and Nozomi, with the New Dagda still wanting the same things as the original but choosing to help Danu being interpreted as brainwashing by detractors, and in general the characters ignoring the truths told to them because it doesn't fit their worldview.
Fanon Discontinuity: While the series has an underlying continuity that is loose at best, it still tend to have some common threads that tie everything together. Apocalypse, meanwhile, is somewhat seen as an exception with its lore severely contradicting what loose canon has already been established. As a result, the game tends to be ignored among lore buffs and is instead treated as its own separate thing, as opposed to a continuation of Shin Megami Tensei IV it was promoted as.
It comes down to Nanashi and Toki or Nanashi and Asahi. There are many, however, who simply aren't invested in either pairing.
In the Japanese fandom, Nanashi and Hallelujah or Dagda tend to be very popular pairings. Then there is Krishna, who tends to be paired with just about everyone.
Mute and Dizzy, hands down. Not because they can shut down any enemy into either wasting their turns doing nothing or using their puny regular attack, but for the simple fact that no one can resist either of these status. Not hordes, not bosses, not even the Final Boss or any Superboss! Because of this, the skills Dark Sword and Mist Rush are highly valued among any endgame-level team.
The same can be said about the Steel Bazooka, coupled with Mute Rounds. Not the strongest firearm available to Nanashi, and certainly not the most powerful ammunition, but having two to six chances to inflict Mute per turn is nothing to scoff about.
Skill Augment returns from the previous game, allowing you to, through a few strokes of luck, mutate skills and get potent passives or skills earlier than normal. Its strength is downplayed this time around due to rearrangement of the skill ranks, making it less likely to find desirable element-blocking passives until very late into the game.
Before the first patch, if you had the patience, you could fuse White Rider, who comes with God's Arrow (Light-based instant kill), and have a skill mutate to Light Pierce, which pierces all resistances and is otherwise only available to Cleopatra. This combo proved so deadly and effective even against bosses that the first patch had to nerf God's Arrow.
Just like Flynn in the previous game, Nanashi has full customizability of his stats and can utilize Demon Whisper to learn nearly any skill and tweak his affinity for it, making him an early powerhouse just by pouring all his points into a single offense stat. Unlike the previous game, positive affinities now give a percentage damage boost, letting him fully exploit nearly any attack, single or multi-hit.
Nanashi's Awakened Power, obtained near the end of the penultimate chapter, is absurdly powerful. It strengthens all (yes, ALL) of his attacks and makes them pierce resistances and even bypass reflective shields. Combine with the fact that the player can jack his offense stat to high heavens and you have a recipe for ludicrous damage. And if you neglect to take up or end up overwriting this skill, you also automatically get an infinite-use item that can teach it back. And it actually stacks with a late-game accessory which basically does the same thing.
Navarre eventually develops into one, due to his ability to consistently provide two of the strongest buffs and debuffs in the game via Doping (which increases max HP by 30%) and Debilitate (which lowers ALL enemy stats). Both of these spells, by the way, cost 100 MP each to cast, while Navarre does it for free. In short, he is one of the most essential partners to take into boss fights.
Once Asahi awakens, her Mediarama is capable of healing an upwards of 700-800 HP per use. Using her as a partner essentially guarantees your team receives Mediaharan level healing every turn for as long as she's alive. If your team is healthy, she's capable of bestowing Smirk, which is easily one of the best status buffs in the game.
Odin is one of the easiest special demons to fuse and is ridiculously powerful. Giving him the Charge + Gungnir combo gives him absurdly high damage output, and Gungnir is capable of piercing through resistances. He is an excellent choice for the final dungeon as well due to many of the enemies therein being weak to electrical attacks, including the Metatron Hordes, the most powerful normal enemies in the game.
Once you defeat Vishnu-Flynn, you can fuse Krishna for yourself, with access to his signature Ragas and Combat Tara. He will proceed to trivialize any enemy not immune to ailments, and the fact that said ailment-inflicting skills double as two-level debuffs also means that he can pull his weight in boss battles. All for only 51 MP per casting (65 if you subtract his affinity discount). Combat Tara is simply Luster Candy with a cheaper cost, at only 42 MP (base 60, as opposed to Luster Candy's 80). To compare, the two-attribute debuffs Acid Breath, Fog Breath, and War Cry each cost 65 MP before affinities.
Matador pulls his weight with his signature skill Andalusia, which, like the previous game's Kannuki Throw, hits a massive number of times — 4 to 12 this time! On top of that, Matador will naturally learn Phys Pierce which lets this attack not get blocked under any circumstance. Stack on Phys Pleromas, augment his accuracy and/or crit rate, add a Charge, and you can really destroy bosses with him. And it doesn't take much effort to unlock him, as he only resides on the 5th (out of 46) floor of Twisted Tokyo.
David picks up his own variation of a game-breaker with his signature move Haunting Rhapsody. It acts like Debilitate with a chance of causing panic, in addition to his affinities reducing its cost by an absurd amount. Combined with the fact that he is the first Fiend you can fuse, you can easily reduce many powerful enemies to mere targets.
While they're DLC, Cleopatra and Mephisto are both extremely powerful demons, thanks to their ability to pierce light and dark resistance. Cleopatra in particular, has a skill which covers her weakness, possesses incredible Magic to empower her Signature Move, and another skill which has a high chance to charm the enemy, along with fully decreasing their defense. Add in some Pleromas and they become incredible damage dealers for any situation. And while they cannot be fused via the standard Fusion app, purchasing Demon Fusion Lite allows you to do that, enabling you to pass their otherwise-exclusive Pierce passives to other demons! Of course, if you're strong enough to defeat them, you're probably strong enough to beat anything who isn't Stephenwithout them anyway.
One of the artifacts you can salvage is a thermometer, and the description states the temperature (Nanashi's) reading at 35.3 degrees Celsius (95.5 degrees Fahrenheit) — "a little on the low side." The description is an understatement, as it's barely above the threshold for hypothermia. It also delves into Fridge Horror about Nanashi's not-quite-human state: he apparently has a deathly-cold body temperature all the time.
The Trumpeter Horde is completely accurate to the demon's origin. In the Book of Revelation, there are seven trumpets played by seven angels. At full health, there are seven Trumpeters visible.
Related to the above: The music that plays during the battle with YHVH's second form opens with a Drone of Dreadthat sounds similar to a horribly distorted trumpet repeated seven times.
During the Mikado mission, Asahi tries to look older by putting on makeup. An angel chastises her, saying that makeup was invented by fallen angels to corrupt mankind. In the Book of Enoch, makeup was one of the many things the Grigori taught mankind.
As the artist that drew YHVH's forms points out, the elements of his forms reference God's actions (but this is mostly applied to his second form): "The first form was the head of the first man, Adam, created in his own image. However, the second form turns into a strange chimera that resembles a demon. The goat wanted by god in the Scriptures, the snake that tempted Eve in Eden or the swarm of locusts that appeared in the Exodus, threatening the Pharaoh if he refused to free the Jews, all can be seen in this form. Each part of the chimera is connected to the other."
YHVH's name being verbally censored is this twofold. For one, Jews and some Christians believe that the name of God should never be spoken aloud. Secondly, names like Yahweh or Jehovah are mere guesses at what the name actually is as those four letters are all we actually have. Taking these two bits of knowledge together, making it so that YHVH's name is completely incomprehensible even to the player makes a lot more sense.
Of all the bosses where you have to replay other fights if you lose, Azrael is one of the most annoying because of the four-scene long cutscene preceding the two Hordes that have to be fought before Azrael. The fight itself is also a pain due to him switching between Tetrakarn and Makarakarn each turn, leading to having to switch between physical and magical attacks.
Optional Boss Izanami is not terribly powerful for the earliest part of the game at which she can be fought, especially since you have a secondary partner who has multiple ways to support you. The main problem is that she has Diarahan, meaning that at any time once her HP runs low, she can make your efforts go up in flames by healing back to full.
Whenever Nanashi swings his weapon, he nudges a little bit forward. This can be used to the players advantage to cross poison areas without taking damage since the game doesn't register this as movement, and thanks to the fact the the cooldown period on his strikes are much shorter than in the previous game, it is much easier and time-saving to pull off.
In the game's initial release, an apparent programming oversight meant that if you could get Light Pierce onto White Rider, then his Signature Move God's Bow (instant death to anything that doesn't resist Light) would actually be able to bypass Contractual Boss Immunity. This was fixed in a patch.
Even after the patch, Light and Dark skills can still bypass Contractual Boss Immunity, provided the boss is weak to them and below 30% HP.
Using Imposing Stance and then ending your turn with Energy Drain allows you to act on one of the enemy's Press Turns. This is consistently repeatable and has a lot of uses. Beyond giving yourself more turns, you can also intentionally use a skill the enemy is immune to, which will, because it's still treated as the enemy's turn, remove all the rest of the enemy's Press Turns.
The game is called Shin Megami Tensei IV FINAL in Japan. About three years later, Splatoon 2's Final Splatfest has the subtitle of Splatocalypse and also has an Order Versus Chaos theme.
In the Defenders in the Diamond Realm DLC, after defeating Stephen, the Demi-fiend has a throwaway line saying "I won't go easy on anyone who gets in my way, not even the prime minister." Come Shin Megami Tensei V (a game where the prime minister of Japan is a major character), it was revealed that Demi-fiend would be returning as a DLC boss fight yet again.
Nanashi is voiced by Hiro Shimono in Japanese, who would later voice Rex in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 a year later, another JRPG protagonist who starts the game killed, only to be brought back by a supernatural force and fights with summoning various entities.
Ho Yay: It's genuinely hard not to interpret some of Asahi's fangirling over Isabeau as a bit Les Yay-y. Especially when she's blushing about being in Isabeau's quarters.
Well before release, fans guessed that YHVH would return and sure enough.
Some players of the previous game suspected that Nanashi would be the reincarnation of Akira in the present.
It Was His Sled: Notably, many series fans picked up this game because of these well-known spoilers:
The fact that Satan and YHVH are the true villains became quite well-known quite fast. This is such an open secret that before the game was even out anywhere other than Japan, an Atlus representative on Reddit publicly assured fans that YHVH would not be Bowdlerised in the localization.
Stephen being the ultimate superboss with the protagonists of the previous four mainline games joining you in battle is right up there with YHVH as the Final Boss as "game's most well-known spoiler."
Dagda is slowly revealed to be one throughout the narrative. Sure, he's abrasive, stubborn about his omnicidal plans and used you to his own ends, but it becomes increasingly clear that he's like that only because the setting's constant, futile cycles have all but broken him. Combine that with the way he consistently holds respect and admiration for Nanashi, brings up nothing but good points about the nature of existing in the SMT universe, and is the ultimate safety net in terms of gameplay, and you'll like him and hate him and feel sorry for him all at once.
During the fight against him on the Bonds route, not only is he understandably pissed that you betrayed him, but midway through the fight, Danu creates a replacement of him (this audibly angers him even further) and after he's defeated he is hardly ever mentioned and promptly forgotten in favor of the new brainwashed-Dagda. The somber, defeated tone of his last words really doesn't help here.
Also surprisingly, Lucifer, who was revealed to be, at least in this particular universe, created by YHVH as a false flag to make the side of Law look better by comparison, something he himself only realizes as he dies.
Low-Tier Letdown: Gaston is regarded to be one of the worst partners, mainly because he can steal your Press Turns in attacking, and it still counts as your attack if he misses or the enemy blocks it. His awakened passive merely increases his damage output, which is his only saving grace. For this reason, Toki is regarded to be vastly superior to Gaston, mainly because she attacks at the beginning or the end of the turn without using your Press Turns, and the fact that she can inflict instant death reliably. Relatively mitigated when Gaston obtains Gungnir after killing Odin, which pierces resistances, but the issue of him stealing Press Turns persists, especially since he also learns Gungnir Sever which is a Powerful, but Inaccurate attack which can again cause you to take turn penalties. While he can be a powerful and useful partner in the right hands, many players instead prefer to use utility-oriented partners, like Nozomi who can inflict status effects, Asahi who provides healing and Smirks for your team, and Navarre and his powerful buffs, as Gaston only has his damage output going for him.
Nanashi himself is considered the latest contender for most powerful MegaTen protagonist, joining Aleph and the Demi-fiend.
Memetic Loser: Gaston, due to his idiotic "jump in and attack physical-immune enemies and cause you to lose Press Turns" tendencies. He's basically the Walter of this game.
YHVH gets this due to jokes about how his entire fight can be summed up as "God gets insulted by a bunch of kids and gets turned into a demon". Despite the jokes, his boss fight is considered one of the best in the entire game.
Jokes about Maitreya's resemblance to the celebrity Matsuko Deluxe abound in Japan.
Vishnu-Flynn similarly being a Sith Lord due to giving of a strikingly similar style to them on top of wielding four red light-sabers.
In the two months between the game's release and the announcement of the localization, people commonly joked (at least, some people joked; others seemed to be serious) that given the game's content and themes the translation would be a hack-job, with the controversial localizations of Bravely Second and Fire Emblem Fates often being brought up.
The fandom plays up Dagda as an edgy teen trying to rebel against his mother. Typical edgy additions are included, such as black t-shirts and Linkin Park. Also, Dagda as a Bad Angel on Nanashi's shoulder constantly encouraging him to kill his friends.
Gaston. Because his name is Gaston. Cue the theme song and all derivations thereof.
"Hate teh break it teh yeh, kid. Yer dead."
"Record Needle Scratch". No, not the sound effect, but rather, the sound effect being written when referring to YHVH instead of using his name.
In regards to the Final Boss, thereareimageparodiesofthefirst phase which replace YHVH with other characters edited to resemble him and the miniature heads in the background.
More than a few jokes have spawned regarding Krishna wearing a fedora of all things, not helped by a. a few protests from conservative Hindus regarding it (and some other qualities about his appearance) and b. fedoras being part of a meme involving Hollywood Atheists, "neckbeard losers", or the overly edgy.
Krishna being obsessed with the word "Salvation", due to how often and how exaggeratedly he says it.
The dialogue triggered by excecuting the final dungeon-exclusive Combination Attack on the Bonds route.
Nanashi: "Flynn!" Flynn: "We'll do this together!"
The sound of the "ENEMY TURN" banner shattering when your partners interrupt the enemy to perform an Assist special, along with the associated lines spoken by your partners as they buff you and prepare to kick ass for you.
Nozomi: "It's still our turn!" Navarre: "On to new heights! You're in good hands!"
The glass-shattering sound every time one of YHVH's aspects is denied during the neutral routes' final battle.
After fulfilling certain conditions, hearing the equipment dealers take on a more friendly tone instead of their usual contemptful lines is quite satisfying:
"It's you! What do you need?" "Heh. See ya, Hunter."
This time, Mido belts out an enthusiastic "WHOAAAAAAAAA!!" to indicate that you've unlocked a new demon for Special Fusion.
In the English version, the static that results from anyone trying to pronounce YHVH's name is replaced with an obnoxiously loud sound that resembles a Record Needle Scratch that kinda kills the whole effect.
The Fiends' pre-battle grunts are basically annoyed sighs more than anything.
The "Armageddon" stand-off next to the Yamato Perpetual Reactor is supposed to be a serious Climax Boss event where it's possible to choose a Downer Ending by siding with Merkabah or Lucifer, but the fact it's just Merkabah, Lucifer, Nanashi's party and several other factions staring menacingly at each other makes it look more like a glorified political debate than a massive Law versus Chaos conflict.
Merkabah in particular is very difficult to take seriously there, since most of his dialogue is just him throwing the word "Filth" around as an insult. He doesn't just use it against the people of Tokyo this time, but against everyone involved in the standoff including himself.
The game takes Metatron's robotic angel designs and plays it to its logical conclusion; the Voice of God and the strongest of all the Heralds now has Robo Speak and mechanical whirring noises. Why?!
The YHVH name static does, however, emphasize how truly alien he is, given how even his name isn't something that human ears can properly comprehend.
The Fiends' annoyed-sounding sighs can be taken to mean that they don't see you as a very serious threat.
Never Live It Down: When you gain access to the Ginza member's shop, Nanashi can wear an Elegant Gothic Lolita outfit as a regular piece of armor. As a result of this, he is frequently portrayed as a constant cross-dresser by the fandom.
Nightmare Retardant: While generally an intimidating character, the way that Merkabah spams "filth" as he's confronted in Armageddon might be some sort of comedic relief.
No Yay: Some oppose Nanashi's two primary love interests (Asahi and Toki) on account of being adopted siblings and because of Toki's behavior when sealing the pot of lust during the Tokugawa Mandala mission, and Innana and Krishna highlighting how she wants to bear his (Nanashi's) children when she's kidnapped in the Cosmic Egg. Note that Nanashi (and Asahi for that matter) is fifteen years old, and it's explicitly revealed that a lot of her more flirtatious behaviors was Innana's influence...
Pandering to the Base: Ooh boy, the game is swimming in references and returning characters from the series older days, even including a DLC where the player is allowed to meet with past protagonists from the series. YHVH's presence was even used to promote the game during its first stream. The story, however, with its attempt at character focused writing and themes of "bonds" is seen by some as blatant attempts to pander to the Persona crowd.
On the Massacre route, all your allies bar Asahi and Dagda turn against you, forcing you to kill them, then Flynn, and then a mob of Tokyo citizens, including Fujiwara and Skins. To rub it in for those who have played IV, the battle theme when you fight your former allies is Isabeau's battle theme, which is played during a similar Player Punch in that game.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: Even people who don't like this game's plot admit the gameplay is among the best in the series. Others like both the gameplay and the overarching plot but find the specific narrative themes to be fairly rote. Not to mention a heavy focus on The Power of Friendship (at least in the Bonds route), which feels pretty out of place in a series you typically end up fighting your friends over ideological differences by the end of the story.
The Strength stat, the least useful stat to raise in SMTIV, gets a lot more utility in this game by being the key stat for Physical skills, rather than Dexterity.
The Smirk status, which was overpowered and overly luck-based in IV, has had several details reworked to make it more balanced. Offensively, Smirk no longer gives a massive attack boost but now lets your attacks — even magic attacks — inflict a guaranteed Critical Hit for extra turn economy, and some skills also gain bonus effects while Smirking. Most notably, Hama and Mudo are now damage spells but can One-Hit KO if used while Smirking. Defensively, Smirk no longer gives you an absurd evasion rate so you can still attack a Smirking enemy for a neutral hit. Finally, you get skills that let you directly bestow or remove Smirk to properly play around the mechanic.
In this game's predecessor, your battle partner tended to be randomly chosen if you had several candidates and suffer from painful Artificial Stupidity. Here, you get to choose who joins you in battle, their AI is smarter, and they level up with you and learn useful skills.
Alignment-Based Endings no longer force you to juggle a Karma Meter throughout the game. You simply need to answer a few prompts to get the route you want. That said, you will still be harshly penalized in the non-Law/Chaos routes if your dialogue choices throughout the game don't match up with the final route you choose (lose all items if you've been a Nice Guy but go Massacre, lose all demons if you've been a Jerkass and go Bonds).
The original got some accusations of Japanese nationalist sympathies, with the quest where you kick foreign gods out of Ikebukuro, an area of Tokyo known for its high immigrant population. In this one, you fight the deranged ghost of a nationalist politician, who is portrayed as a crazed Knight Templar who indirectly caused the entire conflict in the first place in a misguided attempt to remove foreign influence from Japan and make it a superpower again.
For people who feel that the series' portrayal of Neutral is too good compared to Law and Chaos, this game features the Divine Powers alliance as an explicitly antagonistic force of Neutral-aligned deities who demonstrate that they can be just as selfish and amoral as their Light and Chaos counterparts. Likewise, the inclusion of Maitreya/Miroku (who is a significant figure among Japanese Buddhists) among the Divine Powers goes a way towards addressing some of the series' accusations of nationalistic undertones in classifying locally-worshipped deities as Neutral and thus implicitly superior.
In response to Lucifer's bizarre Took a Level in Jerkass and less well-received design compared to past games Apocalypse reveals this version is actually the latest iteration of a subdivided Satan, whose traditional attitude and design IV's version of Lucifer resembles more closely.
The designs for several of IV's designs such as the National Defense Divinities are revealed to be the product of inhumane human experimentation. Meaning most of them were likely turned into their current states by Japanese nationalists. Of course this does not apply to all new designs but to a certain few.
Just as it was in Shin Megami Tensei IV standard and Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne before it, the demon recruiting system continues to be apparently luck-based. Demons you attempt to recruit will ask for answers to their questions, or to give up items, HP, MP, or any combination thereof, and there's still an even chance that they will just leave after you do all that.
Partner Assists are triggered automatically on the next enemy turn once the Assist meter is full, meaning it's possible for an Assist to kill a demon you were trying to scout or to waste one on a random encounter right before a boss that it would've been really useful on. Granted, you can just beat up random encounters to get the meter back to full, but that's super tedious to do. There's also fleeing and hoping you fail (which is guaranteed in Apocalypse difficulty without Trafuri), which somehow skips the Partner Assist from taking place. Of course, that comes with its own problems (like fleeing successfully).
Considering how many elements of the gameplay are tweaked solely to get rid of prior Scrappy Mechanics, the fact Macca Beam remains is quite glaring.
While the fact the Nanashi doesn't have to go back to the Hunter's Guild to cash in non-delivery quests like Flynn is appreciated, what's not is the fact that he automatically completes the quest after the final battle. Meaning if a player is trying to level up a Demon, it might be in their best interest to actually make sure not to use the demon, since if the demon falls in battle, they'll miss out on EXP from the boss and for completing the quest since the player has no opportunity to revive it. Bonus point for if beating the quest causes Nanashi to level up, triggering another Challenge Quest that Nanashi already fulfilled the requirements for creating another quest that the demon misses out on.
Three entire races of demons (Zealot, Famed, Undead) cannot be obtained except by fusion accident or special fusion, which proves to be infuriating for players aiming for 100% Completion on their compendium. A couple of Undead demons can be recruited from random battles, but require the Scout+ app or for the demon to beg for its life, which triggers randomly and infrequently.
Slow-Paced Beginning: Much like its predecessor, the story really picks up after the second major boss; up until that point your characters are fresh recruits being sent on relatively easy missions, but once Sukuna-Hikona falls and the Divine Powers arrive the cosmic battle truly begins. Downplayed somewhat compared to its prequel though, since we begin right in Tokyo instead of the peaceful Mikado, and the game does begin with you dyingand getting resurrected as a Godslayer.
Talking around in Mikado shows that Hugo has largely been demoted to a courier for Merkabah. In one of the DLC missions, you even get to kill a demonized Abbot Hugo.
The look on poor Asahi's face as she watches you get killed in the beginning of the game. Even though you do get better quickly, she just watched her lifelong friend die.
During your trip to Mikado, you can choose to emulate Flynn and take a nap at the lake. This results in hearing most of Issachar's opening speech from IV. Upon waking up, there's a fish hook in your hand when, all of a sudden, the ghost of Issachar painfully tells you to give it to Flynn. While it works out on Bonds, if you choose Massacre, once Dagda revives Flynn after the Vishnu-Flynn fight, he'll destroy the fishing hook, having forgotten all about Issachar.
On the Massacre route, having to kill your own allies, plus Fujiwara, Skins, and a good slice of Tokyo's population in cold blood will likely make you feel as though you have a heart of stone, especially since the battles aren't even hard. In the ending, the Goddess of Tokyo lets out a heartbroken "Why?" before vanishing. On the same route, picking someone to be revived as your goddess and seeing someone who was once an individual who could think and act for themselves be reduced to your unquestioning personal servant, may make you think twice about your decision to side with Dagda. Perhaps most poignantly, Asahi was recently murdered and devoured by Shesha in one of the most gruesome sequences in the game, and that is the last you see of her if you choose not to revive her.
Even the otherwise-happy Bonds ending isn't safe from this: After YHVH is slain, Isabeau looks for Jonathan and Walter, who then remind her that, as parts of Satan who is in turn part of YHVH, if the Almighty bites it, they have to go too. After the duo's parting words of promising to reincarnate as friends and rivals, they indeed vanish.
Sukuna-Hikona's signature attacks are medium-strength and hit the entire party, while you won't have access to attacks of such magnitude until at least two bosses later. They also have additional effects, like causing Daze or debuffing your accuracy on top of that.
Titan has sky-high defenses, no elemental weaknesses, and he's your introduction to Critical Eye, a buff that makes his next attack always a Critical Hit. He's thankfully weak to ailments, but you're at the mercy of the Random Number God that they don't wear off at the worst possible time.
Krishna's signature Venomous and Dream Raga skills not only inflict a series of ailments on you, but also double as two applications of Tarunda or Rakunda, forcing you to waste more time and MP undoing the debuffs, assuming you can first rid yourself of these ailments.
On a complete route, you have to fight Merkabah and Lucifer in succession. While they're not as powerful as they were in IV and they now have weaknesses to Dark and Light, respectively, they still have most of their moves and are formidable opponents. And, much like previous situations like this, dying to Lucifer will force you to refight Merkabah.
YHVH can quickly classify as this despite being the Final Boss, and can keep even a max-level party on their toes. Of note is the fact that he resists everything until cut down with Flynn's Godslayer's Sword, has moves that can bypass most resistances, and also possesses moves that can fully debuff your party or fully buff himself while gaining Smirk. And even the first phase, while far easier, still has a couple of nasty tricks up its sleeve like Mouth of God, an ability that just straight-up kills one of your demons and whose only countermeasure is hoping for a miss. And if you're unlucky, an event will trigger that cuts everyone's HP to 1 and saps sizable amounts of MP. You are expected to hold nothing back.
While you do get to use two full parties on the Bonds route (you and your demons in one party, and Flynn, Jonathan, Walter, and Isabeau in the other), on the Massacre route Flynn's party only has one companion, Satan, meaning that his party only gets two Press Turn icons instead of four. The boss decides to hit them with Authoritative Stance? Flynn and Satan lose their entire turn no matter what!
3/8 Moon is considered to be one of the toughest segments of the game. Terminals are disabled, Asahi is gone for almost all of it, and there are eight major boss fights, the last three of which are fought all in sequence — die to any of them, and you have to start again at the first of the three. To add insult to injury, skipping a cutscene when it's all over can cause the game to not start the cutscenes to proceed to the next day; while easily fixable by exploring a little and triggering the cutscene, it's not hard to skip it, and the game doesn't tell you what to do.
Tsukiji Hongwanji/Konganji, that horrendous teleport maze, is back! While it's no longer an Escort Mission like in IV, the dungeon has been made bigger, ensuring that you will get lost at some point.
Commander Hope, which many feel was wasted in the first game, is even more absent in the second one. Considering how this game rescued Navarre's reputation, some feel this could had been done with Hope too.
Some have expressed slight disappointment over the fact that Abdiel from Demonic Gene never appeared in the game, more specifically, that he was not present in the Explosive Epidemic in Mikado DLC. Reason for this being that he was the reason for the existence of the Demonic Gene, and the DLC diving right into dealing with said gene was seen as something of a missed opportunity for him to make an in-game appearance.
Mastema has no role whatsoever beyond a generic fusible demon. This is despite the fact that the DLC for the original IV reveals he was one of Akira's own demons and helped him found Mikado, both of which would be very relevant to Nanashi's story, and his insistence that God Is Good indicates that, in light of Apocalypse's reveals on the subject, he may well be reporting directly to the Axiom.
Side materials note that one of Dagda's reasons for hating YHVH so passionately is that He apparently used his daughter Brigid (who is consistently established to be one of his children in Celtic mythology) as a pawn by making her a Christian Saint. This is never expanded upon and never explained in the game, and to top it all off, Brigid herself only appears as a generic fusable demon! Not only would an explanation maybe have helped Dagda's motivation, but the fact that he himself is a father is wasted away to speculation as well.
Yay! Flynn the previous protagonist is back! Except he only has two encounters before being kidnapped for most of the game, he's used more as a plot device over a character in most of the story, and when you finally rescue him, it turns out the "Flynn" you rescued is actually Shesha who was impersonating him. He only gets a role during the final dungeon and by then it was far to late for him to get to do anything else.
Some fans have expressed disappointment that there is no option to side with the Divine Powers, feeling their arguments make more sense than Merkabah's and Lucifer's, and even Dagda's in some cases. In-game, Krishna does offer Nanashi to join him during his boss fight only to Dagda to prevent you from doing so.
Twisted Tokyo. Despite making totally sense that alternative Tokyo being turned into a huge domain due the lack of a "messiah", some fans think this was a wasted opportunity to make an alternative Tokyo setting, considering how Inferno Tokyo and especially Blasted Tokyo from the first game are praised. Instead, Twisted Tokyo is a series of dungeons with the exact same design floor after floor with the colour and name changing with each Fiend's section and no lore beyond the few lines that the man at the entrance tells you.
Speaking of which, Blasted Tokyo and Inferno Tokyo are revealed to be alternate timelines in Shin Megami Tensei IV. A prequel telling the story of Akira, Kiyoharu, Kenji, and Flynn's past self would have been a full game in and of itself.
Danu is portrayed as one of the few unambiguously good gods in the game, but her solution to her son's betrayal (creating a clone of him more in-line with her worldview and using it to perform a Kill and Replace on the original) did not endear her to a lot of players, though in her defense the original was trying to kill everyone and performing a Life Drain on Nanashi so it's not like there were many options. It also seemed in-character for her to be serious aboutnot wanting to kill her own son.
The Yuriko Faction of the Ring of Gaea are treated as a better faction compared to their Maitreyan faction counterparts, but are in reality a bunch of Social DarwinistHypocritestoo weak to actually enforce their worldview, take credit for things they never did, and raise children to be expendable Tykebombs if they survive the Training from Hell. Yet the story expects people to treat them as a perfectly reasonable viewpoint to have. One of them even admits that — by their own rules — the fact that the Maitreyans beat them means that the Maiteryans are right, yet they still fight to unseat them.
The Un-Twist: Mara is the true villain of the Maruology questline. Between the similar names and the traditional Hurricane of Puns starting almost immediately in the first quest well before Mara's first appearance, the only question was whether Maruo was influenced by Mara or if he was Mara — for the record, it's the former.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Quite a few people were confused over the main character's gender at first, thinking that he looked like a tomboyish young girl. Further adding to the confusion is the fact that Nanashi can dress up in both male and female clothing. Although the game itself remarks in passing that Nanashi might possibly be more or less pulling a Sure, Let's Go with That and just not bothering to correct anyone that they're not female.
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