Should i play this first or should i just go straight to Apocalypse?

should i play this first or should i just go straight to Apocalypse?
What are the redeeming factors of each?

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it's simple
the first one is less like persona and the second more like persona

4 - okay mechanics, eh difficulty, decent story
4A - absolute garbage story, best gameplay

play the IV, don't bother with the other one.
but if you REALLY want to, then read whatever happens on a wiki or watch someone else play it

travel to an alternate reality where IV has IV:A gameplay

IV is way better, IV A has almost every aspect of IV ruined except for battle mechanics. music is god awful except for the reused tracks, story is bad, characters are mostly annoying, and their is no atmosphere of danger despite being a kid who grew up in demon rampant tokyo

Apocalypse is a sequel dumbass

I'm not OP, but what's the deal with the story? I was of the understanding that MC's friends are a shitty attempt at replicating Persona-style friends/allies, but there's an option to listen to a leprechaun and kill them.

the friends are all super annoying except for the ashura kai kid, so siding with dagda to kill them is revenge for them grinding the game to a snail pace with all of their worthless dialogue

Only watched some vidoes on it on youtube.
SMT IV seems more like a dark fantasy with philosophical dilemmas for the player to decide. Like Planescape Torment
SMTIV:A you kill YHVH wht the power of Fedora youtube comments and friendship

Apocalypse starts at the ass end of one of the endings of 4.
They're both pretty good games, so play both. People say Apocalypse's story is bad, but I don't mind it. Most people say story and characters don't matter in SMT anyways

the story matters alot in SMT, that is the issue with IV A. the characters are poorly written and only drag the game out when IV didnt need a new neutral ending anyways. the gameplay changes to light/dark were welcome though so im thankful it did that

>the story matters alot in SMT,
Weird, when I said Nocturne had an incredibly boring and poorly told story, people said that it didn't matter because the gameplay was good. Thought that still held up today. Wonder what changed

Play both.
IV has great atmosphere and it's a very charming game despite all of its shortcomings. It's by far the hardest SMT during the early game, but becomes the easiest afterwards. Its problems with the story are nothing new for the series - it's the stuff like alignment reps suddenly going full retard to justify their alignment switch. Still, probably my favorite SMT.
IVA has the best gameplay in the series, all bosses feel difficult just right, it has by far the biggest compendium in the series too.

Despite what brainlets claim, Apocalypse is NOTHING like Persona, it's just more shounen with tropey characters, story isn't even that bad, people just sucked each other too much and their perception of IVA's story is completely different from reality.

You unironically claim that when the most beloved game in the series, Nocturne, barely has any story?

SJ and IV are both better than nocturne, and the story is a huge draw in both. nocturne is great for what it is, but going forward after it the story has been a large focus of all of them

Ignore the spergs and play IV:A if you only want to play one of them. It has the best gameplay in the franchise. The story's pretty anime but I unironically love the Divine Powers.

>and the story is a huge draw in both.
When the fuck did this happen? Because everyone always said gameplay was what mattered most in SMT. I wouldn't even say SJ and IV's story are even that good or worth playing the games for. They're serviceable

>Nocturne, barely has any story?
Is that a bad thing? Nocturne's story is unironically pretty good, just minimalist. Nocturne's problems are more related to gameplay then anything.

the odin redesign is the best thing to come of the game

I really hope SMT V, whenever it's coming out, has more factions like the Divine Powers, cause the Law-Chaos bullshit is really played-out and predictable at this point

>Nocturne's story is unironically pretty good, just minimalist
You actually think it's "minimalist" on purpose? The game is straight up unfinished.

Play strange journey redux

based. Strange Journey is my favorite SMT game.

strange journey is great, the only problem is how exhausting some dungeons get in lategame, I remember giving up at grus and only returning few months later

What makes you say that? The Mainiax release? That is actually the worst writing the game has to offer as they made up backstory for things that didn't need it.

>boot up SJR cause I haven't touched it in years
>"man I can't wait to finally finish this ga
>load up in the middle of somewhere in Sector Grus

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They did it fine in Nocturne and DeSu/2 so I'm not sure why they don't want to experiment more.

You forgot that apocalypse has got the worst fucking final dungeon since the basilica

I never really liked it in Nocturne. Reasons were always so boring and uneventful, like a lot of story related stuff in Nocturne now that I think about it

This, except Apocalypse is better in every other way: the story flows better, the dungeons are better, better gameplay, bosses, etc.

Look up older interviews and promotional material, stuff in Maniax was just quick retelling of things that were supposed to be told more naturally in original Nocturne.

The Divine Powers were the only good part of the story. The entire DIY messiah plot thread was retarded.

Eh, it's fine. I like the general concepts of reasons. I also like how you can fuck up the "neutral" ending where the giant disco ball just decides to leave.

How do I have fun? I don't know what the fuck is wrong with my brain but I always just default into gun Flynn/buff bot/debuff bot/magic user every goddammed playthrough and I end up bitchmoding the game and getting bored.

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There's not a whole lot of variety in the game user. Just do status/Luck MC or something.

They're neat in concept, but in execution they're just so lacking, mainly because you hardly interact with the Reason characters and the endings are really unsatisfying.

Apocalypse actually had a pretty good idea with having each partner character, sans Navarre&Asahi I guess, being related to a different faction. They just need to bring that back in V and do more with it.