40 hours in. Chapter 4 out of 8 (?). Just finished yet another battle against a certain repeating boss who refuses to stay dead. Eh, I guess I could spoil a little bit. The boss is a giant snake called Shesha, annoying like all repetitive bosses tend to be but luckily not very strong. Actually I haven’t met any really strong bosses in SMTIV:A so far, but I’m only halfway in. Very easy game, TBH. But not so easy that I want to switch to the Hard setting, haha.
I was building a Phys-based main character, but after putting 200 points in Strength and only 50 or so in Magic I realized that -dyne magic was murdering the enemies much faster and more consistently than physical attacks. You also get access to -dyne magic much faster than Heavy physical attacks become available. Magic misses far less often, and gives you extra turns more easily than relying on criticals that may or may not come. If only I could reset my stat distributions to focus on Magic instead. It’s not too late though, so that’s what I’m working on now.
I made a silly mistake though. Somehow my eyes glossed over that Skill Slot+ option in the apps. I’ve been going through the whole game with only 4 skills on my main character, wondering when at all new skill slots will unlock. Level 20? Level 30? 40? It’s only when I hit level 60 and nothing unlocked that I took a second look at the App list. GAAAHHHHHHH…. Well, as I said Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse is a really easy game so it doesn’t matter anyway. I can think of it as an accidental challenge run or something.
Current Story – Everyone’s about to launch an all-out attack on the supposed Big Bads of the game. Except we’re only in chapter 4 of 8 so they’re doomed to failure. Either that or an even Bigger Bad will show up and make things worse. To be honest it feels like I’ve been playing SMTIV:A for a really long time now, so I’m ready for it to end so I can start something new. At the same time, gathering and fusing demons is still fun enough that I can keep going for a while now. If it ends around the 60-hour mark that will be good enough for me.
