I finally hung up my T5 and got the welfare shoulders. Now I look exactly like every other Arena hunter, instead of having at least the shoulders to put me above the fray.
In Shin Megami Tensei Online, you see some interesting faces.
Hm.
Sorta late but how does this play like?
rayofash did a huge rundown on Imagine here at Platformers.
I'd love to play it, but there's the whole language barrier to get over and all.
I'm so tempted to try it though..
Ah, sorry for the late reply. I sort of forgot about this and thus never got back to you guys.
Things to do in Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE
1. Hi. My name is Drem, and I am standing next to pretty woman.
2. Wear funny hats.
3. Start your own Klan.
4. Look at this funny comb woman.
5. Have a Merry X'mas!
Truthfully, I don't have a lot of experience in MMOs, so I can't really give good comparisons to other games. Nor have I been playing (actively) for very long. That said, I've been enjoying it despite the fact that I've pretty much soloed the entire time. I somehow ended up writing a whole lot, so I've organized it a bit and I'm going to put it in spoilers so I don't clog the thread up. If there is still interest in the game afterwards, I guess I can try starting a thread and provide more in depth information to help people get started. I would love to try playing in a party rather than soloing the entire game.
Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE does a good job of following Megami Tensei's traditional systems. The art style from the rest of the series is intact, and the sort of cell-shaded look does a good job with the graphics (it looks a lot like SMT:Nocturne and DDS:Avatar Tuner on the PS2). Everything has a soft glow, which gives things a slightly surreal feel. Weaknesses are still important in combat, as attacking an enemy with it's weakness provides a much greater amount of damage and knockback to enemies.
Demons
Demon negotiations and recruiting are here as well. At the outset, you have three commands to interact with demons in the fields: Greet, Overpower (I think), and Provoke. You pretty much need to figure out which command appeals to each particular demon, and then constantly use it on the demon you want to recruit. The demons will respond with text appearing on the screen that I can't read, so I usually experiment a bit. If I see a musical note by the enemie's text, I assume they like what I'm saying (Alternatively, using a google-translated version of the Japanese wiki can tell you which command you need to use for each demon). After you use the command enough times (and assuming you're strong enough to use the demon), the demon will either join you, leave some items and disappear, or just runaway. Or get angry and attack you a whole lot, if you didn't use the right command.
You can have a total of six demons at one time, with only one demon summoned at a time to accompany you. If you want another demon, you have to put away your current companion and summon the other one. You can also fuse your demons together to create a new one, and I think you can carry over some skills your original two demons had, allowing you to give your new demons some skills it wouldn't usually have (I don't think I've done this just yet, but I think it may be possible judging from the fuse menu). There is a good amount of demons, so there's a lot of variety in what you can recruit. You have to be the same level as or above a demon's level to recruit them or to create a fusion demon, meaning you can't just run out and recruit the stronger demons when you just start.
The game also retain the alignment system. As you complete certain quests and make certain choices in a quest, you align and shift from neutral to either law or chaos. Each alignment has their own demons that you can recruit (if you're law, you can't recruit chaos demons, I assume, and vise versa). I believe some equipment are also binded to certain alignments as well.
Combat
Combat is a bit more hands-on than other MMOs I've seen, in that you'll be pressing buttons a lot. You basically have all of your actions hotkeyed onto the number and F keys as per usual. But rather than clicking on an enemy and watching them attack by themselves, each attack requires you to press the attack button. For my guns, I have to press '1' once to load my shot. I then have to get in range and then press '1' again to fire (or click on the enemy again and you'll automatically move in range and fire). After that, my actions are done until I tell my guy to do something new. Many attacks have 3-hit combos built in to their startup and cool down times, so I can press '1' again to load quickly and '1' again to fire another shot, and I can do it one more time to end the "combo," providing a large knockback effect on the enemy and leaving me with a longer cooldown time. Pretty much all moves have a start-up time that you must go through before you can actually use them, so timing is pretty important in battles. If you get hit in the middle of an action, you get stunned and have to go through the start-up time again.
After a 3-hit combo with my guns, I have to decide whether the knockback was good enough that I have time to wait for my shot command to cool-down, load and then fire again (usually this isn't the case), or to go with a spell or special attack, or just use Defend or Counter-attack or Dodge (the latter two are used to counter different types of moves, physical and ranged respectively (I think)). Or I can have my demon attack to buy me some time. Demon's commands are assigned to buttons F1-F8, allowing the demon a total of 8 skills at a time (assuming it's like other SMT games, if you demon learns a new skill when all skill slots are full, you will have to un-learn a skill to get the new one). They also follow the startup cooldown rules, though their times are different. They can also attack on their own, but I find coordinating my attacks with their's manually works pretty well. Timing is pretty important in the combat.
Battles are also pretty unforgiving, in that if you start fighting something, running away can be difficult. Your running speed is the same as theirs, so they can follow you and keep the same distance you had before. If they have quick attacks, they can get an attack on you even when you're trying to run, stunning you and allowing the monster to combo you. If you manage to get a good knockback on them though, or see them coming from far away to attack you, you can keep running away until they stop chasing you. There are special items that can increase running speed that you can find as drops from bosses, I believe. If you die, you lose experience. You can choose to respawn at your home point or resurrect on the spot with a small amount of HP and 2x (or might've been 4x) the experience loss.
Leveling
Leveling up is a bit different from regular as well. One thing that's normal is that each time you level, you gain some points to allocate into some basic areas such as Strength, Wisdom, Vitality, Speed (which is apparently to increasing attack with guns rather than increasing your running speed), and some other areas. The system changes when it comes to learning new skills. There aren't any classes you choose. Instead, you have a long list of skill areas that you can level up in. There are things like Attack (regular melee attack), Shot (regular gun shooting), Guard (defending against physical attacks), Conversation (referring to the greet command in demon negotiations), Destruction Magic (destruction magic), Recovery Magic (recovery magic), Mechanical Engineering (?), Computer Science (??), etc. There are a good number of these; I just picked a few at random out of the skill list at GameFAQs. You can turn on as many as you like and level them up by using actions from that skill area. Using Attack will level up Attack, using greet will level up Conversational, using Dia (the normal heal spell) will level up Recovery Magic, and so on. As the skill areas level up, you can learn new skills and gain stat bonuses. You can't, however, make some sort of god master in all areas as there is a restriction. I haven't taken the time tocompletely read up on it yet, but leveling up a skill area and learning skills in it costs a certain number of points. At the outset, your character can have a max of 10,000 point used up. It sounds like a lot, but apparently isn't. I remember reading your max points goes up slightly each time your character levels up, but it isn't a great amount that allows you to learn something new all time if you've reached the previous max points. So you sort of create your own class in terms of skill choice.
Demons' leveling isn't quite as involved. They level up separately and automatically; you don't allocate any points yourself. As the demon levels up, they can learn new skills. But as previously mentioned, they can only know 8 skills at a time, meaning you'll have to forget an old one if you're full and want to learn a new one.
World
World-wise, it takes place in post-apocolyptic Japan, so there are alot of ruined skyscrapers. The area outsite your opening city is pretty drab and dreary, but I guess it gets the atmosphere along. I haven't done a lot of exploring yet though, so I don't know how varied the environments are. The only other places I've seen are a former city now covered in some some cool looking crystals, as well as desert with this bizarre windstorm going on in the sky. They look fine, but they're nothing mind blowing in terms of artistic direction. There are also many dungeons that you can explore, marked by a 'D' symbol on the map. They are generally a long series of passages filled with monsters that provide better drops than field monsters, and ending with a boss (the only one I've fought so far is this giant garm). I've only reached one other actual city, but I believe there are some more.
Digital Devil Database: Megami Tensei fansite that has a guide on how to register, create a character, and helps you get a bearing on the GUI and gameplay. It is very useful for obvious reasons. In the forums, there are is a section for IMAGINE where lots of useful people are that will explain things to you. They've recently started a klan* to help new people start the game and have a guide on how to join it. They are also planning on starting an English wiki for everyone to use. There is another english clan by the name of Globe that is much larger than DDDB. I think there's a topic about them in the GameFAQs message board. They apparently also have a really nice English wiki on the game, but the higher-ups are really exclusive about their stuff, and thus have their wiki is password protected and hidden, allowing only Globe members to use it. I don't know why you'd want to do that to a game with such a small English community, but that's what I've heard they've done. I was a member of Globe briefly (I went on hiatus 2 days after joining, so I assume I was kicked out due to inactivity), and am now a member of DDDB's klan. http://www.digitaldevildb.com/games/shin_megami_tensei_online_imagine/
Japanese IMAGINE wiki: Favorite the google translated version of this page. It maybe have akward English from the translation, but it is still surprisingly understandable and will help you a lot in figuring out items and whatnot. http://imagine.gkwiki.com/index.html
Playing the game without knowing Japanese isn't all that difficult actually. It's what I'm doing. The Skill Guide and Quest Guide at GameFAQS can help you a lot, and I believe the makers update them as new skills are implemented and such. The interface isn't hard to navigate once you figure out what's what. Each main button has an english header so you can tell one button is for Items, another for your character, another for your quests, etc. They may have several tabs, but just looking at them is usually good enough for figuring out what window does what. You can't understand NPCs, so I just try out random choices when presented to see what happens. Same goes for stores. Just trying each choice will give you a different window, so you'll figure out pretty easily which choice is Buy (it shows you all sorts of items) and which choice is Sell (it shows you your items).
The GameFAQs Quest guide can help you with the main story quests, but the other quests in the game will probably be lost to you. I've found having the Japanese katakana alphabet beside me to be helpful, as the katakana characters are used to write all of the demons' and many of the skills' names. So if in the quest log I see some text that says the number 10 followed by the katakana that says jack frost, I figure I need to kill 10 jack frosts. It's sort of hit or miss, and a lot more work than most people are probably feeling like putting in though. There is a Japanese wiki that has wealth of information, and google translating seems pretty sufficient for understand many things. I haven't used it for quests yet, but matching skill icons with those in the skill list on the site has helped me figure out what spells do what, figuring out what some items do, and learning where to find and how to recruit some monsters.
As mentioned, GameFAQS also has a Skill Guide that explains the skill system and all of the skills, so you can learn the skills you want and level your character the way you want to.
There are some things I've had to have explained to me, such as the fact that you need to buy a Copper Plate from the store in the dungeon to enter the actual dungeon area. The rest I've learned through experimenting and using common sense from other games to understand what does what. It isn't hard, as there isn't a lot to learn to play the game. I've soloed all of my time and got along fine, and it wasn't until recently that I found the DDDB community.
Miscellaneous
- There are apparently a lot of clothes, accessories and hairstyles you can buy and find, so you can make your guy look interesting.
- There are Christmas and News Years events going on right now that you'll probably not be able to complete if you start the game now, but at least you can see the funny Christmas Jack Frosts and Christmas trees.
-The game is free to play, but there are some items that you have to buy with real money (in the form of CP (cash points?)). This is apparently a system that's becoming more common and popular nowdays. If you felt so inclined, you can use your foreign credit card to buy CP. Otherwise, the number of items that don't require CP outweigh those that do. You don't feel jipped into looking stupid or using weak weapons if you don't buy CP. You can also find lots of items for cheap at player shops.
- You may feel poor at the outset, but you'll get much richer after going through your first dungeon.
- I don't remember what else I was going to put.
- I wrote too much. I bet you didn't even read all of it.
*Yes. You do not form guilds nor clans. You for Klans.
I'll look at your pics! Ok, done, and yet again, I see a Male Belf pally that doesn't quite look right. They look fine as ret, but I've always thought they were too waifish as a tank.
Posts
Char Aznable from Gundam
Reno from Final Fantasy VII
A reject from Kingdom Hearts II
A... something wielding a... something
So why, in the middle of post-apocalyptic Japan, do I look like a tourist?
I swear, my main motivation in Shin Megami Tensei Online is to get some nice duds. Maybe one of those bondage angels, too.
Oh I wasn't bashing HIM. He looks freaking awesome, and you did a really good job recreating him.
Was poking fun at all the dwarves/gnomes/elves up there.
I like how the Nightscape Headband isn't as much worn as just resting on top of his head.
My new and improved Corruptor looking angry.
Sorta late but how does this play like?
Yay for winter clothes! Just need the boots to complete the ensemble.
leatherworkers
Xbox Live: Kunohara
Holiday/Slut set complete.
Just finished the main quest chain in Bloodmyst. 'Ending Their World' is an intense quest.
give me ghostlands anyday
I may have taken too many of these.
rayofash did a huge rundown on Imagine here at Platformers.
I'd love to play it, but there's the whole language barrier to get over and all.
I thought that I wou-
I am so sorry
Just a ship I've pimped out but not yet used.
I'm so tempted to try it though..
I'm concerned that the penis-ship was the first thing that popped into my head as well...
Face it, everyone in G&T is gay.
I'm dead serious."
Things to do in Megami Tensei Online: IMAGINE
2. Wear funny hats.
3. Start your own Klan.
4. Look at this funny comb woman.
5. Have a Merry X'mas!
Truthfully, I don't have a lot of experience in MMOs, so I can't really give good comparisons to other games. Nor have I been playing (actively) for very long. That said, I've been enjoying it despite the fact that I've pretty much soloed the entire time. I somehow ended up writing a whole lot, so I've organized it a bit and I'm going to put it in spoilers so I don't clog the thread up. If there is still interest in the game afterwards, I guess I can try starting a thread and provide more in depth information to help people get started. I would love to try playing in a party rather than soloing the entire game.
Demons
Demon negotiations and recruiting are here as well. At the outset, you have three commands to interact with demons in the fields: Greet, Overpower (I think), and Provoke. You pretty much need to figure out which command appeals to each particular demon, and then constantly use it on the demon you want to recruit. The demons will respond with text appearing on the screen that I can't read, so I usually experiment a bit. If I see a musical note by the enemie's text, I assume they like what I'm saying (Alternatively, using a google-translated version of the Japanese wiki can tell you which command you need to use for each demon). After you use the command enough times (and assuming you're strong enough to use the demon), the demon will either join you, leave some items and disappear, or just runaway. Or get angry and attack you a whole lot, if you didn't use the right command.
You can have a total of six demons at one time, with only one demon summoned at a time to accompany you. If you want another demon, you have to put away your current companion and summon the other one. You can also fuse your demons together to create a new one, and I think you can carry over some skills your original two demons had, allowing you to give your new demons some skills it wouldn't usually have (I don't think I've done this just yet, but I think it may be possible judging from the fuse menu). There is a good amount of demons, so there's a lot of variety in what you can recruit. You have to be the same level as or above a demon's level to recruit them or to create a fusion demon, meaning you can't just run out and recruit the stronger demons when you just start.
The game also retain the alignment system. As you complete certain quests and make certain choices in a quest, you align and shift from neutral to either law or chaos. Each alignment has their own demons that you can recruit (if you're law, you can't recruit chaos demons, I assume, and vise versa). I believe some equipment are also binded to certain alignments as well.
Combat
Combat is a bit more hands-on than other MMOs I've seen, in that you'll be pressing buttons a lot. You basically have all of your actions hotkeyed onto the number and F keys as per usual. But rather than clicking on an enemy and watching them attack by themselves, each attack requires you to press the attack button. For my guns, I have to press '1' once to load my shot. I then have to get in range and then press '1' again to fire (or click on the enemy again and you'll automatically move in range and fire). After that, my actions are done until I tell my guy to do something new. Many attacks have 3-hit combos built in to their startup and cool down times, so I can press '1' again to load quickly and '1' again to fire another shot, and I can do it one more time to end the "combo," providing a large knockback effect on the enemy and leaving me with a longer cooldown time. Pretty much all moves have a start-up time that you must go through before you can actually use them, so timing is pretty important in battles. If you get hit in the middle of an action, you get stunned and have to go through the start-up time again.
After a 3-hit combo with my guns, I have to decide whether the knockback was good enough that I have time to wait for my shot command to cool-down, load and then fire again (usually this isn't the case), or to go with a spell or special attack, or just use Defend or Counter-attack or Dodge (the latter two are used to counter different types of moves, physical and ranged respectively (I think)). Or I can have my demon attack to buy me some time. Demon's commands are assigned to buttons F1-F8, allowing the demon a total of 8 skills at a time (assuming it's like other SMT games, if you demon learns a new skill when all skill slots are full, you will have to un-learn a skill to get the new one). They also follow the startup cooldown rules, though their times are different. They can also attack on their own, but I find coordinating my attacks with their's manually works pretty well. Timing is pretty important in the combat.
Battles are also pretty unforgiving, in that if you start fighting something, running away can be difficult. Your running speed is the same as theirs, so they can follow you and keep the same distance you had before. If they have quick attacks, they can get an attack on you even when you're trying to run, stunning you and allowing the monster to combo you. If you manage to get a good knockback on them though, or see them coming from far away to attack you, you can keep running away until they stop chasing you. There are special items that can increase running speed that you can find as drops from bosses, I believe. If you die, you lose experience. You can choose to respawn at your home point or resurrect on the spot with a small amount of HP and 2x (or might've been 4x) the experience loss.
Leveling
Leveling up is a bit different from regular as well. One thing that's normal is that each time you level, you gain some points to allocate into some basic areas such as Strength, Wisdom, Vitality, Speed (which is apparently to increasing attack with guns rather than increasing your running speed), and some other areas. The system changes when it comes to learning new skills. There aren't any classes you choose. Instead, you have a long list of skill areas that you can level up in. There are things like Attack (regular melee attack), Shot (regular gun shooting), Guard (defending against physical attacks), Conversation (referring to the greet command in demon negotiations), Destruction Magic (destruction magic), Recovery Magic (recovery magic), Mechanical Engineering (?), Computer Science (??), etc. There are a good number of these; I just picked a few at random out of the skill list at GameFAQs. You can turn on as many as you like and level them up by using actions from that skill area. Using Attack will level up Attack, using greet will level up Conversational, using Dia (the normal heal spell) will level up Recovery Magic, and so on. As the skill areas level up, you can learn new skills and gain stat bonuses. You can't, however, make some sort of god master in all areas as there is a restriction. I haven't taken the time tocompletely read up on it yet, but leveling up a skill area and learning skills in it costs a certain number of points. At the outset, your character can have a max of 10,000 point used up. It sounds like a lot, but apparently isn't. I remember reading your max points goes up slightly each time your character levels up, but it isn't a great amount that allows you to learn something new all time if you've reached the previous max points. So you sort of create your own class in terms of skill choice.
Demons' leveling isn't quite as involved. They level up separately and automatically; you don't allocate any points yourself. As the demon levels up, they can learn new skills. But as previously mentioned, they can only know 8 skills at a time, meaning you'll have to forget an old one if you're full and want to learn a new one.
World
World-wise, it takes place in post-apocolyptic Japan, so there are alot of ruined skyscrapers. The area outsite your opening city is pretty drab and dreary, but I guess it gets the atmosphere along. I haven't done a lot of exploring yet though, so I don't know how varied the environments are. The only other places I've seen are a former city now covered in some some cool looking crystals, as well as desert with this bizarre windstorm going on in the sky. They look fine, but they're nothing mind blowing in terms of artistic direction. There are also many dungeons that you can explore, marked by a 'D' symbol on the map. They are generally a long series of passages filled with monsters that provide better drops than field monsters, and ending with a boss (the only one I've fought so far is this giant garm). I've only reached one other actual city, but I believe there are some more.
Translation
Pages of interest:
GameFAQs page: Has a Skill Guide, Quest Guide, and the board used to be pretty active. It still has activity, but just not as many people anymore.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/game/921999.html
Digital Devil Database: Megami Tensei fansite that has a guide on how to register, create a character, and helps you get a bearing on the GUI and gameplay. It is very useful for obvious reasons. In the forums, there are is a section for IMAGINE where lots of useful people are that will explain things to you. They've recently started a klan* to help new people start the game and have a guide on how to join it. They are also planning on starting an English wiki for everyone to use. There is another english clan by the name of Globe that is much larger than DDDB. I think there's a topic about them in the GameFAQs message board. They apparently also have a really nice English wiki on the game, but the higher-ups are really exclusive about their stuff, and thus have their wiki is password protected and hidden, allowing only Globe members to use it. I don't know why you'd want to do that to a game with such a small English community, but that's what I've heard they've done. I was a member of Globe briefly (I went on hiatus 2 days after joining, so I assume I was kicked out due to inactivity), and am now a member of DDDB's klan.
http://www.digitaldevildb.com/games/shin_megami_tensei_online_imagine/
Japanese IMAGINE wiki: Favorite the google translated version of this page. It maybe have akward English from the translation, but it is still surprisingly understandable and will help you a lot in figuring out items and whatnot.
http://imagine.gkwiki.com/index.html
Playing the game without knowing Japanese isn't all that difficult actually. It's what I'm doing. The Skill Guide and Quest Guide at GameFAQS can help you a lot, and I believe the makers update them as new skills are implemented and such. The interface isn't hard to navigate once you figure out what's what. Each main button has an english header so you can tell one button is for Items, another for your character, another for your quests, etc. They may have several tabs, but just looking at them is usually good enough for figuring out what window does what. You can't understand NPCs, so I just try out random choices when presented to see what happens. Same goes for stores. Just trying each choice will give you a different window, so you'll figure out pretty easily which choice is Buy (it shows you all sorts of items) and which choice is Sell (it shows you your items).
The GameFAQs Quest guide can help you with the main story quests, but the other quests in the game will probably be lost to you. I've found having the Japanese katakana alphabet beside me to be helpful, as the katakana characters are used to write all of the demons' and many of the skills' names. So if in the quest log I see some text that says the number 10 followed by the katakana that says jack frost, I figure I need to kill 10 jack frosts. It's sort of hit or miss, and a lot more work than most people are probably feeling like putting in though. There is a Japanese wiki that has wealth of information, and google translating seems pretty sufficient for understand many things. I haven't used it for quests yet, but matching skill icons with those in the skill list on the site has helped me figure out what spells do what, figuring out what some items do, and learning where to find and how to recruit some monsters.
As mentioned, GameFAQS also has a Skill Guide that explains the skill system and all of the skills, so you can learn the skills you want and level your character the way you want to.
There are some things I've had to have explained to me, such as the fact that you need to buy a Copper Plate from the store in the dungeon to enter the actual dungeon area. The rest I've learned through experimenting and using common sense from other games to understand what does what. It isn't hard, as there isn't a lot to learn to play the game. I've soloed all of my time and got along fine, and it wasn't until recently that I found the DDDB community.
Miscellaneous
- There are apparently a lot of clothes, accessories and hairstyles you can buy and find, so you can make your guy look interesting.
- There are Christmas and News Years events going on right now that you'll probably not be able to complete if you start the game now, but at least you can see the funny Christmas Jack Frosts and Christmas trees.
-The game is free to play, but there are some items that you have to buy with real money (in the form of CP (cash points?)). This is apparently a system that's becoming more common and popular nowdays. If you felt so inclined, you can use your foreign credit card to buy CP. Otherwise, the number of items that don't require CP outweigh those that do. You don't feel jipped into looking stupid or using weak weapons if you don't buy CP. You can also find lots of items for cheap at player shops.
- You may feel poor at the outset, but you'll get much richer after going through your first dungeon.
- I don't remember what else I was going to put.
- I wrote too much. I bet you didn't even read all of it.
*Yes. You do not form guilds nor clans. You for Klans.
Sigh, I wish I could get shoulders that aren't hideous.
Then again Nightbane's shield sort of evens it out.
Ding, 40. Tresjynn and Charvanek go for a trot. Katryn at 36 and climbing.
I'll look at your pics! Ok, done, and yet again, I see a Male Belf pally that doesn't quite look right. They look fine as ret, but I've always thought they were too waifish as a tank.