Don't underestimate how much people are obsessed with anything anime related lol - Persona blew up because it is SMT but even more appealing to anime fans. So its super anime (Persona) vs somewhat anime (SMT5), so if you eat anime for breakfast, lunch and dinner then I can see why Persona looks more appealing
Not officially done yet. Let's look at your points.- Strange Journey is NOT a spin-off. It is a non-numbered mainline entry. It was considered SMT IV during development and only wasn't given the number in the end because it wasn't set in Japan. It's called "Shin Megami Tensei" in Japan, whereas Soul Hackers is part of the "Devil Summoner" branch. If SMT If is considered mainline (which it is), so is Strange Journey.
- Your point about sales is inconsistent and nonsensical to me. You say that SMT IV selling 96k proves that Persona wasn't more popular and the series overall was getting popular, but you also gave the numbers for Strange Journey and Soul Hackers as 28k and 26k, which is a huge decrease from P3 FES at 154k and P4 at 123k. What you're suggesting here just isn't backed up by your own evidence. 154,000 is a much bigger number than 26,000. Persona 3 FES sold 6x as much than those two games. Your hypothesis that your provided numbers shows Persona as not being more popular is just wrong.
- Okay so, "Physical US Sales via NPD", you said something about leaks, right? What time frame is that looking at? Launch window or lifetime? I honestly don't know. I admitted earlier that I don't know the source of these sales numbers, I don't really get caught up in stuff like that. I do know that Persona 4 sold 359k on the PS2 and 324k on Vita in Japan, and in America it was the best selling game on Amazon for two weeks. I don't dig much deeper than those base Wikipedia level facts because, as I've said several times, I do value the experiences I've had more than that. And I saw tons of Persona cosplay, merch, and conversation during that era. I didn't see anyone showing up in Strange Journey cosplay or trying to talk about Devil Survivor outside of the specific SMT fanbase. It's honestly... baffling to me someone would suggest that Persona wasn't huge for Atlus at the time and far more popular than SMT. That's been accepted by Atlus fans the entire time.
But you've got those leaked numbers or whatever, so let me provide my own piece of evidence. Google trends. I think that's a pretty accurate representation of what is "popular", moreso than leaked sales numbers with a bunch of asterisks next to them.
Let's compare how often people search for "Persona 3", "Persona 4", "Strange Journey", and "Shin Megami Tensei IV". To make it even fairer, we can start from 2008, years after Persona 3 first came out. We'll do 2008-2015, so it covers the launches of Strange Journey and SMT IV, but cuts off before Persona 5 comes out.
Something tells me you already know what the results are going to be because if you were in this fanbase during those years deep down you have to know that Persona was way more popular, but here we go either way.
Strange Journey and SMT IV both came close to almost being talked about as much very briefly when they launched before immediately dropping to almost nothing while Persona 3 and 4 never stopped being talked about the entire time.
I rest my case, I'm officially done with this back and forth.
Persona has always been more popular and was always the big hit for Atlus from the moment P3 hit the scene. Was even moreso when P4 hit. Even moreso when P4G hit. And even moreso when P5 hit. It gets more popular each time. SMT never comes close.
I mean, I included SJ and SH because I was including everything semi-relevant I found. I also included some PS1 and PSP Persona 1-2 numbers which you freaked out about. Context matters though and Strange Journey just isn't equivalent to a numbered entry, while Soul Hackers is really a different subseries (and sold pretty well for what it is tbh). The point in those sales was just to give a fuller picture, just like Persona PSP. Giving further context on SMTIV isn't trying to do anything but give context, especially as I did it because you attributed some of those sales to the eShop FE Awakening promo deal (the reality was the opposite there). The numbers are just the numbers, even if they don't support your club or con memories.
Well, as someone who thinks both P5 and SMT V look good in their own ways, I can understand it honestly.
PS3 to Switch is like a half gen step up in raw performance, but with a much more modern shader arch and like 8x the memory to play with. The latter's why Switch can handle scaled conversions that PS3 couldn't dream of like TW3 or Doom Eternal. Even old ports from PS3 usually run significantly better on Switch without much trouble (Dark Souls, Dragon's Dogma, Skyrim, etc). It's sort of like saying Vita wasn't much more powerful than Dreamcast or something.
Took me a second to realized you were only responding to the dumb thing in the spoilers and not the actual post.
Yeah, it was brutal! And then digital only, plus the system was region locked so we couldn't even import the NA version :(
Maybe Suikoden (RIP) and Ni No Kuni. Can't think of any others offhand?
Torn on this post. Shitting on neo twewy, def my goty, but also recognizing SMT4 A as great.
That's not being really generous. That's exactly where the Switch is; a halfway point between the PS3 and PS4. Higher end Switch games and PS4/XB1 downports more or less show just that. It's basically what you'd get out of a Vita 2. If we're comparing P5 and SMT V, I'd argue the latter looks much more modern, even if it's art style is not quite as stylish. P5, in many ways, gives me PS2/early PS3 vibes with how limited a lot of it feels when it comes to its camera, areas, animation, and movement. It just made up for it elsewhere
I just don't really agree, maybe radical but not unique like all of the animes posted above. The protagonists look like typical anime protagonists, the world looks like a wasteland w typical anime aesthetics, etc......nocturne is nocturne we've seen enough of shin megami 5 though. I just don't think it is going to grasp a western market like persona can, looks more like a scarlet nexus then a persona in the ways that matter imo
you literally just posted art work. C'mon man. The lack of effort makes me not want to respond but fine, I will.Brah what anime have you been watching lmaoooo. Like I've been watching anime for a long ass time and a lot of the settings are located in high school and have power of friendship just like Persona lol (Not to say the entire medium is like that because it is not, but it does foster a lot of material like that). Your post doesn't really make any sense considering a lot of things in Persona have are in the medium like school, the protags design, and social interaction like a harem, and power of friendship type beat.
Like I can't think of many anime series that are similar to SMT than say Persona.
How does this look like a typical anime design compared to Joker? Nothing about SMT is typical anime and even then you aren't really specifying what you mean by anime considering it's a medium, not a genre.
you literally just posted art work. C'mon man. The lack of effort makes me not want to respond but fine, I will.
there is a very very clear difference between this
and this
even as someone who loves anime and can understand that tensei 5 isn't just generic trash, imo it's going to be much harder for it to distinguish itself among Western audiences then a series like persona, which is way more stylized, way more unique, does not look like typical anime. Look at scarlet nexus which people loved but largely was ignored and even the people who loved it where like "suppeer anime"
like c'mon, deserted wasteland w more serious lookin characters and a heavy anime aesthetic is like, not really hard to find. If you're telling me you can't see the difference between persona and these two nothin else I can do, I'm not an artist I just have eye balls. Imo that difference plays a huge factor in how much the West tolerates persona
You literally cherry-picked the worst shot of SMT V to make it look bad lol. While you picked a good shot of Persona to push your narrative.
Like you are seriously doing a disservice to the game by cherry-picking so that you can push your narrative. Like I could do the same by picking this picture of Persona 5 here.
Here Persona 5 looks nothing special and just typical anime that you like to use apparently.
Just wanna say as someone who loves SMT and prefers it to Persona: I agree with your analysis and also am surprised to see how much pushback you are getting.you literally just posted art work. C'mon man. The lack of effort makes me not want to respond but fine, I will.
there is a very very clear difference between this
and this
even as someone who loves anime and can understand that tensei 5 isn't just generic trash, imo it's going to be much harder for it to distinguish itself among Western audiences then a series like persona, which is way more stylized, way more unique, does not look like typical anime. Look at scarlet nexus which people loved but largely was ignored and even the people who loved it where like "suppeer anime"
like c'mon, deserted wasteland w more serious lookin characters and a heavy anime aesthetic is like, not really hard to find. If you're telling me you can't see the difference between persona and these two nothin else I can do, I'm not an artist I just have eye balls. Imo that difference plays a huge factor in how much the West tolerates persona
....."Brah" lmao
Didn't say nocturne was generic, I said shin megami tensei 5 is clearly more generic to a western audience then something like persona 5. Shin Megami is very much my thing, I like anime and don't mind more typical looking anime games. If you can't see it from the screenshots I posted I don't know what to say, persona like all the animes listed above is just much more stylized then shin megami 5 is. Shin megami 5's style is far more typical. People consider scarlet nexus as typical anime as possible here in the West if you followed the discourse around it even a little bit, Shin megami 5 looks much more like that. There is no world in which Shin megami 5 is going to sell even close to the 5 mil that persona 5 and persona Royal managed to sell and imo a large part of that is artistic direction, not just slife of life aspects and the likeBro, you're going off tangent. We weren't talking about P5 performing on the switch. Regarding what you said about Nocturne, I don't know what obscure JRPGs you've experienced but to imply Nocturne's art direction to be "generic". Wow that's a statement I thought I would never hear XD
Every JRPG look like a typical anime protagonists tho...what makes the Persona portags "less animu" than the SMT protags?? Sure, you're not humouring me lol and what's wrong with wasteland settings?
Okay in all seriousness, SMT is not your thing and you sway towards slice of life and isekai stuff. Kewl to know
You do know that there are more areas than the desert right.
You clearly just don't get it. That's fine, let it go. I understand everything, you're the one who is being delusional imo so let's just agree to disagree. When you gotta pretend I'm saying shit like there is only a dessert which I clearly never said you're just missing the point. Saying nothing about Persona is unique is so laughable that I literally just laughed, have a nice day dude.
Sure I'm being delusional when you were the one that said: "Typical Anime" which doesn't make any sense in the slightest.
Uh, I still think that bottom screenshot of P5 shows more personality than any of the SMTV shots. Don't underestimate the power of the HUD elements, which are oozing personality in P5 in a way that they aren't in SMTV.You literally cherry-picked the worst shot of SMT V to make it look bad lol. While you picked a good shot of Persona to push your narrative.
Like you are seriously doing a disservice to the game by cherry-picking so that you can push your narrative. Like I could do the same by picking this picture of Persona 5 here.
Here Persona 5 looks nothing special and just typical anime that you like to use apparently.
I've very clearly highlighted the differences and you have ignored them and pretended like I've said something completely different just because you don't get it. In my opinion, that is pretty delusional. I'm not going to derail this thread further with you, please knock it off. If you take it so personal feel free to report it, but don't feel there is anything to report. I explained my point, you don't get it, that's fine.
I hope SMTV's story and characterization will feel closer to SJ. SMTV is clearly trying to capture a bit of Nocturne, but Nocturne's characters and endings felt so empty to me with how little we saw of them before the end compared to SJ letting us watch the Law and Chaos heroes' descent more closely.
