art blog

apoc is REALLY good in terms of improvements done to combat, there's a lot of super useful things like being able to reorder skills (both yours and your demons') which is a godsend for freaks like me who have to have them in a very specific order (i've found myself literally re-fusing certain demons in iv just so i could reorder their skills in a way that suits me) & there are also some brand new useful skills like magaon (i don't remember it being in iv) which removes smirk from enemies. some skills got nerfed though (like salvation, which i'm still kind of annoyed about LOL but it's understandable honestly) and they also removed that thing where if your entire party smirks your recover full hp+mp but i think it was done because you already smirk wayyyy more than in iv + your companions doing a full group attack also makes your party smirk at random. all in all i've found iva's gameplay to be a massive step up from iv which i was very surprised by because i already enjoyed iv's combat tremendously. also i'm not sure if it's tied to game difficulty or not (i was on conflict) but i noticed you get wayyy more exp for battles and quests, which makes you level up very quickly. i also never had macca problems the way i did in iv ((flynn voice) don't you have any more?) because money rewards for quests are also huge. on that front iva is really fun to play, it's biggest flaw lies in its writing. i was extremely annoyed by everything throughout most of the game up until i realized it's best to view iva not as a serious sequel to iv but rather "smtiv if it was a parody of itself" and then i started enjoying it. kind of. like it has its good moments but they are unfortunately hidden amongst a deluge of just (vague hand gesture)... you'll know what i'm talking about when you play it.

as a side note i also HATEEE flynn's english voice in iva lol i really don't like keith silverstein in general but i feel like it's absolutely a miss for flynn, especially compared to his japanese voice. krishna's english voice is awesome though, his japanese voice is very lovely but i feel his eng voice actor put their whole pussy into making him sound as sassy as possible which makes for some very delightful line inflections.

a little more of this