i think it's interesting you mention that some things work better in definitive over the original version, because i find that definitive completely revokes some of the key aspects of the original that i thought were so cool. not knowing the fates of party members in act 2 until meeting with them again was a big one, and erik's amnesia i always found worked a hell of a lot better "unexplained" because it wasn't really hard to fill in the blanks that he had a trauma response of dissociation after what happened to his sister

i really think DE hinting at what's to come in act 2 completely ruins the appeal and pacing of it in the first place. also i'd honestly probably recommend going through with act 3. as much as i don't like it, i think your lack of attachment to the latter end of the plot would make you enjoy its revelations more. but iunno - your mileage may vary

honestly we're lucky this game came out as finished as it did (and at all). i recommend watching a vid about its dev cycle if you're curious - it's a total clusterfuck

"I found myself constantly losing to bosses just to come back with a team specifically designed to counter it"

every smt game is based on trial and error. grinding is pointless - it's all about party composition. fuse lots of demons, negotiate, and build parties around what's blocking your path. most of this series is spent in menus. though it is worth noting that early game is more of a struggle than late; eventually you hit a point where you've got a pretty reliable team for most circumstances and can adapt on the fly

if that's not your thing, then the only games i think you might enjoy in the series are smt iv and apocalypse. maybe something like digital devil saga as well since it doesn't have demon fusion at all

still pissed they picked a B tier NIN song (at best) when they had literally all of phm/broken/tds/fragile to work with

fuck it - let's use the free album that was made in garageband

@killb It's not petty dawg they've released 2 games in 14 years and one of them is a dogshit mobile game. This is just a reasonable response! I don't even hate mobile games, despite popular belief they aren't ontologically evil pieces of tech developed solely to control the masses. X Dive is just really ass and it's insulting since we've got so little for so long. Resident Evil and Monster Hunter got like 20 1000 hour long games, should they never get a game again? Imagine if Fromsoft took 5 more years to make an Armored Core game and it was the worst game in the franchise, that would sting wouldn't it? And it would be especially obnoxious to see their #1 dickriders go "erm... you already have a ton of games, why would you want another one?" as they play their 8th Soulslike.

as if that's even a footnote compared to the way it performed on switch