I’ve already talked a bit about how hard Shin Megami Tensei IV was on the default difficulty — and how the game makes you humiliate yourself in order to switch to easy mode. But if even easy mode is still too much for you, you can always download the first DLC dungeon. It completely breaks the game.
Inside the ¥250 (about $2.50) “There Are Also Affairs of Hell That Depend on Your Level” DLC, you gain experience points hand over fist. The entire DLC is actually just a single room. Each of the devils you encounter in it drop one of two items. One, when used, gives you one-sixth of the needed XP to reach your next level. The other one simply gives you a full level straight up. After each battle, I would get between two and six of the former. The latter was a bit rarer drop — I only got one about every other battle. To put it another way, with these items, I was able to level up nearly once per battle.
To put this in perspective, after 15 hours in the normal game, my main character was level 16. After two hours and 15 minutes in the DLC dungeon, he was level 99. Yet if anything, I was a slowpoke as reports across the Japanese side of the net say it can be done in even less time: about an hour.
But more than just having one strong character, I suddenly had access to the game’s entire devil-filled library. Normally, when you are constantly catching and fusing new devils, you are not allowed to fuse devils that are a higher level than your character’s level. However, once you power level him to level 99, you can basically fuse any devil in the game — as long as you have the proper devils to combine anyway.
This DLC seems designed solely for power levelling in this way. After all, even on the easy, Shin Megami Tensei IV is on par with Persona 3 difficulty-wise. This DLC may just be Atlus’ way of giving the game a “super easy mode” for those who just want to experience the story without the hassle of grinding for hour upon hour in the game.
Shin Megami Tensei IV was released on May 23, 2013, for the Nintendo 3DS in Japan. It will be released in North America on July 16, 2013.
Comments
6 responses to “This Game’s DLC Lets You Hit Level 99 In An Hour”
Weird. Surely half the point of these games is the satisfaction of defeating a hard enemy after the slow grind
I reckon that’s it for half the players, but for the other half it’s about the story and seeing the cool fusions and the like. It seems like a pretty smart idea on Atlus’ behalf.
Have you ever played Mass Effect 3 on Narrative difficulty?
This game is as hard as Persona 3? Suddenly doesn’t seem as difficult as you make it out to be.
The Persona line of SMT has generally been vastly easier than the main SMT series.
Nocturne, for example, make Persona 3 look like a children’s game as far as difficulty is concerned.
So it’s like Exponential growth for Fire Emblem: Awakening, completely optional but you know you’ll do it anyway.
On a side note, sorry to everyone who picked up my full level 20 master class street pass team in the first week of the game coming out.