Death of a Game: Shin Megami Tensei Imagine Online

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Break up with basic browsers. Get Opera GX here: operagx.gg/nerdSlayerStudios

[@DoctorMissplays]

1 question, what was your user name?

[@EcardEcardian]

Opera GX is spyware.

[@MasterBotttle]

Chinese spyware Dislike

[@Marinealver]

2:57 🍰🍰

[@morioh6623]

This ad was hilarious

[@mrturbo84]

Next Pls. Death of a Game: Concord

[@deneskun.8587]

YES LMAO

[@amysteriousviewer3772]

Has there ever been a game that died faster? It didn't even last a month.

[@aquapendulum]

@@amysteriousviewer3772 The Culling 2 and Immortals: Muv-Luv Alternative lasted even shorter.

[@sebastienboucher4387]

now is the time lol

[@jesusojeda7850]

It would be a difficult task because he would avoid mentioning the woke factor. "It had some gameplay issues and players didn't like the character designs. Content creators made things worst" Concord's failure isn't just about concord itself, but the status of the industry at the time- DEI, sweet baby, saturation of hero shooters, devs screwing up on social media...

[@Lucas003_]

This comment section in a nutshell: 5% Shin Megami Tensei Imagine Online 95% Concord

[@ThwipThwipBoom]

The people have spoken, we demand Concord!

[@parsath_2584]

Kind of fitting because you can't mention SMT without someone bringing up a more popular title (Persona)

[@maccamachine]

It’s sad tbh

[@meandmylittlebigmouth3672]

Releasing your death of a game on the same day that concord gets killed instantly faster than the day before scam is crazy

[@onemorescout]

It died so fast he couldn’t even finish his current project

[@ThwipThwipBoom]

They'll probably try to relaunch the game as Free to Play in a few months

[@xAvitaLT]

@@ThwipThwipBoom And it will still die. It might live a bit longer but that's about it

[@ubermaster1]

@@ThwipThwipBoomit probably would still die cause it would compete with OW2 and all the other free hero shooters that I sadly cannot remember cause there are so many(which is the problem)

[@asturias0267]

​@@ubermaster1 I haven't played Conduit, but from what I've seen of it I'd rather play it over Overwatch. It seems more casual focused and honestly more like Battleborne, which also sadly perished too soon.

[@vanilla8956]

You're missing some key information about the lawsuit that shutdown the private servers. Atlus was letting private servers slide for years, but to promote a competing private server, the creator of that private server actually stole the entire official website for SMT Imagine and put it on their own domain, and for some insane reason, they edited the site to include themselves as owning the Shin Megami Tensei copyright. This isn't as simple as greedy company doesn't want to let us have fun. They were looking the other way until one ruined it for everyone by stepping over the line so egregiously that no sane company could ignore it anymore, forcing Atlus to put their foot down. Also Sega and Index are not incorporated, Sega bought Atlus from Index

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

I mentioned the stealing of the website/common issues PServers encounter, I however didn't add more details as you stated.

[@vanilla8956]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss I guess what I was trying to say is just that I disagree with your opinion on blaming Atlus. I don't want to seem like I'm a meme saying "Leave the corporation alone" but I believe that fan content is a fragile ecosystem and the biggest threat to it is when fans don't respect boundaries and push it way too far. Back when Nintendo struck down Yuzu I was getting heat for playing devil's advocate because in my view, Nintendo let Yuzu get away with a lot for a long time but felt they crossed the line when they made patches to support Tears of the Kingdom piracy before it even officially released. So I'm kinda a stooge I know lol. but I think my worldview is right. Thanks for covering cool stuff like this tho

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

That wasn't what you were trying to say, you were trying to make Atlus less to blame...they are still absolutely to blame.

[@vanilla8956]

@@nerdSlayerstudioss Huh? What are you saying? You're telling me that advocating for Atlus's side of the story is not what I was talking about, and then you say it's what I was talking about? What does that even mean? Like I guess you disagree with me but you haven't given any argument as to why and instead just said im 'not saying what I said' but that makes no sense lol. I'm really trying to figure out what your opinion is here. Like should we expect companies and all the lawyers within them to just be cool about all infringements without having a boundary for what's too far? I think it's awesome that they give us the courtesy and leeway that they already do. Or do you mean that blame is defined by who has the authority and makes the decision? Because that can make sense on paper until you apply it to real life. Is the cop to blame for the speeding ticket when someone decides to go 80 in a 45? He's the one who used his authority to make the ticket. In real life the golden rule of grey areas is that if you want them to continue to exist then you need to respect them and act in moderation. Not push it as far as you can and refuse responsibility when that leads to the honor system being taken away. I love emulation and private servers and fan games more than most people do, to an obsessive level even. And that's exactly why I know that the people in charge of unofficial projects absolutely need to have responsibility when doing so. I think it's dangerous for people to have the impression that they're already rogue from the beginning once they make unofficial content. That can make them believe their actions don't have consequences in how the IP holder will respond to them.

[@valletas]

Its worse then this they were trying to create a steam listing to the game and link to it Like of atlus didnt do anything they might actually lose the smt license thats why they had to act

[@UntitledGameShow]

The Concord death of the game video will have more viewers than the actual game ever had players.

[@amarcoded]

Probably a Short fit better

[@heitorrangel8880]

Maybe 2-3 years ago, my friends and i managed to play Imagine on a private server that was up and running. That was one of my first pc games (i was a console player my whole life) and i have to admit, the sensation of exploring an old game that was supposed to be dead is weirdly enthusiastic feeling. Like exploring a whole forbidden world. Edit: I deeply miss my full build Eligor u.u

[@Gaousensei]

Imagine vet here, there were a lot of problems the game had that wasn't mentioned in the video like how overly complicated gearing and the demon grinding were. DESTINY wasn't a PvPvE mode, but a minigame mode where you kill as many demons as you can to fill a 100-slot box filled with crafting materials, old cash shop gear and expertise/experience buffs. It was very useful for getting easy macca and mag pressers before Home II as well, especially if you can get your hands on a hell dart as either a Jack, Black or King Frost appears and you kill them and slow down your killing speed from there unless a mitama or ghoul appears, in which case eradicate them before they wipe your board. All of the best gear outside of Masakado and the Dark Babel gear like the Masakado weapons and Shirashcakra(Halo) backpiece you get from fighting Mara are all from Fortune Cards regardless of Aeria, Atlus and Gungho. However, these gears could have a bad stat baseline but good set effects and characteristics and vice-verse. This is where Spiritual Mixing comes in where you fuse gear with each other to create the perfect piece of gear. It can become ridiculously expensive macca and money-wise to optimize your Limit/Intense Break stats, Digitalize bonuses, Pursuit, etc. Excluding your bullet slot, you have 14 gear slots to work on to give as much damage and mitigation as you can which can be super daunting if you weren't able to find said pieces of gear. You also can only fuse weapons of the same type and outfits of the same type and gender, so if you want to make a good pistol, you need pistol fodder to add into your base pistol. If you want to make a good top and you're playing as a male, you need to make sure the pieces of gear are top pieces and for male characters. Demons were also a bit annoying to make as demons were either best as PC Slaves which gave bonuses to your DB (your character), or dedicated attackers if you're a demon main or Enchanter. You would need to farm WILDCAT which is a unique dungeon type where you can only use your demon in and you should always have a demon gearset for that on top of your player gearset unless you want to use a demon that was good for buffing and healing like Daisoujou and are willing to dump points into him, whatever if you have a syringe to transfer into another demon or are willing to use him for Digi or PC slaving. If you were a demon user, you would also need to rebirth your demon multiple times and while blue and yellow runes weren't annoying to get, pink ones and their necessary fodder for the final uncap were annoying to farm for as they went for 1.5-2m macca a piece. After you get your rebirths done, you need to make your mitamas from fusing elementals which you can get for gems from dungeons or fusing easy demon families and you need a lot of mitama to make a mitama demon shine. Of course you can use any demons as a pc slave which needed soul points from WILDCAT, but Black Maria and Holy Night Angel were your best bets if you really want to minmax your LB damage. The COMP shop at the 16:30 mark was also in no way that generous since that's for a private server and not the three official services.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

The comp shop is a clip from my editor pulling in randomly, it doesn't disprove or take away from the point made at all. Thanks for your insight however, including the extra details on the gear and the demon system being complicated!

[@phantomfenrir4976]

Omfg, the WILDCAT farm. You made me remember why i absolutely abhorred raising demons, along with the massive grind it was to rebirth system. It was such a pain in the butt if it was a high lvl demon too.

[@sayatullahkamalhasan3335]

Isn't the complicated system make it hard to forget, that's why some people willing to move to jp server to play it, even though most of them doesn't understand any Japanese at all, even when jp server closed, they make private server with struggle since it's in jp lang 😅, i remember when it first launched for testing , every close range weapon are blunt affinity, even white wolf sword 😅

[@hooliganmulligan]

23:45 I feel like you forgot that Metaphor:ReFantazio is the unique title Atlas is making that isn’t based on persona or smt. It’s coming out oct 11

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Fair point!

[@ThwipThwipBoom]

You're the first comment I've read that isn't about Concord. Congrats

[@DestroyerArcher]

I honestly forgot that was upcoming.

[@cygnusblue7904]

Yeah but metaphor basically has "personas" in them with a bunch of other elements from smt/persona, I want to play it but kinda disappointing they really cant make much original stuff without relying on smt/persona

[@iTz_Cheshire]

I'm so excited for Metaphor

[@Joogoo96]

Weirdly enough, this game was my intro to the SMT series. I remember playing it on Aria back in the day.

[@reagenlionel]

Exact same for me

[@Ada-xb6fk]

same man. i found a private server thats still alive and im reliving the nostalgia

[@buddykischer6640]

Devs didn't use buffs. Case closed.

[@RagnarokMaster]

Ah...Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. I played so much of this in my early college days. It is unfortunate that Aeria Games got their crubby little mits on it. It is very sad what AG did to SMTI. It didn't help that AG constantly had Spender campaigns... Spender campaigns, for those who are reading this that are younger than 20 and had the good fortune to not cross AG's path, were timed events where the goal was to spend as much money as possible. There would be reward tiers are certain breakpoints: $50 USD, $70 USD, $100 USD, $200 USD, $500 USD. Every time you cleared a tier, you would be given a reward package, with the higher tiers having the same rewards as the lower ones. So, big spenders were essentially getting double rewards. You could also loop once you hit the campaign limit, which meant you went back to the bottom tier and could get even more items. In some of their campaigns, there was even a $1000 tier, where those spenders could get a "GM ticket", where the GMs would give the player ANY item in the game's code, up to recently released gear. I say all of this to explain that I stopped playing when one of AG's Spender campaigns promoted a set of rings where players had access to the highest-tier AOE Fire, Ice, Wind, and "Divine" (referred to as Almighty in the SMT/Persona-series) spells. These were so game-breaking that if you hit the $$$ tier where you could get them, you could only pick 1 ring, and you were barred from getting any of the others, even if you looped. I saw this campaign, and I had to wash my hands of it until the private servers came out.

[@goranisacson2502]

... While I have never played an MMO (I watch this series mostly because I like to educate myself of a world I'm unfamiliar with), this feels like THE most over the top greedy scumbag-move I've ever seen a developer pull. I'm kind of in awe of it all.

[@RagnarokMaster]

@@goranisacson2502 Yep. Aeria Games was so scummy, and yet, they made so much money because of FOMO. This is not to say anything about games that have PVP elements, and AG putting out some of the best PVP gear through Spender campaigns.

[@FinRhia]

SMT: Imagine was good fun, it felt clunky and a little bare, but it had its charm and the demon system in an mmo was really cool. I will never forgive myself for convincing my friend to join, drop a ton of money right before the game got announced it was closing down though 💀

[@NightOwl35]

Was the first game that I played in the SMT series and spawned my absolute love of the series as a whole for years to come. I remember for years looking for private servers after it closed down and found that I can just have one to mess around with on my own computer which I do on occasion just to relive that little bit of nostalgia. Wasn't a great game by any means but damn if I don't still love going back to that world and listening to the music for a bit.

[@GundamPharmacist]

Man I remember playing this way back in the day. Interesting community, fun times with friends, Inu Hell as a death trap for newbies, unlocking Demolition Dash... I understand why it's gone, but it's still sad to remember it is.

[@evancollin6371]

This episode is one I silently wanted for quite some time

[@Fenrir190]

I'm a huge SMT and Persona fan. I keep forgetting atlus made a mmorpg that I heard next to no one talking about 🙃

[@bag-manbaron2547]

Play the New Moon fan server

[@TheBlackSeraph]

I think this was one of a handful of FtP MMO's I tried when I first got internet but gave up quickly because of performance issues (no local server)

[@KazShiro]

That can also be chalked up due to the fact that SMT wasn't as mainstream as it was back then like it is today. Around 2018 when a lot more newer fans were coming into SMT and/or joining SMT ReImagine the common thing that I've witnessed boiled down to they became fans of the mainline game and were shocked they made a MMO but were bummed out that it shut down by the time they became part of the fandom.

[@KanameYuuki]

Man, the concord team was really speed-running to get into these series huh.

[@adamcammack3534]

It appears most modern game devs are app trying atm

[@samwill7259]

The only thing I've learned from this series is that creating a virtual world is probably tantamount to programmer suicide Like 1 percent of them have ever survived and 0.1 percent of them have both survived and actually been prominent

[@momasksifimokay990]

There will never be another MMO where I willingly do a QTE in a forest with my dead child summon so I can afford new dresses that make me better at shooting poison bullets. RIP Imagine.

[@VagrantVideos]

This game was so much fun to play. Awesome to see you cover it!!

[@Natzawa]

The games not dead though. People are still playing it on private servers like new moon and new order. The private servers improve the experience too.

[@Anon_Spartan]

Persona2 bros we are forgotten again and I have no idea why.

[@weebnerdgaming4908]

A few tidbits regarding CAVE as a CAVE fanboy. It is true that CAVE is most well known for their shmups in particular the bullet hells, but they had other divisions too separate from the shmup team. This not-shmup team have made games of other genres like racing and puzzle games. Atlus had been their publishing partner too. So Atlus working together with CAVE for an Online RPG doesn't sound that crazy.

[@matteste]

I will say that they did a fairly decent job at capturing Kaneko's distinct artstyle for this game.

[@lisotte]

"It was the first attempted at a Japanese MMORPG" FFXI: "What am I, a joke to you?" Hilarious as there can be no doubt that FFXI (basically Japanese EQ1) was massively bigger than SMTO, and was Squire Enix's most profitable game, for a very long time. Also funny that screenshots are included of FFXIV, that wouldn't have existed without FFXI. Regardless, SMTO was a pretty fun MMO, especially as a broke high schooler who played a bunch of F2P MMOs casually. The early leveling experience was fun, the first dungeon was fun. My friends and I got into the game a couple times, and we enjoyed the first chunk of the game quite a bit. After that, it started feeling bland and samey, so we definitely fell off a lot.

[@nakano15]

Kinda late for the party, but lemme add up to this: If you wanted to progress on SMT, you'd probably have to grind dungeons over and over again for levels and maccas (the game money). The dungeons they give like 5 times the experience you'd get from fighting the same monsters on the open world maps, so doing dungeons was always the way. The dungeons themselves had multiple difficulties, which ranged from Bronze to Gold Plate (from easiest to hardest dungeon, and depends on the dungeon). The plates you could mostly buy at the lobby of the dungeon, unless the dungeon has other way of acquiring the plates, and the difficulty levels not only increases the length of the dungeon, possibly also changing the layout and how the dungeon floors changes, but also changed the demons inside, placing more dangerous demons, and also bosses. Doing dungeons is rewarding, even more later ones in group (if you got the level to enter the run, since some dungeons have level requirement). As you can imagine, repeating the same dungeon hundreds of time gets boring and old quickly, even more since the character runs so slow naturally, and a run on a dungeon may take about 30 minutes. The cash shop of the game was absurd. The only way you could get stronger in the game is either if you swipe your credit card, or buy an item from cash shop being sold by other player. The amount of absurd sets you could find on the cash shop was huge. From sets that make your character grind faster, set to make demon cause more damage, or set to make your character cause extra damage when attacking by a chance (there was a point where that was showcased, when the player was doing Limit Break). Basically, you could literally break the game by getting the right cash shop items, and potentially even make the game soloable too. Gladly, any private server of the game may allow you to see for yourself how broken that is. And yep, leveling in the game was dire. I only managed to get to level 30 on the official server, when Marvelous USA was about to close the game servers, and they launched a 4x experience event.

[@F95XM1]

Wanna hear a joke? Concord.

[@sebastienboucher4387]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 dude stop my ribs 🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@nanukgamingcz]

And the best part - nobody gets it.

[@ThwipThwipBoom]

Lmfao bro XD

[@burmecian123]

I know thats not what they meant, but "mixed martial arts role playing game" sounds pretty sick.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

agreed

[@ThwipThwipBoom]

Concord was announced to be shutting down today so I can't wait for your Death of a Game vid on it! After all the millions Sony spent on it over the last 8 years, Concord might genuinely be the biggest financial flop in gaming history.

[@fabioalanmp]

The game lasting way longe in Japan was kinda excepted since the Shin Megami Tensei franchise has been strong in Japan since the 90s, while it only got more widespread in the west with the release of SMT nocturne and eventually Persona 3, which is the most famous franchise from Atlus here on the west. There are so many great Atlus games that never got an English release, it just is not as well known on the west :(

[@PluckyInc]

better jump on Concord before the corpse gets cold.

[@TheBlackSeraph]

That corpse was cold before Sony kicked it out of the hearse. Frankly, if you're going to talk about a modern day fuck up, Final Fantasy VII: First Soldier would be more interesting given that it was a spin-off from a popular game that died in under a year. Heck, I hadn't even HEARD of that game until SQEX announced it was being shut down.

[@leress]

@@TheBlackSeraph Nerd has already done First Soldier

[@cabrondemente1]

The comment section: Concord! 💀 SMTIO: Am I a joke to you? 🤡

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

:(

[@xbon1]

was just searching for this game recently and even tried a priv server. what timing with this upload.

[@Thowzand]

Man I remember having a lot of fun for the first day when this came out to NA servers. The biggest issue was that it immediately became apparent that the grind was not only real, which wasn't that big of an issue back then for MMOs, but that you were not going to FEEL the effects of character growth for long periods of time. It was even worse as an SMT fan where you know you are able to recruit and fuse demons to get stronger, but the game hard stuck you so much that you never got a consistent dopamine hit for any of your work.

[@HimePenguin]

I have to imagine that selling an MMO in the west after 2004 was rough

[@oOAjjOo]

I was searching for a new private server of this and see you did a deep dive on it. INCREDIBLE. I loved this game so much and love SMT.

[@Red_Fr0st]

Concord video waiting room

[@WindygekoTV]

Hey there! Former SMTO:Imagine New Moon server owner here, Private servers existed as early as 2015/2016 and have been thriving for years following the release of COMP_HACK server emulation software!!!! We've had a devoted and very dedicated community literally throwing themselves into reverse engineering and recompiling the games files for development purposes and over the last few years the community itself has made STAGGERING advancements in understanding and manipulating the games code all the way down to it's source. With that said nice use of the new moon trailer footage at 20:55 😏 See you out there DB!

[@KazShiro]

Was only a matter of time before you showed up. Good to see you.

[@WindygekoTV]

@@KazShiro Lmao I'm just hangin around, good to see you!

[@jimkama]

You still taking orders from that racist guy begging for scraps ?

[@KidArez]

2:00 is where the video starts.

[@avalokiteshvara113]

ty

[@senorcheesy9661]

ITS ABOUT GODDAMN TIME WE DECIDED TO COVER BRINK, LETS GO

[@spahghettiboi4150]

*Smt 3 Title Loop Intensifies*

[@RainingFlow19]

Thanks for the memory lane! I never played but remember this game a lot due to Persona 3 changed my life back then and made me obsessed with the series. I watch every single persona and megaten related video I could find on the internet and followed this game closely. I tried downloading it many times but either my then laptop not powerful enough or it requires an ID but I do not understand japanese.

[@TheOneTrueOfficialLordGod]

Would you believe me if I told you this was the first SMT game I ever played and without it, I would have never played Persona?

[@eddythefool]

I remember this game. I still have the emails from aeriagame from 2009 since i signed up to it before i found out i couldn't run it on my ancient computer.

[@billwilson1225]

This game was the closest we got to a Pokemon MMO RIP

[@Metal_Fingers.]

☠☠Concord is already being shut down. They are on world record pace to become the fastest game to die.

[@5000cz]

That was The Day Before at 3 days. Hard to beat

[@boyanpenev9822]

Hyenas died before release.

[@JonoSSD]

Played the hell out of this back in the day.

[@zaneheaston8254]

Now for a game that had infinite promise, but released far too soon

[@missNekolover91]

huh, multi player Persona would really work, since there is Theurgy skills in reload and in the persona 2 games, there are fusion spells, theurgy is when the player's while fusion, are when multiple characters using specific persona's to use skills

[@halucinujte]

man you rarely cover games i played but I'm always amazed by the speed you put out videos. cheers

[@karagravis]

I should have played this game more when it was out...I really liked it, like, the first week

[@TheArchevil]

The combat system was great. I liked how it was without classes so you could be a shotgun wielding dps mage who could also use healing/rezz magic. And the demon system was a plus. You could capture and mix demons like in Persona. Nowadays everybody has played Persona so it's not a foreign system anymore, but the people in the article were comparing it to Pokemon because they had nothing else to compare it to which was doing the game a massive disservice.

[@Flailmorpho]

the "forced pet system" is a bit of a weird criticism considering this is a monster collector franchise, it's like saying pokemon forces you to have pets, the pets are the point

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Combat doesn't include you as a Pokemon trainer...

[@Flailmorpho]

@nerdSlayerstudioss no but, SMT as a franchise is built on collecting and using your demons in battle, it's a main part of the series identity. Very few SMT games don't have this aspect and it would be really weird if an SMT MMO wasn't built around the demon collecting. Protagonists usually rely on demons to carry alternative damage types, heal, buff and debuff, and generally make your protag's job easier. Think of it literally as like, a pokemon where the protagonist carries a shotgun

[@Claytor22]

i had waited for this episode, i loved this game, i dived so hard into it when it came to the west and it died so fast, thank you for covering this.

[@JohnDoe-jh1qd]

Death of a Game: Concord.... speed run

[@YdenMk-II]

I remember playing SMT Imagine early on in the Aeria days and dropped off cause the updates were slow and cash shop really bad. Aeria also very much half assed the translations and did things like remove the tooltips for armor pieces which really hurt cause that included all the defense numbers. For the longest time I thought gear was purely cosmetic.

[@jeannecaelum5167]

I kinda wish i was around to play this, i only got into SMT roughly 8 years ago. Thanks for covering this! And obligatory "cant wait for the Concord episode" i honestly liked that games presentation, if i werent burnt out on shooters.

[@KnightGamer724]

You can today. New Moon and other fan servers are pretty good.

[@rafaelgq2913]

Hey nice video! I am the RafaelGQ showed in the video and i enjoyed this game a lot in Aeria, Atlus, Xseed, japanese server and private servers. I stopped but im playing Dx2 now on cellphone.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

thanks for stopping by :)

[@captainwo]

What's the main difference between Imagine and Concord? I would've felt bad reviving Concord even before the legal threat! Thanks for covering my 3 year passion project. Been a fan since the beginning ❤️‍🔥

[@jakubmakalowski6428]

I don’t think I realized there was a release outside Japan

[@Duc1796]

Wow ive always been interested in this game, being an SMT fan myself! Thanks for the coverage!

[@DoctorMissplays]

SMT was my favorite game for years and I loved playing it, but Concord is now the game I love watching die.

[@GATX370]

I actually played this back in the day, the concept was great but that cash shop was wild.

[@Natzawa]

That’s why the private servers are better they have none of that.

[@mimimalloc]

I really liked the premise of Imagine, how they used the series tradition of demon summoning and fusion as a way to give you minute control over your build through a semi-permanent companion you can swap around.

[@DucklingNM]

Private servers were playable prior to 2021. SMT Re:Imagine was up around 2019/2020, and before that there was other private servers like Black Frost and New Order. As an edit, The private server's started up around 2016.

[@daikichwama4364]

Man, I remember playing imagine. I started it with no smt history and with only the persona series in my background. Back then I didn't know what I was missing and didn't invest more in the game... I did like the cosmetics though. Now that Ive played a lot of mainline smt games, I really wish I played more of smt imagine

[@TheMorrochben]

Very long time SMT fangirl. I've played a bit of Imagine over the years, mostly on fan servers and it was a genuinely really good mmo experience if you are a fan of the Megami Tensei mainline series. Its very stylistically on point with the ps2 and dreamcast eras of the series and maintains a fun challenging battle system which is what elevates SMT mainline so much. I was also on the ground floor when the Atlus cease and desists came in for one of the fan servers. As far as we in the community could figure, it seemed that their main issue was that server they sued had put an Atlus logo on their site, making it look more 'official.' And given only that one server got hit by the cease and desist, while all the ones that were more transparent about them being fan run didn't get notified (though some closed out of fear) I am still inclined to believe it was due to the missus of the Atlus logo rather than an actual issue with running the game.

[@antecxaser3]

Please do Concord next!!!

[@snazzydrew]

I really liked this game when it was out. It had a weird and unique combat system. Wish it had a private server.

[@KnightGamer724]

... it does. New Moon.

[@KazShiro]

Been waiting for this to be covered

[@verdura31]

i was expecting the next death of a game would be Concord, but i was not expecting Brink, used to play the fuck of that game, but looking back on it now, it was quite rough.

[@Unquestionable]

Never expected an episode of on this. I remember being super into the US version for the first year and really loved it but wasn't super dedicated. In an interesting twist it's also the reason my girlfriend got into FFXIV, I was going to play this with her one weekend we had together but found out it went offline about a month prior. Saw FF was having a sale, was before the first expansion even, so picked it up for both of us (I had played the console version at launch so already enjoyed it) and while I played on and off she's been super into it for over a decade now. She actually convinced me to come back this past summer and while it's no SMT Online it's still nice to have a game to share.

[@retnuah825]

Was really expecting this one, glad you covered it :D

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Glad you liked it!

[@hunainkhan1058]

CONCORD video coming when?

[@phantomfenrir4976]

I played this game until the final day on the Japanese server! I meet a lot of people through it, one of them ended up being one of my best friends to this day.

[@avalonknight]

SMT:I was my first foray into the series as a whole. Well, I think I did play Persona 2 EP for a bit as a rental...back when the franchise as a whole was called "The Revelation Series" (My god, that was a long time ago.) Played it for I think two or three years, before I knew about the move to Marvelous. Dropped it, because of the typical F2P restrictions that Aeria Games tend to have, from what I remember. I do miss my Pixie there. I know she's a fixture in my party in every mainline SMT game plus Strange Journey, but yeah. I guess I like how she looks and fits in this post-apocalyptic urban fantasy setting.

[@braveagentg]

As someone who was there, I have to say: Aeria was the entire reason the game failed in the West. I disagree with perceived issues with the gameplay design, in fact, I'd go a far as to say that the player character shouldn't be able to use magic, but if you go that far it's even more difficult to grab and retain players.

[@Kalinskiya]

Can't wait for CONCORD VIDEO! LMAO

[@goldentiramisu7935]

still one of the realest shin megoomi tensay game to this day

[@misfitmikey619]

I love the Megaten franchise so much, and I have never even heard of this game before seeing this video 😅

[@Natzawa]

It’s a really good mmo. They have private servers up for it. New moon (us) and new order (ru).

[@AaronL0905]

I played in a private server a while ago It was fairly good, the start feels so slow but also I am not really the biggest adept to MMO's so I can say it was probably me

[@Regithegamer]

Out of all the MMORPGs I've played, this is the one closest to my heart despite its pay-to-win and overall jank. The demon summoning system is the best pet system I've played in an MMORPG and back in the early days having both the player and demon be damage dealers was helpful. It also tickles the Pokemon but MMO itch I had at the time even if I wasn't super familiar with the franchise (at the time my only SMT game played was Devil Survivor 1 for the Nintendo DS). I mostly played player mage builds so I had a summoned demon stat stick but the Digitalize system in the game also required you to build other demons that you used as a temporary super buff with long cooldown to really push your power to the next level. I absolutely love the complexity of buildcrafting in this game. Expertise skills had to be leveled up by doing the action associated with it (albeit this was trivialized with skill books and 10x or 2010% incense) and certain chain expertise needed prerequisite skills leveled. Gear was 90% of the power of your build but equipment in the game was not soulbound so you could play completely f2p and earn in game money to trade for the strongest p2w gear in the game. There was no auction house so all trading was player to player and manual so you had to figure out the value of everything yourself. Playing on the private server which got all the Japanese-only content was amazing as an NA player since I spent so much time researching and theorizing a gear setup that would maximize Limit Break Power and Limit Break Cap which eventually resulted in a Digitalize setup with a demon (separate from your summoned one but still within your COMP slots) that had Cup of Babylon which had a massive AoE almighty spell that scaled off the Support stat, Almighty affinity, and Limit Break Power only which made it particularly hard to hit the damage cap. From the NA side of things, I only remember our updates being very scarce. The PvP update already happened when I joined the game but I recall seeing the information on the JP server about the Diaspora raids with a whole group of 30 players being something to look forward to but we ended up getting that content 2-3 years after they did. I did eventually get to experience that content on the private server but it's kinda funny how utterly powercrept that content became such that you can just duo it or multibox solo it.

[@mestre12]

Cant wait for the concord video.

[@nazgulsenpai]

I can't tell you how many times I've looked at my browser and thought "you know what'd make this better? GX Mods"

[@prock.]

This was my second mmorpg after Ragnarok Online. It was one of the few online games that my pc was capable to run back in those days, and that was the main reason for me to try it. Also was the first game where I manage to met a spanish speaking community (and really small) inside the game in a completely dominated english speaking ecosystem and player base. It was fun at the time, and fortunately I was so broke that didnt have the opportunity to put any real money

[@maccamachine]

Great video man I enjoy the smt series and have known about this game for a while and it’s still interesting the whole concept of a smt mmo is pretty cool.

[@nerdSlayerstudioss]

Glad you liked it, hope you enjoyed the nostalgic trip!

[@Awesomethingness]

I remember IMAGINE! The advanced classes were interestingly balanced, with Gunners being easier to use early, melee in the midrange, and the magic paths requiring the most grinding. The gradient inverted with a break-even point among the classes around level 45-50, with later levels favoring mobbing capabilities and heavy funding. I stopped playing about a year in as a neutral crit MGunner in the 70s due mainly to a lack of content at/past this level. Even so, there was a lot to keep someone occupied and engaged.

[@ZaneBarrow]

Nobody talk about the currently running private server.

[@zerosolanum8625]

Good times, in both servers, cool to see old friends in the backgroud.

[@TearThatRedFlagDown]

I remember playing this game, completely forgot about it until I saw this video. What a hit of nostalgia lol.

[@Waryfuls]

*_"The Death of Battlefield Heroes"_* ;(

[@lol80626]

So...Concord? Or Blue Protocol?

[@WarlordShinkouhyou]

I played this game twice over now, once by Aeria Games and once on Re:IMAGINE. I'm occupied with other games at the moment but I know I'll be back on the latest private server some day. The versions of this game run by the community who love it have removed all the p2w garbage and made something really fun.

[@thirteenthfloor327]

Was a known player in this game, can’t believe they took this game from me. They also oversold all the he gear towards the end getting people to buy nice things for it to get shut down, dirty

[@hoshi314]

oh fuck me this is gonna hurt right in the nostalgia, i never gotten very far but since i am coming from playing the mianline SMT game i am just glad that games like this existed. and now SMT is gonna have their own board game LOL

[@graytantan4839]

As one who had 400 hours in This game while i was growing up, it was kinda dead feeling even back then. Spent all my days jusT solo grinding. nobody did pvp. Rooms and areas were empty. It was a good and fun game. RIP.

[@algomi9280]

Everytime i see a new video of this series. The first thing that comes to mind is, Will it be for Mabinogi? Its a maricle that game is alive.

[@lelouche25]

Ngl, I had zero idea there was an online persona game lol.

[@CrazyAce777777]

He did one that hit me personally now