真・女神転生IV FINAL

IV was already a departure for the series, and IVA is an even bigger one. Remember that SMT fans didn't like IV at the time, and this was even more IV but weirder and much less like Katsura Hashino-era SMT, often referred to as the golden era of SMT (PS2 era, and he eventually founded P-Studio).

I really like this game, but I personally love Nocturne and V's approach of immersing the player in an alien world, and slowly isolating them from humanity. IV was a big departure from this with the addition of the guest ally system, and human NPCs who journey with the player. IVA goes even further down that path with the Partners system. Basically it's a traditional character-focused JRPG in a lot of ways which is why there's often a gulf between SMTIV and IVA fans and Nocturne and V fans.

Yeah makes sense, I’m on my second run of nocturne now after finishing IVA because it initially did nothing for me, i’m starting to get it more than before but you’re right that the more character focused, persona-esque style is very distinct from nocturne and V, also, these ones are real heavy on the science fiction shit so it really makes sense that there’d be a gap in the fanbase, really interesting

One thing I understand the criticisms for is the tropeyness of some of the characters, this one definitely felt like a cheeseball anime at points unfortunately, but for me personally I found a few of the main cast engaging and I was just happy to be back in this specific setting of tokyo, revisiting the characters from IV