Hey all

I finished Soul Hackers (3DS) a bunch of months ago and kinda have the itch to play again. I figured I could do New Game and go through the game again trying to fill out my Compendium, but it looks like some difficult bonus boss fights are required to access NG .

I'm.. not great at SMT, nor am I very good at games in general. I'm used to Persona and play those on Normal so they're never too challenging anyway.

in fact, after a certain point in SH, I kinda just started to rely mostly on a guide to get through it. Between very long confusing dungeons and battles that I didn't know how I would have known how to prepare for (late story/ending ones specifically), I kinda wondered if I was... just not... smart enough?

But it's still something I'm considering trying, since it would be fun to play SH again. I really enjoyed it despite the confusion. It's just that I feel like I just finished it fairly recently, so most of it would be repetitive.

Which is why I shifted my attention to Devil Survivor: Overclocked (3DS) instead.

...buuuuut while looking up general tips for that one, I felt I was in over my head, worse than with Soul Hackers. cracking skills, optimizing your builds, knowing which Demons to buy (since I suck at winning via bids), and hearing that this game is one of the hardest SMT games has me... concerned.

and with all that said, something I've NEVER gotten the hang of, between Persona Q and these two games, is the party's turn order. I'll think I've figured out the order in which my party will act, and someone will somehow act first on a turn, throwing off my strategy and leading to things like a character throwing a heal spell to a character that just died, wasting their turn. I'm very bad at this in particular.

so basically, I'm likely to keep trying with Devil Survivor just because I've never completed it before, but I can see myself going back to Soul Hackers at some point soon too, which means I really need to up my general SMT skills.

do y'all have advice for someone like me

is there like a good beginner guide to optimizing and strategizing and such

I'd love to get better at these games but they seem pretty daunting at the moment. I'm early in Devil Survivor but already wondering if I've made any mistakes with which times events to experience and which Demons to buy. I've heard to go for the 5-Stars but there are always 5-Stars and my Macca is limited.

so yeah.. in need of some SMT-for-Dummies here.

thanks in advance