![](/static/253f0d9b/assets/icons/icon-96x96.png)
![](https://fry.gs/pictrs/image/c6832070-8625-4688-b9e5-5d519541e092.png)
In my experience, it’s not just a lack of reading comprehension, but often some combination of an utter lack of curiosity, laziness and defeatism. Many other things, like video games, have escaped the realm of being reserved only for nerds and gone mainstream, yet computers remain something people just constantly assume are hopelessly complicated.
I know for a fact my mother-in-law can read just fine, as she spends most of her day reading novels and will gladly spend the rest of it telling me about them if I happen to be there. Yet when it comes to her cell phone, if there’s any issue at all, she just shuts down. She would just rather not be able to access her online banking in the Citi bank app for weeks or months at a time, until one of us goes and updates it for her, rather than reading the banner that says “The version of this app is too old, please click here to update and continue using it.” and clicking the damn button. If anyone points this out to her, though, she just gets worked up in a huff and tells us “I’m too old to understand these things, you can figure it out because you’re still young.” She will eventually figure these things out and do them for herself if nobody does it for her for a while, but her default for any problem with her phone is to throw her hands up and declare it a lost cause first. I’ve seen a lot of people have the same sort of reactions, both young and old. No “Hey, let’s just see what it says,” just straight to deciding it’s impossible, so they don’t even bother to check what’s going on.
Almost all, except for the oddball that is Strange Journey, taking place in post-apocalyptic Antarctica, instead. It has a lot of elements that differ from other Mainline entries, but Atlus treated it as such and acknowledged it with the recent Mainline 25th anniversary celebrations. I really enjoyed it and think it’s worth a playthrough, but it may not be the best starting point. I also don’t know how the remake holds up, I’ve read complaints about changes online, but SMT fans can be a bit touchy about their favorite games.
I’ll disagree on this one and just add that not everyone who enjoyed 4 found Apocalypse to be that good. From what I saw, people that really just love the battle system and doing things like building out the perfect team for tackling boss rushes and insanely challenging super bosses really enjoyed it. If you go in expecting more of SMT IV’s world and story, you may well be disappointed by it. I found the characters to be unlikeable, personally, and it seemed like an unnecessary rehashing of the story. I also recall some unavoidable boss rushes in the main story that made certain areas really grindy and killed my enjoyment for a good while.
Otherwise, I would say a pretty decent write up here.