SMT2 is atypical from most JRPGs in more ways than you would expect. Eschewing a traditional adventure with towns along the way is nothing necessarily new, but the way SMT2 focuses on such a sprawling but interconnected region feels pretty forward thinking. There's obvious inspiration from Western RPGs, but it also evokes Dark Souls or FF12 with its commitment to an immersive world.
There's no doubt that the world itself is incredibly interesting and creative in a lot of ways, much more so than SMT1. From the unique flavor text to the striking aesthetics of each area, Kaneko's creativity really bleeds through constantly. It makes for probably the best aspect of the exploration.
However the exploration itself often ends up as a tedious and extremely frustrating task. I mentioned Dark Souls as an example of an immersive world that SMT2 reminds me of, but Dark Souls both commits to making you move from place to place on foot and has interesting gameplay. SMT2's gameplay is, well, terrible. It's pretty much brainless levels of easy for most of the game but with a ridiculous amount of encounters. I sort of knew this would be the case going in, but even if I was able to get past the combat itself the overall design feels made to waste time to insane degrees. Most of the games runtime is made up of fetch quests which drag you around every corner of the map. I understand wanting you to explore the map, but so much of the game being inane backtracking for little gameplay or story reward gets extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, this detracts a lot from the story a lot of the time for me as well. This is by far the aspect of the game I've seen praised the most, and I think there is good reason for this. Not only does it have a much more interesting setting than SMT1, it also has a much more interesting alignment system that feels less wishy-washy about what it's trying to say. But the structure hurts it greatly still, as the story is only interesting until it suddenly isn't again. For every long expository dialogue scene there's another 10 hours of wandering around doing random tasks afterwards with little story impact. Aleph is a cool idea for a protagonist, with a really neat twist, but it's also undermined by the fact that there's little to no interactions that build up to the twist or follow up on it. For every interesting plot point I know it will be followed by "Find the 8 Idols of shitfuck to unlock the gate" I got the Law ending and it was interesting and neat but also felt detached from the rest of the game as well, mostly functioning off a cool aesthetic. I think the story had a big chance to make up for the rest of the game for me but I came away from it with little attachment.
I might be giving SMT2 a more positive score than how it actually felt to play but I can see the appeal to such a unique game. There's a really striking creative voice behind a lot of it that even SMT1 didn't really have. I just wish it could have all come together for me to be able to see it as a masterpiece at all.
There's no doubt that the world itself is incredibly interesting and creative in a lot of ways, much more so than SMT1. From the unique flavor text to the striking aesthetics of each area, Kaneko's creativity really bleeds through constantly. It makes for probably the best aspect of the exploration.
However the exploration itself often ends up as a tedious and extremely frustrating task. I mentioned Dark Souls as an example of an immersive world that SMT2 reminds me of, but Dark Souls both commits to making you move from place to place on foot and has interesting gameplay. SMT2's gameplay is, well, terrible. It's pretty much brainless levels of easy for most of the game but with a ridiculous amount of encounters. I sort of knew this would be the case going in, but even if I was able to get past the combat itself the overall design feels made to waste time to insane degrees. Most of the games runtime is made up of fetch quests which drag you around every corner of the map. I understand wanting you to explore the map, but so much of the game being inane backtracking for little gameplay or story reward gets extremely frustrating.
Unfortunately, this detracts a lot from the story a lot of the time for me as well. This is by far the aspect of the game I've seen praised the most, and I think there is good reason for this. Not only does it have a much more interesting setting than SMT1, it also has a much more interesting alignment system that feels less wishy-washy about what it's trying to say. But the structure hurts it greatly still, as the story is only interesting until it suddenly isn't again. For every long expository dialogue scene there's another 10 hours of wandering around doing random tasks afterwards with little story impact. Aleph is a cool idea for a protagonist, with a really neat twist, but it's also undermined by the fact that there's little to no interactions that build up to the twist or follow up on it. For every interesting plot point I know it will be followed by "Find the 8 Idols of shitfuck to unlock the gate" I got the Law ending and it was interesting and neat but also felt detached from the rest of the game as well, mostly functioning off a cool aesthetic. I think the story had a big chance to make up for the rest of the game for me but I came away from it with little attachment.
I might be giving SMT2 a more positive score than how it actually felt to play but I can see the appeal to such a unique game. There's a really striking creative voice behind a lot of it that even SMT1 didn't really have. I just wish it could have all come together for me to be able to see it as a masterpiece at all.
This review contains spoilers
Very mixed feelings. On the one hand, it has a very solid gameplay loop, and it's really cool seeing the events of the first game leading to this shiny new city that throws the trash into the rotting corpse of Tokyo that the Messiaen Church created.
On the other hand, good god does backtracking in the later part of this game become a nightmare. The last terminal you get access to is quite a ways away from the final part of the game, so if you want to finish up, make sure you have EVERYTHING you want, cause you're strapped in.
All in all, I really wish Atlus went back to this type of game, cause it's pretty cool.
On the other hand, good god does backtracking in the later part of this game become a nightmare. The last terminal you get access to is quite a ways away from the final part of the game, so if you want to finish up, make sure you have EVERYTHING you want, cause you're strapped in.
All in all, I really wish Atlus went back to this type of game, cause it's pretty cool.
My appetite for SMT not nearly satiated with just the first game, I quickly went on to the sequel, which is also on the Switch Online Super Famicom service. Unfortunately, my appendix issues sprang up in the middle of my playing it, so I had to take a week off near the end of the game, but I got back and spent another couple of days finishing up my adventure. It took me around 35 hours to beat the Japanese version of the game using many rewinds and save states just like I had for the first game.
SMT2 came out a couple years after the first SMT and takes a pretty different approach to the narrative compared to the first game. This is a direct sequel to the first game, taking place some time after the neutral ending of SMT when Law has managed to take nominal control over society again. The followers of Law have built a massive pyramid-like city high above the ruins of old Tokyo called MILLENNIUM TOKYO, and that's where you, Hawk, live. You're a prize fighter about to engage in the championship bout to meet the heads of state at the Center as your prize. From there, you end up going on missions for the Center, even going as far as being claimed the Messiah after defeating the anti-Messiah in a huge staged fight, but that's when things really start to go off the rails and its revealed that (of course) things are not even close to the way they seem.
I'm of a split mind about SMT 2's story. On one hand, it's a bold step forward for character writing and a character-driven plot compared to the first game. On the other hand, the story is much less open and much more directed the first game's, but this game also keeps the same alignment system that the first game has. It results in a game where trying to get the ending you want is a lot more frustrating mechanically and a fair bit less appropriate narratively because of how the story is constructed. It isn't quite Megami Tensei 2 in how structured the story is, but it reminds me more of that game than it does of Shin Megami Tensei 1. There are some other smaller things I'm not a fan of, like how this game has significantly more homophobia in it than the other SMT games I've played (though that isn't exactly unique for Atlus games these days), but I'd still rank this game below its predecessor in terms of narrative. It's a good step in the right direction for making a more complicated and relatable version of the kinds of themes that SMT 1 is trying to talk about, but it still definitely needs polishing up in making the player feel like it's a world with more equally valid arguments to agree or disagree with.
The gameplay is a very similar to the first game in that it's first-person dungeon crawling with turn-based battles where you can fight or recruit the demons you run into, but like with the writing, this is another mixed bag of new improvements but setbacks to previous features. On the good side of things, you have now L is now a shortcut to your auto-mapper and R a shortcut to your demon analyzer, as well as the very significant ability to actually see what items and spells do in-game rather than needing to look them up like you had to for SMT 1. The most significantly appreciated step forward is in regards to demons and how they're no longer all completely identical. They're all still mostly identical, sure, but now if you make a demon via fusion of two other demons, they can inherit some spells from what they were fused from. It's not a massive change, but it's another very good step in the right direction that future games would follow.
The list of negative changes is unfortunately much larger. While the concept of alignment is still around, and it's still decided by story-important decisions you make (both optional and non-optional) and determines if you can equip certain items and recruit certain demons, you can now no longer check your alignment by which way your cursor spins on the world map. Now the only way you have to check it is by trying to summon demons of the presumed opposite alignment (law can't summon chaos demons and vice versa) or trying to equip some of the very small number of alignment-locked equipment. The signposting is also much worse, with it generally being much harder than in the first game to know where to go or what to do (particularly around collecting the very well hidden 7 pillars).
Random encounters have been lowered, sure, but they also give magnetite less frequently and they give less of it. You need magnetite to keep demons summoned, so a shortage of magnetite is a really bad thing to have, and there were several points where I had to spend large parts of the game either with no demons summoned or just grinding for magnetite because running out of it is such a huge problem. This is compounded by the fact that the way demon negotiations (to recruit them) have been significantly altered. They're more dynamic and conversational, sure, but it's also much harder to get anything out of them that isn't friendship. In the first game, you could very easily ask them for money, magnetite, or items too, but that isn't the case in this game. You can almost never explicitly ask them for things, and when they do give you money or magnetite, it's very small amounts. They thankfully also only ask for super small amounts of money/magnetite if they're demanding it in negotiations, but that really doesn't help much when you're already so short on magnetite.
Game balance is also similarly bad to the first game, with a typically brutal early game and a more easy mid-/late-game, but the final bosses are thankfully nowhere near as much of a cakewalk as they were in the first SMT. Like in SMT, guns and bullets that either sleep or charm enemies are going to be your biggest friends. Sword fusion is also much harder to do in this game, so it's much harder to rely on that for an easy super weapon like you could in the first game. I myself really lucked out by finding Fargus's Sword in the mid game, one of the game's best weapons that's a rare random drop, but without that I would've had a MUCH more difficult time. Leveling up still works the same, with putting one stat point into a stat (strength, intelligence, magic, vitality, speed, or luck) per level, so leveling up is still an exercise in very gradual power growth, so getting stronger demons or finding better equipment are still going to be your best options for dealing with encounters you simply can't beat.
However, the biggest reason for this difficulty spike isn't any of that, or even the dungeon design (which is still pretty damn mean in terms of invisible pitfalls, floor traps, one-way doors, and even more difficult to see in darkness). The biggest issue with SMT2 is the way the allied AI has been ruined. In SMT 1 and SMT 2, the way random encounters work is that you run into one or two demons at a time who each have several members of their group (from 1 to 8). However, although you can pick which demon group to attack, you can't specify which of the 1 to 8 you wanna hit. In SMT 1, your AI are pretty damn good at focusing down weakened members and avoiding trying to bash enemies who are slept or stunned. In SMT 2, that intelligence is robbed from them entirely, and they seem to attack things almost at random. This makes the game much MUCH harder in its random encounters compared to the first game, and that's an issue that persists the entire game (especially as you get more and more enemies who are totally immune to guns, which are your main and most effective way of dealing status effects in a game where MP is still such a valuable and difficult to recover resource).
The presentation is one area where it's a universal step up from the first game. Dungeon tile sets are much prettier, and although there are a lot of returning demons, virtually all of them have been touched up or altered in some way. There's a lot of new, good music too, but it's still in the much more low-key and atmospheric style of the first game. Good music, but not really my jam. You can REALLY feel just how much Atlus had gotten more comfortable with the Super Famicom's hardware in the two years between the first game and this one.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is a much more hesitant recommendation than the first SMT. It's virtually impossible to recommend not playing it with rewinds and save states like I did, but it's such a step down from the first game in so many frustrating ways that you're much better off playing that instead. Now if you really like SMT 1 and want more of that, then SMT 2 is a pretty good way to get it. Just don't expect this to be quite as polished or refined an experience as that.
SMT2 came out a couple years after the first SMT and takes a pretty different approach to the narrative compared to the first game. This is a direct sequel to the first game, taking place some time after the neutral ending of SMT when Law has managed to take nominal control over society again. The followers of Law have built a massive pyramid-like city high above the ruins of old Tokyo called MILLENNIUM TOKYO, and that's where you, Hawk, live. You're a prize fighter about to engage in the championship bout to meet the heads of state at the Center as your prize. From there, you end up going on missions for the Center, even going as far as being claimed the Messiah after defeating the anti-Messiah in a huge staged fight, but that's when things really start to go off the rails and its revealed that (of course) things are not even close to the way they seem.
I'm of a split mind about SMT 2's story. On one hand, it's a bold step forward for character writing and a character-driven plot compared to the first game. On the other hand, the story is much less open and much more directed the first game's, but this game also keeps the same alignment system that the first game has. It results in a game where trying to get the ending you want is a lot more frustrating mechanically and a fair bit less appropriate narratively because of how the story is constructed. It isn't quite Megami Tensei 2 in how structured the story is, but it reminds me more of that game than it does of Shin Megami Tensei 1. There are some other smaller things I'm not a fan of, like how this game has significantly more homophobia in it than the other SMT games I've played (though that isn't exactly unique for Atlus games these days), but I'd still rank this game below its predecessor in terms of narrative. It's a good step in the right direction for making a more complicated and relatable version of the kinds of themes that SMT 1 is trying to talk about, but it still definitely needs polishing up in making the player feel like it's a world with more equally valid arguments to agree or disagree with.
The gameplay is a very similar to the first game in that it's first-person dungeon crawling with turn-based battles where you can fight or recruit the demons you run into, but like with the writing, this is another mixed bag of new improvements but setbacks to previous features. On the good side of things, you have now L is now a shortcut to your auto-mapper and R a shortcut to your demon analyzer, as well as the very significant ability to actually see what items and spells do in-game rather than needing to look them up like you had to for SMT 1. The most significantly appreciated step forward is in regards to demons and how they're no longer all completely identical. They're all still mostly identical, sure, but now if you make a demon via fusion of two other demons, they can inherit some spells from what they were fused from. It's not a massive change, but it's another very good step in the right direction that future games would follow.
The list of negative changes is unfortunately much larger. While the concept of alignment is still around, and it's still decided by story-important decisions you make (both optional and non-optional) and determines if you can equip certain items and recruit certain demons, you can now no longer check your alignment by which way your cursor spins on the world map. Now the only way you have to check it is by trying to summon demons of the presumed opposite alignment (law can't summon chaos demons and vice versa) or trying to equip some of the very small number of alignment-locked equipment. The signposting is also much worse, with it generally being much harder than in the first game to know where to go or what to do (particularly around collecting the very well hidden 7 pillars).
Random encounters have been lowered, sure, but they also give magnetite less frequently and they give less of it. You need magnetite to keep demons summoned, so a shortage of magnetite is a really bad thing to have, and there were several points where I had to spend large parts of the game either with no demons summoned or just grinding for magnetite because running out of it is such a huge problem. This is compounded by the fact that the way demon negotiations (to recruit them) have been significantly altered. They're more dynamic and conversational, sure, but it's also much harder to get anything out of them that isn't friendship. In the first game, you could very easily ask them for money, magnetite, or items too, but that isn't the case in this game. You can almost never explicitly ask them for things, and when they do give you money or magnetite, it's very small amounts. They thankfully also only ask for super small amounts of money/magnetite if they're demanding it in negotiations, but that really doesn't help much when you're already so short on magnetite.
Game balance is also similarly bad to the first game, with a typically brutal early game and a more easy mid-/late-game, but the final bosses are thankfully nowhere near as much of a cakewalk as they were in the first SMT. Like in SMT, guns and bullets that either sleep or charm enemies are going to be your biggest friends. Sword fusion is also much harder to do in this game, so it's much harder to rely on that for an easy super weapon like you could in the first game. I myself really lucked out by finding Fargus's Sword in the mid game, one of the game's best weapons that's a rare random drop, but without that I would've had a MUCH more difficult time. Leveling up still works the same, with putting one stat point into a stat (strength, intelligence, magic, vitality, speed, or luck) per level, so leveling up is still an exercise in very gradual power growth, so getting stronger demons or finding better equipment are still going to be your best options for dealing with encounters you simply can't beat.
However, the biggest reason for this difficulty spike isn't any of that, or even the dungeon design (which is still pretty damn mean in terms of invisible pitfalls, floor traps, one-way doors, and even more difficult to see in darkness). The biggest issue with SMT2 is the way the allied AI has been ruined. In SMT 1 and SMT 2, the way random encounters work is that you run into one or two demons at a time who each have several members of their group (from 1 to 8). However, although you can pick which demon group to attack, you can't specify which of the 1 to 8 you wanna hit. In SMT 1, your AI are pretty damn good at focusing down weakened members and avoiding trying to bash enemies who are slept or stunned. In SMT 2, that intelligence is robbed from them entirely, and they seem to attack things almost at random. This makes the game much MUCH harder in its random encounters compared to the first game, and that's an issue that persists the entire game (especially as you get more and more enemies who are totally immune to guns, which are your main and most effective way of dealing status effects in a game where MP is still such a valuable and difficult to recover resource).
The presentation is one area where it's a universal step up from the first game. Dungeon tile sets are much prettier, and although there are a lot of returning demons, virtually all of them have been touched up or altered in some way. There's a lot of new, good music too, but it's still in the much more low-key and atmospheric style of the first game. Good music, but not really my jam. You can REALLY feel just how much Atlus had gotten more comfortable with the Super Famicom's hardware in the two years between the first game and this one.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is a much more hesitant recommendation than the first SMT. It's virtually impossible to recommend not playing it with rewinds and save states like I did, but it's such a step down from the first game in so many frustrating ways that you're much better off playing that instead. Now if you really like SMT 1 and want more of that, then SMT 2 is a pretty good way to get it. Just don't expect this to be quite as polished or refined an experience as that.
Overall I found it to be a downgrade from the first game. Story and atmosphere are where it shines but SMT1 does them better. Combat is still mostly brain dead, negotiation is dumbed down, and progression is either tedious backtracking or just too obtuse. Perhaps my biggest complaint is the game is too long. An issue in their other SNES offerings. They wring out so much game time with so little unique assets. It feels like it doesn't know when to end. I'd have preferred a shorter, tighter experience.
Primeiro SMT que joguei na vida kkkk, gosto MT da história dele
Não é o meu preferido, mas certamente é o melhor dos SMT's de SNES.
Eu gosto muito de como esse jogo propõe algo bem próximo ao primeiro, só que com uma roupagem distópica muito mais interessante e com twists que funcionam bem dentro da escrita limitada do jogo, que (apesar dos pesares) ainda consegue explorar temas interessantes. Sofre dos mesmos problemas que todos os SMT's dessa época, mas aqui estes problemas, se não são atenuados, são pelo menos mascarados, como no caso das dungeons. Estas ainda são repletas de lugares com absolutamente nada, mas ao menos são mais interessantes em conceito e ambientação.
Eu gosto muito de como esse jogo propõe algo bem próximo ao primeiro, só que com uma roupagem distópica muito mais interessante e com twists que funcionam bem dentro da escrita limitada do jogo, que (apesar dos pesares) ainda consegue explorar temas interessantes. Sofre dos mesmos problemas que todos os SMT's dessa época, mas aqui estes problemas, se não são atenuados, são pelo menos mascarados, como no caso das dungeons. Estas ainda são repletas de lugares com absolutamente nada, mas ao menos são mais interessantes em conceito e ambientação.
Shin Megami Tensei II is an overall improvement over the first game in terms of gameplay, story and setting: the result is a much more enjoyable experience that, with a bit of patience and perseverance, can still hold to these days.
Of course, the game itself is almost impossible to play without a guide, much like the first one, by today standards: unless you have so much time on your hands that you don't know how to waste it, playing it without pre-made maps is miserable and can take from you much more times than any other game.
The dungeons are, in fact, not better than the first game's one. They are messy in an almost non-sensical way, they are big and full of unused spaces, have an unholy encounter rate and requires you to do so much backtracking to the point you'll start to remember the way to follow without even looking at the map.
It also doesn't help that the game stops offering any kind of challenge after the first half of it, when the protagonist starts becoming so overpowered every enemy just get oneshotted by him. Just like it happened in the first game, except this time you don't need guns to actually break the system.
As for the story, it's incredible for a 1994 game!
While the first game lacked in some depth and could have used more cutscenes and dialogues, SMT II shows how ambitious the whole script is and tries to convey, despite the limitations of the console, an incredible plot, a direct sequel of the first game Neutral Ending.
This time, the Chaos and Law alignment really differ from one another, making it much more impactful to choose who to side with.
The characters are much, much more interesting too, being not only blank representatives of their alignments.
The setting is, this time, futuristic, being set in 2070s Tokyo Millennium, built on the ruins of the Basilica of the first game: those who have played it will absolutely adore the continuity of the setting.
I, myself, loved the game atmosphere, despite not being that much into the cyberpunk-futuristic genre.
Being the worldbuilding much more specific and detailed, this time, the exploration of the world is also much more guided and less randomic like it was in SMT: the only annoying thing being the excessive backtracking and the almost useless Teleport which was, most of the time, too far away from the goal or straight up unaccessible.
Some areas were also impossible to enter without having a certain specific amount of points put into the protagonist stats: that was the most BULLSHIT thing I've ever seen in a game, in particular because the game required you to have invested in useless stats such as Magic.
And the protagonist. Can't. Use. Magic.
All those little things really did annoy me and made the second half of the game less enjoyable, making an already pretty lenghty game excessively long.
The pixel art is really good, a great improvement over the first game, and the soundtrack is good- nothing groundbreaking, but still pretty enjoyable.
I went for the Chaos Route during my first session, then for Law and Neutral.
Despite the game being heavily Law-oriented and basically forcing you to go for the Law route, I'd say the best ending is, indeed, the Chaos one.
In the end, I think Shin Megami Tensei II is a better experience than Shin Megami Tensei, but people can really apprecciate it only after playing both and seeing with their own eyes how much this title improved over the first one.
Definitely a must play for hardcore Megami Tensei fans.
Of course, the game itself is almost impossible to play without a guide, much like the first one, by today standards: unless you have so much time on your hands that you don't know how to waste it, playing it without pre-made maps is miserable and can take from you much more times than any other game.
The dungeons are, in fact, not better than the first game's one. They are messy in an almost non-sensical way, they are big and full of unused spaces, have an unholy encounter rate and requires you to do so much backtracking to the point you'll start to remember the way to follow without even looking at the map.
It also doesn't help that the game stops offering any kind of challenge after the first half of it, when the protagonist starts becoming so overpowered every enemy just get oneshotted by him. Just like it happened in the first game, except this time you don't need guns to actually break the system.
As for the story, it's incredible for a 1994 game!
While the first game lacked in some depth and could have used more cutscenes and dialogues, SMT II shows how ambitious the whole script is and tries to convey, despite the limitations of the console, an incredible plot, a direct sequel of the first game Neutral Ending.
This time, the Chaos and Law alignment really differ from one another, making it much more impactful to choose who to side with.
The characters are much, much more interesting too, being not only blank representatives of their alignments.
The setting is, this time, futuristic, being set in 2070s Tokyo Millennium, built on the ruins of the Basilica of the first game: those who have played it will absolutely adore the continuity of the setting.
I, myself, loved the game atmosphere, despite not being that much into the cyberpunk-futuristic genre.
Being the worldbuilding much more specific and detailed, this time, the exploration of the world is also much more guided and less randomic like it was in SMT: the only annoying thing being the excessive backtracking and the almost useless Teleport which was, most of the time, too far away from the goal or straight up unaccessible.
Some areas were also impossible to enter without having a certain specific amount of points put into the protagonist stats: that was the most BULLSHIT thing I've ever seen in a game, in particular because the game required you to have invested in useless stats such as Magic.
And the protagonist. Can't. Use. Magic.
All those little things really did annoy me and made the second half of the game less enjoyable, making an already pretty lenghty game excessively long.
The pixel art is really good, a great improvement over the first game, and the soundtrack is good- nothing groundbreaking, but still pretty enjoyable.
I went for the Chaos Route during my first session, then for Law and Neutral.
Despite the game being heavily Law-oriented and basically forcing you to go for the Law route, I'd say the best ending is, indeed, the Chaos one.
In the end, I think Shin Megami Tensei II is a better experience than Shin Megami Tensei, but people can really apprecciate it only after playing both and seeing with their own eyes how much this title improved over the first one.
Definitely a must play for hardcore Megami Tensei fans.
I love you.
This is absolutely the best Super Famicom MegaTen game. I'm someone that gave up on finishing SMTI due to it's encounter rate in a dungeon, and gave up SMT if... near the end because of being unable to fuse anything good and encounters taking forever. SMTII might have had some of the same issues, but at the same time it was interesting enough that something compelled me to keep going. While some aspects of the story have been discussed and memed to death, there were some hits that genuinely shocked me.
The dungeons were sometimes frustrating, and I would say that if you're feeling frustrated, look up a guide. However not many were too frustrating. Another thing to beware of is bugs. The original 1994 release had a paper insert warning of game bugs, and I highly suggest using save states or the like. One example of a bug was when using the map marking feature, the screen just goes black and it basically shows you a powerpoint presentation of every single boss in the game.
Overall I think SMTII has a great setting and premise and it's absolutely worth your time.
The dungeons were sometimes frustrating, and I would say that if you're feeling frustrated, look up a guide. However not many were too frustrating. Another thing to beware of is bugs. The original 1994 release had a paper insert warning of game bugs, and I highly suggest using save states or the like. One example of a bug was when using the map marking feature, the screen just goes black and it basically shows you a powerpoint presentation of every single boss in the game.
Overall I think SMTII has a great setting and premise and it's absolutely worth your time.
Pedrada.
Liked it a lot though some aspects felt like they were there to waste your time
Played the snes version. Graphics turned me off so I am waiting on a remaster or the newer versions to be translated to english
been sleepin on this for too long
Un juego que a dia de hoy se siente un poco lento pero siendo bastante solido comparado al primero y una historia que hace valer el juego aun con sus defectos.
This review contains spoilers
Shin Megami Tensei II, which released exclusively in Japan on March 18, 1994 for the Super Famicom, is the direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei - not just in number like for most of the Megami Tensei games - and has become a video game that I have very conflicted feelings for. It is a game I enjoyed a lot overall, but one I can't recommend to anyone who isn't a big Megami Tensei fan. It is a game that confirmed once again that the Megami Tensei franchise is one of my favorites in gaming, but is also a game I don't see myself ever playing again (unless we get a remake). Though I'll explain what I thought about the game in detail in this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
(To preface this, as with the original, it's worth cautioning that if you are a deeply religious individual, you might take offense to the portrayal of the Messians in this game. Personally, I think a work of fiction should be treated as such, and I think the social commentary in this game goes way beyond the Messians (who appear to be portraying Christians) but if this kind of portrayal is a no-go for you, I'd stay away from the game. Some say this fear within Atlus is why the games never released in the West at the time, but who knows.)
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME: This game starts several decades after the first game ended. From the ashes of Tokyo, the Messian religion created a new encapsulated city called "Tokyo Millenium". Millenium's purpose for the Messians is to bring about the Thousand Year Kingdom, an age where people can live in peace. This concept was put forth in the first game as well, but did not come to fruition for the Messians yet, who are awaiting their Savior / Messiah who can guide them there. These seemingly noble amibitions aside, looking at the layout of the Millenium paints a different picture of perhaps not only their intentions, but definitely of their actions.
See, Millenium is divided into several districts, with one central tower controlling and ruling them all, aptly named "The Center". This is where the Messians and the elite live. The other districts include "Factory", the industrial center where commodities are produced and mining and excavation projects take place, "Arcadia", a demon-free district filled with care-free citizens, and "Valhalla", a zone more or less free of control by the Center and one where its citizens can pursue earthly delights as well as fight in a "Collosseum" in deadly tournaments, the winners of which get to live in the Center themselves.
You are one such fighter called "Hawk". Your trainer, Okamoto, wakes you up one day to train for the upcoming finale of the tournament. You are also an amnesiac who Okamoto "found", took in and named one day after you were unable to do so yourself. As you prepare for the final battle, many mysterious characters show themselves to you in odd visions. There is an old man in most of them standing next to bodies of men and women who are standing motionless in chambers, as the man asks you if you remember their names. Apparently, they are tied to your destiny. There is also a guy named Steven, who you will remember from SMT 1 if you played it, who appears in a "Virtual Battling Program" to give you something he calls the "Demon Summoning Program", which he gives to many capable people because of certain events that he fears will take place soon.
From here, you become demon-summoning Hawk, though that's just the start of who you are. What is your real name? Who are you and why are you strong? Why did the old man come to you in these visions? How do you tie in with the Center and their plans for the Thousand Year Kingdom?
Know that the characters you name ARE tied to your destiny somehow and that the reveal of who you really are is a big deal in this game and a pretty awesome moment. In general, characters feel a lot more fleshed out here than in the original. While two of the characters you are asked to name appear very briefly in this game, multiple of them play a massive role and the others have their own storylines that are interesting to follow for many hours. The resolution to all of their invidiual stories were satisfying in my opinion. The characters, both yourself and the others, have canon names which you can let the old man give them, or you can look them up and give the names yourself. The difference here is that letting the old man name them somehow means you get a lot of points towards the "Law" alignment.
Yes, the Law and Chaos alignments return in this game and as with SMT 1, there are many ways that your alignment at any given moment impact the way the game is played. During the end game part, you once again then decide which path to ultimately follow and you get one of three endings from there, Law, Neutral and Chaos.
SPOILERS REST OF THE WAY
Unlike SMT 1 though, I feel like Atlus played around with these alignments a bit more. While Law was not your "Objectively morally good" path then, it is even less so here, with some surprises along the way in terms of the characters that are supposed to portray and follow the Law path. Whatever you were expecting in that regard, it likely will not have been what this game throws out there. While the game starts off with a heavy focus on the Messian religion and would make you seem that this game becomes a negative commentary on Christianity, it moves beyond that to provide general social commentary about humanity's need for guidance and the leader's tendency to exploit it.
In that regard, I found the Law ending that I achieved in the end to be really satisfying. Unlike the Neutral ending, where guiders / leaders / saviors are generally rejected, or the Chaos ending, where you follow Lucifer's anarchic path to freedom (which I personally think could never last), the Law ending, to me, presents the best path to achieve true peace.
While the Messians used their ambitions as a pretense to make a luxurious life for themselves and let the majority of citizens in Millenium slave away for them, the Law ending takes things in a different way when the Archangel Gabriel takes the protagonist to the top of the Center, where the garden of Eden is located. The idea is to create the Thousand Year Kingdom here, as Eden turns out to be on a "spaceship" that will take its inhabitants away from the Earth while the Earth. Instead of taking those with them who pretend to be working for the ideals that they propose, such as the leaders of the Center, you find that regular citizens of Millenium were chosen and brought to Eden, people who devoted their lives to make the Thousand Year Kingdom a reality in pursuit of true peace, with no ulterior motives. Meanwhile, you can find followers of the Messian religion remaining in the lower floors of the Center, wondering whether God made a mistake because they weren't chosen.
What really tops it off for me is the fact that at the end of the game, YHVH himself is challenged by you and Satan (yes, Satan), despite the fact that you seemingly follow the same ideals. I presume this was done because Satan didn't want a being to be mindlessly worshipped and one everyone attempts to please and be judged by. Instead, killing him and bringing all those pure-souled people with them achieves the reality of the Thousand Year Kingdom, where people truly work for each other's benefit, while those with the exact same ideals, the protagonist and Hiroko (who turns out to be the protagonist's surrogate mother), are presented as the "leaders", mainly to satisfy humanity's desire for "leaders" to cling to, instead of actually acting as the sort of leader YHVH or the Elders in the Center would have been.
I think an argument can be made for all three alignments however, which is why I like the alignment system, even though I am by no means someone who has more than basic knowledge on any religion, political ideologies or mythologies.
All this is brought home with the cyberpunk aesthetic of this game, both through the art design and its themes, which makes this stand out over the first SMT game. I don't SMT II's story is among the best in the history of video games, but it is certainly among the best for its time, it is certainly a notable one for the medium despite its shortcomings in pacing and character development at times (lack of memory storage at the time would play a big role there) and it is certainly one worth retelling thorugh a remake (PS: the genocide in the Law alignment is indeed fucked up, but I think it works as part of what the Law alignment proposes I feel).
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Shin Megami Tensei II's gameplay is a tale of two sides. There is the Great side and the Terrible side. The Great side is just as great as the original with some quality of life improvements but little innovation, while the Terrible side slightly improves upon the issues that were present in the original, but adds a couple more terrible things. Well, and then there is some stuff that is not terrible, but also not great.
The Great side
This game features the same gameplay as SMT I but improves upon it in some areas. The screen is divided into two halves akin to a Nintendo DS, with the top half presenting the gameworld and its dungeons, and the bottom half showing you the up to 6 humans and demons you have on your team. You and one other human character are together for most of the game, while the remaining 4 slots can be filled by demons. You acquire demons by negotiating with them and persuading them to join you by selecting the correct dialogue options, giving the demon presents and sometimes, hoping that the invisible stat-checks work in your favor. Once you acquire demons, you can summon them for battle. In the Cathedral of Shadows, here 'Jakyou', you can fuse 2 or 3 demons together to create even stronger demons, which you will need to do in order to be strong enough for the battles ahead. As you level up, you have access to higher level demons and as you progress in the game, you get into areas where some of these stronger demons can be found and negotiated with. As with the majority of the Megami Tensei series, this gameplay loop is more or less the same and pretty addicting.
As you traverse dungeons or the overworld, a multitude of random encounters await you where you need to battle demons and figure out a way to your destination, where you fight bosses to progress the story. Random encounters are not difficult for the most part, so you can use the Auto Battle function to quickly dispose of the enemies, but there are enough tough enemies to make you face them manually, and besting them will require you to have a certain strategy to do so. There are no affinities here like in future games, but you still have to see if the enemy is more susceptible to physical or magic attacks and you will need to find demons with certain skills that will make your life easier like "-kaja" attacks that can buff your attack or defense. Getting those demons requires a lot of negotiating, fusing and testing, which is, again, a really fun gameplay loop that can entertain for dozens of hours, as is the case here.
The game is your typical early 90s RPG, with story moments mixed in between all the dungeon crawling you do. Dungeons are more or less the same in the way you traverse them and in their layout, but traversing feels a lot smoother here, which makes doing so more satisfying. There are also a lot more different challenges dungeons have for you. There are the fog levels as in SMT 1, but there is also a dungeon that pushes you around in a specific pattern which you will need to fight to reach the stairs, there are a lot of dungeons with traps that will throw you down a couple flights of stairs if you walk into them and more. I have this listed under "the Great side" because I like that there are more challenges than simply walking forward, but this aspect certainly has a negative side to it that I will get to later.
There are also a lot of optional dungeons and areas you can enter, many of which will grant you pretty nice bonuses for your playthrough, such as better equipment or boosts to your stats like "Strength", "Magic", "Vitality/Stamina" and "Speed". Even in mandatory dungeons, you can go straight to the destination or be rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with item drops and sometimes entrances to areas that provide you with a Save point.
Finally, the best quality of life improvement here is that you can now instantly access the map by pressing the left bumper, which is such a big deal here.
Overall, the best part about this game is simply the gameplay loop of demon negotiating, fusing and battling, which is I think some of the most engaging combat in an RPG for its time. It's not nearly as fleshed out as in later entries of the series (obviously) but I think it is satisfying enough to still be enjoyed here. Unfortunately, distractions from this come in many negative forms.
The Terrible Side
It starts off easy enough. One of the early objectives you get is to go to a place called "Holytown" and kill two bosses. There are 4 districts you can go to on this overworld where you get the task, all of which could be "Holytown". If you talked to a specific NPC in a bar, you will know which it is without having to potentially go through all four. Nice, you get rewarded for exploring with this useful piece of info. Once you get to Holytown, you explore the dungeons and find one of the bosses. Great, no hand holding and you get it done, no problem. The other boss however is not in these dungeons. Instead, I stumble upon it by walking through a semi-random spot on the overworld. Hm, ok, no problem.
Then, it gets progressively worse. To unlock a new area, you need to find six pillars. I found most of them, but one gave me trouble and one would give all players trouble who go into this blind I think. That is that you need to win a now infamous dancing contest to get one of the pillars. This is done in a disco. Finding the disco can take a while on its own if you don't mark every notable location somewhere on a notepad or something while you play, walking through the disco is a pain because no matter where you go or where you look, each individual step is interrupted with a good 3-5 seconds of uninterruptable dialogue showing people who dance and a text that states that they dance. Once you finally find the spot, you may enter the dancing contest, but ONLY if you have 10 magic. Magic is a useless stat for your protagonist because he can't do magic, so you wouldn't level magic due to this. If you read up on a couple small tips beforehand, you will know, but if you don't and are stuck with the 4 magic at the start of the game, you may be in some trouble and have to grind for a while. Getting a certain drink and wearing a certain equippable item can get your magic up by up to 4 points temporarily I believe however.
The other thing that I myself had trouble with was with one pillar that you apparently get by going to a super-random location in one of the, by this point, dozens of dungeons you unlocked, and finding one random NPC. Getting these pillars can generally be random (buy something from the junk store to get one, go to a digging site on one overworld map to get another) but this felt over the top. There are countless times where the solution to progression is not intuitive at all and talking to NPCs doesn't help either, which I think takes it way too far. On top of that, there is absurd amounts of backtracking that you are meant to do, and that's if you even know where to go. If you don't, you can easily spend hours per task just to find where you needed to go, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through this without a guide. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game (it actually helped with that) but I can imagine this being a dealbreaker for some and is the primary reason why I can't recommend this game. Late in the game for example, I need to enter a certain area. I can't, and so I apparently have to go all the way back to a different area, have one short chat, and go all the way back to the area I wanted to enter to be able to do so. This can easily take 45 minutes and is just one instance of backtracking being brutal here.
In terms of the combat, while I enjoyed it, there is one issue and that is that it is way too easy after you reach about the mid-way point of the game. I got a Gun at this point that let my protagonist and other human partner shoot 3-6 shots per turn, which absolutely obliterated the majority of random encounters. Get one or two demons that have the Tarukaja spell (increases damage) and you will do absurd amounts of damage. This has made pretty much every boss fight from that point on trivial and simply a matter of depleting their health. Some bosses are resistant to Gun attacks, like the final one, but even there the damage the boss dished out was so low (and they only get one action per turn) that I just had to wait for the boss to go down. Part of me was glad because I notoriously am terrible at JRPGs, but obviously being able to spam one tactic for half of the game is not very fulfilling.
I also can't end this part without mentioning the encounter rate. There are many areas where the encounter rate is actually more than OK, but there still are too many where the encounter rate is way too high. It's especially infuriating when you are lost and trying to figure out where to go, or when you are thrown down two flights of stairs and have to go back. It is an improvement over 1 though.
The "Meh" Side
This game still has the Magnetite system, which I believe will stick around for a while, and I can't say I like it that much, though it's not a big deal, if you know how to deal with it. Magnetite is a resource that is spend with each step you take, if you have a demon in your lineup. The more demons you have active, the quicker it goes down. As dungeons get larger and more complex, your Magnetite can run out insanely fast if you have two or more demons active. If you have 0 Magnetite, each step dishes out damage to your demons, so you should always have Magnetite. This forced me to grind for Magnetite at multiple points early on to have enough (luckily some enemies give you a lot of Magnetite) but what you can also do is simply walk around without any demons being active. This means you will be in a tough position if you can't get away from an encounter and it means you need to re-summon demons, which costs a little bit of money, but it was a great trade-off in my opinion. In the end game, you get so much Magnetite but dungeons are so massive that even that is not enough, so I never felt secure with the Magnetite I had in stock right until the end, and it's a system I can definitely live without.
There are also some activities you can do on the side, like go to the Casino or play in a "Code Breaker" game. While I didn't play in the casino (I hear you can get some near-game-breaking items from there), I found the Code Breaker game to be not really rewarding. You need to guess 5 numbers in the right order and have about 10 guesses to do so. If you picked one of the correct numbers, a B is shown to indicate that. Get the number in the correct spot and an H is shown. 12345 could for example show you "HBBB", which means one of the numbers is in the correct spot and three others are in the solution. 21358 for example could be the solution, and the quicker you get it, the better the reward. Unfortunately, the only rewards that are worth it were for the first two guesses, and you can imagine how unlikely it is to get those right, so either use your emulator to cheat a win or don't bother. Plus, you need Metal Cards to participate, but you get so many and these Code Breaker stores appear so rarely that they only end up clogging up your limited inventory space, and I didn't realize they were a waste of time until I got to play the game again and truly understand how poor the rewards were.
In general, a lot of items in this game are pretty useless. "Maha-" stones for example are attacks that can damage multiple enemies. Usually, if you face one enemy, it would just hit that enemy, at least if you use "Maha" attacks as part of a demon's magic. If you use the item, it doesn't even work unless there are multiple enemies on the screen. Then there are tons of other items which have 0 use for boss battles and are ineffective compared to your other attacks, so I went through almost all of the game without using any. Only time I needed to use some was during the final few boss fights, when I was locked out from going to any stores and the last 5 or so stores only sold guns, which meant my protagonist (who went from Neutral to Law at this point) couldn't equip his sword anymore, couldn't find a new sword anymore and was useless because he has no Magic attacks and all Gun attacks were blocked, so I just ended up using his turns to waste all the items I had been carrying for almost the entirety of the game.
OVERALL
Overall, I can't say I would have finished this game if it weren't for the fact that I played it on an emulator that let me use save states and let me fast forward whenever I needed to and used a guide. The pacing of everything being slow can really be frustrating when most of the time you are simply trying to figure out what even to do, and backtracking for ages just to get a nugget of info (if it even was available) just felt too ridiculous. I did want to beat it though because I think it is worth it for the story, but I'd recommend watching someone else play it to not potentially lose your mind with this.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I'd say the sound design was a mild improvement over the original, but not too noticeable in that regard. The soundtrack was great once again here, though I'd say a step down from SMT 1's soundtrack. There weren't enough tracks that were as notable as in that game, and even worse, a select few would play for roughly 80% of your playtime. Truthfully, I did not get fed up with these tracks and could gladly listen to them right now, but I can see how it would get on people's nerves after 30+ hours. There are plenty of bangers here however and it is one of my favorite soundtracks out of all games I played as part of this challenge I am doing, so I can't complain, I just know that Atlus has done better a lot of times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
This game is not technically impressive by any means, so the majority of time is spent looking at wall tiles in first-person dungeon crawling that, while they look improved from the original thanks to actual textures being used (and a variety of them), each dungeon's tiles all look the same and each texture is reused multiple times, apart from later ones. The other part of the game is spent in the overworld, which has an odd mix of blue-yellowish colors but, after getting used to it, is definitely a step up to the originals. Where the game really shines visually is in the design of its demons, which are pretty much all looking excellent and also in its cyberpunk aesthetic, which I think could have been more prominent but shone through whenever it needed to. The UI in this game also looks much better compared to the original, as it has been cleaned up and doesn't take nearly as much space anymore.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Shin Megami Tensei II is just as atmospheric as the first game, and the series in general has some of the best atmosphere out of any video game I've played. To do this despite the clear technical limiations at the time is quite impressive, and it couldn't be done without the game's soundtrack, its art design and the story. There are multiple events that really surprise you and make you realize that in this fucked up world, everything is fair game and no one is safe. Its an atmosphere that is as depressing and hopeless as in the first game due to the state of the world, but I think the options of resolution offered here made me feel more hopeful once it was all said and one than I felt with the first.
CONTENT | 7/10
Dozens of mandatory dungeons, a handful of optional ones, plenty of which provide you with really useful stuff. A huge list of 100-200 demons to choose from, a fun battle system and more story content than in the majority of games at the time and among the highest quality story content for sure. The game will take you 30+ hours, though closer to 40 to 50 if you do the Neutral route and closer to 70 hours, if you decide not to use a guide at all. Unfortunately, as you can tell, a lot of these hours come from not knowing where to go and/or backtracking, so a lot of very good content feels slightly buried in between these nuisances.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
There are a ton of really interesting areas to explore in this game, such as the multiple districts in the Millenium, the underworld and the Abyss, but the backtracking and cryptic progression are just so bad. If you want to show a horrible example to the "I liked when games didn't hold your hands" crowd, this is it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The concept still feels really fresh here, simply because there was no game like it at the time. All RPGs I've played focused on the same style of turn-based combat and put the onus on level-grinding to be able to beat tough enemies. This game offers a lot more strategic options beyond putting man-hours into playing it, which is what I really appreciate about its system, and its approach to storytelling is unique to this day. Its such a demonic story that the developers, to this day, go to a shrine to cleanse themselves before working on one of these games, and I am glad that their superstition didn't lead them to stop making these outright. In an era where console games where nearly exclusively aimed at kids, I am glad this was made.
That said, the game doesn't innovate a lot over the original, though that is to change over the coming years when SMT moves from mainline to the Devil Summoner and Persona series.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Once beaten, you can decide to go for the other two routes, which will not only change the path to the ending but will also allow you to use different demons and equipment. Replayability is reduced a bit by the fact that progression has a big focus on backtracking.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
In many ways, this is an improvement over the original and in some ways, it's a step back. It's a game that shows its age a lot and will be tough to play and enjoy for the majority of people who try it these days, which is why I can only recommend this to hardcore SMT fans. The story is worth experiencing and is the main reason why this game is worthy of a remake, and it didn't do anything to stop me from being excited to play Shin Megami Tense if... in a couple weeks / months, but I'm unlikely to want to play SMT II again in its current state, though happy to have done so.
(This is the 93rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
(To preface this, as with the original, it's worth cautioning that if you are a deeply religious individual, you might take offense to the portrayal of the Messians in this game. Personally, I think a work of fiction should be treated as such, and I think the social commentary in this game goes way beyond the Messians (who appear to be portraying Christians) but if this kind of portrayal is a no-go for you, I'd stay away from the game. Some say this fear within Atlus is why the games never released in the West at the time, but who knows.)
SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST GAME: This game starts several decades after the first game ended. From the ashes of Tokyo, the Messian religion created a new encapsulated city called "Tokyo Millenium". Millenium's purpose for the Messians is to bring about the Thousand Year Kingdom, an age where people can live in peace. This concept was put forth in the first game as well, but did not come to fruition for the Messians yet, who are awaiting their Savior / Messiah who can guide them there. These seemingly noble amibitions aside, looking at the layout of the Millenium paints a different picture of perhaps not only their intentions, but definitely of their actions.
See, Millenium is divided into several districts, with one central tower controlling and ruling them all, aptly named "The Center". This is where the Messians and the elite live. The other districts include "Factory", the industrial center where commodities are produced and mining and excavation projects take place, "Arcadia", a demon-free district filled with care-free citizens, and "Valhalla", a zone more or less free of control by the Center and one where its citizens can pursue earthly delights as well as fight in a "Collosseum" in deadly tournaments, the winners of which get to live in the Center themselves.
You are one such fighter called "Hawk". Your trainer, Okamoto, wakes you up one day to train for the upcoming finale of the tournament. You are also an amnesiac who Okamoto "found", took in and named one day after you were unable to do so yourself. As you prepare for the final battle, many mysterious characters show themselves to you in odd visions. There is an old man in most of them standing next to bodies of men and women who are standing motionless in chambers, as the man asks you if you remember their names. Apparently, they are tied to your destiny. There is also a guy named Steven, who you will remember from SMT 1 if you played it, who appears in a "Virtual Battling Program" to give you something he calls the "Demon Summoning Program", which he gives to many capable people because of certain events that he fears will take place soon.
From here, you become demon-summoning Hawk, though that's just the start of who you are. What is your real name? Who are you and why are you strong? Why did the old man come to you in these visions? How do you tie in with the Center and their plans for the Thousand Year Kingdom?
Know that the characters you name ARE tied to your destiny somehow and that the reveal of who you really are is a big deal in this game and a pretty awesome moment. In general, characters feel a lot more fleshed out here than in the original. While two of the characters you are asked to name appear very briefly in this game, multiple of them play a massive role and the others have their own storylines that are interesting to follow for many hours. The resolution to all of their invidiual stories were satisfying in my opinion. The characters, both yourself and the others, have canon names which you can let the old man give them, or you can look them up and give the names yourself. The difference here is that letting the old man name them somehow means you get a lot of points towards the "Law" alignment.
Yes, the Law and Chaos alignments return in this game and as with SMT 1, there are many ways that your alignment at any given moment impact the way the game is played. During the end game part, you once again then decide which path to ultimately follow and you get one of three endings from there, Law, Neutral and Chaos.
SPOILERS REST OF THE WAY
Unlike SMT 1 though, I feel like Atlus played around with these alignments a bit more. While Law was not your "Objectively morally good" path then, it is even less so here, with some surprises along the way in terms of the characters that are supposed to portray and follow the Law path. Whatever you were expecting in that regard, it likely will not have been what this game throws out there. While the game starts off with a heavy focus on the Messian religion and would make you seem that this game becomes a negative commentary on Christianity, it moves beyond that to provide general social commentary about humanity's need for guidance and the leader's tendency to exploit it.
In that regard, I found the Law ending that I achieved in the end to be really satisfying. Unlike the Neutral ending, where guiders / leaders / saviors are generally rejected, or the Chaos ending, where you follow Lucifer's anarchic path to freedom (which I personally think could never last), the Law ending, to me, presents the best path to achieve true peace.
While the Messians used their ambitions as a pretense to make a luxurious life for themselves and let the majority of citizens in Millenium slave away for them, the Law ending takes things in a different way when the Archangel Gabriel takes the protagonist to the top of the Center, where the garden of Eden is located. The idea is to create the Thousand Year Kingdom here, as Eden turns out to be on a "spaceship" that will take its inhabitants away from the Earth while the Earth. Instead of taking those with them who pretend to be working for the ideals that they propose, such as the leaders of the Center, you find that regular citizens of Millenium were chosen and brought to Eden, people who devoted their lives to make the Thousand Year Kingdom a reality in pursuit of true peace, with no ulterior motives. Meanwhile, you can find followers of the Messian religion remaining in the lower floors of the Center, wondering whether God made a mistake because they weren't chosen.
What really tops it off for me is the fact that at the end of the game, YHVH himself is challenged by you and Satan (yes, Satan), despite the fact that you seemingly follow the same ideals. I presume this was done because Satan didn't want a being to be mindlessly worshipped and one everyone attempts to please and be judged by. Instead, killing him and bringing all those pure-souled people with them achieves the reality of the Thousand Year Kingdom, where people truly work for each other's benefit, while those with the exact same ideals, the protagonist and Hiroko (who turns out to be the protagonist's surrogate mother), are presented as the "leaders", mainly to satisfy humanity's desire for "leaders" to cling to, instead of actually acting as the sort of leader YHVH or the Elders in the Center would have been.
I think an argument can be made for all three alignments however, which is why I like the alignment system, even though I am by no means someone who has more than basic knowledge on any religion, political ideologies or mythologies.
All this is brought home with the cyberpunk aesthetic of this game, both through the art design and its themes, which makes this stand out over the first SMT game. I don't SMT II's story is among the best in the history of video games, but it is certainly among the best for its time, it is certainly a notable one for the medium despite its shortcomings in pacing and character development at times (lack of memory storage at the time would play a big role there) and it is certainly one worth retelling thorugh a remake (PS: the genocide in the Law alignment is indeed fucked up, but I think it works as part of what the Law alignment proposes I feel).
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Shin Megami Tensei II's gameplay is a tale of two sides. There is the Great side and the Terrible side. The Great side is just as great as the original with some quality of life improvements but little innovation, while the Terrible side slightly improves upon the issues that were present in the original, but adds a couple more terrible things. Well, and then there is some stuff that is not terrible, but also not great.
The Great side
This game features the same gameplay as SMT I but improves upon it in some areas. The screen is divided into two halves akin to a Nintendo DS, with the top half presenting the gameworld and its dungeons, and the bottom half showing you the up to 6 humans and demons you have on your team. You and one other human character are together for most of the game, while the remaining 4 slots can be filled by demons. You acquire demons by negotiating with them and persuading them to join you by selecting the correct dialogue options, giving the demon presents and sometimes, hoping that the invisible stat-checks work in your favor. Once you acquire demons, you can summon them for battle. In the Cathedral of Shadows, here 'Jakyou', you can fuse 2 or 3 demons together to create even stronger demons, which you will need to do in order to be strong enough for the battles ahead. As you level up, you have access to higher level demons and as you progress in the game, you get into areas where some of these stronger demons can be found and negotiated with. As with the majority of the Megami Tensei series, this gameplay loop is more or less the same and pretty addicting.
As you traverse dungeons or the overworld, a multitude of random encounters await you where you need to battle demons and figure out a way to your destination, where you fight bosses to progress the story. Random encounters are not difficult for the most part, so you can use the Auto Battle function to quickly dispose of the enemies, but there are enough tough enemies to make you face them manually, and besting them will require you to have a certain strategy to do so. There are no affinities here like in future games, but you still have to see if the enemy is more susceptible to physical or magic attacks and you will need to find demons with certain skills that will make your life easier like "-kaja" attacks that can buff your attack or defense. Getting those demons requires a lot of negotiating, fusing and testing, which is, again, a really fun gameplay loop that can entertain for dozens of hours, as is the case here.
The game is your typical early 90s RPG, with story moments mixed in between all the dungeon crawling you do. Dungeons are more or less the same in the way you traverse them and in their layout, but traversing feels a lot smoother here, which makes doing so more satisfying. There are also a lot more different challenges dungeons have for you. There are the fog levels as in SMT 1, but there is also a dungeon that pushes you around in a specific pattern which you will need to fight to reach the stairs, there are a lot of dungeons with traps that will throw you down a couple flights of stairs if you walk into them and more. I have this listed under "the Great side" because I like that there are more challenges than simply walking forward, but this aspect certainly has a negative side to it that I will get to later.
There are also a lot of optional dungeons and areas you can enter, many of which will grant you pretty nice bonuses for your playthrough, such as better equipment or boosts to your stats like "Strength", "Magic", "Vitality/Stamina" and "Speed". Even in mandatory dungeons, you can go straight to the destination or be rewarded for exploring every nook and cranny with item drops and sometimes entrances to areas that provide you with a Save point.
Finally, the best quality of life improvement here is that you can now instantly access the map by pressing the left bumper, which is such a big deal here.
Overall, the best part about this game is simply the gameplay loop of demon negotiating, fusing and battling, which is I think some of the most engaging combat in an RPG for its time. It's not nearly as fleshed out as in later entries of the series (obviously) but I think it is satisfying enough to still be enjoyed here. Unfortunately, distractions from this come in many negative forms.
The Terrible Side
It starts off easy enough. One of the early objectives you get is to go to a place called "Holytown" and kill two bosses. There are 4 districts you can go to on this overworld where you get the task, all of which could be "Holytown". If you talked to a specific NPC in a bar, you will know which it is without having to potentially go through all four. Nice, you get rewarded for exploring with this useful piece of info. Once you get to Holytown, you explore the dungeons and find one of the bosses. Great, no hand holding and you get it done, no problem. The other boss however is not in these dungeons. Instead, I stumble upon it by walking through a semi-random spot on the overworld. Hm, ok, no problem.
Then, it gets progressively worse. To unlock a new area, you need to find six pillars. I found most of them, but one gave me trouble and one would give all players trouble who go into this blind I think. That is that you need to win a now infamous dancing contest to get one of the pillars. This is done in a disco. Finding the disco can take a while on its own if you don't mark every notable location somewhere on a notepad or something while you play, walking through the disco is a pain because no matter where you go or where you look, each individual step is interrupted with a good 3-5 seconds of uninterruptable dialogue showing people who dance and a text that states that they dance. Once you finally find the spot, you may enter the dancing contest, but ONLY if you have 10 magic. Magic is a useless stat for your protagonist because he can't do magic, so you wouldn't level magic due to this. If you read up on a couple small tips beforehand, you will know, but if you don't and are stuck with the 4 magic at the start of the game, you may be in some trouble and have to grind for a while. Getting a certain drink and wearing a certain equippable item can get your magic up by up to 4 points temporarily I believe however.
The other thing that I myself had trouble with was with one pillar that you apparently get by going to a super-random location in one of the, by this point, dozens of dungeons you unlocked, and finding one random NPC. Getting these pillars can generally be random (buy something from the junk store to get one, go to a digging site on one overworld map to get another) but this felt over the top. There are countless times where the solution to progression is not intuitive at all and talking to NPCs doesn't help either, which I think takes it way too far. On top of that, there is absurd amounts of backtracking that you are meant to do, and that's if you even know where to go. If you don't, you can easily spend hours per task just to find where you needed to go, so I can't imagine anyone wanting to go through this without a guide. It didn't stop me from enjoying the game (it actually helped with that) but I can imagine this being a dealbreaker for some and is the primary reason why I can't recommend this game. Late in the game for example, I need to enter a certain area. I can't, and so I apparently have to go all the way back to a different area, have one short chat, and go all the way back to the area I wanted to enter to be able to do so. This can easily take 45 minutes and is just one instance of backtracking being brutal here.
In terms of the combat, while I enjoyed it, there is one issue and that is that it is way too easy after you reach about the mid-way point of the game. I got a Gun at this point that let my protagonist and other human partner shoot 3-6 shots per turn, which absolutely obliterated the majority of random encounters. Get one or two demons that have the Tarukaja spell (increases damage) and you will do absurd amounts of damage. This has made pretty much every boss fight from that point on trivial and simply a matter of depleting their health. Some bosses are resistant to Gun attacks, like the final one, but even there the damage the boss dished out was so low (and they only get one action per turn) that I just had to wait for the boss to go down. Part of me was glad because I notoriously am terrible at JRPGs, but obviously being able to spam one tactic for half of the game is not very fulfilling.
I also can't end this part without mentioning the encounter rate. There are many areas where the encounter rate is actually more than OK, but there still are too many where the encounter rate is way too high. It's especially infuriating when you are lost and trying to figure out where to go, or when you are thrown down two flights of stairs and have to go back. It is an improvement over 1 though.
The "Meh" Side
This game still has the Magnetite system, which I believe will stick around for a while, and I can't say I like it that much, though it's not a big deal, if you know how to deal with it. Magnetite is a resource that is spend with each step you take, if you have a demon in your lineup. The more demons you have active, the quicker it goes down. As dungeons get larger and more complex, your Magnetite can run out insanely fast if you have two or more demons active. If you have 0 Magnetite, each step dishes out damage to your demons, so you should always have Magnetite. This forced me to grind for Magnetite at multiple points early on to have enough (luckily some enemies give you a lot of Magnetite) but what you can also do is simply walk around without any demons being active. This means you will be in a tough position if you can't get away from an encounter and it means you need to re-summon demons, which costs a little bit of money, but it was a great trade-off in my opinion. In the end game, you get so much Magnetite but dungeons are so massive that even that is not enough, so I never felt secure with the Magnetite I had in stock right until the end, and it's a system I can definitely live without.
There are also some activities you can do on the side, like go to the Casino or play in a "Code Breaker" game. While I didn't play in the casino (I hear you can get some near-game-breaking items from there), I found the Code Breaker game to be not really rewarding. You need to guess 5 numbers in the right order and have about 10 guesses to do so. If you picked one of the correct numbers, a B is shown to indicate that. Get the number in the correct spot and an H is shown. 12345 could for example show you "HBBB", which means one of the numbers is in the correct spot and three others are in the solution. 21358 for example could be the solution, and the quicker you get it, the better the reward. Unfortunately, the only rewards that are worth it were for the first two guesses, and you can imagine how unlikely it is to get those right, so either use your emulator to cheat a win or don't bother. Plus, you need Metal Cards to participate, but you get so many and these Code Breaker stores appear so rarely that they only end up clogging up your limited inventory space, and I didn't realize they were a waste of time until I got to play the game again and truly understand how poor the rewards were.
In general, a lot of items in this game are pretty useless. "Maha-" stones for example are attacks that can damage multiple enemies. Usually, if you face one enemy, it would just hit that enemy, at least if you use "Maha" attacks as part of a demon's magic. If you use the item, it doesn't even work unless there are multiple enemies on the screen. Then there are tons of other items which have 0 use for boss battles and are ineffective compared to your other attacks, so I went through almost all of the game without using any. Only time I needed to use some was during the final few boss fights, when I was locked out from going to any stores and the last 5 or so stores only sold guns, which meant my protagonist (who went from Neutral to Law at this point) couldn't equip his sword anymore, couldn't find a new sword anymore and was useless because he has no Magic attacks and all Gun attacks were blocked, so I just ended up using his turns to waste all the items I had been carrying for almost the entirety of the game.
OVERALL
Overall, I can't say I would have finished this game if it weren't for the fact that I played it on an emulator that let me use save states and let me fast forward whenever I needed to and used a guide. The pacing of everything being slow can really be frustrating when most of the time you are simply trying to figure out what even to do, and backtracking for ages just to get a nugget of info (if it even was available) just felt too ridiculous. I did want to beat it though because I think it is worth it for the story, but I'd recommend watching someone else play it to not potentially lose your mind with this.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 8/10
No voice acting. I'd say the sound design was a mild improvement over the original, but not too noticeable in that regard. The soundtrack was great once again here, though I'd say a step down from SMT 1's soundtrack. There weren't enough tracks that were as notable as in that game, and even worse, a select few would play for roughly 80% of your playtime. Truthfully, I did not get fed up with these tracks and could gladly listen to them right now, but I can see how it would get on people's nerves after 30+ hours. There are plenty of bangers here however and it is one of my favorite soundtracks out of all games I played as part of this challenge I am doing, so I can't complain, I just know that Atlus has done better a lot of times.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
This game is not technically impressive by any means, so the majority of time is spent looking at wall tiles in first-person dungeon crawling that, while they look improved from the original thanks to actual textures being used (and a variety of them), each dungeon's tiles all look the same and each texture is reused multiple times, apart from later ones. The other part of the game is spent in the overworld, which has an odd mix of blue-yellowish colors but, after getting used to it, is definitely a step up to the originals. Where the game really shines visually is in the design of its demons, which are pretty much all looking excellent and also in its cyberpunk aesthetic, which I think could have been more prominent but shone through whenever it needed to. The UI in this game also looks much better compared to the original, as it has been cleaned up and doesn't take nearly as much space anymore.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Shin Megami Tensei II is just as atmospheric as the first game, and the series in general has some of the best atmosphere out of any video game I've played. To do this despite the clear technical limiations at the time is quite impressive, and it couldn't be done without the game's soundtrack, its art design and the story. There are multiple events that really surprise you and make you realize that in this fucked up world, everything is fair game and no one is safe. Its an atmosphere that is as depressing and hopeless as in the first game due to the state of the world, but I think the options of resolution offered here made me feel more hopeful once it was all said and one than I felt with the first.
CONTENT | 7/10
Dozens of mandatory dungeons, a handful of optional ones, plenty of which provide you with really useful stuff. A huge list of 100-200 demons to choose from, a fun battle system and more story content than in the majority of games at the time and among the highest quality story content for sure. The game will take you 30+ hours, though closer to 40 to 50 if you do the Neutral route and closer to 70 hours, if you decide not to use a guide at all. Unfortunately, as you can tell, a lot of these hours come from not knowing where to go and/or backtracking, so a lot of very good content feels slightly buried in between these nuisances.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
There are a ton of really interesting areas to explore in this game, such as the multiple districts in the Millenium, the underworld and the Abyss, but the backtracking and cryptic progression are just so bad. If you want to show a horrible example to the "I liked when games didn't hold your hands" crowd, this is it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
The concept still feels really fresh here, simply because there was no game like it at the time. All RPGs I've played focused on the same style of turn-based combat and put the onus on level-grinding to be able to beat tough enemies. This game offers a lot more strategic options beyond putting man-hours into playing it, which is what I really appreciate about its system, and its approach to storytelling is unique to this day. Its such a demonic story that the developers, to this day, go to a shrine to cleanse themselves before working on one of these games, and I am glad that their superstition didn't lead them to stop making these outright. In an era where console games where nearly exclusively aimed at kids, I am glad this was made.
That said, the game doesn't innovate a lot over the original, though that is to change over the coming years when SMT moves from mainline to the Devil Summoner and Persona series.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Once beaten, you can decide to go for the other two routes, which will not only change the path to the ending but will also allow you to use different demons and equipment. Replayability is reduced a bit by the fact that progression has a big focus on backtracking.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 74/100
In many ways, this is an improvement over the original and in some ways, it's a step back. It's a game that shows its age a lot and will be tough to play and enjoy for the majority of people who try it these days, which is why I can only recommend this to hardcore SMT fans. The story is worth experiencing and is the main reason why this game is worthy of a remake, and it didn't do anything to stop me from being excited to play Shin Megami Tense if... in a couple weeks / months, but I'm unlikely to want to play SMT II again in its current state, though happy to have done so.
(This is the 93rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
a lot better presentation and story wise, very insane to see a story presented like this in a game during the time it was released in, doesn't have pascal but cerberus is there and he's just as much of a friend :)
Shin Megami Tensei 2 is generally seen as a refinement of the first game, and I have to concede that on most levels it is. But I really did not find it anywhere close to as appealing.
Shin Megami Tensei 1 was about a world ending and moving forward after it does. SMT 2 is some weird sci fi post apocalypse typical of Japanese media at the time of its release. I personally felt much less immersed in this world than I did in the first, and I'll admit, I do not know why.
I recognize that while it does do some efforts to convey its unique world to the player, I really did not get into it at all while I completly did with the first. I did not feel it was worth going through when I reached the point where I needed to boost a completly useless stat to progress the story.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that I keep comparing this game negativly to the first when the first is by no means a masterpiece, it's a janky 90s RPG that aged very badly, but I found something in it that I simply did not for this one.
Shin Megami Tensei 1 was about a world ending and moving forward after it does. SMT 2 is some weird sci fi post apocalypse typical of Japanese media at the time of its release. I personally felt much less immersed in this world than I did in the first, and I'll admit, I do not know why.
I recognize that while it does do some efforts to convey its unique world to the player, I really did not get into it at all while I completly did with the first. I did not feel it was worth going through when I reached the point where I needed to boost a completly useless stat to progress the story.
I think the point I'm trying to make is that I keep comparing this game negativly to the first when the first is by no means a masterpiece, it's a janky 90s RPG that aged very badly, but I found something in it that I simply did not for this one.
Persona 2 is better
Some parts of it are better than the previous game and some parts aren't, mid to endgame though is where I enjoyed it the most but overall its definitely worth experiencing if you don't mind old dungeon crawlers, would love to try the PSX version someday.
has aged horribly. interesting plot & atmosphere, bad everything else.
Most of my issues with this game probably could've been circumvented by me being smarter and setting markers and getting help with fusions, but there's one thing I learned about this game, and it's my main gripe: there's simply not as much documentation of this game as there is SMT1. 1 gets several translations, including one for the PSX version; this game has only one version translated. 1 has a guide with maps and a list of enemies for each area; 2 has a good guide, but with no maps or enemy list (I used separate maps, made only a few years ago). It took me ages to fuse Anubis because I was on Law and was inclined to fuse something specific. The Fusion Calculator also straight-up lied to me along the way and also doesn't show every result.
The story... Yeah it's good, was a little less exciting than I had expected though. I'd put it above 1's. I feel that while it's better than IV's, the latter presented its story better. No shit though, it's a much newer game. While I do think IV is my least favorite of the new trilogy, it's a solid game. I bring it up mainly because the first two SMT titles heavily inspired it, and I think the result was great.
That's about all I have to say about this game. Maybe someday the PSX port will be translated, then I would likely give it a 4/5.
Actually, something else I should add is that the translation is real buggy. Negotiation was especially bad in many cases, with even some sprites glitching out during it. It was done around 2004 by Aeon Genesis, who I heard had a Chaos bias for the original translation of 1 and took way too many years to translate If. I respect Aeon Genesis for the Cave Story translation, but I think this game in particular should get a retranslation. Again, PSX please
The story... Yeah it's good, was a little less exciting than I had expected though. I'd put it above 1's. I feel that while it's better than IV's, the latter presented its story better. No shit though, it's a much newer game. While I do think IV is my least favorite of the new trilogy, it's a solid game. I bring it up mainly because the first two SMT titles heavily inspired it, and I think the result was great.
That's about all I have to say about this game. Maybe someday the PSX port will be translated, then I would likely give it a 4/5.
Actually, something else I should add is that the translation is real buggy. Negotiation was especially bad in many cases, with even some sprites glitching out during it. It was done around 2004 by Aeon Genesis, who I heard had a Chaos bias for the original translation of 1 and took way too many years to translate If. I respect Aeon Genesis for the Cave Story translation, but I think this game in particular should get a retranslation. Again, PSX please
A very well made squeal, to the original game in 1992. While it still suffers from age, it makes up for that in a very different feeling game from the original. Also with some improved mechanics (would still recommend using an FAQ tho).
Overall 100% worth the time if you enjoyed the original
Overall 100% worth the time if you enjoyed the original
some aspects i liked more than the first one, some i didn't as much. the story was overall better and very cool, and i liked the alignments more in this one, but some of the dungeon/over world exploration is really tedious even moreso than the first game and so the start of the game takes a lot to try and grip me. but the abyss is genuinely very cool
This review contains spoilers
The Law ending really left me satisfied. A bit of a shame for all the innocents that died but eh, we can rebuild and everyone's gonna be happier.
Game Review - originally written by Spinner 8
The Megami Tensei series is a long one, and mostly a Japanese one. Shin Megami Tensei II is a direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei, and takes place a few decades afterwards. You're a guy who (of course) doesn't know who he is, and he's really strong and fights in the colosseum fights in Tokyo Millennium, a domed city that is essentially the last stronghold for humanity and whatnot. Soon he makes it to the championship battle, and shortly afterwards all hell breaks loose. LITERALLY! OMG hahahaha! You've never heard that one before, I warrant!
All you people who don't know what Megami Tensei is all about are pretty much cocking their head to one side and looking confused right about now. Maybe some further explanation is in order. I guess. The Shin Megami Tensei games take place in the distant future, where demons run rampant on the earth. Your advantage is your ability to talk to these demons and gain their trust. Ideally, they will join your party, and will fight alongside you and so forth. You can even fuse two or three demons to create an even more powerful demon. Pretty open-ended stuff, this.
Fans of the first Shin Megami Tensei will not find much different. Thank Jesus, accessing the map now only requires a press of the L button. And there are… other differences.
The Megami Tensei series is a long one, and mostly a Japanese one. Shin Megami Tensei II is a direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei, and takes place a few decades afterwards. You're a guy who (of course) doesn't know who he is, and he's really strong and fights in the colosseum fights in Tokyo Millennium, a domed city that is essentially the last stronghold for humanity and whatnot. Soon he makes it to the championship battle, and shortly afterwards all hell breaks loose. LITERALLY! OMG hahahaha! You've never heard that one before, I warrant!
All you people who don't know what Megami Tensei is all about are pretty much cocking their head to one side and looking confused right about now. Maybe some further explanation is in order. I guess. The Shin Megami Tensei games take place in the distant future, where demons run rampant on the earth. Your advantage is your ability to talk to these demons and gain their trust. Ideally, they will join your party, and will fight alongside you and so forth. You can even fuse two or three demons to create an even more powerful demon. Pretty open-ended stuff, this.
Fans of the first Shin Megami Tensei will not find much different. Thank Jesus, accessing the map now only requires a press of the L button. And there are… other differences.
Aleph and Lucifer besties for life
Not as good as the first game. Improves in some ways, but they were trying too hard to make this game more challenging when the original was already challenging enough. The dungeons are way too big with nothing in them, and they throw harder layouts at you way earlier. They also PUNISH you for knowing how the game works by forcing you to increase your main character's magic stat, something which many may not realize they have to do until it's way too late and you have to grind. This goes for the first game too, but play this with a guide, for your own good.
El mejor de la mainline
An overall improvement over the first game but still a flawed experience.
The narrative has enough plot twists and interesting characters to keep you going but it's ultimately dragged down by terrible and sometimes nonsensical backtracking segments that stretch out an already long game. Furthermore, even though initially you're able to find your way around easily, it eventually devolves into the same guesswork the first game put you through.
Fortunately, this time around you have a Fortune Teller guiding you in case you get lost as well as the usual Bar conversations. However, if you don't want to add even more backtracking by going to these places, your best bet is to grab a guide.
My absolute favorite thing about this game is the atmosphere and the art direction. Tokyo Millenium's high-tech aesthetic mixed in with traditional religious imagery is a very interesting combo that creates a vibe unmatched within the series and even outside of the series. This is of course enhanced by the soundtrack which is not as energetic as in the first game but still serves its purpose extremely well by going in a more experimental/ambience direction, so to speak.
This is definitely a must-play but it's hard to recommend it knowing how much of a drag in can be. Hopefully one day we get this game translated on the PSX so more people can enjoy it while benefitting from the faster pace of that version.
The narrative has enough plot twists and interesting characters to keep you going but it's ultimately dragged down by terrible and sometimes nonsensical backtracking segments that stretch out an already long game. Furthermore, even though initially you're able to find your way around easily, it eventually devolves into the same guesswork the first game put you through.
Fortunately, this time around you have a Fortune Teller guiding you in case you get lost as well as the usual Bar conversations. However, if you don't want to add even more backtracking by going to these places, your best bet is to grab a guide.
My absolute favorite thing about this game is the atmosphere and the art direction. Tokyo Millenium's high-tech aesthetic mixed in with traditional religious imagery is a very interesting combo that creates a vibe unmatched within the series and even outside of the series. This is of course enhanced by the soundtrack which is not as energetic as in the first game but still serves its purpose extremely well by going in a more experimental/ambience direction, so to speak.
This is definitely a must-play but it's hard to recommend it knowing how much of a drag in can be. Hopefully one day we get this game translated on the PSX so more people can enjoy it while benefitting from the faster pace of that version.
Beautiful soundtrack, great aesthetic and retains the same immersive atmosphere as the original. The combat UI was improved and there's post game content that really doesn't do anything but it's cool that it's there nonetheless! The story is peak SMT which is evident in that there are future SMT games that take heavy direct influence from this game (yes even if every game is about alignments and the birth of a new world).