An MMO that is unquestionably a Shin Megami Tensei game. The setting, themes and iconic game mechanics are all here. In particular, I think it's really neat how demon fusion and inheritance are pretty much exactly what you would expect.

I've fooled around with it a few times, once on an official server and twice on fan servers. My major takeaways are as follows:

- By YHVH this game is jank
- Monetization practices like Imagine's should be outlawed
- This concept has a ton of potential

It's not hard to see why people continue to try and keep this game alive, as most MMOs thrive off vibes and Imagine has them in spades. With that being said, it also seems to fall into the same "you had to be there" territory that so many older massively multiplayer games do for me. Its systems are tolerable at best, but man if I don't still feel like a badass decked out in leather, toting around a handcannon and being followed by a powerful demon I summoned from my wrist-mounted computer. I would be lying if I said I enjoy playing Imagine, but I sorely wish I wasn't.

On behalf of those who do enjoy it, though, I am politely requesting that ATLUS stop trying to murder this game.

Similar to other reviewers, I am really not big into MMOs at all! However, unlike the other reviewers, my love for SMT WAS able outshine that hatred for stereotypical MMO grindey gameplay.

If you love SMT, there's enough here to appreciate to keep you going for a good couple dozen hours. I did not finish the mainline quest yet, but I do plan to return one day and see it through to the end.

Plus, this game allows you to select any demon to follow you around, like it's Pokemon. That's rad!

I had a lot of fun playing this one with my girlfriend over these past wintery weekends. It's a dream come true when it comes to experiencing being a demon summoner in the post-apocalyptic world. You can customize yourself a lot and truly make your player character your own.
However it's chock full with soooooo many obscure game mechanics that you'd be lucky to even find any information on, let alone understand, let alone want to spend months grinding to master each of them. I can't recommend this game to anyone else beyond just checking it out casually. It's not worth it trying to become "end-game" tier.
HOWEVER if you were willing enough, it is possible and not too difficult to actually host this MMO locally, so you could check it out on your lonesome own with the full power of GM commands and all that.

As many other people, not a fan of MMOs but decided to try it with a friend because it's a SMT.
The biggest flaw of this game is how confusing it is towards new players. Most tutorial quests are secondary and are really easy to miss, specially in your first hours of gameplay. The fact that the game is half translated and the wiki is lacking doesn't help either.
The expertise system, which pretty much determines your build is also strange. I love that you can combine different expertises together to make any random build you can imagine, but the fact that basic skills like recruiting demons, demon fusion or gear crafting are affected by the same rules as combat skills is a mistake in my opinion, because you can only unlock a limited amount of skills. Also, finding extensive information about the system and what builds I could make was an almost impossible task.
The combat system feels fun. I like that phys and gun skills have 3 affinities, and the whole attack/rush/spin thing is pretty cool, but the fact that combat is based in knockbacking enemies is kinda weird (you can literally cheese enemies by hitting them against the wall over and over).
Overall, it's a fun MMO but has many small mechanics that don't make any sense (like demon recruiting) and makes the game mediocre.

It's great as a SMT mmo, but kind of bad as a game. Usually it's good when there's no linear path to the end but with so many complicated rules and tricks and avenues to go down, the time investment it would take to get as strong as you'd like is really daunting especially considering how corrupt and expensive the game was before it shut down.

Every little thing needs some other thing, and you can't just farm it out in a few months. I truly believe it would take a year+ to make any serious progress and even then you'd still find something that can stump you, or something that requires specific stuff or group play.

In a way it's like eve where you'll spend way more time trying to buff up and get everything in order before you can really play just to get knocked down anyway. Digitalization and mitama and trying to get all these rare expensive gear sets to meld together, it didn't need to be so complex.

And I haven't even mentioned other gripes like how annoying recruiting demons can actually be, or that you can't use the compendium to summon and instead have to recruit every single fusion demon, along with endgame items to unlock the demon you wanted to fuse in the first place.