for my first time ever playing this game, i made a few fatal errors. one, i played the gba version, two, i took the chaos route bc i thought itd be funny, and three, i streamed it. not a great way to experience this for the first time, ill be honest. that being said, i feel very conflicted on smt1. i loved the characters, story, spritework (even if it was a bit crusty on gba) and character designs. of all the smt games ive played so far, this one has my favorite protagonist designs by far, all of them are REALLY good. the beginning "chapter" was also really good, 199x is a super great introductory segment to get you used to all of the games core mechanics and the like. its once you get to the apocalypse, in 20xx, where things take a turn. the game takes away all your money, party members, pits you against monsters way stronger than you, drinks your juice and calls you a bitch. which, to be fair, i guess thats how things would go in a real apocalypse, so it fits in that regard. but the difficulty really spikes here for me, everything is so expensive, especially reviving and healing party members. not to mention, you get so little money from encounters that it takes ages to even get enough to revive one guy. equipment was really expensive too, and that felt like the one way i could maybe stand up to some of the tough enemies in this section. the dungeons also got really mean after a certain point, stuff like the girl's mind dungeon, where there are no ways to save and Arachne can just charm you and make you hit yourself to death, forcing you to redo the entire dungeon, or Tokyo Destinyland, where one bad roll can cripple you and force you to walk allllll the way back to the Kaifuku to get it fixed for an exorbitant fee. this all culminates in the worst dungeon in the entire game by far, the Basilica, which is so colossal and full to the brim of backtracking that it took me over 6 hours to get through this god forsaken hellhole, and that was WITH a map. of course, there were a couple things that i probably could have done to minimize my frustrations, and probably the most important one was just... not streaming it. when you're streaming something, you can't really take breaks the same way you can when you're just playing a game on your own, at least not in the way that i stream stuff, so my play sessions usually boiled down to these grueling several hour grinds through dungeons, when the game really isn't meant to be played that way. as such, i feel like i can't really give this game a proper review in the state that my playthrough was in, so i definitely plan to write a second one after i do another playthrough on my own time. also, while the GBA version is a pretty cool oddity, it is not the ideal way to play this game. everything looks super crunched down and washed out, and the iffy musical renditions aren't helping. again, not the best way to play the game for the first time. also, i didn't know where else to put this, but the demon negotiation, fusion, and battle systems overall just didn't really click for me in this one. compared to the other smt entries ive played things were just pretty barebones and boring here. that being said, it is a little unfair to compare one of the first entries in the series to the later ones in that regard, considering it was working off of what the first two MegaTens had and not much else, so i'll let this slide. one thing i WON'T let slide, however, is that Energy Drain attacks from DDSt:MT are in this one for some god forsaken reason. you can inflict me with statuses or use Hama on me all you want, but NEVER take away my levels. that should be considered a war crime.

to conclude, this review is moreso about my experience streaming this game, rather than an actual review of the game itself. i'll save that for its own review when i play through the SFC version on my own time. that being said, streaming Shin Megami Tensei was one of the most grueling, mentally taxing, and frustrating experiences ive ever had streaming a game, but it still had some fun moments sprinkled in there. and again, a lot of my issues with this game stemmed from a comedy of errors on my part, and were no fault of the game itself