I'm glad I tired to play this game 5 times and pushed through navigating one of the worst overworld maps in the history of games to complete this game. Really truly moving, a slow burn of a story that is like boiling a frog because before you know it, you're in Reverse Hills and everything is going to hell in ways you never anticipated.

I really like the thesis of this game. I tripped into the Neutral route for my first playthru (I KNOW, wtf) and there is something so compelling about the final message of the game, about the impermanence of this "golden" ending, it was deeply effecting.

Half star deducted for that fucking overworld map. Another half star deducted for Purgatorium.

Worth playing just for the setting alone. While the press turn system is still as fun as ever, the overall balancing of this game leaves a lot to be desired since you can basically steamroll the rest of the game after you defeat the second major boss. Despite the story itself being pretty basic, the world they've built and the simple but likeable cast of characters BEFORE THE ALIGNMENT LOCK more than make up for it. As with every SMT game it likes to pretend that each of the endings are equally viable choices but once you see all of them it's clear which is the definitive good ending. (And it's not the white ending.) Also has one of the best soundtracks of the genre.

This game is a masterpiece and is in a tie for my second favorite game of all time with Blasphemous 2. SMT IV takes elements from early SMT and modernizes them in the best kind of way with a story that is more character-driven than most mainline SMT games. The combat is wonderfully chaotic and hits hard, the beginning of this game is infamously difficult, but you will eventually be able to become stronger and you can eventually become more overpowered than you can in any other mainline SMT game. The desire to replay a wonderful game like this is one of the reasons my backlog continues to pile up to mountainous heights.

Shin Megami Tensei IV has got to be one of the best games I’ve ever played. The atmosphere, gameplay, story and aesthetics are some of the best in any RPG.

Story? Don’t get me started. Amazing. There’s very few games where after I beat them I’m sitting in my room contemplating what I’ve just played. A really captivating story and one of the best in Megaten.

Gameplay is amazing too. It’s lightning fast and endlessly satisfying with the press turn combat and unique demon mechanics. Fusing demons is fun and rewarding, and using their skills on your main character adds more planning into your fusion process, as you consider which skills you want to transfer. The bane on this game’s gameplay is the dungeon crawling and smirking. The dungeon crawling is mostly nonexistent with only 4-5 real dungeons in the game. The dungeons you do get are pretty good, but often lacking in good loot and side routes to flesh them out. And smirking is just bullshit.

The graphics are pretty good for a 3DS game, though if they went with their original idea of making it a first person dungeon crawler it’d probably look better, but make the game far less as unique as it is.

The music is stupendous. Nothing else I have to say other than it’s ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL. There’s really nothing that compares except the Shin Megami Tensei V OST, done by the same people.

Overall, fantastic game that I will play again and again and never get tired of.

SMT IV is like a gentle slope leading down into a cliff, it is impressive how this game managed to slowly bleed out my enjoyment over the course of many hours before finally bringing down the hammer and crushing my soul.

The beginning section in Mikado is the best part of the game and I feel like this is a massively unpopular opinion. Despite knowing we'd eventually end up in a post apocalyptic Tokyo I had high hopes that Mikado would get about half as much screen time... that it didn't, and it disappointed me a little, but by far it is not my biggest problem with this game's story. What makes Mikado great is how it sets up the law/neutral/chaos conflict SMT is known for, gets you to know the friends that will more than likely betray you as is series tradition, and introduces the gameplay with some proper bite meant to say this isn't your grandma's monster collection game. By the end of the game most of these aspects will be botched, the only exception being the character dynamics, those survive the end game slump and that's commendable.

The first proper boss-like encounter of the game is the hardest it ever gets, I'd go as far as to say the minotaur boss is overhyped, but still, everything within Naraku is at a nice level of challenge. The game plays more or less like any other mainline SMT post 3, you got your press turns, you got your fusions now with manual skill selection, and you get to distribute stats, though with the notable disappearance of the vit stat. SMT 4's troubles aren't in the Megaten formula, but how it handles it, magic is simply too dominant, the game ends when you whisper megido to Flynn as you'll never struggle with a random battle ever again, and even bosses will fold in often only two turns. This isn't simply an elitist "Megaten is supposed to be hard" take, the game is just boring after a while and it never recovers unless you try your hand at the DLCs. What makes it worse is that one of the three endings, neutral specifically, requires you to do a mountain of mind numbing side quests in order to access the final set of dungeons, this is likely an attempt at making neutral feel like the definitive ending where you do the most stuff, a notion I already dislike because what's the point of choosing an alignment if the "neither" option is definitive, but it comes out as pure needless padding.

As mentioned above, neutral is framed as the definitive choice in a complete antithesis to the series' identity. The story arcs that precede the alignment lock are the closest the game ever gets to surpassing the intro, presenting arguments as to why chaos cannot exist without order and order cannot exist without chaos, it then promptly fumbles it by making chaos the bad choice and order the worse one. The only reasonable choice is the neutral route, and it ends up being too reasonable as the only thing you sacrifice to achieve the best outcome is losing your sanity doing a mountain of side quests.

I wanted to like this game, and I did for a few brief moments, but I cannot truly enjoy it, its flaws are too many. I do not put it in the same high pedestal as most other fans, but I'd much rather replay it than SMT 1 so that's something at least.

What the fuck.. I thought the 3DS was for Pokemonsters and Mario... What is this SOVL....

The vibes are impeccable. The atmosphere is unmatched. The press turn system is, obviously, good. The crits are brutal. The first dungeon is harder than probably all of Persona 5 (random stray slander I haven't played it). The monsters are... PNGs.... The world map... uh.. anyway

The story is mid, but the worldbuilding saves it. It's at least always interesting, but I mean, the overall plot is just SMT like, again, so not much room there. I appreciate the allegories and symbolism and such as always, but it's not exactly a character driven franchise. That's fine.

Surprisingly great English voice acting, particularly Burroughs. I miss her

Completed the Law ending for this playthrough. This one was in my backlog for a few... years lol, finally decided to start it. My very first main SMT game (although I played Persona, Devil Survivor and Tokyo Mirage Sessions before).

My biggest surprise is how this is not a very long RPG, which is a really good thing, especially since it's Atlus we're talking about (looking at YOU, Persona, which I also love btw). 30 hours long if you're just going for the main story and one of the endings, and it never drops the ball. It always throws stuff in your way for it to keep interesting.

Gameplay is fun, nothing too groundbreaking for a turn-based RPG but its Press Turn system never fails to be interesting, as well as finding and fusing demons.

Its story is good, the supporting characters are nothing to really write about (they are there more to represent the moral choices really), but the story, coupled with the AWESOME post-apocalyptic and brooding atmosphere really nails it to me, even under the massive graphical limitations for the 3DS (HD remaster Atlus, please!). The limitations however are apparent in overworld Tokyo, where you are represented by what looks like a weird board piece. It's not a major thing, but definitely a low point in an otherwise great presentation.

On the graphics side, I remember being kind of turned off by seeing screenshots of the game and seeing the demons in battle were sprites and not 3D models unlike many Atlus games on the 3DS even, but watching them in motion is a whole different story, the sprite work is SPECTACULAR, by the screenshots it felt they were just reusing old sprites to save time and cut costs, but in-game you can clearly see it's a conscious and good stylistic choice. Character designs overall are great as usual. Atlus and Kazuma Kaneko never disappoint.

Music is awesome and fits the overall theme really well. Voice acting is also great and really sets the tone, despite it not having many animated cutscenes.

Shin Megami Tensei IV is amazing and it's kind of a shame it's stuck on the 3DS for the foreseeable future, although a rerelease of it is definitely a given in the not-so-near future. Although I only finished one of the endings, I want to get to know the other 3 endings at some point. But not now. I mean, Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse has also been sitting in my backlog for some years, so I'd rather try that one out first.

Ce jeu est exceptionnel, le lore, l'ambiance, les personnages, les musiques, le gameplay, le scénario... Je recommande fortement, il m'a beaucoup plu et marqué !

Le plus gros point négatif que je peux souligner est l'exploration de Tokyo qui est un véritable calvaire. Sans guide, c'est compliqué d'avancer de façon fluide et intuitive.
La difficulté au début peut être assez rageante aussi, donc il faut prendre l'habitude de sauvegarder très régulièrement (comme pour n'importe quel SMT en soi, mais celui-ci est particulièrement fourbe des fois.)
Et sinon, personnellement, juste pour le plaisir j'aurais bien aimé voir davantage d'échanges / d'interactions entre les Samouraïs en dehors du scénario principal comme dans SMT4 Apocalypse.

Malgré la traversée de Tokyo un peu rude, une fois le jeu fini et peu importe la fin qu'on obtient, on ressent vraiment quelque chose de spécial. Le récit est rempli d'événements et de détails importants et chacun de nos choix va avoir son importance. C'est qu'une fois qu'on arrive devant les crédits qu'on peut prendre un bon recul et se rendre compte du chemin parcouru pour en arriver là.
La rejouabilité est agréable et permet d'avoir les autres fins qui sont toutes aussi intéressantes.

Ce jeu est une sacrée découverte qui aborde plein de problématiques morales et éthiques, de notion de bien et de mal, de religion, de politique, etc... Mature et sérieux, mais aussi avec des pointes d'humour un peu partout. Tout est équilibré.
Bref, un gros classique pour moi

The story is trash, despite some interesting ideas. I got the very underwhelming Chaos ending, so I went looking for the "canon" Neutral ending on YouTube and it was just as bad.
There is like no payoff for any plot point. Almost nothing is explained, you just wander around the terrible Tokyo map (while Mikado is completely ignored) doing fetch quests and killing demons for random people.
And all of this is just made worse by the disgusting English dub, and the character design and artstyle which I personally don't like at all.

And don't get me started on the awful Alignment system. It's almost impossible to get on the Neutral path without following an extremely strict guide (they literally suggest you to not do any side quest). So you're stuck with Flynn becoming an extremist genocidal piece of shit.

The combat is fun in the first half of the game or so, but becomes extremely boring towards the end of the game when you just start to spam Megidola on all encounters. Also the bosses are mostly frustrating damage sponges that unfairly one shot your entire team if the luck isn't on your side. So most of them were just a matter of how many times I needed to close and reopen the game before I got lucky.

I think this series is stuck in the past, there's a reason it naturally shifted into Persona. There you have an actual story, with actual dungeons, and actual characters you can interact with.