Shin Megami Tensei is a turn-based JRPG with first-person dungeon elements developed by Atlus in 1992 for the Super Famicom with a Game Boy Advance version later in 2003 exclusively to the Japanese audience with two translation patches out for both of them for the English speaking audience. Shin Megami Tensei is a decent first entry for a series that would slowly become big over time with the fifth numbered iteration developing overall attention for the series. The atmosphere and world building is definitely on the higher end of SFC/SNES JRPGs at the time that is aided by the wonderful soundtrack (GBA version significantly reduces the quality of the music here but still manages to come through) only suffering in how tedious yet easy this game felt playing to the point I almost felt conflicted that if I truly enjoyed the whole experience or not.
Shin Megami Tensei was one of the first games of its kind that let you use demon and monsters as your teammates beating Pokemon by 4 years and being beaten by Dragon Quest V by a month. The game manages to use demons and deities from various mythologies in a way that makes the game a bit more grounded in realism yet still manages to be in its own realm of a cyberpunk fantasy with the overall designs of the characters themselves including our Protagonist. The world of Tokyo manages to show a very slow and serious decline as your progress through the game with things going wrong real quick and the demonic apocalypse being completely thrust upon you after no real big event showing the change in the real world. The game's atmosphere is unique for its time as well with having a protagonist kitted out in cyber-ware ready to fight against demons with a good-mannered man in a red coat and an angry man in a camouflage trench coat that serve as catalysts for the entire game. The music even coming from a compressed as hell version of the game manages to come off with a high pace and illustrate the dark and bleak world that Tokyo slowly becomes throughout the course of the game to the point the game itself actually feels like a horror game. This game truly isn't for the faint of heart and seeing the events that happened with the music aiding in the horror from the chaos theme feeling like your mind is descending slowly into insanity and the law theme illustrating the righteousness you want with the midi angels singing to your praises. The demon negotiation system here is a bit archaic but doesn't really screw you over like in the later titles as much. You can easily get what you want here and I figured out this was a good way to get MAG and money here since grinding normal battles wasn't rewarding at all.
I would have a lot more praise for this game if it didn't suffer in the one way it should not have suffered, the gameplay. This game manages to be something tedious to get through yet having no real difficulty at all even until the final bosses where there's a slight difficulty jump which didn't matter to much since the game is pretty broken from a gameplay perspective. Using guns and bullets with status effects seems to be the only way to play the game without losing more patience than you already have, the encounter rate is pretty high especially in the world map although it was much more bearable in the GBA version which is why I decided to play this version. The demons here are pretty cool from a design perspective but from a gameplay perspective, it felt pretty limiting since each demons only really have 1-2 spells most of the time so they're mostly relegated to being auto-attack bots most of the time that I didn't feel too inclined to really fuse as much. A small flaw but the Heroine doesn't really have a personality in this game as far as I'm aware other than being completely reliant on the main character except for one moment and I wished they fleshed her out a bit more but it's not a huge deal.
For a first entry of a series, it does a great job setting up the structure of what this series would usually entail. A ruined Tokyo, law and chaos, and having demons on your side throughout all of it. Despite how tedious it might be to get through if you're used to play more newer and modern JRPGs, I still think it's a title worth playing especially if you're a big fan of megaten. The series would later improve the gameplay in various ways to the point that Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is considered one of my favorite games. It wouldn't be the greatest dream but it definitely wasn't a nightmare at all.
Shin Megami Tensei was one of the first games of its kind that let you use demon and monsters as your teammates beating Pokemon by 4 years and being beaten by Dragon Quest V by a month. The game manages to use demons and deities from various mythologies in a way that makes the game a bit more grounded in realism yet still manages to be in its own realm of a cyberpunk fantasy with the overall designs of the characters themselves including our Protagonist. The world of Tokyo manages to show a very slow and serious decline as your progress through the game with things going wrong real quick and the demonic apocalypse being completely thrust upon you after no real big event showing the change in the real world. The game's atmosphere is unique for its time as well with having a protagonist kitted out in cyber-ware ready to fight against demons with a good-mannered man in a red coat and an angry man in a camouflage trench coat that serve as catalysts for the entire game. The music even coming from a compressed as hell version of the game manages to come off with a high pace and illustrate the dark and bleak world that Tokyo slowly becomes throughout the course of the game to the point the game itself actually feels like a horror game. This game truly isn't for the faint of heart and seeing the events that happened with the music aiding in the horror from the chaos theme feeling like your mind is descending slowly into insanity and the law theme illustrating the righteousness you want with the midi angels singing to your praises. The demon negotiation system here is a bit archaic but doesn't really screw you over like in the later titles as much. You can easily get what you want here and I figured out this was a good way to get MAG and money here since grinding normal battles wasn't rewarding at all.
I would have a lot more praise for this game if it didn't suffer in the one way it should not have suffered, the gameplay. This game manages to be something tedious to get through yet having no real difficulty at all even until the final bosses where there's a slight difficulty jump which didn't matter to much since the game is pretty broken from a gameplay perspective. Using guns and bullets with status effects seems to be the only way to play the game without losing more patience than you already have, the encounter rate is pretty high especially in the world map although it was much more bearable in the GBA version which is why I decided to play this version. The demons here are pretty cool from a design perspective but from a gameplay perspective, it felt pretty limiting since each demons only really have 1-2 spells most of the time so they're mostly relegated to being auto-attack bots most of the time that I didn't feel too inclined to really fuse as much. A small flaw but the Heroine doesn't really have a personality in this game as far as I'm aware other than being completely reliant on the main character except for one moment and I wished they fleshed her out a bit more but it's not a huge deal.
For a first entry of a series, it does a great job setting up the structure of what this series would usually entail. A ruined Tokyo, law and chaos, and having demons on your side throughout all of it. Despite how tedious it might be to get through if you're used to play more newer and modern JRPGs, I still think it's a title worth playing especially if you're a big fan of megaten. The series would later improve the gameplay in various ways to the point that Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne is considered one of my favorite games. It wouldn't be the greatest dream but it definitely wasn't a nightmare at all.