I swear, I always forget how much I love Shin Megami Tensei. My first entry was SMT IV: Apocalypse around early 2017, and I’ve played a few other titles since then. Seeing that my first ever SMT title was a sequel to it, it’s a genuine surprise to me that it took me this long to finally play Shin Megami Tensei IV. Playing through it all, it reminds me just how much I love SMT, and this game was amazing.
One of the first immediate things about SMT that I think about is the Negotiations. SMT is a monster tamer after all, and it has such a unique way of actually taming the monsters. Having to hold a conversation with Demons, and trying to convince them to join you is so interesting. It’s far from easy, but I find charm in that, Demons can suddenly attack you, leave the battle, give you items. You’ll also have to hope you respond correctly, and even if the demon has a specific personality, there’s still a level of randomness to it. It always stings when it seems like a negotiation goes as planned, but instead the demon runs away instead. This all creates such a unique way of creating your party, especially with how many demons you’ll be able to hold by the end of the game.
And in a similar vein to this, Fusing demons is ridiculously engaging to me. Sometimes I could spend up to a full hour trying to plan and fuse demons. You can craft entirely unique builds for each demon, and the more demons are fused, the more built up one becomes. With how there’s a level requirement for fusing demons, it also makes gaining each level all the more exciting, which very few RPGs make me excited for single level gains. With how aside from the player character, the other party members are demons you’ve gathered, there’s an immense level of connection to the party, as you made them all. And as well, if a demon learns all of its skills, it can teach the player character the skills it knows, which allows for immense customization of the player character as well.
The actual combat of SMT IV is super engaging as well. I absolutely love the press turn system and how it works. You have as many moves as you have characters in battle. So basically, if you have the player character and 3 demons, you have 4 moves per turn. But if you get a critical hit or exploit an enemy’s weakness, you get an additional move, up to a total of 8 moves per turn. Enemies as well have this exact same system, which can make battles far more dangerous, and in turn, really thrilling. It made a lot of the early game really difficult because of how little options you have compared to the enemies. As well, I believe SMT IV introduced Smirks as a mechanic, which can increase the power of skills, or make regular attacks likely critical hits. Yet again both you and the enemies have access to this feature, which is so fun.
Shin Megami Tensei games always have intriguing stories to me. They’re always super philosophical, asking questions that not many other games do in the same way that SMT does. I really love how SMT IV opens, compared to the other ones that I’ve played, it opens in such an interesting way. Even though this game is far from new, I don’t want to reveal the opening act of this game, I find the reveal really cool. As well, I love the main cast, and how they grow and encapsulates the three major alignments typical of Shin Megami Tensei. Jonathan, Walter, and Issabeau are all really great characters, and I love how you get to understand each of them as the game progresses, especially if you go down a different path than them.
Now I’m not going to spoil it at all, but the nature of how endings work in Shin Megami Tensei is so interesting. Throughout the entire game, every choice you make determines your morality and that morality is what leads you to your ending. Unless you’re following a guide you’re likely not going to control what ending you get. And because of that, it makes what’s typically the best ending for SMT games, the Neutral ending, to be the hardest one to obtain. Especially as the window to obtain this ending is so small, and it can be easy to lock yourself into one, and be unable to change it. Somehow I stumbled into it on my first ever playthrough, though I imagine that others would likely not encounter a situation like I did. Though as well, no ending is the true ending, each ending is equally canon, which is always interesting when games do as such.
It’s really interesting going back to Shin Megami Tensei after this long. I play them so rarely that each time I play one it feels like I’m playing the series for the first time again, for better or worse. Every time I play one, I’m enthralled by how good these games are, from both a story and gameplay perspective. I really need to get myself to play more of them, as I would like to eventually try them all out. Though I know the earlier ones are odd, and I’m not sure if I’d be able to beat those in particular. Though back to Shin Megami Tensei IV specifically, I absolutely adore this game. There’s so much I wish I could talk about in particular to its story, but with a game such as this, I feel it better to see it for yourself. I can’t help but recommend SMT IV, I don’t know if it would be a good entry title to SMT, but as a game I think it’s worth playing.
One of the first immediate things about SMT that I think about is the Negotiations. SMT is a monster tamer after all, and it has such a unique way of actually taming the monsters. Having to hold a conversation with Demons, and trying to convince them to join you is so interesting. It’s far from easy, but I find charm in that, Demons can suddenly attack you, leave the battle, give you items. You’ll also have to hope you respond correctly, and even if the demon has a specific personality, there’s still a level of randomness to it. It always stings when it seems like a negotiation goes as planned, but instead the demon runs away instead. This all creates such a unique way of creating your party, especially with how many demons you’ll be able to hold by the end of the game.
And in a similar vein to this, Fusing demons is ridiculously engaging to me. Sometimes I could spend up to a full hour trying to plan and fuse demons. You can craft entirely unique builds for each demon, and the more demons are fused, the more built up one becomes. With how there’s a level requirement for fusing demons, it also makes gaining each level all the more exciting, which very few RPGs make me excited for single level gains. With how aside from the player character, the other party members are demons you’ve gathered, there’s an immense level of connection to the party, as you made them all. And as well, if a demon learns all of its skills, it can teach the player character the skills it knows, which allows for immense customization of the player character as well.
The actual combat of SMT IV is super engaging as well. I absolutely love the press turn system and how it works. You have as many moves as you have characters in battle. So basically, if you have the player character and 3 demons, you have 4 moves per turn. But if you get a critical hit or exploit an enemy’s weakness, you get an additional move, up to a total of 8 moves per turn. Enemies as well have this exact same system, which can make battles far more dangerous, and in turn, really thrilling. It made a lot of the early game really difficult because of how little options you have compared to the enemies. As well, I believe SMT IV introduced Smirks as a mechanic, which can increase the power of skills, or make regular attacks likely critical hits. Yet again both you and the enemies have access to this feature, which is so fun.
Shin Megami Tensei games always have intriguing stories to me. They’re always super philosophical, asking questions that not many other games do in the same way that SMT does. I really love how SMT IV opens, compared to the other ones that I’ve played, it opens in such an interesting way. Even though this game is far from new, I don’t want to reveal the opening act of this game, I find the reveal really cool. As well, I love the main cast, and how they grow and encapsulates the three major alignments typical of Shin Megami Tensei. Jonathan, Walter, and Issabeau are all really great characters, and I love how you get to understand each of them as the game progresses, especially if you go down a different path than them.
Now I’m not going to spoil it at all, but the nature of how endings work in Shin Megami Tensei is so interesting. Throughout the entire game, every choice you make determines your morality and that morality is what leads you to your ending. Unless you’re following a guide you’re likely not going to control what ending you get. And because of that, it makes what’s typically the best ending for SMT games, the Neutral ending, to be the hardest one to obtain. Especially as the window to obtain this ending is so small, and it can be easy to lock yourself into one, and be unable to change it. Somehow I stumbled into it on my first ever playthrough, though I imagine that others would likely not encounter a situation like I did. Though as well, no ending is the true ending, each ending is equally canon, which is always interesting when games do as such.
It’s really interesting going back to Shin Megami Tensei after this long. I play them so rarely that each time I play one it feels like I’m playing the series for the first time again, for better or worse. Every time I play one, I’m enthralled by how good these games are, from both a story and gameplay perspective. I really need to get myself to play more of them, as I would like to eventually try them all out. Though I know the earlier ones are odd, and I’m not sure if I’d be able to beat those in particular. Though back to Shin Megami Tensei IV specifically, I absolutely adore this game. There’s so much I wish I could talk about in particular to its story, but with a game such as this, I feel it better to see it for yourself. I can’t help but recommend SMT IV, I don’t know if it would be a good entry title to SMT, but as a game I think it’s worth playing.