This game is easily the worst of the SNES SMT games. It has a concept, plot and characters that works very well. But the game design sucks, the dungeons are worst than torture, the negotiation with demons is broken, the game has a ton of bugs like equipaments that vanish out of nowhere, and the guardian system just not works.
I decided to stop after beating Hazama first form with Reiko. I don't want to spend any other second with this game anymore.
And this comes from someone that loves old JRPGs and loved both SMT 1 and 2.