The way I first got into the Megami Tensei series is actually not too dissimilar to how many did over the past decade I would imagine. First, I got into the Persona series, which is a lot more approachable due to its social sim aspects and its bigger focus on story and characters. Persona 3 became one of my favorite games of all time, and I wanted more like it. Persona 4 was only available for the Vita at the time, Persona 5 didn't release yet and so, all I had was this series called Shin Megami Tensei. Apparently, it had the same combat system and I should probably start with Nocturne, which also was the only SMT game I was able to play on platforms I had available. I ended up playing Nocturne for about 25 hours before giving up. On the one hand, I was initially put off by the fact that gameplay played a much bigger role than story (though I wasn't promised otherwise) because I sucked at the battle system and finding the right demons to get past those incredibly challenging early bosses (Matador still gives me nightmares). That didn't change throughout my playthrough, but I got better and as combat was becoming less of a worry, I started to take the atmosphere in more and to this day, I get an itch from time to time to dive into a game with a hopeless, oppressive atmosphere because the type that SMT games manage to create remain unique in video games. Though I'd be lying, if I said I wasn't drawn to the Persona series more, and have only played SMT 3, 4 and a tiny bit of 5 so far, even though I know the franchise has lots of spinoffs as well.
So know I am doing this challenge where I go through all types of games chronologically, and I am in this great position where I am looking forward to appreciate the Megami Tensei series from its (near) beginnings, playing almost all the games fully blindly, from Soul Hackers to Digital Devil Saga to Strange Journey and everything in between, and I am happy to say I took a big step in that regard by beating Shin Megami Tensei.
Shin Megami Tensei is the third game in the Megami Tensei series, the first to be released on the Super Famicom and a remake of the second Megami Tensei game to indicate a new beginning for the franchise. It released on October 30, 1992 and unfortunately, did not release in the West until it got an iOS release in 2014, which doesn't even work anymore unless you have a phone using IOS 10 or a previous version. Luckily, there is a fan translation for this game, so you can still play it in English using an emulator. The game apparently didn't release in the West due to its heavy use of religious themes, which led Nintendo to reject a western release. The game released on a lot of other platforms as well (PC Engine, Mega-CD, GBA, iOS/Android), including the PlayStation, which also didn't get a Western release due to a similar veto by Sony.
Shin Megami Tensei is an RPG with first-person dungeon-crawling gameplay and demon-fusing as its core forms of gameplay. You play the Hero that you give a name of your choosing. You are also to give names to a 'Law Hero' and a 'Chaos Hero', as well as a 'Heroine'. The game plays in Tokyo, another factor that makes this game stand out amongst the sea of medieval fantasy JRPGs of the time. It starts in the year 199X. A scientist opened a portal to another world that leads to demons invading Tokyo. You get an email by a guy called Steven, who gives you access to a "demon summoning program", which allows you to recruit and summon them.
You discover that there are multiple factions fighting for control over Tokyo, and that you and your companions have a big role to play in the fate of humanity. First, you have the US military led by ambassador "Thorman", who decide to bring their forces to Tokyo when they hear the news about the demon invasion. They are opposed by Gotou and the "Japan Seld-Defense Forces", who are more keen on using demons. Then there is the resistance led by the 'Heroine', who are there to to prevent conflict between the other two factions. Gotou starts looking for any woman in Tokyo with the same name as this otherwise, to him, unknown 'Heroine', which leads to all women with her name captured. These actions lead to Gotou's faction being "Chaos" aligned. Thorman and the US military look to purge Tokyo from demons, which makes them "Law" aligned, however they do not fear using any methods to accomplish this, as they have atomic bombs aimed at Tokyo as the conflict waits to be escalated.
I don't want to take away much more than this, but understand that you can decide to side with either faction or no faction at all, which is one of multiple decisions in this game that will put you on the "Law", "Chaos" or "Neutral" route. This decision manifests itself in multiple ways. If you are either Law or Chaos, you 1) have to defeat all bosses with the other alignment, but not the one's that have the same as you (Neutral fights both), 2) can only summon demons, if they align with your alignment, 3) have to pay extra to use healing services of the opposing alignment and 4) get a different ending. This is pretty nice and adds plenty of replayability.
There is plenty of story to uncover in this game and it is well told, with the level of maturity present pretty much throughout that is unheard of for games of its time. It is downright depressing to see what happens to the main character and humanity as a whole in this game, and I love it.
Throughout the game, you travel the overworld of Tokyo and go from dungeon to dungeon. There are some optional dungeons you can take on and some dungeons are open to visits before you are supposed to go there, which is neat, but usually there is no point in doing so, and it feels like the only reason for why you can go there is because the devs wanted you to get lost.
Dungeons mostly are designed the same. They differ in size, but almost all have simple wall tiles with plain colors and no textures that you traverse in first-person. The same-y look can lead you to getting lost quite a few times, which means opening up the map a whole lot, which can only be done by going to the menu, entering another menu and selecting map, looking at the map, exiting the map, exiting the sub-menu and exiting the main menu. There is a patch to make the map accessible through one button press, but I didn't know this until beating the game, so I was left frustrated by this from time to time.
In dungeons, there are a lot of optional areas you can go to and optional enemies you can fight, which often drop items that you could have skipped otherwise. Your human party members all have levels and stats (Strength, Magic, Vitality, Speed etc.) that can level up as you gain XP. You can also gain 'Incense' items that let you increase stats by one as well, which are often hidden in dungeons at random points. Likewise, other items are hidden as well, like Memory Boards, which you need to give to a character called Steven (who looks like the late Stephen Hawking) to be able to hold more demons in your computer, something that is easily missable.
Your main task though is to find specific characters / items / bosses in dungeons to progress the story. As you navigate the dungeons, you are thrown into random encounters every few steps and engage in battle. First, a quick rant on the encounters. Forget what you know about random encounters in other retro JRPGs. This game is the KING of them. It is ridiculous. Every couple steps you take, a random encounter pops up. Escape, and you are thrown back a couple steps, only to take those steps forward again and get into another random encounter. Some dungeons have a lot of encounters, and some dungeons have even more. It is the #1 thing that keeps me from giving this an otherwise easy "Recommended" seal, because it is that ridiculous.
It helps though that the battle system is relatively fun. You can use physical attacks (sword, gun) with your main character, magic attacks with the other Hero characters and demons that you summon and the assortment of elemental, buff, debuff and ailment attacks that are common in the Megami Tensei series. This game doesn't have the Press-Turn system yet (that gets introduced with SMT III), which is a shame, but it was enjoyable regardless. That said, the high encounter rate and the low XP you get relative to the length of normal fights made me escape a lot of them. Especially around the halfway mark, you get so much XP from frequent boss fights that it didn't make much sense to me to put myself through all of these. Boss fights didn't turn out to be so bad either.
Demon negotiations and fusing is present in this game as well. Obviously, it is much more basic here then in future iterations, but it is just as fun to fuse demons here. Negotiations weren't quite as fun, as most would fail. There are few answers you can give and they appeared to be random, as the same demon would react differently to the same answer at times. Failing didn't always have any negative consequences, but often enough it would allow the demon to get the first hit in.
Overall, the game's loop is fun enough to push you through the game, at least in my opinion, and what will make you want to stick around is its incredible atmosphere and unique story presentation for its time. The Shin Megami Tensei feel is very much present in this game.
Apart from the atmosphere, the other highlight of this game to me was the soundtrack. The soundtrack is the best on the Super Famicom I've heard so far (by far) and likely among the best to ever be released for the console. What Tsukasa Masuko achieved on the Super Famicom is incredible. Pretty much all tracks did a great job of capturing the mood, the battle theme is kick-ass, the Ginza track is an instant classic and the boss theme always had me alert that serious shit was going down.
If you like the Shin Megami Tensei series and are OK with the lack of QoL features present (or not present) in retro RPGs, and if you think you can live with the high encounter rate (emulating allows you to fast-forward, which helps move things along quicker), then this is definitely a game I can recommend to you. Otherwise, probably not, though I myself am very glad to have played this and am looking very much forward to the sequel that released in 1994.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Engaging apocalyptic story with multiple memorable moments
Three different route options which impact the ending and your allegiance with characters
Fittingly depressing scenario that adds to the overall atmosphere
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Addicting gameplay loop of exploring, battling and demon negotiation & fusing
Lots of strategic choice in battle
Navigating dungeons can become confusing
Encounter rate is RIDICULOUSLY high. Think of high it could be for the entire game, double that number, and that's how many encounters a dungeon has
Demon negotiations can become frustrating, as you fail most of the time
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting
Easily one of the best soundtracks on the Super Famicom, simply amazing
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
Dark and atmospheric visual style
Lots of unique demons with varied designs
You spend most of the game staring at texture-less wall tiles
Dungeons graphically only distinguish themselves through color of the tiles
Easy to get lost / be forced to open the map due to sometimes confusing, similarly designed areas
Few animations, majority of battles and cut scenes play out with quasi-still sprites on-screen
ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Incredibly atmospheric in terms of visual style, soundtrack and overall theme
Staring at pretty much the same wall tiles for most of the game does take its toll on immersion
CONTENT | 7/10
30-40 hours to beat
Many mandatory and more than a couple optional dungeons and bosses
Plenty of demons to fuse and battle
Most dungeons have no texture and look very similar
Encounter rate should have been lowered, even if that would have shaved off 5-10 hours off the game's overall length
The game makes up for that with three routes you can take, which adds replayability
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Leveling up to get stronger, face bigger challenges and be able to fuse better demons is a fun loop
Around the half-way mark, most enemy encounters can be skipped, as the time spent for the XP gain is not worth it due to the high number of bosses that give you a lot of XP
Encounter rate didn't have to be so high as a result
Some dungeons are hard to navigate and some have an annoying "fog" gimmick that makes this even worse
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
Atlus imprinted their DNA into this game so well that it sticks out all these years later
The first SMT game I'd deem approachable for non-hardcore RPG fans
Very unique in terms of theme (religious themes, use of Norse mythology etc.) and demon fusion system compared to pretty much every RPG out there at the time, especially on the Super Famicom
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replayability thanks to three routes you can take
Your alignment impacts gameplay in a lot of ways as well
High encounter rate is the one problem that makes replaying the game less appealing
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 78/100
(This is the 77th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
So know I am doing this challenge where I go through all types of games chronologically, and I am in this great position where I am looking forward to appreciate the Megami Tensei series from its (near) beginnings, playing almost all the games fully blindly, from Soul Hackers to Digital Devil Saga to Strange Journey and everything in between, and I am happy to say I took a big step in that regard by beating Shin Megami Tensei.
Shin Megami Tensei is the third game in the Megami Tensei series, the first to be released on the Super Famicom and a remake of the second Megami Tensei game to indicate a new beginning for the franchise. It released on October 30, 1992 and unfortunately, did not release in the West until it got an iOS release in 2014, which doesn't even work anymore unless you have a phone using IOS 10 or a previous version. Luckily, there is a fan translation for this game, so you can still play it in English using an emulator. The game apparently didn't release in the West due to its heavy use of religious themes, which led Nintendo to reject a western release. The game released on a lot of other platforms as well (PC Engine, Mega-CD, GBA, iOS/Android), including the PlayStation, which also didn't get a Western release due to a similar veto by Sony.
Shin Megami Tensei is an RPG with first-person dungeon-crawling gameplay and demon-fusing as its core forms of gameplay. You play the Hero that you give a name of your choosing. You are also to give names to a 'Law Hero' and a 'Chaos Hero', as well as a 'Heroine'. The game plays in Tokyo, another factor that makes this game stand out amongst the sea of medieval fantasy JRPGs of the time. It starts in the year 199X. A scientist opened a portal to another world that leads to demons invading Tokyo. You get an email by a guy called Steven, who gives you access to a "demon summoning program", which allows you to recruit and summon them.
You discover that there are multiple factions fighting for control over Tokyo, and that you and your companions have a big role to play in the fate of humanity. First, you have the US military led by ambassador "Thorman", who decide to bring their forces to Tokyo when they hear the news about the demon invasion. They are opposed by Gotou and the "Japan Seld-Defense Forces", who are more keen on using demons. Then there is the resistance led by the 'Heroine', who are there to to prevent conflict between the other two factions. Gotou starts looking for any woman in Tokyo with the same name as this otherwise, to him, unknown 'Heroine', which leads to all women with her name captured. These actions lead to Gotou's faction being "Chaos" aligned. Thorman and the US military look to purge Tokyo from demons, which makes them "Law" aligned, however they do not fear using any methods to accomplish this, as they have atomic bombs aimed at Tokyo as the conflict waits to be escalated.
I don't want to take away much more than this, but understand that you can decide to side with either faction or no faction at all, which is one of multiple decisions in this game that will put you on the "Law", "Chaos" or "Neutral" route. This decision manifests itself in multiple ways. If you are either Law or Chaos, you 1) have to defeat all bosses with the other alignment, but not the one's that have the same as you (Neutral fights both), 2) can only summon demons, if they align with your alignment, 3) have to pay extra to use healing services of the opposing alignment and 4) get a different ending. This is pretty nice and adds plenty of replayability.
There is plenty of story to uncover in this game and it is well told, with the level of maturity present pretty much throughout that is unheard of for games of its time. It is downright depressing to see what happens to the main character and humanity as a whole in this game, and I love it.
Throughout the game, you travel the overworld of Tokyo and go from dungeon to dungeon. There are some optional dungeons you can take on and some dungeons are open to visits before you are supposed to go there, which is neat, but usually there is no point in doing so, and it feels like the only reason for why you can go there is because the devs wanted you to get lost.
Dungeons mostly are designed the same. They differ in size, but almost all have simple wall tiles with plain colors and no textures that you traverse in first-person. The same-y look can lead you to getting lost quite a few times, which means opening up the map a whole lot, which can only be done by going to the menu, entering another menu and selecting map, looking at the map, exiting the map, exiting the sub-menu and exiting the main menu. There is a patch to make the map accessible through one button press, but I didn't know this until beating the game, so I was left frustrated by this from time to time.
In dungeons, there are a lot of optional areas you can go to and optional enemies you can fight, which often drop items that you could have skipped otherwise. Your human party members all have levels and stats (Strength, Magic, Vitality, Speed etc.) that can level up as you gain XP. You can also gain 'Incense' items that let you increase stats by one as well, which are often hidden in dungeons at random points. Likewise, other items are hidden as well, like Memory Boards, which you need to give to a character called Steven (who looks like the late Stephen Hawking) to be able to hold more demons in your computer, something that is easily missable.
Your main task though is to find specific characters / items / bosses in dungeons to progress the story. As you navigate the dungeons, you are thrown into random encounters every few steps and engage in battle. First, a quick rant on the encounters. Forget what you know about random encounters in other retro JRPGs. This game is the KING of them. It is ridiculous. Every couple steps you take, a random encounter pops up. Escape, and you are thrown back a couple steps, only to take those steps forward again and get into another random encounter. Some dungeons have a lot of encounters, and some dungeons have even more. It is the #1 thing that keeps me from giving this an otherwise easy "Recommended" seal, because it is that ridiculous.
It helps though that the battle system is relatively fun. You can use physical attacks (sword, gun) with your main character, magic attacks with the other Hero characters and demons that you summon and the assortment of elemental, buff, debuff and ailment attacks that are common in the Megami Tensei series. This game doesn't have the Press-Turn system yet (that gets introduced with SMT III), which is a shame, but it was enjoyable regardless. That said, the high encounter rate and the low XP you get relative to the length of normal fights made me escape a lot of them. Especially around the halfway mark, you get so much XP from frequent boss fights that it didn't make much sense to me to put myself through all of these. Boss fights didn't turn out to be so bad either.
Demon negotiations and fusing is present in this game as well. Obviously, it is much more basic here then in future iterations, but it is just as fun to fuse demons here. Negotiations weren't quite as fun, as most would fail. There are few answers you can give and they appeared to be random, as the same demon would react differently to the same answer at times. Failing didn't always have any negative consequences, but often enough it would allow the demon to get the first hit in.
Overall, the game's loop is fun enough to push you through the game, at least in my opinion, and what will make you want to stick around is its incredible atmosphere and unique story presentation for its time. The Shin Megami Tensei feel is very much present in this game.
Apart from the atmosphere, the other highlight of this game to me was the soundtrack. The soundtrack is the best on the Super Famicom I've heard so far (by far) and likely among the best to ever be released for the console. What Tsukasa Masuko achieved on the Super Famicom is incredible. Pretty much all tracks did a great job of capturing the mood, the battle theme is kick-ass, the Ginza track is an instant classic and the boss theme always had me alert that serious shit was going down.
If you like the Shin Megami Tensei series and are OK with the lack of QoL features present (or not present) in retro RPGs, and if you think you can live with the high encounter rate (emulating allows you to fast-forward, which helps move things along quicker), then this is definitely a game I can recommend to you. Otherwise, probably not, though I myself am very glad to have played this and am looking very much forward to the sequel that released in 1994.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Engaging apocalyptic story with multiple memorable moments
Three different route options which impact the ending and your allegiance with characters
Fittingly depressing scenario that adds to the overall atmosphere
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Addicting gameplay loop of exploring, battling and demon negotiation & fusing
Lots of strategic choice in battle
Navigating dungeons can become confusing
Encounter rate is RIDICULOUSLY high. Think of high it could be for the entire game, double that number, and that's how many encounters a dungeon has
Demon negotiations can become frustrating, as you fail most of the time
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting
Easily one of the best soundtracks on the Super Famicom, simply amazing
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
Dark and atmospheric visual style
Lots of unique demons with varied designs
You spend most of the game staring at texture-less wall tiles
Dungeons graphically only distinguish themselves through color of the tiles
Easy to get lost / be forced to open the map due to sometimes confusing, similarly designed areas
Few animations, majority of battles and cut scenes play out with quasi-still sprites on-screen
ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Incredibly atmospheric in terms of visual style, soundtrack and overall theme
Staring at pretty much the same wall tiles for most of the game does take its toll on immersion
CONTENT | 7/10
30-40 hours to beat
Many mandatory and more than a couple optional dungeons and bosses
Plenty of demons to fuse and battle
Most dungeons have no texture and look very similar
Encounter rate should have been lowered, even if that would have shaved off 5-10 hours off the game's overall length
The game makes up for that with three routes you can take, which adds replayability
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Leveling up to get stronger, face bigger challenges and be able to fuse better demons is a fun loop
Around the half-way mark, most enemy encounters can be skipped, as the time spent for the XP gain is not worth it due to the high number of bosses that give you a lot of XP
Encounter rate didn't have to be so high as a result
Some dungeons are hard to navigate and some have an annoying "fog" gimmick that makes this even worse
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
Atlus imprinted their DNA into this game so well that it sticks out all these years later
The first SMT game I'd deem approachable for non-hardcore RPG fans
Very unique in terms of theme (religious themes, use of Norse mythology etc.) and demon fusion system compared to pretty much every RPG out there at the time, especially on the Super Famicom
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replayability thanks to three routes you can take
Your alignment impacts gameplay in a lot of ways as well
High encounter rate is the one problem that makes replaying the game less appealing
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 78/100
(This is the 77th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)