I love this game, it's great in every way. Overclocked is even better, but this version is special to me because it's how i discovered SMT when i was like 12.

I found out about it in a Club Nintendo magazine, the reviewers compared it to Death Note and TWEWY. At that time i didn't play RPGs (now one of my favorite genres), i found them boring except for Pokemon. I imagined cliche plots about medieval fantasy with magic crystals and prohpecies and shit, i was not into it at all (kinda funny considering Dark Souls has a medieval fantasy setting and it's currently my favorite game of all time).

But Desu 1 taking place in modern times and fighting using demons caught my attention and decided to play it.

I still remeber the first time i booted it up. It was night, i was playing it with headphones and hidden under my sheets. The fucking intro theme and text SCARED me enough to turn it off, i had to start playing it the next day in the morning.

A bit of context:

1) I used to be a MASSIVE pussy, like, i was not able to beat 1-1 in Re4 because i was too scared to progress. I couldn't handle scary shit AT ALL. I would eventually get over it years later by exposing myself to that stuff until it didn't scare me anymore. Now i love horror games and can play them without any issue but the side effect is that nothing scares me wich also kinda sucks :/

2) I grew up in a VERY religious family, one that ate up all the satanic panic garbage up. For example i couldn't play Doom because they tought it would LITERALLY SUMMON DEMONS to our house. And of course i believed it.

So yeah, not only the intro scared me to death, i also felt like i was doing something wrong.

Anyways, i loved it and i sucked really really REALLY bad at it, this was my first non-pokemon RPG, and it's not an easy one regarldless of your experience. Horrible teams, terrible stat spread for the MC, fucked up every event, getting stuck for months in a few bosses, getting the bad ending, getting the not-good ending, etc.

But i couldn't stop playing it because i was having too much fun and i eventually mastered it and beat it like a billion times.

It also shaped my taste in media, it improved my english a little bit (just a bit, what i know is self taught and this game and the AVGN were one of my main learning tools), and Naoya's edgyness was my first step to questioning religion.

It's probably the most important game i played in my life for all the effects it had later, it literally made my life better. It also helped me discover the Persona series, and Kanji's Social Link was ANOTHER thing that had massive influence in my early teens and made me a happier person.

Thank you for everything edgy japanase game with gravity defying boobs.