in my review of smt if... i said some backhanded remarks regarding my experience playing the first Shin Megami Tensei. to a degree, i still stand by those statements, at least in the situtation i originally played the game in. i thought the game was slow, grindy, exceedingly archaic, had one of the worst final dungeons of any RPG i'd ever played, and while it had a great atmosphere and character designs that i absolutely fell in love with, i couldn't see myself doing another playthrough for a long time. however, after finishing if... i hungered for more classic dungeon crawling action. SMT2 would be a good option, but i was kind of saving that for another occasion. Devil Summoner seemed like a cool game to check out... if it wasn't for the fact that it still remains untranslated, and i'd already burned myself out on Persona 1, since i'd tried (and failed) to do a Snow Queen run of it pretty recently. this left me with one definite option: i needed to give SMT1 another shot. i knew fully that my original experience had been somewhat tainted in several ways, i'd forced myself to keep playing far past the point of me having fun since i was streaming it, i'd played the Gameboy Advance version for some reason, and i accidentally railroaded myself onto the chaos route, making my playthrough feel incomplete in a lot of ways. i'd been wanting to give the game another chance for a long time, and i figured there was no other time like the present to finally dip my toes back into the pool.

and my god, this time it fully clicked for me. i got completely sucked into Shin Megami Tensei the last couple weeks, which is admittedly why this site update took so long. one of my play sessions went well over 7 hours, that's how into it i got. so what was different this time that made me enjoy it so much more? what do i see in SMT1 that i didn't before? and is it still an archaic, grindy mess? i plan to answer all of these questions tonight, because they've been eating away at me just as much as they've been eating away at you.

just like if..., there's a couple facts i wanna lay down before we hop into the real review. one, for my recent replay, i chose the PlayStation version. i considered playing the original SFC version, since i was riding off the coattails of my if... playthrough, but honestly that just boiled down to the fact that the RetroAchievements for the PS1 version looked nicer. i mean, the SFC version's cheevos use clipart for their icons, they look WEIRD. (i also don't like that opening the map isn't bound to a button on the controller, you have to open up your menu, go to your comp, and open up the map that way. that's an actual turnoff for me, i check my map CONSTANTLY) that brings me to my next point, just like with if..., i played with RetroAchievements enabled, so that affected the way i played the game to a degree. last, this technically wasn't a fresh playthrough, i used an old save from when i started playing the game in like, April. i've played the opening hour of SMT1 more times than any human reasonably should, and i really didn't feel like doing it for the 20th time. if you're wondering, i believe the save left off around the time when you arrive in the Shinjuku Mall for the first time. with all that out of the way, let's finally hop into the meat and potatoes.

SMT1, when coming off of the later entries like Nocturne or Strange Journey, can feel pretty weird and archaic. that's probably part of the reason why i didn't mesh with it the first time. however, compared to Megami Tensei 1 and 2 before it, everything is a HUGE step up. being the first entry to be completely detached from the series' origins as licensed games based on a series of novels, it takes this opportunity to set itself in a completely unique setting: modern day Tokyo. i'll say it once and i'll say it again: fantasy is the most boring setting or theme any piece of media can take on to me. i'd rather jump into a pit of barbed-wire snakes than be forced to talk to elves and slay dragons. (unless it's the early final fantasy games) and while MT1 and 2 weren't strictly fantasy, MT1 was treading a fine line, and MT2 is set in a completely apocalyptic Earth, no resemblance to what we'd consider regular life. SMT1, however, opens with you walking around the city of Kichijoji, getting arrested and locked up in a hospital, and exploring a huge ass mall in Shinjuku. i love games set in modern day, the Mother series is my favorite of all time for that exact reason, and i think SMT being set in real-life Japan makes it super unique and cool in that way. i'd imagine it'd be like playing a game, and seeing your hometown be one of the locations you go to, if that makes sense. not even the first two Mother games nail this aspect to me, since they take place in Eagleland, a fictional America-esque place. on top of that, it lets itself separate from the exploits of boy genius/war criminal Akemi Nakajima, instead opting for a new storyline and cast of characters, and i think these are some of my favorites in the whole series.

i've gone on record of saying that the hero characters of SMT1 are my favorite designs in the whole series, and i still stand by that. they go by many names, neutral hero, law hero, chaos hero, Futsuo, Waruo, Toshiki, but to me they'll always be Joey, Stokes and Gus, for neutral, law and chaos respectively. i chose these names pretty much by random the first time i played SMT1, and since then they've become pretty much canon to me. i can't imagine these three being called anything else, honestly. (i also called the heroine Carey, though on this old save she was actually named Cait. for clarity, i'll be calling her Carey for the remainder of the review.) i think their designs are excellent too, i love Stokes' puffy red jacket and luscious locks, he's so fruity. i also really love Gus' camo trench coat and glasses, he looks both geeky and tough at the same time, which wraps perfectly into his motif of wanting to be stronger, and not wanting to look weak. and i absolutely love Joey's green jacket, specifically in the artwork done for the PS1 remake. yes, the original SFC artwork is great in its own ways, i just really love the artwork done in Kaneko's modern style. it's definitely a lot better than what was going on with what he did for the if... remake, that's for sure. and hey- that reminds me, the PS1 version of SMT1 was released in 2001. that is a year after the PS2 was released! and the if... remake was released in 2002, still on the PS1! just thought that was interesting. i also really love Carey's design once she gets revived in the apocalypse, the white cloak with all the red accents is a super good look honestly. actually, something interesting my friend Cate told me a while ago is that all of the designs for characters, demons, pretty much anything with official art, were done as sprites first, and then hi-res art was drawn based on the sprites. Kaneko found this process much easier than drawing the main artwork first, then trying to fit all the details into tiny SFC size sprites, and that's honestly a really smart way to do it. also, i don't know where else to talk about this, so i'm putting it here: i find it so interesting how SMT1 introduces Joey, Stokes and Gus as if they're gonna be your defined party for the entire game, yet pretty soon after getting to Apocalyptic Japan, both of them leave you and Carey becomes your staple party member. Stokes and Gus are drawn away from you by their alignment, and i kinda love that. it's such a bold move for an RPG to just take away your allies like that, and it makes for a pretty impactful story moment later on.

okay, okay, i like the characters, i like the setting, i like the vibes, whatever. what about the GAME? that was my main issue originally, so how did my opinion shift? well, i wasn't being watched this time, for one. yeah, streaming an RPG is strangely stressful, especially one as slow-paced as SMT1. i'm pretty tolerant to The Grind (see my experiences with World of Sloth in if... for more details) so i'm fine with a high encounter rate or needing to gather some more money for equipment when needed, but when you're needing to keep people entertained or keep things interesting, it's a little hard to do that when you're just fighting enemies over and over! although, in this playthrough, i didn't find myself needing to grind at all. i can't seem to recall a single time i felt incapable of taking on whatever the next area had for me, not even in Ginza, which is where most people feel the game slows to a hault. maybe it's just that i'm better at megaten than i was in May, but the game felt way easier than it did before. (though to be fair, that could just be because i knew what to expect this time.)

i mentioned earlier that SMT1 feels pretty different in comparison to the more popular SMTs, and there's one big gameplay reason for that: Demons. in the later games, demons can level up, learn new moves, be bought back from the compendium for easy fusion, and can even teach the protagonist new spells in games like IV. that is not the case here. the demon mechanics are extremely simple here, demons are always the exact same, same level, same skills, same stats, and theres no way to change them. this means that, unfortunately, you (probably) can't keep your Jack Frost from the beginning of the game all the way until the end, he's gonna get outclassed sooner or later, and there's nothing you can do to stop that. i didn't like this at all originally, i found it to be super annoying and limiting, since i tend to get really attached to my demons. however, on this replay, i came around on this aspect of the game, and now i actually kinda like it. it makes you want to try out new demons, it makes you more excited to see what new stuff you can fuse and forces you to use demons you wouldn't otherwise. i always found myself super excited to gather a bunch of new demons in an area, then haul them all back to the Cathedral of Shadows (or the Jakyou Mansion, depending on your dialect) and see what fun new things i could fuse. and just because demons can't level up doesn't mean you can't hold onto them for a long time! i remember for a long stretch in the midgame, i had a Yakshini that was a staple of my party, she was super useful for a long time. same goes for Arahabaki in the lategame, it stayed in my party up until the final battle. and hey, speaking of fusion, sword fusion is such a weird and fun concept. fusing demons with some random sword you find in Shinagawa to make the ultimate weapon is a pretty fun idea, if not a little obtuse to figure out on your own. but it's so rewarding to figure it out and finally make Hinokagatsuchi, which lets you pretty much steamroll the entire rest of the game. i feel no shame using such a powerful weapon, even if it kind of does remove the purpose of making powerful demons and kills any tension a boss fight might have. listen, i love RPGs, but i suck total ass at them. if there's anything i can do to cheese an RPG, i'm taking that opportunity, no questions asked.

with all that said, some of the fusion requirements are pretty fuckin rough. i have this weird obsession with Mara, i think he's such a weird and wack ass design and always try to see him in every Megaten game he's in. (which, for the record, is a lot of them.) there is no big battle against him in his first game appearance, however, instead he's this EXTREMELY late game demon you can only get through triple fusion, and only through fusing three extremely powerful demons. (plus, there's a RetroAchievement attached to fusing him, so i had to go for it.) of course, that isn't too bad, just get some guys out of the compendium with your fat stacks you probably have at this point. except guess what, there's no compendium in any version of SMT1, so you gotta get every demon through negotiation alone. that really isn't too bad when you're just playing the game, but when you're trying to fuse for a specific demon, and especially one as tricky as Mara, it can get fucked up. i spent somewhere around 6 hours of combined playtime trying to recruit and fuse demons just to get Bael, who's only one part of Mara's fusion requirements. the fusion recipe i ended up trying to go for was Bael, Indra, and Tezcatlipoca, and to do this you have to fuse multiple instances of another very high power demon, Lakshmi, which requires triple fusion of other very high power demons, and it was just this endless, painful loop of climbing up/delving down the cathedral to get certain demons, go back to the Cathedral of Shadows, fuse what i needed, rinse and repeat. and once i got all three pieces, i STILL couldn't fuse him, because the calculator was wrong!! for the first time in my whole life! yeah, for whatever reason the SMT1 fusion calculator has some misinformation on how to fuse Mara. here, take it from me, if you want to fuse this guy, all you need is Bael and a Succubus. fuse those two together, and you're good. there was also an achievement for fusing Shiva, who caused problems for an entirely different reason! the actual fusion process isn't all that hard, you just need to fuse Rangda and Barong. however, Shiva is level 88. by the time i had beaten the final boss and gotten all of the extra EXP it gives, i was only level 86, and you can't go back after that, so it wasn't even useful. i was stuck at level 82, and i would have had to grind off of the enemies at either the bottom or top of the cathedral, who give out peanuts worth of experience at this point, like maybe 100 exp max. for reference, to get to level 83, i would have needed 80,000. so i broke a golden rule: i cheated. i know, i know, it's heinous and i should be ashamed. i turned off hardcore mode, gave myself a ton of experience with cheats, saved, and then turned hardcore mode back on again. to be fair, if i hadn't done this, i would have been grinding for maybe 6 years if i was lucky, so i think this was warranted. plus, the main reason i needed to grind at all was due to the fact that i missed out on the fiend fights before the flood, and- oh good lord, i need to talk about the fiends, don't i.

okay! so if you're unaware, fiends are a special type of superboss in the megaten series that have become a bit of a series staple. if you've played Nocturne, you'll know them because you got stuck on Matador for like 6 hours of game time. however, in SMT1, 2 and if..., fiends work very differently. instead of being a forced boss battle, fiends have an EXTREMELY small chance of showing up each time you step on a certain square in the map. in SMT1, these squares can be identified because when you step on them, it'll always force an encounter with a certain enemy. take for example, in Shinagawa F1, the bottom right corner of the map has a small room that always has a Rusalka in it. (technically it's not always a Rusalka, sometimes it can be an Archangel but that's also exceedingly rare) once you beat the Rusalka and try to walk back to the square, it just says "Nobody's there." however, on very rare occassions, (1/256, specifically) one of three fiends will appear in its place. these three are the Pale Rider, Daisoujou, or David. and each time you wanna get another chance, you have to reload your save. it's pretty devilish, and it's not like you can just save in front of the room, you have to save at a terminal, then haul your ass all the way to the fiend spot, see if its there, and if it's not then you have to reload your save. and on top of that 1/256 spawn chance, there's ANOTHER 1/256 chance that the fiend you find will drop a completely unique piece of gear. this means your chances of getting any of the unique equipment is a 1/35566 chance per attempt. that's FUCKED. besides the fiends, i also mentioned that sometimes another unique enemy can spawn in certain spots, and there's three of these. Bigfoot can appear in the Echo Building's 2F fiend spot, Backbeard can appear in Ginza's fiend spot, and Archangel can appear in Shinagawa's fiend spot. unlike the fiends, these guys are way less iconic, and they're such an obscure corner of SMT as a whole. again, these three are completely unique to their specific fiend spots, and the chance you'll ever see them in casual play is so low that i didn't even know about them until i saw that you got achievements for seeing them. Archangel ate the best out of these three, since SMT1 he's been a staple of the mainline series and i'd say he's achieved iconic status. Backbeard has veteran roots as they appeared in Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II, and ended up making a handful of appearances in some spinoffs like Last Bible III, Majin Tensei II, and Devil Children. Bigfoot, though? he's completely exclusive to this game and this game alone. funny, considering he's the most iconic cryptid, at least in America. what's even weirder is that his representation here is... strange. he's classified under the "Machine" race, and his sprite is a recolor of the Wendigo, having Jade hair and blue skin, instead of the red hair and pink skin. in the GBA version, which has a demon database, (sort of like a compendium except it's only for information, you can't summon anything from it) they say that Bigfoot originated in Tokyo, is a bio-robot created by demons, it was fused with a low level ghost, and serves as the demons' henchman. ok, what?? nearly 100% of that description of bigfoot is completely wrong! man, bigfoot is SO weird in this game. i know i got kind of derailed here, but i just HAD to talk about this.

alright, let's talk dungeons. this was a big part of my if... review, so it should go without saying that they get their own section here too. and like... honestly, it's a little hard to separate what's a town and what's a dungeon, they're usually pretty intertwined. unlike if..., the world is very interconnected in SMT1, and each area is meant to represent a real location in Japan. it'd stand to reason that, yeah, each area you visit would be a town of sorts, but they had to make dungeons somehow. i do like this idea, turning towns into dungeons, though i think whoever designed these dungeons should calm down and be told that they don't need to use every single tile for something. some of these dungeons feel unnecessarily snakelike and convoluted, some standout examples are Ginza, Shinagawa, and ESPECIALLY the Great Cathedral. good lord, one of my biggest complaints in my original playthrough was just how annoying the Great Cathedral was as a final dungeon, and while i'm certainly more tolerant of it now, it's still objectively a total slog. about 15 floors of colossal size, with paths that really should be connected in way more spots, with no real reason why they're built the way they are. i mean, who approved whatever in-universe architect built this damn thing?? there's so many useless rooms and dead ends, but i need to fill in each blank spot on my map, just in case i missed some treasure! (this is one of those things that RetroAchievements affected on my playthrough, since there were achievements for getting every single item in each eare.) it sort of takes me out of that feeling that these are supposed to be real towns, and just feels annoying. plus, Kongokai and Carey's Mind Dungeon can suck my demonic girl dick, they've got all the same problems but with none of the cool theming.

one dungeon that weirdly stuck with me, however, was Tokyo Disney- er, Destiny Land. at first glance, it seems pretty unremarkable. it's super linear, full of traps that are pretty much just luck checks which either let you pass without harm or inflict you with some annoying status, provides a ton of luck incense, and that's about it. but when you look at it in the context of a real location, that's when it gets interesting. the Messians (or, pretty much the SMT equivalent of Christians) have set up their base of operations in Shinagawa, a real city in Japan, and it seems like they've built a church there, it makes sense. the Gaians, who represent the Chaos faction here, have made their base in fucking... Disney Land. yeah, TDL is the Gaian base, this pretty-in-pink fantasy land. not to say pink should be stereotypically cuddly and cute, of course, it's just funny. it shows that the world really has gone to shit, and people are just taking whatever structures are left in the world and using them for their own purposes. i like that a lot, it's a super cool idea. and i mean, i guess a theme park with a huge ass castle would be a good place to make a hideout, after all. deep within sits Echidna, whose sprite utterly baffled me the first time i saw it. it's so much bigger and more detailed than anything else in the entire game, it really caught me off guard and spooked me. for the longest time i didn't even know what she was supposed to be. a giant woman? a head growing out of the wall? maybe just someone whose really close to the camera? it makes a little more sense when you take a look at her official art, but still, super weird. her name certainly didn't help me to understand either, apparently Echidna is a Greek monster who's the mother of all monsters, but i thought an Echidna was like, what Knuckles is. there's also a minigame in TDL that lets you shift your alignment, which adds to the weird and surreal atmosphere of this area. i like to imagine that someone found one of the attractions that was set up originally in TDL, and converted it into this weird setup that lets you brainwash people into changing what they think about the world, and that's the explanation for how it changes your alignment. that just feels like something the Gaians would do.

this next section is gonna contain some major spoilers, so proceed at your own risk! something i found really weird after finishing the game is that, there isn't really a true final boss. in my first playthrough i accidentally put myself on the chaos path, since i was just choosing whatever i thought was funny, and ended up defeating all the angels in the Cathedral by the end. i remember fully expecting there to be another, final-er boss after Michael, but was pretty disappointed when i walked up to the final balcony and just watched Lucifer fly away and do evil shit. for this playthrough, i instead went for a completely neutral route, and expected it to give me a real final boss. instead, the way they make the neutral route the "true" route is just by making you fight both the law and chaos sides parallel to each other. which like, that is kinda weird, but cool at the same time? in the cathedral, you find Stokes and Gus arguing about which is better, Christianity or Demons. when they see you, they both ask you to go beat up a specific demon they don't like, and in the neutral ending, you kill both. when you return, they're both really pissed off at you for killing their respective sides of the war, and later on in the dungeon, you end up killing both of them as well. it paints the neutral hero as this unstoppable force, not allowing anything to get in his way of what he believes the world needs, and i kinda fuck with that. it's sort of like the true demon ending of Nocturne, by the end you've killed everything in your way, and you're the only thing left alive to stand on top. it's kind of a bittersweet ending, i love it though. it brings me back to that point i made earlier about the game not being afraid to take away who you thought were your friends, having you fight them near the end has you questioning if what you're doing is really the right thing.

in conclusion, is Shin Megami Tensei worth your time in this day and age? yes! i would say it is! it does have its rough patches, ESPECIALLY in that final dungeon, but overall i think it holds up very well. it's a very simple game in a lot of regards, the demon system, the story, the gameplay, but it's never to a fault. the demon recruitment and fusion mechanics are more barebones than the later entries, but are still a lot of fun once you get used to how it all works. the story may not be as intricately woven as the later games, but i still think the themes and things it has to say are very intriguing all the same. and to be honest, i think i genuinely do prefer the first person dungeon crawling over the 3D walkaround stuff the later entries end up doing, at least in a gameplay sense. i find there's a lot less fluff in a dungeon that way, yet there's still a lot you can do in terms of puzzles and interesting design. (if you ask me, Persona 1 was the peak of the first person dungeon crawling style, at least of the games i've played in the series.) now, which version do i recommend? well, i would say if you're just beginning with the series, definitely go for the PS1 version. it's got a lot of quality of life improvements such as spell and item descriptions, snappier movement, 3D dungeons, and a more up to date fan translation. however, i recently began another playthrough of the SFC version with a patch that lets you open up the map with the shoulder buttons, and honestly? it plays fairly well, all things considered. plus, you get that iconic soundtrack and a completely different aesthetic that the PS1 version simply can't replicate. every area in the SFC version looks like an office building, i love it. and if you want to truly feel no happiness in life (outside of a few extra story cutscenes and a "compendium") play the GBA version! i still regret choosing this as my first choice. it technically uses the most official translation, since it ports over the script used in the iOS port, the only way SMT1 was ever officially released in the west, but good god does it butcher everything else. rancid compositions of the soundtrack, extremely rough visuals (which im pretty sure are just screenshots of the PS1 version crunched down onto the GBA) and a pretty ugly font all add up to a port that is not a fun time! if you want something more unique (and can read Japanese) i'd recommend looking into either the Sega CD or PC Engine ports. these have a ton of different graphical changes, as well as completely different soundtracks. i wish there were fantranslations for these, because they look really fascinating, however i'm fully aware that that's kind of a pipe dream in the grand scheme of things. any which way, you really can't go wrong with Shin Megami Tensei, it's awesome.