Who's the real demon? Let's Play Shin Megami Tensei!

So, Shin Megami Tensei. If those random collection of Japanese words meant enough for you to click on this topic, you probably already know a bit about the series. Or maybe you just saw my name under the title, and decided to read it just because you like reading everything I have to write. In which case, hi Mom! Stop stalking me! It's creepy!

As for the rest of you, you may know the series as those JRPGs Atlus keeps bringing over, including such pieces as the Persona series, the Digital Devil Saga games, and the Devil Summoner entries. Some of you may be expecting that, since Shin Megami Tensei is the prefix to almost every game in the series that has been brought to America, I'm going to be LPing the progenitor of the line, the first game in the Megaten franchise. Well, I'm not. Shin Megami Tensei may be the first game in the series produced by Atlus after they acquired the rights for the IP, but Namco produced two games for the Famicom before this one, Megami Tensei I and II, already laying down plenty of the Megami Tensei series's foundation.

The first game is loosely based on the Digital Devil Monogatari series of light novels by Aya Nishitani. The light novels have become less and less relevant to the series as time has gone on, but the central concept that stuck with many of the early entries is the idea of using computers to communicate with, summon, and control demons. And much like your hipster neighbor, Megami Tensei was doing the monster collection thing long before Pokemon made it mainstream. Throughout many games in the series, the recruitment of your enemies is the primary means of building your party. These demons can then be retrieved from wherever you're storing them to fight alongside you in battle, each with their own specialized skills and properties. “Demon”, of course, using the old context of the word that's still commonly applied to the equivalent in many languages, as being living things that are somehow beyond the typical perspective of our world. This use of the term has no regard to whether the being is sacred or infernal. We're going to be seeing that tag applied to both angels and denizens of the underworld, as well as gods and minor mischief makers from folklore. The series typically draws most of it's enemies and bosses from folk tales, mythology, demonology and religion, and Shin Megami Tensei is no different. The Megami Tensei IP is typically more faithful in their representations than most other games (i.e. Shiva is not a naked ice woman) but artistic liberties are definitely taken. Fusion, taking two or more of your demons and smushing them together until a new one pops out is a major part of nearly every Megaten game as well.

Otherwise, the Megami Tensei series is one with a lot of variation. Including all the side series, which comprise most of the franchise, the Megaten series includes games with a large focus on basic dungeon crawling as well as those with the plot as the most major player, strategy rpgs as well as games utilizing active combat, and children's games along with those whose themes and concepts a typical child could not hope to grasp.


Shin Megami Tensei, meanwhile, came before Atlus started experimenting with the formula. It uses the same nuts and bolts as its Namcot-developed predecessors, making similar updates and refinements to the series' mechanics as one might expect from a videogame sequel of the time. What this entry does bring to the table (aside from the jump to 16 bit), is a new level in integration of the plot. The story's not grand or epic by any means, this is before Final Fantasy IV came along and changed what it meant to be an RPG, but it's definitely not an excuse plot, either. And while Megami Tensei II may have carried a plot that had a decent amount of play in the game already, Shin Megami Tensei brought a host of new elements to the gameplay/plot interaction. This game bears an alignment system (more on this after it becomes relevant) long before such things became common and actually involves some nuance in each side, rather than just having the typical good vs. evil choices. It also carries along a branching plotline, again while such things were very rare in video games. And... well, I'm not going to completely spoil the game in the introduction, so you'll just have to read along the LP.


My own introduction to the series, if you can call it that, came when I was but a young cub in 1996, with Jack Bros. for the Virtual Boy. I then proceeded to ignore all things SMT for ten years. With all the Megaten games available in America by 2006, you might think that I had picked up one of those offerings, but no, it was this game you'll be reading about in just a minute. I was moving towards the latter side of my college years, and had thought it would be a good idea to follow up on random classified ads and rent a house with five other men and women I had never met before. Yeah, I wonder about myself too, sometimes. It wasn't all bad, though! I was firmly set in my “Japan is the holy land” phase, and one roommate at least knew Cowboy Bebop was, so he and I managed to get along. Turns out he had already been experienced the Nipponophile affliction through his older brother, and we bonded over several items he had “borrowed” from said brother's collection, including an uber-1337 modded SNES and a collection of Japan-only games, including Shin Megami Tensei. I wish I could say I immediately fell in love with it. That'd be a much better story, right? But, it was not to be. The game's inaccessible enough when you can read the text, and...we weren't smart enough to look online for a translation guide. For months, we'd occasionally try to trial and error our way through, but it wasn't exactly a good time. Some months down the line, we did discover the magic of the internet, and were able to progress farther with the help of those guides, but still not enough to come close to completing the game.

It wasn't until I graduated college that I was able to fully delve into this game. Rather than doing the sensible thing and getting a job, I had instead committed myself to a full-time Americorps volunteer contract in the middle of nowhere, meaning I'd have no money and nothing around to keep me easily entertained. My friends graciously started up Operation Sleepy Winter, and gave me a series of graduation presents designed to keep me entertained over the next year. That former roommate gave me his brother's copy of Shin Megami Tensei and that Super Nintendo, which I thought was much cooler before I realized the modification was just taking out those plastic tabs next to the cartridge reader. Now that I had absolutely nothing else to do, I really fell into the game. The game is definitely old school in design, but the challenges and strategic requirements were a perfect fit with me over that period, and I really enjoyed the demanding and deep gameplay and the atmosphere. I went through it several times over the course of that year, and still replay it every once in a while. Even now, playing through it again gives me fond memories of that time when it was just me and that game living in the most basic of houses in the most basic of land.

Yeah, that's probably enough big blocks of background. TITLE SEQUENCE ENGAGE!

The game opens with a spinning summoning circle that rises up to greet us. As the series hadn't developed the Pentacle of Solomon-inspired design for its logo yet, this seal serves as the game's main image, being the only non-text piece on the cartridge's label and being the first thing we see upon booting up the game. It uses at its base the Seal of Solomon; the Star of David, or two overlapped triangles, surrounded by two circles. This seal was the design on a ring that was handed to Solomon the King by the archangel Michael, which Solomon used to bind and command the demons that were restricting the building of a great temple. The Seal of Solomon is commonly used in demonology to either protect people or trap and restrain demons, and is often filled with other religious symbols, much like it is here. This seems ironic, but keep in mind that throughout the medieval period, much of demonology was passed on through books and other textual works. In many parts of the world, the clergy and others associated with churches made up a high proportion the few who could read, and were the ones who reproduced most of the books of the time. As such, many grimoires were both used and distributed by the religious, in spite of what the church may or may not have been doing against it, and it's not surprising that many popular grimoires held a religious influence, if they were not written for the purposes of some religion in the first place.

In this case, we've got several things here implemented in the Seal of Solomon. In between the two outer rings, we have the words Quod Inferius and Quod Superius, alongside Macroprosopus and Microprosopus. Quod Inferius is Latin for “That Below” and Quod Superius means “That Above”, obviously referring to Heaven and Hell. Macroprosopus and Microprosopus could refer to a couple of things in regard to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, but the meanings that seem most appropriate here are the “realm of potential” (for Macroprosopus) against the “realm of the actual” (Microprosopus). And you have two cross pattées separating words at the top and bottom of the circle, which hold similar connotations to the common Christian cross. Inside the circles, we've got three references to God. At the top and bottom of the interior, the letters spell out AGLA, a common acronym used in exorcism for the Hebrew words Ateh gibor leolam Adonai, meaning “You are powerful and eternal, Lord.” There are also the symbols for Alpha and Omega, a common name for God, and inside the Star of David, “Tetragrammaton” is spelled out, another common name for God. In the center of it all is Loki, Norse trickster god and primary antagonist of the first Digital Devil Monogatari novel. Assumedly, he's here representing the general demon, signifying the summoning and commanding of demons that makes up a large part of Shin Megami Tensei's gameplay. Anyways, this sigil, minus Loki and everything within the outer rings, also shows up in the areas where you fuse demons within the game.

If you're interested in stuff like this, Zef's got a good write-up covering this seal, the series' logo and a bit on their relevance to the greater mainline SMT mythos here.


Shin Megami Tensei takes place in the year of totally not 1999.

Then we go to some coding. Assumedly, this is executing the demon summoning program that becomes so important to the game.


That's interspersed with pictures like these. We'll be seeing these people later in the game, with actual context. I could cut them out of this and probably not lose anything, but I figure some of you have the attention span of eight year olds and need to see some pictures to keep your interest after the above text bomb. You can't really tell in this shot, but he's working on a computer.


If I know my hex code (I don't), the power to bind, summon, and command demons requires a mere 8 kilobytes of ram. You could run it off of your Game Boy.

What exactly are those things in the background wearing?


And here we have a prayer ripped from the Grimoire of Armadel. I have little idea what it says, although it uses several names for God and brings up that AGLA again. I would guess that it's calling upon God either for protection or wisdom, just from the nature of grimoires of that period.


The original Japanese version reads “Shin. Digital Devil Saga.” Seems kind of an odd thing to change in the translation, but oh well.

And with that, the title sequence closes, and we can start the game proper.

Let's begin.

Some people say some dreams are just special. That you can tell the future, or connect with other dreamers, or even let your spirit fly off, leaving your body behind. They also say that when you have one of those special dreams, you just know. I don't know how much I buy that, but this dream definitely seems to be something different.


For one thing, I'm lucid. Fully aware of this dream, and myself in it. That hasn't happened since I was a kid. I have no idea where I am, no recollection of ever having been here, yet this place seems comfortable somehow, familiar, even as reality seems to shift in waves around me.

Standing around won't get me anywhere, so I walk. I don't know where I'm going. Probably wouldn't do me much good if I did, this place is like a maze It doesn't matter, though. My feet seem to know where to go, carrying me around without my input. As long as part of me knows how to get to the end of this dream, I'm cool with it.


It's all just red. This is a very boring dream! I'm a young man! I should be dreaming of women, and adventure, and other fun stuff! Can I at least have... okay, that's something different.


How rude. Still, it's a simple matter. I tell him my name.


Wait, that was it? All that "You shall not pass!" business just falls away when I mention my name? The wall's just a blazing guestbook!

With that diversion out of the way, I walk some more, going until I spy something in the distance. I can't quick make out what it is, but it does look to be flying... right at me! I try to flee, but... well, you ever have that dream where you want to run away, but you just can't lift your legs from the ground? Yeah.


A flickering... soul? Spirit? Whatever. Something appears on the cross, a cloaked figure forming to its side.


His name seems obvious to me.


Yeah, being strung up on a cross will do that to you.


Whatever floats your boat, man. Not like I know any more about this than you.

So he comes along. Together, we walk some more, until we're stopped again, this time by something grotesque forming in front of us.


Thanks to the strange logic of dreams, again was this name obvious to me. I spoke it, and the demon vanished.

Sorry. Didn't realize you liked being pinned down by demons.


Looks like we've got another member of our merry crew. We walk some more. Not much else to do in this place, really. Eventually...

This dream is starting to look better.

Oh sh-! Hide!


Hey, so now that I know your name, you're going to join my party, right? Right? That's how this dream works?


Oh, so this is one of those kinds of dreams, eh? Well, just let me ditch these guys, and maybe I could join...


DAMMIT, MOM!!!

Right at the best part, too. Friggin' Mom. I try to bring the dream back to me, but no luck. I'm really horrible at remembering these things. This does seem important, however. With my barely functioning morning mind, I try my best to hold on to these memories, but their already slipping away. Maybe if I focus on just the most important things...

That guy on the cross, what was his name? And that one guy that was being picked on by the demon, what was he called? Maybe if I can remember those, more of the dream will be coming back to me.

Oh balls, this is going to be one of those mornings, isn't it? What exactly did I get up to last night? I can't remember my own name. What no-doubt magnificent name do I go by?

Man, I need to go back to bed.

If you guys want, you can build our character's stats, too. I've got my ways I like them to be set up, and I'll probably point the level ups in that direction, because if I let you guys choose everything, some joker would probably make me play with the most gimped characters possible, but I'm happy to let you guys set up their initial build.

Essentially, each of these guys have six stats. They start with five points in each of them, and the game gives us an additional 18 points right away to distribute as we see fit.

The stats we've got to work with are:

Strength- Each human character has two types of physical attacks, swords and guns. Strength affects the attack power of sword attacks and the accuracy of both swords and guns. It also has a small effect on each character's HP. Furthermore, I suspect that higher levels of strength has an effect on demon negotiation. Everyone could make use of good strength, although for some character builds, those points could be spent elsewhere.

Intelligence- This works towards a character's Magic Effect, which determines how well that character would be able to hit enemies with status effects, which is much more useful here than it is in most other RPGs. It also determines a character's defense against magic attacks, contributes to their evasion ability, and plays a huge affect on demon negotiations. Getting allies is going to be a lot harder if we have a moron as our hero.

Magic- You can probably figure this one out. Magical Power, MP, and Magic Effect. Out hero can't use magic, so this is pretty much wasted on him.

Stamina- Defense and HP. Pretty straightforward.

Speed- A character's speed helps them with accuracy and evasion, determines what order they'll act in battle, and, for the hero, determines our chances at running away from battles.

Luck- Luck kind of has a minor effect for everyone but the hero. It gives small boosts to accuracy and evasion. Good luck on the hero affects demon negotiation, our rate of picking up items after battles, our ability to escape, and our chances of getting an extra turn at the start of battle. I think it might have a small effect on how often multi-hit weapons strike, but the difference, if there, is a very minor one.

So, if any of you have any aspects you'd like me to emphasize, feel free to speak up. Although... it might help if you know more of the characters.

So, obviously, since we get to name them, the cross man and the demon meat are going to be joining our party. These characters are differentiated by the magic they learn, and the equipment they can use to a far lesser extant.




Our hero, as stated before, can't use magic. He is instead the keeper of the COMP, that computer on his arm. He is the one who summons the demons, handles all negotiations, and otherwise maintains the team. He can only use physical attacks, meaning the stats that govern those skills are more important for him. Of course, as you saw above, there are some stats that he has unique effects with, and those can't be ignored, either, especially those demon negotiation ones.


Here's the man on the cross. He's kind of the Red Mage of the group, in that he can work well pretty much anyway we develop him. He learns decent magic, primarily force elemental, and tends to learn more useful spells before they're otherwise available. If we choose to develop him that way, he could be a powerful mage. If we choose to make him a bruiser, he'll do well at that, too.


And the man who was the demon's scratching post. He uses fire magic, which... isn't really all that great. He can do some damage with it if you put in enough points, but the other spells he learns aren't all that great, and there are a lot of demons that resist fire spells. His magic will be useful maybe one or two major times in the game, and he'll do just fine then with the five points he starts with. He tends to do best with straight physical attacks.

So... that's our merry crew. Any recommendations on what to do with them?

Law. GO FOR LAW. FOREVER.

(Mostly because of a cool cat over at Brontos. We made him go Chaos.)

McDohl is a man of class and character. LAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Also, Garrison is the canon name for SMT leads, so that has my vote.

Oh, if I remember right, cross guy is the law hero, and demon food is the chaos hero, right?

Hero: Soter (Speed/Stamina mix - make him unkillable)
Cross: Kelso
Weakling: Chow

I'm hoping you go for Neutral, myself, but Law is an option.

Yep.

MC: STAN
Cross guy: IESU
Demon food: MEAT

In the spirit of the other LP

The names can only be Kaneda and Tetsuo

As someone who has never played a game in this or the related series, and had just now read the OP description of it being something like Pokemon + crazy religious references, I seriously thought for two glorious seconds that Jesus himself stepped down off his cross and joined the party as your first monster.

I am disappoint.

Oh, silly. God doesn't join your party in Megaten games! You beat him up.

Unfortunately, he doesn't join up this time. Depending on your views, he does have a possible entry in Persona 3, however.

I'll be having you guys make all the alignment-influencing plot decisions for me. For those of you that are new to the series, I'll be providing some more information of the alignment system later on, but I'm kind of interested in seeing the first major choice being made blind. Suffice to say that we have something a little more nuanced than the typical good/evil metric to deal with in the overall game.

Pfff, no way. There's a million savior figures across world myth, and Messiah is just a generic amalgamation of the concept.

Dude, that'd be weeeeeird.

The power of efficient coding! After all, it needs to fit on a wrist-mounted keyboard, or on the fold-out "barrel" of a gun...

What they don't tell you is that the DLLs for extra modules are murder. They take up nearly 16 Kb each!

Pancho!

Sancho!

Gazpacho!

...wait, what's the character limit we're working with?

Man, I love Kaneko's initial character designs for this game. They're so late-80s/mid-90s! Especially cross guy's BITCHIN' red jacket (I had one just like it ) and they all look very much like survivors from a post-apocalyptic world of technology and magic that got functionally stuck in 199X.

The PSX redesigns... not so much. The mannequin look works very well for Nocturne, DDS, and Raidou, but these guys now look all frail and wispy. Isamu would snap them in half by waving his hat at them.

Hero: Meatwad
Cross: Frylock
Food: Shake

Admit it, this is perfect and you know it.

I'm for You: Eric.

But that sort of means I want Law to be Rince and Chaos to be Lug

Ok, changed my vote. This.

It is! It is! But I'm not sure if "Meatwad" and "Frylock" would fit. Do we have only six characters, or seven?

"Francois" fit in ZedPower's LP, so yeah. 8 characters...at least.

Yeah, we've got 8 characters to work with, so everything so far fits.

The original hero is a little too bland 80's anime for me, but otherwise I'm right there with you. Cross man in particular goes from the calm badass look to being a beanpole. At least his in-game sprite takes after the original drawing.

This gives a new meaning to the term "DLL Hell".

Hero: Eric
Cross guy: Valor
Demon dude: Sten

Hero: DOG
Cross fellow: LEFTPAW
Ungrateful dude: RIGHTPAW

You know, so you can say that the last boss was slain by the RIGHTPAW of DOG.

Winner.

This game is really awesome aside from the >80% of the time when it isn't. I look back at my playthrough and just remember tons of crazy awesome shit that happens. And it's got a really sweet low-rent horror vibe (NPCs appearing right in front of you as you walk around, and all of the sterile areas, especially in 20th century Tokyo). But most of the game is...not fun. I've played Phantasy Star II three times and would play it again before this. But for people who haven't seen this before? This is a treat.

Also, I support Shin MegAqua Teen.

For those of you suggesting the Law alignment path, I really suggest against it unless Winter has a ROM or cart he knows works, because the game will sometimes become unwinnable in the last dungeon, the Cathedral, if you pick Law alignment -- this isn't the case in the Japanese language version, but even after unpatching his ROM a friend of mine still couldn't get the Octopus Whistle, a key item needed to beat the game as a Lawful character. As such, I think Chaos is a good choice, because the Neutral route has already been Let's Played once before (even if it is my preferred alignment).

Also, my vote goes towards using one name from each suggestion. In my case, I'm leaning towards...

Hero: Garrison
Cross Guy: Eric
Demon Food: Shake

Also, are we going to get to name the heroine?

Soteira, from this. I demand pretension.