How far did you get: One completion, Chaos ending, 56 hours
The Shin Megami Tensei series is known for a lot of things, and SMT IV upholds nearly all of them. It's apocalyptic, dark, mature, and painfully hard. If your only experience with the series is the spin off Persona games or Devil Survivor games, you're going to get a slightly different experience here. SMT IV isn't really about it's individual characters so much as it is about the big picture. What you're doing to the world around you is much more important than what you're doing to your friends.
The game starts off a bit slow and very unlike a Shin Megami Tensei game. The very first thing that happens in the game will actually be very familiar to anyone that has played the first SMT title, but after that quick intro, you'll be spending most of your time in the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, a 1400s Japanese land filled with castles and Samurai. Fortunately, you find out that a Samurai's duty has more to do with killing demons with a futuristic armband and summoning your own demons than it does with swords and ancient Japan. You become one of these Samurai, and head to a cave full of demons with your fellow Samurai. The other Samurai, while not particularly interesting people, are key to the game in that agreeing with certain friends on certain issues determines your alignment, and ultimately, the ending you'll get when you finish the game.
Everything really opens up when you reach Tokyo. I don't want to spoil any more of the game, so we'll leave it at that, but I'll say that Tokyo is absolutely nothing like the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, and you'll be glad for it.
While the story is interesting, the game really shines in it's combat. It uses the press turn system, so if you've played Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne or the newer Persona games, you should be fairly accustomed to the battle system. It's really simple on paper: exploit weakness, and get more turns. It gets more complicated when you have attacks that hit all of the enemies, and you fight new enemies that have weaknesses you don't know about yet. The battles as fast as you want them to be, but animations are smooth and quick so they can be quite fast if you already know what you're doing. Different attacks result in different death animations, some of which are pretty cool looking.
The game has it's ups and downs when it comes to how it looks. Outside of battle, you run around in a 3rd person perspective though some pretty elaborate dungeons. It also has this pretty cool system where you can jump up or down into certain areas, which is new to this series. The bad part is how simplistic the battles look. The art design on the demons is actually really good (most of the time), but you'll still never forget that you're playing a 3DS and looking at 2d sprites. When you talk to the demons, you'll see hand drawn versions of them, which usually look pretty amazing and a lot better than the on screen sprites.
Speaking of talking to demons, that's another really awesome aspect to battle. It's a really deep system with a lot of choices. The most important aspect of talking to demons is recruiting. It's basically like Pokemon, but a lot more fun. Instead of just throwing a ball at your enemy to make them your friend, you have to convince them through conversation that it would be worth it to them. Considering you're trying to convince demons to join you, you'll definitely have some pretty wacky conversations. The different demon races all have different attitudes, so while buttering up one demon might work, it might piss off another demon. In addition to scouting and recruiting, you can also ask them for money and items, as well as trying to convince them to stand down and let you go. These can be useful when you're not sure if you can beat a demon, or a fight is going badly.
Oh, and fights will go badly. SMT IV is not only hard, it's at it's hardest right at the beginning of the game. You don't have any demons right off the bat, and you'll need to fill your roster as soon as possible. The game doesn't make it very clear that it's necessary to do that, though if you're a Shin Megami Tensei veteran, you'll know already. When you die, you're sent to the River Styx, where Charon will resurrect you for a price. After dying twice, you're given the option to lower the difficulty. Most newcomers will do this, and most veterans will refuse. The game also allows you to save anywhere. This is the first Shin Megami Tensei title to allow you to do any of those things, so theoretically it should be one of the easier Shin Megami Tensei titles, though it certainly never felt like it.
It's difficult to get bored with SMT IV. For the first time in the series, you have a quest list. It's split into main quests and challenge quests. Challenge quests are basically side quests, and you'll spend most of the game doing these. If you're not doing quests, you can work on increases your demon compendium, or fusing them for better demons. When not doing that, you can work on leveling your characters and demons, so you can create higher level demons and get more app points. Apps are a new feature to the series as well. By using app points, you upgrade your armband and open all kinds of possibilities, like increasing the amount of demons you can hold, regaining hp and mp as you walk, and increasing your dialog options when talking to demons.
On the more negative side of things, the Tokyo map is a total pain to get around, and it's not particularly nice to look at, either. You eventually get to option of flying around the map, assuming you do the right challenge quest, but it comes really late in the game. For most of the game, you'll be controlling a little peg on a map that does not have clear paths at all.
Even worse is the DLC for this game. New small bits of DLC is released every week for this game, and very little of it has impressed me. I preordered the game at Gamestop, and received an armor set. If you equip the armor set at the beginning of the game, it makes you weak to physical attacks, and you'll never survive. Thanks a lot, Gamestop! In addition, Atlus released 3 booster DLCs where you get pretty much unlimited access to experience points, app points, and macca (money). If you want to completely ruin your SMT IV experience, try these out. They completely ruin the challenge. I did enjoy some of the armor sets, but I do not approve of releasing DLC where you can max level your main character in an hour.
I don't really think SMT IV is the Shin Megami Tensei game I would recommend to a newcomer to the series due to it's extreme difficulty, but it's going to make a lot of veterans really happy. It's not quite as good as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, but the demon collection, dark story and addictive battle system are enough for me to give this game a thumbs up.
Rating: 91/100
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