Guide on how to play a real Shin Megami Tensei game

Welcome to the guide on how to play a real Shin Megami Tensei game, scrub.

In case you dind't know yet, the Persona Series is a spin-off of the Megami Tensei Series, an old franchise based on a japanese novel written back in the 80's that somehow ended up as a giant in the video game industry. Shin Megami Tensei refers to the remake of the franchise made by Atlus when it officially became a video game company.

Besides the Shin Megami Tensei games, also known as main line games, there are a wonderful amount of other spin-off games, some better than Persona even, Persona however ranks easily in the top 3 so I will give you that.

In this guide we will present to you where to go next after you've finished this game and presumably Persona 3 and Persona 5.

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

This is the game you've most likely have heard about when being called a scrub for not knowing that Persona was a spin-off series.

Nocturne was the first contact many people back in the early 2000's had with the Megami Tensei series since the previous titles were Japan-only and therefore is the reason why while Persona fans are all zoomers, SMT fans are all boomers. Nocturne is also the best place for you to start after you are done with Persona since both Persona 3 and 4 (such great games made in a time span of 2 years between eachother, why is early 2000's Atlus such a god send jeez) run on the same engine as Nocturne.

To play Nocturne unless you have a PS2 or Switch lmao, ♥♥♥♥ you nintendo ♥♥♥♥ you don't deserve anything you'll have to download PSCX2[pcsx2.net], feel free to look the guide up on how to do that on the internet and then go to a ROM site and download Nocturne from there and start it up on Hard difficulty (I don't wanna hear "buts", its final). If you finish the tutorial before breaking your computer into pieces due to sheer rage, welcome to Nocturne.




The more important differences between main line and Persona is that:

• Main line and pretty much all other spin-offs have a mechanic called the Press Turn Battle System in which each party is given an X amount of turns during battle, normally its equal to the amount of party members you have but you get turns everytime you land a critical or exploit a foe's weakness. However, unlike Persona, instead of a follow-up attack, in SMT the turns rotate through the party, so if you have 4 turns, and get a critical it means you will stay at 4 turns and at the end your chain of moves your first party member will get to move again. Besides that, if you miss an attack or it gets nullified you lose 2 turns and you can even lose all your turns if you are not careful. Also, unlike Persona, in SMT there's no "Guard" instead you can use "Pass" which doesn't reduce damage but instead of losing 1 turn, you only lose "half" a turn, as in if you Pass twice then you lose 1 turn and makes it so one should think of how to use your turns well instead of just spamming the same attack over and over again.
  
  
• Buffs and debuffs are permanent through the entire battle and SMT is one of the few JRPG franchises where they actual matter a lot, even in Persona since they eventually run out they are only super important for boss fights, but in Nocturne every battle counts and no, you can't run away from battle, that almost never works unless you use an item/skill.
  TLDR, in Nocturne spamming Sukujaka/Sukunda like skills is the equivalent to cheesing a Dark Souls boss.
  
  
• Your party in SMT (mainline at least) are the demons (or Personas as you scrubs call it) that you find and fight in the wild and much like in Persona 5, you can recruit them but they become your actual party members. P.S: Don't forget to never fuse away the first demon you get, its a surprise that will help us later.

To finish this section: Don't forget that you will get your ass kicked multiple times while playing this game, Dark Souls style.

[artturi siikanen]

i would love but the keybinds are too hard to set for left handed dude who uses the arrow keys

[Demistic]

Own it, played it, beat it, beat NG+, beat True Demon Ending, buying the remaster in spring, and even after over 1k hours in it, I love the game to all hell. It's a shame my PS2 died or it'd be over 2k hours... One problem though. Shin Megami Tensei isn't a remake of Megami Tensei. It is a spin off. Persona is a spin-off of a spin-off, freaky.

[Nintenx123]

hail satan, fuck YHVH.

~ this message is brought to you by the hoy bois of SMT4

[Taffy]

>Battling Thor
>Mage Build
of course he got rekt instantly

[Qvnt]

Bring more Macca next time

[Daetherion]

I recently finished Nocturne (actually, 2 days ago) and I must say that it's definetly a experience. A good one. I enjoyed every second of it (EXCEPT the skill inheritance system. That sucks on mid to end game).
Now I bought P4G and plan to do a run on it. Once I experienced the "classic" mechanics, i want to enjoy myself with skill cards, choosable inheritance, and stuff like that.
PD: I prefer the press turn system over the more classical Persona one. It makes combat much more tactical.

[Turahk]

Oh yea bro, the difficulty of looking up stuff at the wiki, a broken tutorial and tripled prices on Hard, random skill inheritance you can't control and buffs that both make the game too easy and are a pain in the ass if you don't spam them.

[HeeHee]

Fun Fact: It's better to start with SMT 4 if you think Persona 4 Golden is hard, since nocturne will kick your ass to the curb even more than it already does. Nocturne is not getting a remaster/remake on steam, only on switch. The games I recommend starting with:

-Nocturne is great for players who thought P4G or any other persona game was either too easy or pretty normal in terms of difficulty, since nocturne will inject fusion calculators into your brain through brute force, since nocturne will kick your ass without getting the right demons.

[HeeHee]

-SMT 4 is good for people who don't want a challenge but still want fun gameplay and want a good story alongside it. SMT 4 isnt too hard, if you ever get stuck in the game, just get the app point dlc or the EXP dlc, but i wouldn't recommend it if you wanna play the game legit, since its kinda scummy to use the DLCs that give you free stuff.

-Digital Devil Saga is great for persona 3 and 5 fans with its dark and sad story and gameplay that is hard but not too hard. Play this if you're a persona fan who want a great story above all things

-Strange Journey and Devil Survivor are great games but they both are kinda weird in terms of gameplay for a modern persona fan. Strange journey is a 1st person dungeon crawler with a focus on story, meanwhile Devil survivor is a turn based strategy game that makes grinding want to tear my fucking eyeballs ou-

[Stain]

That's a guide I would call passive aggressive