Every day I open Youtube lately, I watch at least one video about Shin Megami Tensei franchise. I'm intrigued about the main series since the announcement of Shin Megami Tensei V and SMT III: Nocturne this year. I'm already a Persona fan and I already played some games that are not in the main series, (namely Devil Survivor,) but I haven't played any main SMT title yet.
Not sure if I'm going to buy Shin Megami Tensei IV first or wait for the current gen release of Nocturne. I might even emulate the older games in the series but I rather do that only if I don't have any games in my backlog which isn't the case right now.
One thing I noticed while watching all these videos, is that SMT main series might be my thing. You see, I love light hearted stories and Persona 4 has one of the best balances between the dark and light themes. But Devil Survivor had one of the best stories with real stakes I ever played in a game, (so much that I wanna buy the Overclocked version to play it again.)
Devil Survivor is said to be the closest game of the spin-off to the stories of the main Shin Megami Tensei titles, so I have high expectations on how these stories would be in the main series.
The alignment system decides the endings in a Shin Megami Tensei game, and the more I watch, the more interesting this alignment system seems to me. Persona games doesn't have it, (and I like that it doesn't because the endings of Persona games are more natural this way.)
Devil Survivor had eight endings but you can choose which ending you want to get in the last day depending on which characters are still alive by then. If every character with an ending is alive, you can choose any of them at that point. I don't think that's how main SMT endings work...
I don't know if all characters with endings can stay alive until the last day in Devil Survivor, a google search didn't give me an answer. Considering some of the main characters are killing each other depending on the choices of the player, I think it's highly unlikely that you can save every one of them in a single playthrough.
So, since we only have one trailer for Shin Megami Tensei V which didn't show any gameplay. Since Nocturne won't release this year outside of Japan. I'm watching videos about earlier games in the franchise, taking care to not get spoiled on any game, but get the feel of the series as whole. (Be it the main SMT stuff, or spin-offs like Persona or Devil Summoner.)
So I'm going to list some of the videos I liked since I began doing this last week:
What Is & Isn't Shin Megami Tensei | MegaTen Explained: This video was very informational and fun. If you're only into the franchise because of Persona, you HAVE to watch this because it tells you how Persona is only a tiny bit of Megami Tensei. While providing a complete history for the franchise~
The Devil Summoner Experience: This game was never released outside of Japan, so this kind Youtuber decided to narrate his playthrough of the game. The video is very short (considering he narrated the whole game in one hour.) This is one game in the franchise I'm glad I spoiled on myself!
Why I Love Shin Megami Tensei: This guy compares SMT with every other RPG he played and why it's (for him) better! I do agree with many of his points~
Finally, I heard that Shin Megami Tensei is anti-religion so I want to make my stance clear about this! I don't like that you have to fight God in some of the games. (You also have the option to do that in most of them even if you don't have to do it.) I don't even like how (Arch-)Angels have been depicted in this franchise.
But I'm also good at separating games and reality in my mind. SMT challenges me in ways that make me question things about religion, research them and make my faith a bit stronger, though you must not take it at face value for this to happen to you.
What do you think?