Introduction

Also, naming etc. was originally going to go to a vote but I played a bit too far for that to be a good idea. So, I hope you like the names from the Steven Report; I could have used other names, sure, but on the whole I like those names the best out of all the pseudo-official ones (even if one of them is completely ridiculous).



Ah, Atlus. Quite possibly my favourite development company to date. You may know them from such games as Trauma Centre or, more recently, Catherine. You may, however, know them primarily more for another prominent series...



This one; Megami Tensei. Starting with the Digital Devil Story horror novel by Aya Nishitani, it spawned a very long lasting line of RPGs, that has been around almost as long as Dragon Quest and mere months less than Final Fantasy. The first of these, Digital Devil Monogatori: Megami Tensei, was released for the Famicom and even then only in Japan. It was released by Namcot, though, whilst Atlus merely developed it. That's not important though; we won't be concerning ourselves with that today, mainly because even though I have beaten it I just blundered through a lot and finished it with sheer luck not skill since I don't understand Japanese at all (fortunately, a translation is apparently being worked on albeit slowly). So, let's skip Monogatori 1 and 2 and, instead, head to this wonderful little thing; Shin Megami Tensei. Yes. the very first one. Easily my favourite SNES game, though that really doesn't mean much since the only other real contender is Mega Man 7.

Anyway, released in 1992 for the SNES, Shin Megami Tensei (or, True Goddess Reincarnation if you're into overly literal translations) was later ported to various systems including the Sega CD, Gameboy Advance and the Playstation. The game itself is a very classy first person dungeon crawler with the main allure not being the plot but the awesome as hell soundtrack, semi-unique battle system and many, many well researched mythology references. Ever since I was but a wee child, I've been interested in mythological tales and such (I, personally, blame Disney for making Hercules so damned awesome) though as I grew older that interest waned. And then, a good 5 years ago whilst browsng eBay for PS2 games as I was want to do, I stumbled across one entitled Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call. I didn't buy it, but the box art stuck out to me (I swear the European box art for that game is way better than what the US has) and come 2008 I recognised it when I was looking in an actual shop and got it suprisingly cheap to say it wasn't a used copy. Point being that I loved the hell out of that game, difficulty and all - Matador is fun as hell even when you don't cheese him dammit - and realising that "hey, these guys are from Greek/Roman mythology and stuff" it single-handedly rekindled an interest I had long ago. And then I noticed that it was the third game in the series and was intrigued as hell. And then I became a slave to Atlus for life (I just wish they'd actually release things in Europe more often! At least Devil Survivor and Strange Journey were DS games so I could import them).

...Needless to say, the Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole if we include all the various spin-offs is, by far, my favourite set of games to ever be devised. Even if we count each of them as a seperate entity they'd all (mostly) rank fairly highly. I can't really speak for Devil Summoner since King Abaddon never got released here, and - yes - Demi Kids is pretty bad but in a comical way. The only game I genuinely dislike is IMAGINE, and even then I don't feel like I really gave it a fair chance (I pretty much just gave up after doing the tutorial twice; that is just really, really dumb design).

Anyway, as for THIS game? Oh god, is this game fun. I cannot stop playing whenever I start. Whilst I love the hell out of games like Persona 3, Digital Devil Saga, Devil Survivor etc. they just lack something that this game doesn't. I can't quite put my finger on it; don't get me wrong here, they're all games I can play over and over again and not get bored of but they just aren't quite so immersive as this. I can start playing this intending to only play for, say, half an hour or so and before I know it a good 2-3 hours have passed (this totally happened even when I was grabbing stuff for this thread). Conversely, if I try to play, oh I don't know, Persona 4, I start to find it gets a bit repetitive after maybe an hour. Of course, the first time through this never holds true (when I got DDS1, the first time I even put it in my PS2 I ended up playing for 10 hours at once without realising it).

Anyway, enough with the preface stuff that you probably won't (have) even read. Let's get on with the show! Note that updates are being hosted off-site since I expect some of the later pages (and mayhap the earlier ones too) to become extremely image heavy otherwise and it could potentially get to the point where it actually becomes a chore to read the thread.

Table of Contents

• Chapter I. Concerning the Divine Love Which Ought To Precede the Acquisition of This Knowledge
• Chapter II. Of The Days And Hours And Of The Virtues of The Planets
• Chapter III. Concerning the Arts
• Chapter IIII. The Confession to be Made by the Exorcist
• Chapter V. Prayers and Conjurations
• Chapter VI. Stronger And More Potent Conjuration
• Chapter VII. An Extremely Powerful Conjuration
• Chapter VIII. Concerning the Medals Or Pentacles, And the Manner of Constructing Them
• Chapter IX. Of the Experiment Concerning Things Stolen, And How It Should Be Performed
• Chapter X. Of The Magical Virtue Of The Soul, And The Mediums By Which It Acts
• Chapter XI. That There Is A Threefold Keeper Of Man, And From Whence Each Of Them Proceed
• Chapter XII. Of The Mixtures Of Natural Things One With Another, And The Producing Of Monstrous Animals...
• Chapter XIII. How Man's Mind May Be Joined With The Mind Of Intelligences And Celestials
• Chapter XIV. Of The Annoyance Of Evil Spirits, And The Preservation We Have From Good Spirits
• Chapter XV. The Great Virtues Of Numbers, As Well In Natural Things As In Supernatural
• Chapter XVI. Another Way Of Making Characters, According To The Cabalists
• Chapter XVII. There Is Another Kind Of Characters, Or Marks Of Spirits, Which Are Received Only By Revelation
• Chapter XVIII. Of The Spirit Of The World
• Chapter XIX. Of The Seals And Characters Impressed By Celestials Upon Natural Things
• Chapter XX. Of Places Wherein We May Convenietly Execute the Experiments and Operations of the Art
• Chapter XXI. Concerning Sacrifices To the Spirits, And How They Should Be Made
• Chapter XXII. Of Wax and Virgin Earth
• Chapter XXIII. Of the Light, And of the Fire

Bonus(?) Content

• I Am Totally Pro Honest [Execution Site Fuck Up Edition]
• Chapter IX. Neutral Event
• Chapter IX. Chaos Event
• The Power of Hinokagutsuchi [The Best Weapon]
• Chapter XVI. Chaos Event
• Longinus v. An Angel [Optional Boss 1: Kazfiel]
• The Lord of the Flies [Optional Boss 2: Beelzebub]
• Chapter Typhoeus [Chaos Ending]
• Chapter Revelation [Law Ending]

Soundtrack

The music for this game is amazing. Kenichi Tsuchiya Tsukasa Masuko (thanks Skychrono!) did a damned good job on it; the tracks linked in the updates (and down here) are from the Shin Megami Tensei Sound Collection CD which is, insofar as I am aware, the closest thing there is to an OST for the first two games.

01 Title Demo
02 Title
03 Dream
04 Home
05 Pascal
06 Lucky Temple
07 Arcade Street (version used in the game)
08 Neutral
09 Embassy
10 Shop
11 Terminal
12 Castle of the Four Gods
13 Encounter
14 Battle
15 Level Up
16 Law
17 Silver Mint
18 Pagan Castle
20 Shuu Valley
21 Boss
22 Game Over
23 Castle Ruins
24 Chaos
25 Cathedral
26 Epilogue (oddly named, isn't it?)
27 Ending
28 Evil People

Character Art

Some of this is taken from the ever-so-useful MegaTen wiki... but most of it is taken from Kaneko Works Volume I.

Protagonist A
Protagonist B
Protagonist C
Heroine A
Heroine B
Law Hero A
Law Hero B
Law Hero C  Messiah 
Law Hero D  Messiah 
Chaos Hero A
Chaos Hero B
Chaos Hero C
Chaos Hero D  Post-Fusion 
Chaos Hero E  Post-Fusion 
Pascal
Steven
Yuriko A
Yuriko B  Lilith 
Gotou A
Gotou B (Thanks Futumimi!)
Gotou C (Thanks Futumimi!)
Ozawa (Thanks Futumimi!)
Louis Cyphre
Yama
Echidna
Haniel
Gabriel (A guy in this game!)
Michael
Asura Lord

Other Things (aka Fanart Creations)

jttoddy made a pretty darn good 8-bit remix of Level Up (Backup)