3/5 ★ – vr_'s review of Shin Megami Tensei if....

Reiko Route review: I really flipped between enjoying this and hating this game. World-building wise and "lore" wise, I really think this is quite an interesting side game, however the execution leaves it feeling like a cheap knockoff rather than a full fledged entry. While the plot is pretty barebones, it's an interesting premise, and the gimmick of each dungeon is neat in concept, however something felt missing, leaving the game feeling a bit empty and incomplete. Probably my favourite part of SMT I, II and IV was the text dialogue given by the bosses both before, during and after combat, making these entities feel both imposing, and also living parts of their world. Outside of a few instances, bosses in this seem more like obstacles than actual demons, which is a bit disappointing. Even though I didn;t enjoy this as much as SMT II, in a way I found this less tedious than II due to the lack of egregious backtracking and overworld, however some of the core changes to gameplay were also quite frustrating. Had this game kept II’s combat systems and the QOL features implemented here, I think I could fully say it’s the most enjoyable of the SNES era games, but as it stands, it's hard to really recommend. Demon negotiation, while requiring less items and going by quicker, seemed to work less. Apparently the party you have summoned can impact success rates,but I never felt super motivated to swap out my entire group when it costs macca in the hopes of recruiting a demon. I suppose this being the 3rd classic Megaten game I have played, by this point I was pretty bored of negotiation, so these changes felt kind of irritating. I wouldn’t say they are bad, just not particularly enjoyable. One thing I didn’t like was alignment being tied to gameplay through the “Party Alignment” system, which sets your alignment to that of your summoned demons. While it's neat in concept, it does not allow you to have demons of different alignments summoned, severely limiting unique party builds. Unlike SMT II, where a Chaos aligned player cannot fuse Law demons (and vice versa), in SMT if.. You can fuse any demon you want, but only summon it to a party consisting of the same alignment of demons. This meant that by the end of the game I had some high level demons I couldn’t use because one that I needed was Chaos while the rest were Law. Probably my least favourite change is that now party members in the back row can’t perform standard attacks due to their distance. This change was absolutely awful and not something I enjoyed at all. As a result, auto battles limit you to only having the first row of party members attacking, while the back row just defend. I can see if this was done to balance auto-battles, but if that's the case, they should have just made the back row unable to attack during auto-battles. It was infuriating at the start of the game running out of MP in a character, and having them become essentially useless. Bullets now actually consume actual ammunition, rather than being unlimited in SMT I and II. I understand that this is more realistic and makes the game harder, but It was honestly just extremely annoying. I ended up just buying a ridiculous amount of bullets for around ♄4000, which would have been the cost of buying the single, endless bullets from the previous game. The biggest difference was that now I had multiple stacks of 99 bullets clogging my inventory of limited space. I am so glad SMT IV went back to the unlimited resource style of the first two games… Skills also seem to have been balanced a bit, as healing spells such as Mediarama cost as much as Mediarahn in SMT II. This introduced a bit of a struggle in the early game, but by the end it wasn’t anything too difficult, and probably a good change. The one major change I liked however was that some status effects, namely bind and seal were not permanent. Rather than having to return to a healer, these status effects would wear off after a certain amount of turns, or by using castable curable magic. This game weirdly has some great new sprite work (specifically for the bosses), but for the main route of the game some extremely ugly and uninspired environments. Even the inside Abaddon is re-used, which diminishes its impactfulness from II. The new environments while looking vastly different from anything in I and II The environments, while technically good looking, somehow just feel kind of cheap compared to I and II. Possibly it has to do with how they are designed, but the game definitely gives off cheap spin-off / rushed development vibes made by a different studio. The guardian system is also pretty lackluster. I don’t really understand what the point of the MC having a guardian is if they can't utilize their abilities. Works decently enough for the partner though. I wish rather than having to die in order to level up your guardian, you could rest at a healing fountain or something. There were parts in the game where I was eligible for an upgraded guardian, but intentionally dying was too much of a hassle that I just kept the one I had. SMT if… also ups the ante with battles of attrition. Some of the final bosses, while not specifically difficult, took such an extremely long time to defeat because of their ridiculous health pool. I'd rather a shorter difficult fight that keeps me on my toes than a drawn out boring fight in which I select the same attacks every turn for 45 minutes to an hour. Changes I Liked - Optimized buying menus - Ability to heal, revive or break curses for all party members in a single menu at healing location - Free healing for main party at hub area - Negative status effects being less permanent Changes I disliked - Party alignment for summoning - Back row being unable to perform normal attacks - Bullets being a limited resource Overall, I’d give this game a 2.5/5 That is if I had actually stopped here… After completing Reiko's route I was glad to finally be done with the old games, but I couldn’t move on yet. As much as I wanted to be done with this game, but something (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dmdTJczXvo&t=3s) was stopping me… Akira route review: This is such an insane part of the game. The fact that it is delegated to New Game +, and that I had to read a guide on how to specifically unlock Akira as a partner is so absurd. This part of the game is so incredibly hidden, yet genuinely the best part of the game and extremely worth playing. With that being said, the Akira route in a vacuum may not be that amazing, but in contrast to the pretty mid experience the standard route is, this route seems so good in comparison. I am truly baffled how some of the best boss designs, dungeon designs and gameplay is hidden. Outside of me still not loving the changes to the core-gameplay, most of my qualms with the main game are fixed here. This feels like a proper SMT game, and the parts I missed, such as bosses talking to you and giving lore-dumps / actually feeling alive are back. Talking to the NPC residents of the expanse also feels a lot more reminiscent of the Residents you could find in the Abyss (previous fan translation of Expanse) in SMT II, as they actually gave worthwhile worldbuilding opposed to the pretty useless NPCs in the main game. I literally forgot about how ridiculous some of the main route’s dungeons were (specifically Sloth) while playing Akira’s route because it truly feels like a different game. Akira is basically a Nahobino fueled by revenge, which makes for some extremely entertaining dialogue when he interacts with other demons. The gameplay is harder, but I felt like I got more XP and leveled up faster during this playthrough. Dungeon designs are pretty straightforward, and don’t follow any specific gimmicks, and I saw numerous enemies during this playthrough that I never saw in the main route, some of which had amazing designs. I think playing this as a palette cleanser to Reiko’s route definitely made me appreciate it more, and I think playing it without having a baseline to compare to wouldn’t do it justice. I have seen some people say that the Akira route should be unlocked from the start, as it's the best content the game has to offer. I’m really torn on this, because on one hand, I’d rather people play the Akira route over not playing the game at all, but I really think there's something special about playing it with the context of the main routes. It really puts you in the position of the characters who just say “screw this, we’re doing our own thing,” because you know what the tedious journey they are avoiding is. To me, the Akira route feels almost like an entirely new game, and debatably the most enjoyable SNES SMT playthrough I have had, but its just a shame that the gameplay changes hold this back from being a game I can wholeheartedly recommend. I’d give this playthrough as a whole a 3.5/5 In conclusion, I was ready to call this game a 2.5/5, my lowest rated SMT game to date, yet after convincing myself to play the Akira route, I feel like it definitely deserves more. It’s a shame that the first half of the game holds the second half back, but I really think without that as the appetizer, the main course wouldn't have tasted so good.