Shin Megami Tensei

Shin Megami Tensei is a foundational Japanese role-playing game developed and published by Atlus, first released in the early 1990s and later ported to the Game Boy Advance.

The game places you in the role of a high school student in Tokyo after a cataclysmic event has plunged the city into chaos and opened a gate to the demon world. Your primary goal is survival and understanding this new reality. Gameplay involves exploring labyrinthine dungeons, often from a first-person perspective, and engaging in random encounters. Combat is turn-based, where you control your human characters and the demons you've managed to recruit.

A distinctive element of Shin Megami Tensei is its demon negotiation system. During battles, you can choose to speak with demons instead of attacking. This allows you to try and persuade them to join your cause, often by answering their questions correctly or offering them money or items. Successfully recruited demons can then be combined through a fusion process at special sanctuaries, creating more powerful beings with new abilities. This mechanic is central to building a capable party to face the increasingly dangerous foes.

The narrative often explores dark themes and philosophical conflicts between different factions of demons and humans, pushing players to make choices that affect the story's progression and outcome.