Shin Megami Tensei

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Shin Megami Tensei, known in Japan as simply "Megami Tensi", is a series of roleplaying videogames inspired by the sci-fi novel series Digital Devil Story written by Aya Nishitani that are described here because a) they're really good Urban Fantasy games, and b) there is an official SMT tabletop RPG in Japan, though it has yet to be translated.

The Premise

Describing the premise of the SMT series is really challenging because, similarly to Final Fantasy, the titles almost never are directly related to each other - they just use a similar basic precept.

That precept, with a little stretching, can be defined as "Urban Fantasy set to an Order vs. Chaos story where both sides suck". The precise story varies from game to game, but in general you play as a human (or a small team of humans) caught up in a cosmological struggle between the forces of Order and Chaos, each represented by an assortment of different monsters, spirits, demons and gods from real-world mythology and you have to choose whether to align yourself with one side or the other, or to try and fight your way to an independent victory. This "neutral" path is usually the best (or least worst) outcome, since SMT is even less subtle than Planescape when it comes to selling that both Order and Chaos are dangerous; an Order victory usually results in the complete erasure of free-will to instead reduce all life to an endless fawning over the ultimate power of Order, whilst a Chaos victory creates a brutal anarchy in which the only law is "Survival of the Fittest".

These "core" SMT games largely never made it into the West outside of the small cult following of fans willing to acquire untranslated games and either play them that way or do the hard work of translating them. This is because the core SMT games originally launched as Nintendo titles, and since the Order faction in the games are often directly based on Christian trappings and characters... yeah, it was a bit too much religious heat for Nintendo in the 90s.

The Persona Subseries

The more popular offshoot of Shin Megami Tensi, due to being Playstation based and thus not having to fear Nintendo's censors, the Persona games are a more Science Fantasy take on the core SMT premise, rooting themselves in a mixture of the Tarot and Jungian psychology. Basically, rather than being "real", the various monsters and deities are emanations of humanity's collective psyche that have taken up their own identities within the collective subconsciousness. The repeating plot generally centers around humanity's collective maladjustments are causing an impending psychic catastrophe, which a small bunch of plucky heroes (aka Highschool students) need to prevent.

Other spin-offs

The Megaten franchise is very old and has a lot of various spinoffs and subseries.

• Digital Devil Saga: A duology of games taking place in a post-apocalyptic world where instead of summoning demons people transform into them. Based mostly around a Hindu mythology motif instead of the standard Judeo-Christian.

• Devil Survivor: Pair of strategic RPGs. Devil Survivor 1 is generally higher regarded than 2.

• Devil Summoner: Series of games taking place in an alternate timeline where the apocalypse in SMT 1 never happened with more of an urban fantasy approach. Has a subseries in itself in the Raido Kuzunoha series, which is about a demon-summoning detective in 1920s Japan.

• Devil Children: Kid-friendly spinoff because ATLUS apparently wanted that Pokemon money.

• Jack Bros: Spinoff game focused around the demon characters Jack Frost, Jack O'Lantern and Jack the Ripper. Generally regarded as the best game on the Virtual Boy, so good that it has its own tier on the Megaten game tier list.

Gallery

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  SMT Demon negotiations in a nutshell.

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  the among the first JRPG in 2 where you can kill the Definitive YHVH GOD.

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  it was not until 4 Apocalypse were you get another go at this asshole

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