it's like consuming excrement but this time it's addictive and you can't stop

hard like me

BEFORE anything else :
- Download the Chronicle free DLC. The regular "new game" is completly useless and should not exist, and you are forced to restart the game from zero if you want to play the content from the free DLC.
- This port is garbage, but generous competent people have made mods and tutorials to help make it decent. The base game is capped at 1080p and 30 fps, which is atrocious. By modifying a dll file you can change the resolution to 4k or whatever you want, and a mod unlocks the framerate. This mod also adds a button to make the game run twice as fast when you desire (without speeding up the music). It looks weird at first, but eventually I played the entire game at this double speed, because you do not lose anything, and it makes all those terrible random puzzles much more palatable. Look at this tutorial (not mine) : https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2974002371

As for the value of the game itself, it is of course extraordinarily overpriced for a lazy ps2 port at 50 euros, I bought it on sale for 12 euros iirc. It's an old school JRPG which has a certain charm to it and a pretty good battle system. However, it does have terrible flaws which can be a deal breaker for many people. There are way too many random battles, and I played the entire game with the skill "Estoma" activated (you have to go into the menu every single time to reactivate it), which reduces the number of random encounters. The game is barely playable without this skill. Puzzles are just absolutely awful. Most of them consists of you opening doors and falling back to the start of the level until you find the right one. I'm not joking, either you try your luck or you check a guide.

I do recommend this game to JRPG fans, who will be able to tolerate those flaws, but not to other people.

peak game

good but overrated

This was my first smt game and im pretty sure my first atlus game in general as well. Easily my new favorite game its basically challenging pokemon with a much darker story which is my cup of tea, also the music is very good:). gonna play all the smt games now and probably digital devil saga and persona as well. can not recomend this game enough. Also I played the original version of the game and havent even experienced the extra content in the maniax/chronicle version so im definitly gonna play through again sometime soon.