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Shin Megami Tensei

This is a game series I simply love. It has a great story, and it throws out the good vs evil kind of thinking. These games normally go with either no moral system, (like Shin Megami Tensei, Devil Survivor) or a Law vs Chaos kind of system.

I was wondering if anyone else has played this series and had any thoughts on it.

Another thing I always wondered is why is there no outrage for these games? I know Shin Megami Tensei isn't the most popular rpg series around, but I would think Christians outraged by these games. In the second one choosing the Chaos or Neutral route leads you to fighting god quite simply!

http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/YHVH

Personally it just makes me scratch my head why there is no outrage for these games, other than it isn't popular enough to be noticed.

I hope to hear what everyone thinks about the series in general or about why there is no outrage. Also my favorite one of the games is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, what is your favorite, if you have one.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Cameron on July 15, 2011 at 12:53am

I haven't actually played a Shin Megami Tensei game before, but I am an RPG fan and this sounds interesting, so I'll definitely check it out. Thanks for the heads up!

Yeah the game series is probably just not popular enough to be noticed. Only games like Grand Theft Auto and Modern Warfare get noticed I guess. I haven't checked, but I'm sure you'd probably find it listed on some religious gaming site under "DO NOT TOUCH!!" if you looked hard enough.

Permalink Reply by Kyu on September 21, 2011 at 7:14pm

Okay, I'm a HUGE SMT fan, and have been for years. MegaTen tends to be such a niche market, honestly. More popular these days thanks to the huge impact that Persona 3 & 4 made, to be sure, but still, niche. The nerd in me would like to go on the record and acknowledge that yes, MegaTen and Persona universes are technically separated, but they've started branding Persona under SMT, so I think the point is lost on the US market.

Now, controversy HAS been there around the games before. It's just been a long time since it's been that way. Remember, we didn't get Persona 2: Innocent Sin for the PS1, we only got Eternal Punishment (and even that was a very risky release at the time). Huge changes were made to the elements of the original Persona (and they've even gone back and edited out many elements to cater to the US market).

They do make concessions when they localize for markets, unfortunately. I could go off on an entire rant on humanist perspective in video games, but there are quite a few games that have set off radars with atheist/humanist messages. I don't know if you remember the controversy when Xenogears was released by Squaresoft - some stores refused to stock it because the entire message of the game became "Kill God." However, SquareEnix was able to repeat this very message in FFX and got away with it because they named it "Yu Yevon".

I really think that MegaTen is too low on the radar for the most part. I've spoken with some of our local game store employees before and they've indicated to me that they really don't get many copies of the MegaTen games outside of what they bring in for preorder. I would be really curious to see what percentage of Atlus' SMT fanbase came to it after P3+4, though, because I've been following them since Persona came to the states under the Revelations heading (even though Revelations is a different universe within SMT, too >.<).

>.>
<.<

I didn't mean to rant that much. I am rather excited that I finally have a copy of P2: Innocent Sin though! As for my favorite SMT games? I would say I have a nostalgic love for P2: Eternal Punishment and you'd have to pry my copies of Nocturne and Digital Devil Survivor 1 from my cold, dead, hands!

Permalink Reply by Jake on October 24, 2011 at 2:18pm