When I first started this game, I was going in blindly because the only Shin Megami Tensei game I have played is Persona 3. It starts out telling the story of how the city Tokyo. The game begins in a first-person point of view when an old man claiming to be the one who rescued you from a demon wakes you up and tells you to get ready for the upcoming tournament finals.
The graphics are minimal with very limited animation which mostly involves your own character moving and repetitive monster movements.
Your character moves in buildings with a first person view, but the city view has your character indicated by a nondescript blue male symbol like you would find pictured on a Japanese public bathroom stall. The monsters are random encounters and you're likely to run into some that spawn another monster after you defeated them, I don't know if this is a glitch or if it is supposed to be this way. The city is beginning to be overrun by demons. A mysterious man in a wheelchair confronts you and gives you a program to fight back by taking the power of the demons for your own use.
The controls can be very confusing and many of the walls look the same. It's difficult to remember
where things are since the map does not appear to be labeled in any specific fashion. Once you've become champion gladiator, you are summoned to "Madam" who instructs you to find a scientist who plans to open the city completely to demons for his own purposes. When you confront the scientist, he opens a hole to the Abyss and demons come through and kill him, then attack the party. Upon returning to "Madam" he discovers his true name and further finds out that he holds the future of the city (and perhaps the world) in his own hands. Like later games, his decisions play a big part of the outcome of this world. He can either become the "Messiah" that he has been told he is or reject that path and try to create a world that includes everyone, not just those deemed worthy by the Mesians.
I feel that, although the gameplay is primitive in comparison to modern games, if you have ever played any of the newer Shin Megami Tensei or Persona games, this is definitely worth a try.
