Makai Agito

This is a clear love letter to early Shin Megami Tensei and Persona games. You know it, I know it, the developers know it, and since we're all on the same page, if you liked any of those games then buy this one. If not for that, then at least for the novelty of a roster of grown adults in an RPG.

budget smt (affectionate)

Fun little indie DRPG and homage to the classic SMT games. Quick and to the point, well paced, with well-designed dungeons and encounters. A little on the easy side, in terms of both combat and navigation, the game is still reasonably challenging. The monster art is very good, while the character and background art is decent but unremarkable. The Arcanes are all pretty good and the system to level and fuse them is very well done, if maybe overly generous in letting you create some very overpowered creatures. The dungeons are diverse, ramp up in difficulty, and have many of the usual dungeon crawler features, though notably there weren't any spinners or dark rooms, but those never mean much when there's an in-game automap, anyway. The final dungeon was pretty well done, in particular. The only real weak point would be the writing, which is not bad, and is functional enough to get you from point A to point B, but everything is just a little too smooth and pat. It's fine for what it is, but I hope that for future projects they can improve this aspect, and then they will have a real gem on their hands like with the classic SMT games.

Awesome homage to the early SMT games. Story is kinda weak, but the gameplay is where it's at. Great retro-style graphics. It's actually my GOTY, it's that good.

Very nice SMT-like with just enough QOL (No demon-persuading! Always available demon-combining!) to make it pleasant to play. If you want your demon-combining quick and want to focus on dungeon crawling, leveling up, and coming up with strange move combinations, this game is for you! The gameplay loop is very focused: Get demon -> Train it until you get its desired level/moves -> Combine it. You can pretty quickly obtain very strong party-wide buffs which trivialize most of the bosses. There's a bit of a nasty difficulty spike at the end, but other than that, it was a very pleasurable experience. The story is fine and has that interesting SMT feel (demons are just casually talking to you). The lore isn't that deep but gives a nice and gentle push to get on with the game. The art is great! The art direction is very SMT 1 and SMT 2 SNES blurry pixels for the environment and character art, but then demon art is very detailed, very cool designs. I'm glad they went into various mythologies, including quite a few South Asian and Southeast Asian demons. Overall, a very quick, very underrated SMT-alike. I don't think there's many games in this niche (the only other one I can think of is Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia), so this is a very welcome addition.

DRPG divertido! O sistema de criação e fusões funciona bem, deixa você ser criativo e proporciona aqueles momentos de superar dungeons e bosses com mais facilidade pela preparação. Esse é basicamente o central da proposta e faz bem! O resto é bem sólido, as dungeons ficaram boas de navegar, cada área tem sua característica direitinho, sem muitas distrações para te tirar do jogo. O 100% é basicamente zerar. Excelente para quem quer algo do tipo que não seja extenso, mas que seja bom!

A really good title for fans of older MegaTen games, especially around the era of Soul Hackers 1.

It is immediately apparent that the game is a persona clone, but instead of presenting the characters and setting and letting us get attached with an engaging intro, you are presented with a one sided dialogue where the other character (who you ostensibly already know) flat out tells you 'I'm a journalist. I'm from here. My parents were killed 13 years ago. Ok let's go' This is a classic example of telling instead of showing, and really starts us off on the wrong foot. Then you are immediately (within 5 minutes) thrown into a relatively long and barren dungeon crawl with random turn based combat. It felt like I was in 2004 again. There are enemy weakness systems like in persona, but finding a weakness only rewards you with slightly higher damage output, so spending the turns hunting for one does not pay off enough to justify it. I just used basic attacks unless the enemy resisted them, and then spammed whichever non-resisted magic I first found. The poor attention to pacing and very stilted writing were offputting, and the dungeon crawl felt like a worse version of the turn based fights that I had to endure as a young teen, but I do think this could end up becoming an interesting game on its own merits with more time. I just can't recommend it currently.