13 Years Ago, One Dark JRPG Proved Atlus Could Still Be Hardcore

Today, we recognize Atlus for the Persona, Etrian Odyssey, and Trauma Center franchises, as well as for the years it spent publishing interesting RPGs from smaller Japanese developers that otherwise might never have made it to North America. That history is worthwhile. It also means that when players who grew up loving Social Links and fun school field trips in their JRPGs dig into the publisher’s backlog looking for more of the same, they’ll find a darker side they might not have expected.

Back in 2006, Atlus localized Persona 3 in North America as Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, explicitly linking the spinoff to its established dungeon-crawler series that had been popular in Japan since the first NES installment in 1987. Atlus had first introduced the SMT franchise to the overseas market a couple years earlier, with Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in 2004. The game offered dark, foreboding, and unapologetically difficult gameplay to satisfy JRPG diehards. But after Atlus achieved breakout success with its third Persona installment, that looked like it might spell the end for the more difficult Shin Megami Tensei series. Then, one dark 3DS JRPG proved Atlus could still be hardcore, even in a world where Persona 3 thrived.

Released on May 23, 2013, in Japan and brought west two months later, Shin Megami Tensei 4 was the follow-up fans had been craving for the better part of a decade. Instead of visits to hot springs and the beach, players navigated the hellscape that once had been Tokyo. They roamed foreboding corridors populated by demons out for blood, recruiting some of them while facing the possible extinction of humanity itself.

As later proved by 2021’s Shin Megami Tensei 5, Atlus has managed to keep both the Shin Megami Tensei and Persona franchises going strong. But Shin Megami Tensei 4 launched when that future was in doubt, and it did so on the last piece of hardware you might expect: the Nintendo 3DS. The game was dark and brutal, just like Nocturne. It launched with a CD full of eerie musical selections, as well as a 176-page “Strategy & Design Book” produced with strategy publisher Prima Games.

Like previous installments in the series, Shin Megami Tensei 4 features the Press Turn battle system. Combat is turn-based, but simply mashing buttons and spamming your most powerful spells and attacks won’t work. The setup forces players to familiarize themselves with an expanded elemental system. By attacking with the correct elements, they can gain additional turns in each round of combat. Conversely, using the wrong abilities have the opposite effect, doing minimal damage and leaving you vulnerable. Regular mobs rarely pose a significant threat, even if a person makes a few mistakes, but going into a boss battle unprepared is a sure way to feel pain.

Battles begin when the player runs into enemies on the map, which feels only nominally different from true random encounters in classic JRPGs. Many of the environments are dark and confined. There’s little hope of avoiding combat once an adversary is alerted. But even when mobs are easily avoided, some grinding is necessary. Players will want to gain levels and improve their stats, for one thing. For another, the demons players battle are recruitable, a series convention that predates Pokémon. Domesticated demons can then be fused to unlock powerful new allies, which is surprisingly compelling and might easily occupy motivated players for dozens of hours.

Shin Megami Tensei 4 features a rich, imaginative story, with fascinating lore involving a powerful dome covering Tokyo. As usual, the protagonist’s behavior along the way is dictated by the player. Choices they make determine whether the main character, Flynn, turns out to be the world’s savior or one of its greatest threats, in league with dark angels who seek to destroy the city. Multiple endings give players reason to play through the lengthy campaign more than once. Atlus eventually released a follow-up, 2016’s Shin Megami 4: Apocalypse, which explores different events within the same overall world.

The Shin Megami Tensei franchise is dark and challenging, and it flourishes in shadows in ways the now more popular Persona series does not. Shin Megami Tensei 4 narrowed the gap between the two dominant branches of the overall MegaTen franchise, but it didn’t lose everything that made fans of the older titles happy in the process. The result occupies a happy space between hardcore and accessible, with enough nods toward the latter to provide a compelling experience for a wider audience.

Atlus isn’t averse to remaking its past hits for modern audiences. It released Persona 4: Golden on Vita, for instance. And Persona 4 Revival will launch on Feb. 18, 2027. Here’s hoping the next step is to make Shin Megami Tensei 4 available for newer hardware, so we’re not all stuck playing it on tiny 3DS screens. More than a decade later, that might be the most hardcore challenge of all.