Shin Megami Tensei IV is a fantastic, densely packed, endlessly interesting game, but it had some (admittedly very minor) shortcomings. For me, it’s story and character development felt underdone, like they had wanted to do more with the incredible setup they had, in a dramatic sense. While the characters were more present than previous games, they still mostly felt like voices for the alignments instead of interesting characters in their own right. That’s fine for an SMT game btw, it works great in all the others, it just felt like they wanted to do more. My only other complaint is IV reduced the complexity of the alignment decisions from Nocturne’s 4 or 5 back to the classic 3, as a throwback. I understand why, but it still felt like a step back instead of forward. Other people also complain about the smirk system in combat feeling cheap and the bosses feeling too easy, but i never got annoyed by the former and DO NOT AGREE with the latter lmao.

Anyways, Apocalypse is an alternate universe sequel to IV that directly addresses all of these issues, and much like the Persona 2 duology, these are both fine games in their own right, but together? Christ I got a bit emotional after the final boss in apocalypse just like, watching the wrap up. It’s not a tear jerker at all, it’s just that good.

The combat’s been tightened up, with a new partner system and smirk system to replace the old ones, and bosses feel about as hard as vanilla IV except there’s so many boss rushes, it’s completely crazy, which feels like an adequate compromise to me.

As far as the things that actually bothered me before, the new story and themes are all character focused, but still manage to hit philosophy in that classic SMT way. SMT IV was all about getting to know this version of Tokyo as a place, understanding its past and deciding its future. Apocalypse is about the people who live in that city on a micro level. The way they live, what they eat, how they survive, and how they came to exist in the state they do. It assumes you know the world and mood of the first game, and doesn’t waste any time establishing it beyond a small reminder of the state of things.

Instead of ideologues, you end up with a true blue JRPG party. Misfits and ghosts and references to the first game all fighting alongside you for the safety of the people they love. They exist for their own reasons, to further their own intertwining arcs, but as a group they act as an illustration of the main theme of the game (not saying it, play the game). The characters are all full and warm and their arcs are lovely, in a huge change for the mainline games.

Together, the SMT IV Duology has pretty much everything I want out of an SMT game. All the god killing and heavy handed philosophical debate, and with more emotional core than the series has been able to muster so far (and including V, which lands around 4 in a lot of areas for me). These are fun dungeon crawlers and thought-provoking visual novels all rolled into one, and for me they sit at the top of that pile.

One last note on the final dungeon, which I finished up after writing the rest of the review. It’s much longer, more complex, and tougher than any other dungeon in the game, and because of that opinion is pretty divided on it. Personally I loved it, a real challenge for people who’d gotten through at least 80 hours total between SMT IV and Apocalypse, and a nice throwback to the ending of SMT 2, both in dungeon design and boss choice. It probably should’ve been a super dungeon rather than required to roll credits, but if you’re this deep in you’ll probably do fine. Plus it’s always ok to lower the difficulty if you’re having trouble!!

Anyways, that was a truly lovely game.