This is a spinoff SMT game that came out the same year as the much superior Shin Megami Tensei II. SMT if... was the spinoff game that spawned a little series called Persona, as it's in the same continuity as Persona.

It is a somewhat solid MegaTen game at the end of the day, however it could also just be downright frustrating sometimes. One dungeon is particularly notorious for requiring many moon cycles while students finish digging out tunnels for you to get the item you need to move on. This basically means you are walking up and down a hallway for literal hours! This is the absolute worst dungeon I have ever seen in an RPG.

There's plenty to love in this game. The atmosphere of the students and teachers scrambling to survive in the school and Expanse was something that felt really cool. I liked things that contributed to that such as raiding sports club rooms at the start of the game to use sports equipment as weapons and armor. The story isn't as thick as it is in the other Super Famicom SMT games, but I do like the minimalist storytelling here. In every dungeon, you generally get a speech from Hazama, the villain, explaining what it's about and usually taunting you. I particularly liked this aspect for worldbuilding.

I did not finish the game. I made it to the second to the 4th floor of the school, the last dungeon on Reiko's route (last dungeon on Charlie's and Yumi's routes) and I was very underleveled. All encounters took forever to beat, I couldn't recruit anything, and I couldn't fuse anything worth a damn either. It ended up being a long grind that even after all that, I was still only high enough level to recruit the lowest common denominator demon. I still couldn't actually recruit them as I never got past negotiation.

I recommend this game for the atmosphere, but I also totally get why so many people were really turned off by it.