Guide on how to play a real Shin Megami Tensei game

This is the game you've most likely have heard about when being called a scrub for not knowing that Persona was a spin-off series.

Nocturne was the first contact many people back in the early 2000's had with the Megami Tensei series since the previous titles were Japan-only and therefore is the reason why while Persona fans are all zoomers, SMT fans are all boomers. Nocturne is also the best place for you to start after you are done with Persona since both Persona 3 and 4 (such great games made in a time span of 2 years between eachother, why is early 2000's Atlus such a god send jeez) run on the same engine as Nocturne.

To play Nocturne unless you have a PS2 or Switch lmao, ♥♥♥♥ you nintendo ♥♥♥♥ you don't deserve anything you'll have to download PSCX2[pcsx2.net], feel free to look the guide up on how to do that on the internet and then go to a ROM site and download Nocturne from there and start it up on Hard difficulty (I don't wanna hear "buts", its final). If you finish the tutorial before breaking your computer into pieces due to sheer rage, welcome to Nocturne.




The more important differences between main line and Persona is that:

• Main line and pretty much all other spin-offs have a mechanic called the Press Turn Battle System in which each party is given an X amount of turns during battle, normally its equal to the amount of party members you have but you get turns everytime you land a critical or exploit a foe's weakness. However, unlike Persona, instead of a follow-up attack, in SMT the turns rotate through the party, so if you have 4 turns, and get a critical it means you will stay at 4 turns and at the end your chain of moves your first party member will get to move again. Besides that, if you miss an attack or it gets nullified you lose 2 turns and you can even lose all your turns if you are not careful. Also, unlike Persona, in SMT there's no "Guard" instead you can use "Pass" which doesn't reduce damage but instead of losing 1 turn, you only lose "half" a turn, as in if you Pass twice then you lose 1 turn and makes it so one should think of how to use your turns well instead of just spamming the same attack over and over again.
  
  
• Buffs and debuffs are permanent through the entire battle and SMT is one of the few JRPG franchises where they actual matter a lot, even in Persona since they eventually run out they are only super important for boss fights, but in Nocturne every battle counts and no, you can't run away from battle, that almost never works unless you use an item/skill.
  TLDR, in Nocturne spamming Sukujaka/Sukunda like skills is the equivalent to cheesing a Dark Souls boss.
  
  
• Your party in SMT (mainline at least) are the demons (or Personas as you scrubs call it) that you find and fight in the wild and much like in Persona 5, you can recruit them but they become your actual party members. P.S: Don't forget to never fuse away the first demon you get, its a surprise that will help us later.

To finish this section: Don't forget that you will get your ass kicked multiple times while playing this game, Dark Souls style.