Topic: Playing the original Megami Tensei

Yeah, people warned not me I shouldn't play the first Megami Tensei, for the Famicom.
So far I've finished (in theory) about half the game (3 of the 6 bosses defeated).
It's certainly a unique game, being one of the earliest monster-catching games (though you can't collect them all, as you have only seven slots in the PC and can only have three of them in your party at once. Plus many of them will never join you.) I can tell a big part of the challenge would be to experiment with fusions to figure out how to mix weak demons to make stronger demons (as unlike your two human party members, demons cannot level-up).
Kind of a fun game but wow does some of its difficulty seem to come from cheap/bad design. One that if it was on Virtual Console, I wouldn't feel much shame in Restore Point abuse.
Haven't played too much of the newer SMT games but I'm hoping some of this crud didn't stay in.

-Sometimes as soon as you defeat an enemy group, you are IMMEDIATELY attacked by another group. Get used to those chain battles. By the third dungeon, two and even three fight battles will be common. You must keep defeating enemies until the game stops to get EXP/money/Magnetite. Run from any of them and you get nothing. Perhaps that is how the game compensates for the relatively low encounter rate (battles seem to happen most often when walking through doors).

-Hero can summon demons from the PC ("COMP"). Hero dies or is paralyzed ("PALSY"), no more summoning. There is a summoning spell that I guess can be used as an alternate, but Cerberus is the only demon I've seen with it so far (and it uses up 8 of his 20 MP). Again, hope you summoned him first.

-Only the heroine can cast spells outside of battle. Have demons in your party with healing magic you'd like to use? You have to go into a fight to use them. Someone dead and you'd like to use a reviving spell? Elf (in the third dungeon) is the first I've seen with the spell. Hope that COMP issue above isn't a bother. Too bad Elf has relatively low HP, hope she doesn't get killed herself when you try to use that spell.

-Relatively early on (I think it was like level 15?) the heroine learns a spell to get a password at any time. Due to how the game works, it can be used to safely warp back to the start of the game (with a free heal) if you're willing to reset the game and type that password in. But from what I've read, if you have any DEAD demons in your party, they will be deleted if you input the password.

-And now, what might be the worst so far: from the fourth dungeon, there's enemies with a spell to PERMANENTLY drop you a Level. Because you know, 8-bit RPGs weren't grindy enough already. (although it doesn't seem to lower HP/MP, somehow I got a feeling if you were to get a password and retype it, the game would recalculate. I know the Strength stat seems to affect max HP, as when I've gained a level and raised Strength, when I continued the game from a password, I'd find HP increased)

(though after the third boss, there isn't really a quick route back to a healing spot. It seems if you find Amethyst Stones (that seem to regenerate if you find one and use it) and bought an item from a "Lago shop" in the dungeon, it will give you an option to spend another Stone for a "London Boot"(?) where I guess the literally boots you back to the start. I don't know how he does it, does he literally kick your butt so hard it sends you flying through countless walls/floors of the dungeons inbetween? )

I've played through the SNES versions (many people have by now, it is in english), and I've spent like 5 minutes running around in the NES versions of both games. They are so terrible, mostly because of the way the screen scrolling works. And by screen scrolling I mean it just switches to a new image. I've heard people say Megami Tensei and Friday the 13th share the same engine and I thought it was a joke, but it is entirely possible they built the in door area engine off of the MT games.

SMT on the Super Famicom is a good deal more polished, and SMT II on the same system is even better. I do want to complete a playthrough of the original Megami Tensei one day, though.