I encourage anyone who held an interest in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, any Persona, Etrian Odyssey game, or any old-school dungeon crawler like Wizardry or Bard's Tale, to seek the fan-translated version of these games. They did hold up very well, and the atmosphere is truly great. Plus the demon NPCs are still as hilarious as ever. Thankfully these have an automap so you don't get lost.
I've completed the first one a while ago and now I'm close to the sequel's ending. Although the sequel had numerous improvements to its interface, the first one is probably the series' best title. It had the best story, best setting, best use of the demon fusion system, best music, and it was almost as open-ended as a western RPG. The only problems with it are that the automap cannot be accessed conveniently (you have to select a few options in a menu before it appears), and the bosses are all ridiculously easy, almost pathetically so.
While I didn't like SMT II quite as much, the angle it went for was quite interesting. It's mostly in some futuristic city. And of course the gameplay system was as enjoyable as ever.
I'm saddened that they removed all the weapons and guns. You could buy a machine guns and special bullets, and then it was sometimes easy to kill 8-9 demons in a row with a powerful blast.
One thing that went away with Nocturne that was for the best, was the use of magicite. It was another in-game currency that you collected along with Macca (the money), and every time you took a step in a dungeon some magicite was consumed when demons were present in your party. It was very easy to run out of it, and then it would be three times as slow to move in dungeons, while all the demons would lose 1HP for every step.
At any rate these are must-play games for RPG and Atlus fans!
