Beat SMT If... yesterday. This is not the first blobber SMT that I've played, but the first that I've beaten. Played completely blind and didn't use any emulation tricks like save states or speedups to see what the game would've felt like back in 1994. Beat the final boss at level 60 exactly, with Thor, Raphael, and Hanuman. Played for a couple of weeks, took a months-long break, then finally finished it.

The first time I arrived at the final boss, only the protagonist and the second character could deal any damage (about 40 damage with the attack and about 100 more with magic). Died, grinded a bunch, came back with a team of level 60 demons who could dish out hundreds of damage every turn and *holey moley* the boss still held on for longer than every boss combined, what the heck was that? By the end I was convinced it was a trick boss with a billion HP that I had to use an item to kill or something. When the boss went down, we were *both* shocked that I actually won.

While taking a break from SMT If, I actually beat Innocent Sin on the PS1, and one thing I figured out about these games (that I wasn't getting back when I first tried them years ago) is that it really is all about catching and fusing demons and the rest is just window dressing, albeit also beautiful. The story is often cool, but if you play for the story, the dungeons will be the death of you. But when I realized that if I wanted to catch more demons, the dungeons were precisely the place to go, I stopped dreading the labyrynths and started *craving* them. The labyrynth is not a barrier to overcome but a great playground to stop about it, and the added sense of progress from gradually revealing the map and finding secrets is just a pleasant bonus. Sometimes story stuff happens as well, which is very cool, but it's all about grinding, catching, and fusing the demons.

With the above mindset I didn't even mind the World of Sloth at all. I mean, the game wanted me to around for hours, catching and fusing demons - well, *perfect*, that's exactly what I was there for in the first place.

What are the level 70 demons for? I stomped the final boss into the ground and was only scared because I thought it had infinite HP or something. If I knew I'd kill it eventually for sure, I would've been yawning. A level 60 party is more than enough to beat the game, while grinding to level 70 would probably take, like, ten hours or more, and for what? Is there a secret superboss? The Angra Mainyu went down when I was, like, level 52 or so so that can't be it.

The most memorable character by far was Professor Otsuki. Holy crap, that mofo.

On a side note, why did SMT abandon the Dragon Quest-style "respawn when you die" thing? I've always hated Game Over screens in JRPGs. This is not a 5-minute stage in a Mega Man game, man, these games are long, slow, and all about gradual progress, and accidentally getting the protagonist merked and regrinding is not fun. It was not fun in calssic Final Fantasy, it was not fun in Breath of Fire 3+, and it's not fun in SMTs. Megami Tensei could apparently do it properly and If... can, but mainline SMTs can't, why? I never understood it. "Stats go down if you die too often and up if you die rarely" is an even better mechanic than halving the money, too. Good game.

Beat SMT If... (the Aeon Genesis translation). What the heck was that final boss