Shin Megami Tensei: if...



"...A peaceful everyday life...

...A boring day after boring day

...Our days of youth slowly passes by..."

"What IF...

that life was shattered to pieces?"

"What IF...

the school thrown into another world?"

"This is...

...a story of children who were stranded in the Demon World..."

- Shin Megami Tensei If... intro.

Shin Megami Tensei: If... was the third Gaiden Game to be spun off from the Shin Megami Tensei franchise (the first being the little-remembered Majin Tensei, and the second being Last Bible, which came to America as Revelations: The Demon Slayer). The title refers to two things: first is the concept of the game, which is a What If scenario in the SMT universe, namely "what if a school was suddenly thrown into the Demon Realm?" The title and logo are also references to the arthouse British film If, where the developers seem to have gotten the school concept from (although all similarities really stop there, with one possible exception). Sadly, this game will never be released outside of Japan due to this, but Aeon Genesis has announced a fan translation of this game is ongoing. If you can find an English patch available, sound off!

Mechanically, the game is built on the engine of Shin Megami Tensei II, and even recycles a large number of art and musical assets from that title. Dungeons are navigated in a first-person view; demons are negotiated with, and fused in the Cathedral of Shadows. Perhaps the biggest change mechanically is the introduction of the idea of "guardian spirits": souls of demons that will save you from death and upon entering your body, strengthen it and even give you and your compatriots magical powers.

If this sounds just a bit familiar, it should; many of the concepts introduced in If would eventually be expanded upon in Persona 1, and the formerly anonymous main character of If even became a character in the early Persona games, putting Persona in the same continuity as If and the Devil Summoner games (which detail what'd happen if people knew about demons before a certain event in SMT 1, thanks to the events of If). In other words, what started as one Gaiden Game ended up dovetailing into a huge Alternate Continuity that has eclipsed the original Shin Megami Tensei games in popularity.

The game begins with your main character (who you can choose the name and gender of, although canonically the Protagonist is a girl named Tamaki) as an Ordinary High School Student at Karukozaka High School who is just about to go home for the day... and then, suddenly, things go very wrong. Your school doesn't seem to be on Earth anymore, demons roam the hallways, and a student named Hazama has gone missing... except he seems to be appearing to you as a kind of astral projection, taunting you. It'll be up to you and a partner of your choosing to get to the bottom of what is going on - and what Hazama may have planned for the school and the world.

This game provides examples of:

 * A God Am I: Hazama.
 * All of the Other Reindeer:
 * Alternate Continuity: And how! Infamous for spawning a continuity that would end up eclipsing its "mother" franchise in popularity and profitability.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Battle in The Center of The Mind
 * Canon Name/Divergent Character Evolution: In If, you are given the option of naming your character, selecting their gender, and more or less defining their personality through gameplay. The Persona series, however, defines the Protagonist as a fairly upbeat girl named Tamaki Uchida.
 * Cybernetics Eat Your Soul:
 * Death Is a Slap On The Wrist/Continuing Is Painful: Dying simply gets you a new Guardian and bounces you back to the start of the current dungeon, which can be good or bad depending on how high your Guardian gauge was and how far in you were.
 * Disc One Nuke: Surprisingly, Reiko's starting Guardian has Agilao of all things. Despite the high MP cost, it's extremely useful and will save your ass many times.
 * Evil Laugh: Even at the very start of the game, Hazama appears before you and does this a lot, cluing you in to the fact that he's got something to do with the weirdness going on.
 * Evil Overlord List:
 * Five Man Band: Although you only ever get to take one human partner with you, your options do form something like this.
 * The Hero: Tamaki/The Protagonist
 * The Lancer: Charlie
 * The Chick: Yumi
 * The Smart Guy: Reiko
 * Sixth Ranger: Akira (getting him to join you is... difficult)
 * The Big Guy: Atlus loves using these three tropes in conjunction.
 * Team Pet: Hoho-kun, sort of.
 * Fortune Teller: NOVA, a computerized one, gives the Player Personality Quiz.
 * Freudian Excuse:
 * Gaiden Game: Naturally.
 * Hello Nurse: Hellooooooo, Miss Kayama!
 * Hospital Hottie: She's actually a nurse, to boot!
 * Of course, this isn't just played for laughs:
 * It Got Worse: Whoever is in control of the Demon World seems to be doing this deliberately to the poor students of Karukozaka High.
 * Jerkass: Charlie. He's perfectly happy to screw the whole school over if it means getting home.
 * Journey to The Center of The Mind:
 * Kick the Dog:
 * Lawyer (Un?)Friendly Logo Cameo: Potentially a reason the game has never gotten a Western release; the lettering of the "if" in the game logo is lifted directly from the, and parts of the game concept also seem to borrow heavily from the movie as well (such as the school setting itself and ).
 * Louis Cypher:
 * Meganekko: Reiko.
 * Multiple Endings: Each partner has their own route and ending.
 * Nice Job Breaking It Hero: In the World of Wrath,
 * Nintendo Hard: Not quite as bastard hard as the previous two games, although certain dungeons could still kick you around, and the final boss is no slouch.
 * No Export for You: Sigh. This is one of the few SNES-era SMT games still lacking a Fan Translation, to boot. Interestingly, due to the somewhat less "controversial" nature of the game's content compared to the rest of the series (that is, ), there were whispers that the game was considered for a Western release, but this obviously never bore fruit.
 * Aeon Genesis has announced that their fan translation is "roughly halfway done", however. We may see this in English after all!
 * Ordinary High School Student: Everyone begins as this. Then stuff happens.
 * Player Personality Quiz: At the start of the game, a computer Fortune Teller named Nova asks you questions what sort of sports and subjects you like, what sort of school club you belong to, whether or not you like video games, and if you have/use a cellphone. Once you finish, she summarizes your strengths and weaknesses, giving you a good idea what your starting stats will look like.
 * Recurring Boss:
 * Samus Is a Girl: After a fashion. Not only was If the first game in the SMT franchise to offer the option of a female protagonist, the Persona series retroactively made Tamaki the first canon female protagonist of an SMT game.
 * Secret Character:, whose path becomes available after beating the game.
 * Seven Deadly Sins: Sort of. The dungeons are based on a major sin, but there are only six sins represented.
 * The worlds, in order: The absent sin,, could potentially be represented by
 * Shaggy Dog Story:
 * Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Played with in the Greed world, where there are about dozen or so chests outside the boss room:
 * Taken for Granite:
 * The Very Definitely Final Dungeon:
 * Villainous Breakdown:
 * What If: The entire concept of the game. Atlus probably didn't anticipate what this would all lead to when first making the game.
 * Where It All Began: If you take the three Super Nintendo-based SMT titles (SMT 1, SMT 2, and If) as a kind of "trilogy" this applies after a fashion. SMT 1 begins in the dreams of the Protagonist of that game;.
 * Womb Level: Guttony has this as the real boss in the world is a demon within the stomach of the headmaster who now looks like a pig.
 * Woobie Destroyer of Worlds:
 * Yank The Dog's Chain: Cruelly used in