Shin Megami Tensei: if...: Difference between revisions

 

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 ''[[It Got Worse|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.

* [[A God Am I]]: Hazama.

* [[All of the Other Reindeer]]: {{spoiler|This is a large part of the root cause of Hazama's psychotic ''hatred'' for everyone around him and why he torments his schoolmates upon becoming the Demon Emperor.}}

* [[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. {{spoiler|The fact that he ''tries'' to draw out his overdone evil laugh at the start of the game is a hint that he's just putting on a front to try and hide his deep-seated emotional disturbance and is just acting the way he ''thinks'' a Demon Emperor should act.}}

* [[Evil Overlord List]]: {{spoiler|Hazama runs into a whole bunch of these over the course of the game; this all springs, naturally, from the fact that he's a high-school kid who ''thinks'' he should be a Demon Emperor and doesn't really have the first clue how such a being should ''actually act''. (Contrast against [[Louis Cypher|a certain other well-known king of the Abyss in the same franchise]].)}}

** [[The Hero]]: Tamaki/The Protagonist

** [[The Lancer]]: Charlie

* [[Journey to The Center of The Mind]]: {{spoiler|The Final dungeon in Reiko's Path. There is also [[Soundtrack Dissonance]] as the Law theme from [[Shin Megami Tensei]] 1 and 2 play while you trod through Hazama's mind.}}

* [[Kick the Dog]]: {{spoiler|Akiko rejected Hazama's love letter and tore it up, badmouthing him to her friends.}}

* [[Louis Cypher]]: {{spoiler|Conspicuous only in his near total absence. He never shows up to talk, you don't fight him, he isn't [[The Chessmaster]], and you can only even fuse him at level 99; making ''If'' one of the tiny handful of SMT games where he doesn't have any kind of story impact. [[Epileptic Trees|Guesses]] about this aspect of the game abound.}}

* [[Meganekko]]: Reiko.

* [[Multiple Endings]]: Each partner has their own route and ending.

* [[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.

** 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 [[It Got Worse|stuff happens]].

* [[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; {{spoiler|the [[Very Definitely Final Dungeon]] of ''If'' is the Mindscape of Hazama, using the same "dream" graphical effect from SMT 1}}.

* [[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.

 

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