For my money, only three roleplaying game series have managed to nail the monster-collecting and training formula. The first two are Dragon Quest and Pokemon, which you’ve most likely heard of. The other is the more obscure Shin Megami Tensei, a series that goes all the way back to the Famicom, and Shin Megami Tensei IV is more of the same of that proud legacy. If I seem a little down on it, it’s because it feels a bit lifeless at times. With a better story and improved exploration, it would be the best RPG on the 3DS, bar none.

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Each game in the Shin Megami Tensei series features a menagerie of cuddly, bizarre, and occasionally terrifying demons, all with their own distinct dialects and personalities. Earning their services usually means negotiating with them and offering gifts, after which they can be leveled up in battle, or fused with another demon to create an even more powerful beast augmented with inherited abilities.

Fusing new demons is really one big carrot designed to keep you hooked, and it works so well on its own that developer Atlus doesn’t really need to go out of its way to reinvent the wheel. Apart from serving as the foundation of the battle system, they’re there to get you excited about exploring each new area. After all, better demons make for a more powerful party. Getting an especially powerful demon not only makes it feel like you’re ahead of the game, but really smart as well, since you’re the one who created it.

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Hence, whenever I get a new demon over to my side in Shin Megami Tensei IV, I immediately run to Mido – a computer program starring a floating pixelated head that wouldn't look out of place in Tron – and check every possible fusion combination. The best moments are when I go through the list and find something like Ictinike, a mid-game creature that combines a fearsome bird-like countenance with Wolverine-like claws, and is markedly more powerful than other creatures at a similar level. With the Ictinike in my party, I felt like a wrecking ball when I got down to dungeon crawling.That process is so fundamental to Shin Megami Tensei IV that it makes the story feel almost incidental at times, so it’s somewhat easy to overlook the fact that SMT4 stars an uninteresting group of teen samurai. But of course, the lack of a good story is where it falls a bit short. Granted, there are times when there’s a great sense of foreboding and mystery to it, particularly in the unexpected twist around the first quarter of the campaign. And it can be tense, such as when I wound my way through a sea of terrified stone statues to battle Medusa.But I didn’t care about the human characters, even during the dramatic moments. They just didn’t seem to have much in the way of motivation; rather, they were sort of a traveling peanut gallery, there to comment on all the weirdness around them for the benefit of my silent protagonist. The most interesting personalities ended up being demons, such as the familiar Atlus mascot and SMT mainstay Jack Frost, who combines a seemingly friendly personality and a fun design with a thirst for blood (many demons will cheerfully announce that they are going to murder you if negotiations break down). But apart from serving as villains, the demons weren’t the ones driving the story ahead – the humans were.

I was also a little disappointed with the actual exploration, which is hurt by a very basic overhead map in which characters and demons are represented by simple icons. Everything is rendered in shades of grey or brown, so the paths are frequently difficult to distinguish from the buildings, and it’s easy to get lost. It stands in weird contrast to the rest of SMT4, which is normally experienced from a third-person point of view, and features plenty of detailed environments. I wish I could say that it's relatively inconsequential, but I spent a ton of time on that map, and it got old in a hurry.

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I don’t want to drag the mood down too much, because Shin Megami Tensei IV a very good RPG in its own right, even if it feels a bit drab at times. By themselves, the demon fusion and negotiation are great, and the progression is further enhanced by Apps, which add yet another layer of depth by making it possible to use more skills, get more experience from fusions, or simply shake demons down for cash during negotiations. The combat, which revolves around hitting weak spots with a corresponding elemental attack, is fast-paced and often intense.The odd difficulty spike pops up here and there, particular with the early bosses, but I found Shin Megami Tensei IV quite approachable, which stands in stark contrast to the series’ reputation for intense difficulty. Of course, this being an SMT game, the latter half has a lot of cheap one-shot deaths and annoying status effects. Even that frustration, however, is mitigated by the demon guarding the River Styx, who will happily revive anyone for cash (or a few Play Coins).There's a lot of interesting strategy to be found here, and while the characters and story are merely okay, they aren’t offensively bad either. That makes it pretty easy to recommend Shin Megami Tensei IV as a hardcore dungeon crawler, even in a year that has seen the Nintendo 3DS absolutely inundated with high-quality RPGs. Once again, the demons make the difference.