Shin Megami Tensei IV landed on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 as the fourth mainline entry in Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei series. It is a role-playing game with turn-based strategy and adventure in its bones, built for one player, and it is the first true successor to 2004’s Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.
It is also one of the best games the 3DS ever ran, and it earns that the hard way.
Atlus developed it and published it, with Nintendo and Sega attached to publishing. Japan got it in May 2013, North America in July, and PAL territories got a digital release through Sega Europe in October 2014. The rollout was slow. The game was not.
Trailer, via Official ATLUS West.
Mikado Castle and the Samurai Test
The game opens with Flynn and his friend Issachar walking to Mikado Castle to take a test. The question is whether they are worthy of becoming Samurai — the guardians of Mikado who both confront and control demons. Issachar fails. Flynn passes, and is initiated alongside Walter, Jonathan, Navarre, and Isabeau.
The new apprentices are handed electronic gauntlets containing A.I.s. Flynn’s A.I. is named Burroughs, and she supports him throughout the game with advice. That gauntlet is the game’s quiet engine. It turns a feudal kingdom into something stranger than it first looks.
The Eastern Kingdom of Mikado is a feudal society inspired by Medieval Europe. It is also secretly controlled by angels. Remnants of Tokyo’s technology sit scattered across the land, studied by the Mikado church as “mystic relics.” The church does not understand what it is holding. Neither does the player, at first.
The Black Samurai and the Sabbaths
Unrest rises in the countryside shortly after the initiation. A figure calling herself the “Black Samurai” distributes books written to spread “knowledge and wisdom.” Some residents of Mikado read them at gatherings called “Sabbaths” and are turned into demons. Issachar is among them.
The Samurai are sent to confront the demons and the Black Samurai. They restore order to Mikado. They kill Issachar. Then they are told to pursue her to the legendary land beneath Mikado: Tokyo.
The Samurai climb down a tunnel that leads to the top of a skyscraper. What they find is a modern-era city enclosed in a rock dome and overrun by demons. The chase drags Flynn and his comrades into a startling revelation and a power struggle between angelic and demonic forces.
The pursuit of the Black Samurai drags Flynn and his comrades into a startling revelation and a power struggle between angelic and demonic forces.
That turn is the whole game. Mikado is built on the surface of the dome. Before the game’s events, when Tokyo became a demon stronghold and was threatened with destruction by angels, a member of Tokyo’s Counter-Demon Force tamed the God Masakado, fusing with him to create the protective dome over Tokyo. After the dome is created, only twenty years pass in Tokyo while over a thousand years pass in the Kingdom of Mikado. Flynn is the reincarnation of Tokyo’s savior.
Flynn, Jonathan, Walter, and Isabeau
Flynn is a silent protagonist, as with previous Megami Tensei player characters. His actions and attitudes are determined by the player. Three characters accompany him, and each represents one of the game’s three main moral alignments. Jonathan represents “Law.” Walter represents “Chaos.” Isabeau represents “Neutrality.”
That structure is not decoration. Decisions players make throughout the story have lasting repercussions, and the fate of the world hangs in the balance. The game makes you live with the faction you choose.
Other important characters include Navarre, a rookie Samurai; Burroughs, Flynn’s A.I. assistant; Lilith, a powerful demon from Tokyo; and Issachar, a former childhood friend of Flynn’s. Navarre is the one who grates. He is supposed to. The game uses him to show what the Samurai order actually rewards.
Press Turn, Macca, and Dying on Purpose
The gameplay is reminiscent of previous Shin Megami Tensei games, carrying over the turn-based Press Turn battle system. Players and enemies fight and exploit weaknesses, allowing either side to gain additional turns or lose them. Strike a weak point or land a critical hit and the party gains an extra turn. Get absorbed or blocked and you lose your turn.
Navigation takes place in third-person with 3D-rendered environments and a 3D overhead overworld map. On that map, icons represent the player party and enemy demons. Battles take place from a first-person perspective, with the enemy visible on the upper screen and party status and commands on the lower screen.
In battle, the player controls Flynn and three demons, with one AI-controlled human support character. Enemies wander the environments Flynn explores. A battle starts when Flynn strikes an enemy, which grants the player an advantage; when an enemy runs into Flynn from the side or behind, which grants the advantage to the enemy; or when they run into each other head-on.
The character grows stronger and advances by completing quests, and earns macca, an in-game currency to buy items and equipment. Some quests relate to the main story and are mandatory. Others are optional. Should the player be defeated, they can return to the game by spending macca. Nintendo 3DS Play Coins can be used in place of macca. Repeatedly dying unlocks an easy mode, where the player can flee from battle if they choose.
That last detail is the most honest thing in the game. Shin Megami Tensei IV will kill you, and it will let you pay your way back, and if you keep dying it will quietly offer you a door out. It never pretends the difficulty is the point.
Masayuki Doi and the Look of the Thing
Development began after the completion of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. The team decided to make a fourth numbered entry based on fan requests, and intended to evoke the style and feeling of the original Shin Megami Tensei.
The main characters and some demons were designed by Masayuki Doi, previously known for his work on the Trauma Center series. That handover matters more than it sounds. Doi’s designs give Mikado a cleaner, more modern cast, and the game’s world is separate from the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei games even though recurring demons and abilities are present.
The two main locations carry the whole aesthetic. Mikado is stone, church, and sword. Tokyo is a dome, a skyscraper, and a demon. The game puts them a tunnel apart and lets you walk between them.
What Actually Matters Here
Here is the ranking of what Shin Megami Tensei IV gets right, in order:
- The Press Turn system, which turns every battle into a risk calculation rather than a damage race.
- The Mikado-to-Tokyo reveal, which reframes the entire first act without contradicting a single thing you were told.
- The alignment trio of Jonathan, Walter, and Isabeau, which gives the moral choices a face instead of a menu.
- The macca death economy, which makes failure a resource rather than a wall.
- The Black Samurai pursuit, which is a strong hook but a thinner character than the game’s structure deserves.
The weakest part is the one the game leans on hardest. The Black Samurai drives the plot, and the plot is genuinely good, but the figure herself stays a device. The game is more interested in what her books do to Mikado than in who she is. That is a real cost.
The rest holds up. The first-person battle view is not nostalgia; it puts the enemy on the top screen and your party’s status on the bottom, and it forces you to read the fight instead of watching it. The overworld icons keep the wandering legible. The dome, the thousand years, the twenty years, the reincarnation — none of it is thrown away.
Shin Megami Tensei IV is the first true successor to Nocturne, and it earns that. It builds on the styles of Atlus’ Persona, Devil Summoner, and Devil Survivor titles without borrowing their shapes. It is a game about knowledge as a weapon, handed out in books by a woman the state wants dead, in a kingdom that does not know it is standing on a roof.
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