Majin Tensei

If you were to take Nintendo's classic strategy game Fire Emblem and mix it with Megami Tensei, you'd get this: Majin Tensei (Demon God Reincarnation). The gameplay mechanics and even the graphics seem ripped from the third Fire Emblem game, right down to the tiny, barely animated stick figures. What really makes the difference are the battle scenes. The characters are absolutely gigantic and incredibly well detailed, looking much better than any of the Shin Megami Tensei games on the SFC (and probably even better than the Saturn games too.) And some of the female demons are disturbingly hot. The backgrounds look incredible as well.

Similar to the first Shin Megami Tensei, your hero lives in a Japanese city that's overrun by demons. At the beginning of the game, you only control your human character, a monstrously powerful lion beast named Ultros and two weak pixies. Although Ultros is tremendously powerful, you'll want to level up your hero, as you'll need him at a high level to recruit more powerful demons. Eventually you come across a mysterious woman in hibernation, and she becomes the requisite SMT heroine. Additionally, you'll need to recruit the usual army of demons by talking to them as. But you have to balance your magnetite supply, so you can't have too many characters on the field at once, or take too long to win a battle. You can still fuse demons, of course, and get money to buy new items. There are pools on the field that regenerate your character's energy, much like Fire Emblem, which plays an important role in your strategy. It's an interesting twist on the strategy formula, and well worth playing.

Ditching the overhead view of the first game, Spiral Nemesis uses a 3/4 angled viewpoint, similar to Front Mission. The graphics are still pretty bad, and the battle scenes aren't nearly as well. It uses a split screen to show both attackers, but they're not as gorgeous looking as its predecessor.

The gameplay is mostly the same, although now you can use the terrain to aid your defense ratings like Tactics Ogre. It's also much more plot oriented, which is a nice break from the straight combat from the first game. The menus are all in English, which should help make this game a little easier for those who are scared of Japanese. You are Naoki Takauchi, who has visions of a strange woman, (much like the original SMT.) But that's not the greater concern - demons are taking over Tokyo, and it's up to Naoki and his friends to defend the city. However, your team is split up after your base is invaded by some shady characters, and you are woken up in the part by a young girl named Aya. She's really just looking for her brother, but she joins you in your quest to save Tokyo and reunite with your remaining compatriots.

Naoki

Kaoru

Tomoharu

Karen Rose

Aya

While many people prefer Spiral Nemesis to the original Majin Tensei, I find myself liking the first game better. Still, it's a decent game, with a pleasantly moody synth soundtrack and an incredibly cool intro.

Ronde (pronounced "rondo") might actually be one of the worst looking games of the 32-bit era. During a time when Saturn developers thought that cheaply CGI rendered characters were the next big thing (see also: Shining the Holy Ark), Ronde features tons of hideous character portraits and two CDs worth of terrible looking cutscenes. And the designs look like generic artwork recycled from Dragon Ball Z. That's not to say the ingame graphics look any better - the game is now 3D, with your characters being blobs of discolored pixels instead of anything remotely resembling a human or demon. The jerky scrolling induces headaches when you do something as simple as moving the cursor. The battle sequences not only look awful but take over thirty seconds to load and complete - thankfully, they can be turned off. Stacked together with the mediocre music, Ronde is a total affront to the senses.

Asuka

Satoshi

Keita

Sakurako

Charlie

The setting is in the near future, as our group of heroes (along with their dog/wolf, Joker) are visiting a demon museum. The statue of a demon known as Moluk comes alive and kidnaps Asuka's younger brother, so it's up to our team to save him and stop the monsters. Various other humans join along the way, including Charlie Watts, who speaks hilariously broken English, until he learns to speak hilariously broken Japanese. The gameplay is pretty much the same as Majin Tensei II. You can no longer directly talk to demons, however. When you defeat a bad guy, they may choose to talk to you, and then they'll join if they see fit. You can also form contracts, that allow some of the human characters to use the demon's magic. Overall, it's not a completely terrible game, but it comes off as a poor man's Shining Force III.