Thanks again for everyone's patience and support. This game felt absolutely huge and it took many nights to try and sum it all up. Be sure to check out the description for timestamps as well as a list of sources/people who helped create the video.
Thank you, Marsh. I had a real bad day, and you really made it better. I know you might not feel like you're changing the world, but to me, you made a huge difference. Thanks again.
I don’t know why but that reminds me of a side character from Avatar: The Last Airbender show. I cannot remember his name but he was a silent archer who never spoke a word throughout the season. By the end, when things seriously went bad he talked which caught everyone off guard.
It’s like Saints Row 1. After multiple hours of your character in complete silence, to the point there’s multiple jokes about you being silent, suddenly the boss says something and everyone gets confused that you can talk, and only chose to make a dumb joke.
What's funny about that to me is that I played a game that did the exact opposite in Zettai Hero Project all the characters just act like it's a matter of course that the protagonist can't talk. Like they never once remark on it or draw attention to it, only for the ending to have one of the main characters go "Wait can he even talk?" when a reporter asks the protagonist for an interview to which the other main characters react to as though they're only just now realizing that was the case.
@@NotAdachiPeopleyeah but… like that’s an anime cutscene, imagine if joker randomly started talking in a random meeting scene in Leblanc you’d be scared
@@NotAdachiPeople that’s a staple tho, even in other modern rpg’s, heck ringo has less in battle dialogue then joker and she’s a fully voiced character
You know, some things are just inevitable. Death, taxes, stand users encountering each other, and Marsh being forced to fight the Minotaur on the 8th level. Just a fundamental law of the universe.
Marsh: Game is slow. Me who grew up with computers that regularly run newer games at 10-12 FPS: *My time has come. A strategy game to test the limits of my power.*
I just realized that hero could be considered Law, and with what can happen in one ending with Heroine turning into a Demon, Law and Chaos can already view that they can work together instead of what they normally have been doing.
@@CallofDutyBlackOps28 I mean, you *can,* but Law kinda requires that you accept God's word and live by it. God who has supposedly abandoned humanity. that, and this game does a fair bit of sh*tting on Law as well.
Fun fact: there's exactly one person to my knowledge who's attempted a Majin Tensei speedrun, and I believe it took him almost 40 hours. If this isn't proof that the game is just way longer than it ought to be, I dunno what is.
Long @$$ speedrun records: the telltale mark of just plain why in a video game. Don’t think anything’s topping the 100% Baten Kaitos speedrun, though; the hoops you have to jump through for that without the speedrun make half the games Marsh has covered look sane.
Holy shit, you're talking about FilthyBlasphemr's attempted speedrun on Majin Tensei! I remember keeping up with his videos about it on Twitter before he said "fuck it." Do you think Majin Tensei's one of those games that has tons of speedrun potential, but we're sorely missing out on stuff like glitch and/or exploit information?
@@tehandroidmaster Doubtful - I think strict grid-based mission-based SRPGs like this are some of the worst for speedrunning. No movement tech, no sequence breaks - the only thing it might have is some RNG manipulation. Otherwise, a speedrun of it would just be a "someone who's played the game before and knows what they're doing" run.
@@smergthedargon8974 Eh, there's fun to be had in learning how to play games like this optimally, and a speedrun is a good way to do that. My issue with SRPGs from a speedrunning perspective is that 99% of the time it's most optimal to just pour all your resources into one Unit and bulldoze your way through with just them. Almost every Fire Emblem speedrun is like this and they're all incredibly boring IMO.
Tbh for SRPGs it's more fun to solve for LTC (Low Turn Count) vs actual Speedruns, like take dondon151's Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon Hard 5 0% growths LTC run vs the speedrun, where the LTC has calculations, crazy optimizations and setup spanning over half the game, vs the speedrun where you just select Marth to go full distance and skip the enemy turn for the whole run
Looking forward to Nakajima Battle Royale, in which a Nakajima from every country, each with his own demonic/godly form, dukes it out in a giant brawl.
@@MarshSMT yeah once you cap str its best to use the swords that deal bonus damage to specific races (the best option imo being the dragonslayer you get in a chest on one of the floors of Lucifer’s Lair
Going by Shining Force, Majin Tensei and Fire Emblem Gaiden it seems like early Tactical RPGs had a serious problem with spreading out the map with nothing to do. Truly they were pioneers for the bad kind of open world games.
When I played through the game, I immediately thought of Gaiden. It's supposed to be an FE rip-off, but I wish it ripped its more thoughtful map design and lower map count. Majin Tensei 2 is like the parts of Gaiden that's more than just an empty, but still have frustrating gimmicks. Some may find that frustrating, and it is, but at least it makes me use a brain cell so I like MT2 better
Yeah, I get what you mean. I don’t played a little bit of the first two Shining Force games. And I played through Sacred Stones and Three Houses as my first two Fire Emblem games. So I can attest to early tactical role-playing games struggling with efficient level design.
Another detailed movie-length breakdown of an obscure Shin Megami Tensei title from Marsh? This is exactly what chill Saturday nights are made of. Let's rock.
I played Majin Tensei on a 3DS without using Fast-Forward, do you wanna know how many hours it took me to finish it with the True Ending? 80 FUCKING HOURS D_D It's a great game tho, slow as a snail but the soundtrack & art design is magnificent 💙
@@alicevioleta3184 80 isn't that long, but compared it with the games previously released Megami Tensei 1 & 2 were around 50 hours for the amount of grind you have to do SMT 1 was around 50 hours And Last Bible....uuuuuuuh, 30?
i have a philosophy that in an ideal world no game should last more than 20 hours to beat. When you past 20 hours it is because of padding. It holds true for most jrpgs, they are usually 50-100 hour experiences but most of that is grinding and padded out secondary missions.
After getting through the intro, it’s so cool to see how much better Marsh gets with every upload. You can really see the care and editing that go into each video and how they’ve improved since the already great SMT if videos
He actually, finally did it. The Majin Tensei Experience is here. Marsh went through one of the weirdest, most obscure, most player-unfriendly strategy RPGs in the genre's history, and he came out the other side still breathing. I am in awe of both this man's dedication and his willingness to suffer for our enjoyment. Actual king shit.
Isn't Fire Emblem 1-5 even more player-unfriendly? You can even miss a healing spell in FE 5, it's actually a meme due to how often it happens. There's also an old XCOM where first few hours is just restarting the game because aliens literally one-shot your squad but I'm no expert.
@@persona3rulezi'm not done watching this video but i played Fe1 blind (+ no savestates/restarts) as my first Fe and i got soflocked at against the final boss because i didn't collect some mcguffin i didn't even know existed like 15 maps earlier. I don't know yet if Majin pulls some shit like that but Fe1 at least is brutal without a guide.
@@persona3rulez honestly most tactics jrpgs are like that. Lets not even start with ogre battle 64, so many ways to just fuck your playthrough, miss most of the classes and items or get one of the dozen bad endings
@@atromin9323 either way, FE 4 and 5 are considered two best games and they both do some horrendous shit like large maps and absolutely dumb hit rates. Like I said, in 5 there is a character that misses healing spells like 7/10 times or so. Yet again, two best games in a franchise.
Me (single) typing, "Babe, wake up, Marsh just uploaded" into a RU-vid comment box, then posting it for good boy points before watching the entire video in the dark by myself in my apartment.
And Marsh even got the Jagen killed by not paying attention and overextending on a really boring slog of a chapter. I wasn't expecting him to give us The True Fire Emblem Experience in this video on top of Majin Tensei.
Marsh: If you don't have the manual, this game will be hard to figure out. *explanation* Me: So it's Fire Emblem with an SMT skin, sounds rad. Marsh: The game is slow and enemy turns take forever Me: So it's Fire Emblem _4_ with an SMT skin, even better!
This game is interesting, but the sequel is even more interesting. Apart from the slow arithmetic of the Super Nintendo, I think that "Majin Tensei 2" (i.e. the sequel to this work) is a masterpiece. Personally, I consider "Majin Tensei 2" to be on par or better than "Tactics Ogre", "Ogre Battle" , "Final Fantasy Tactics" , "Bahamut Lagoon" , "Fire Emblem" , "Little Master" , "SD Gundam G GENERATION F" , "Hiōden" and "Langrisser 2". この作品も面白いのだが、続編は更に面白い。スーパーファミコンの演算の遅さを除けば、魔神転生2（つまり本作の続編）は名作だと思う。個人的には魔神転生2はタクティクスオウガやファイアーエムブレム、ラングリッサー等と同等以上の作品だと考えている。 As a derivative of "Megami Tensei", it's a forgotten series, along with "Last Bible" and "Devil Children".I would much rather wait for an official sequel to "Majin Tensei" (preferably one that follows the system of "Majin Tensei 2"."Devil Survivor" does not satisfy that.) than "Megami Tensei" or "Persona", but that opportunity will probably never come. It is easy to imagine Atlus and Sega not wanting to spend money on that attempt. Not only that, but since the occult boom has died down and the social atmosphere has changed in Japan since the 2000s, it may not be possible to make games with the "Megami Tensei" and "Majin Tensei" atmosphere. I think such games can only be made by people who lived in Japan in the 1970s-90s. (It is difficult to explain in detail to a foreigner, but in those days, manga, anime and games with a unique atmosphere existed as a genre. Now there are no manga, anime or games that have the unique and strange atmosphere of the pre-90s.) 女神転生の派生としては、ラストバイブルやデビルチルドレンと並んで忘れられたシリーズだ。私は女神転生やペルソナよりも、魔神転生の正式な続編（できれば魔神転生2のシステムを踏襲したもの。デビルサバイバーではそれは満足されない。）を待ち望んでいるのだが、その機会は多分永遠に来ないだろう。アトラスやセガがその試みにお金を使おうとしないことが容易に想像できる。それだけではなく、2000年代以降の日本はオカルトブームが廃れて、社会の雰囲気も変わったので、昔の女神転生や魔神転生の雰囲気を持ったゲームは作れないかもしれない。ああいうゲームは1970-90年代の日本に生きていた人でないと作れないと思う。（外国人相手に詳しく説明することは難しいのだが、あの時代は独特の雰囲気を持った漫画、アニメ、ゲームが一つのジャンルとしてあった。今は90年代以前の独特の奇妙な雰囲気を持ち合わせた漫画、アニメ、ゲームは存在しない。）
It is fascinating to meet someone in such a position. What was the game like when you first played it? Did you get the true ending? Love from the USA ❤
@@nitro5247 nice to meet you! I'm sorry with Google Translate. I started playing games with Family Computer Megami Tensei, and got lost many times with the paper maps I made. I fell in love with the story of Megami Tensei 2 and Shin Megami Tensei. I remember that the ending of Majin Tensei made me feel very quiet, not impressed, as I continued to live in the world that had ended, and started looking for a way to live from the end. Right now, I'm writing a fan fiction just after Shin Megami Tensei's ICBM explosion. I'm still a captive of Megami Tensei!
@@AdamOwenBrowning It's true that it wasn't major, and fans at the time weren't active on social media, but there are some. There are few Japanese people who actively appeal to overseas in order to avoid troubles caused by cultural differences.
"French Nakajima was actually one of God's angels the entire time" is a line I never expected to hear before starting this video lololol. Thank you for making another excellent video Marsh!!! You do so much for the SMT fandom
I remember watching month after month as Marsh's twitter showcased his spiraling out of control playing Majin Tensei I hope that the Majin Tensei Military Strategist arc's conclusion is just as beloved
This game took its ques from Fire Emblem and made it work in megaten, the overpowered Orthrus is your Jagen/paladin equivalent. In nearly all FE games you get an early game unit that's super OP for the 1st couple of chapters but you're only meant to use them as a crutch or tank enemy attacks so that your units can pick em off for kill EXP.
I think a marsh video about some of the old ass fire emblems would be pretty interesting, Thracia especially for all its bullshit nonsense, hell it even has dark rooms
Stuff to look at in case you want to play Majin yourself and are looking for a specific ending/demons: 18/19 - 53:15 28 - 1:04:37 30 - 1:05:29 32 - 1:12:44 (Marsh got this one after stage 34 but you could get it right after 32) 34 - 1:11:58 46 - 1:29:19 (this is a long segment, watch until Marsh gets the powered up Ino Kagutsuchi) 51 - 1:36:45 Asides from that, remember to spare demon's lives when the choice is prompted. I think with these timestamps you can get any demon and ending you desire, please correct me if i missed anything.
This really reminds me of the Super Robot wars games which i love. The old super famicom ones still kick my ass but Majin Tensei seems easier to pick up than a dungeon crawler for me.
I played through this game, like, half a year ago, and the game got so tedious toward the later half that I felt like I was experiencing a fever dream, but instead of being subjected to a virus I was subjected to dark-green floors and light-green walls for hours. Overall, fun game, 6/10.
Sometimes I forget what drew me to your channel in the first place. At first it was at the time recent interest in SMT, 3-4, years ago. But then I realized. I came for SMT, stayed because you're in a funny way the Cybershell of Megami Tensei, humour wise. I don't know how you do it but you always send me in a fucking laughing fit
I feel like this games has a ton of remake potencial. It has some fun ideas and the narrative is surprisingly interesting, but the execution is utterly atrocious
Before this video was released, I was reading a recently made translation of this game but in manga form, Majin Tensei True Rememberence. Honestly that story was written with the authors interpretation of the game Edit: the ending feels rushed but overall its a finished megami Tensei manga so I can’t complain
When protag-kun first spoke, I actually thought there was some kind of copycat mimic NPC that was pretending to be me during the dialogue... because that still makes more sense to me than what actually happened, lol
This game, although often compared to Fire Emblem, has a lot more similarities with Famicom Wars. The unit match ups, where certain races deal more or less damage to others, is ripped almost directly from the series. The way units are summoned is also comparable, though instead of capturing towns to amass wealth and building them from factory tiles, you just summon them with your protagonists. The main influence from Fire Emblem comes from how you build your own army by recruiting new units as the game progresses, replacing old ones that may have died due to the permadeath system. This keeps the game feeling like one long, connected RPG in contrast to the disconnected levels of Famicom Wars that have no continuity. Majin Tensei falls into a strange limbo between both series with a coat of Megami Tensei slapped on top. The gameplay and map design feel like Famicom Wars, but it's burdened by the need to have continuity between levels. Stages just can't be tightly designed since the designer doesn't know how strong the player's army will be by this point in the game, leading to levels being needlessly long as a stand in for actual difficulty. This game's story structure is also similar to Fire Emblem: Gaiden, meaning that many maps have no dialogue and only exist as filler between story beats. Gaiden at the very least broke up certain story arcs with small towns or shrines, not to mention that most maps in Gaiden are relatively quick to beat. Majin Tensei doesn't do much better than either of these games in terms of gameplay, with its most stand out traits being its atmosphere, visuals, and music. This game is an absolute slog to play, but I still pushed myself to complete it before this review could come out. I'm glad I gave it a shot, but I don't think I could recommend it to even the most diehard SRPG fans. If anybody out there wants to play this game to completion, make sure to stock up on Noble Birds and fuse some Goddesses! Noble Birds deal tons of damage to flying units that otherwise resist most physical attacks, whereas Goddesses have great healing skills and take little damage from most enemies. Both races also fly, so use them to reach faraway treasures or block enemy spawners when the need arises. And open the central chests in Scenario 30 before you defeat all the enemies (The map shown at 1:04:57)! There's an item here called the Lapis Lazuli that can be taken to Rag's shop to increase you demon capacity by 10. Apart from that, just remember that this game will wear you down. Take some breaks or you might just lose your mind playing it all the way through.
I just got to say. I really enjoy how crass and casual you are when doing these retrospectives/walk throughs. Always feels like it 's just a friend explaining a game they like in a very understandable way. Especially with how some of the mechanics in smt games are.
No joke, I consider you one of the best SMT historians I've ever watched. Because I had no idea 99% of these games existed before your videos (and yes, I do play mainline SMT games and not just Persona games)
It's somewhat funny to realise that if this game had a more compelling cast, hub areas, dialogues and npc interaction together with quality of life improvements such as smaller levels, a faster general pace in the gameplay and so on it would have probably become easily a fan favourite in the whole franchise like devil survivor is. Majin Tensei has a solid gameplay, sprites, OSTs and a somewhat decent story, if only more time was invested in it to smooth its edges.
Holy shit he played majin tensei! Congrats on struggling through the abject suffering. This game is great though. Though what i am REALLY interested in you covering, is the 2nd majin tensei game, that game is in my opinion, one of the best titles in the franchise. Here's to you covering that Marsh and good luck 👍
What could maybe salvage this retro game is if maybe you can progressively social-link up with Ettienne (french Nakajima) in between dungeons, of the 'Temperance' arcana. And when you max him, he reveals himself to be Gabriel and at your disposal with waaaayyy more HP. Oui! Oui! >_< XD
Something about the fact that like most of the named characters died in this run really established how dangerous this was and seems more realistic. Also love the romance building between marsh and rags and a jealous Minotaur trying to interfere. Love your shit dude and thanks for making this
Something not mentioned in the video: You can get them back after recruiting them through fusion! You might be able to create multiple copies of them, even. I went the neutral route after checking it out so I dunno.
Wait a minute , Minotaur , Medusa .....Deja Vu . As much as like your videos I'm still waiting for SMT 2 .I hope you do it soon . Love your videos and I kinda hate you for brainwashing me into playing KMT .
Personally, I like the True Ending precisely BECAUSE it's boring and happy. I mean, let's be real. Life is boring, but happy endings aren't really a thing. Well, not really. You don't get happy endings so much as a nice end of a chapter. I will agree that the lack of incentive and context to get it does hurt its value, A LOT though. Sure things ended up pleasantly enough but... they still have a war torn world to live through that could see them dead literally five minutes after they get their 'happily ever after'. And with 2 more games in the subseries, then you tell me, do you really think that happy ending is so happy then? The bad ending is pretty cool, but for me, that's the boring one since well, he just goes hopping from timeline to timeline to NTR the heroine... from himself. That's kinda dumb and just shows how much of an idiot he is unless he goes all noble and makes damn sure he guides his other self from repeating his own mistakes... Ugh, no thanks. And the normal ending? Shit hasn't changed... and that's it. Blah. But yeah, I love your color commentary with respect to the game design though. I love your humor and thoughtful analysis! ...And I respect your mild masochism to suffer on the community's behalf... as a part of us laughs at the humor said masochism breeds.
May I just say that the Vishnu-Flynn fight theme from SMT4A for the "Worst Stage Ever Played in a Video Game" segment (stage 45) is just perfect? It really helps encapsulate the idea of a man hitting his limit with a game that does NOT respect his time whatsoever.
59 stages? Sounds similar to what some SRW games got and that is without counting split paths stages that you don’t get to play on the same playthrough. Very nice to see Fire Emblem type game being covered, I thought you are doing mostly rpgs only.
Glad to see someone cover this game in as much detail as possible. As usual, rad vid man. Can't wait for Majin Tensei II, and of course, the third entry, and best selling Majin Tensei game on the Sega Saturn: Ronde, to come out soon after this. We'll finally have HD footage of Ronde gameplay, and the [R E D A C T E D] fight.
I initially played Majin 2 just for the music, and I honestly don't regret it. SRPGs terrify me, but the price for the awesome soundtrack is well worth it for me. I might get to Majin 1 once I'm done with it, but that'll probably be another half decade.
Maybe this first game (and the ones that came after) prove why it took so long to go back to SRPG's for Devil Survivor. They probably really wanted to take a break until they were confident they could make a more digestible map structure. And Devil Survivor proves that they really thought about it with its more compact maps and bigger focus on the actual combat and plot.
It's almost certainly because Ronde was so bad, killing the sub series and they didn't really have another srpg sub series, other than that one Gameboy another bible game
Just now learning about this game from this video, it is (more or less) exactly what I expected and wanted when I learned that the Shin Megami Tensei series was going to have a cross over with the Fire Emblem series. But instead we got Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE...
Majin Tensei’s one of the more unique franchises in MegaTen. It’s a really archaic game because of it’s painful slowness but it’s weirdly different charm from SMT makes it one of the more unique branches from Megaten. Majin Tensei 2 especially is one of my favorite SMT games because of its story and totally different atmosphere from other games. You really went all out with this video Marsh, def one of those games that you have to sacrifice any social interaction to finish. Can’t wait for SMT 2 and Majin 2!
its pretty crazy that this and fire emblem: mystery of the emblem came out within literal days of each other, yet some of their odd design decisions are so similar I was sure one was copying the other. The idea of a bunch of missable garbage that effects the true ending, a random map late in game where killing weakened enemies is a fail condition, the way that you get a visual of your actual movement range (something not always present in strategy games at this time) the way the final boss will kill characters close to the main character unless proper conditions are met, etc.
