Until Dawn

 

Until Dawn is a game that I ignored for the longest time because I saw it was a similar sort of title to things like Beyond: Two Souls and Heavy Rain and David Cage had very much destroyed any hope I had of the "interactive movie" genre being any good.  Well, thanks to the viewer request system on my stream I was eventually forced to play it and I would like to formally apologise to Supermassive Games for ignoring their first game for so long because Until Dawn was probably one of the most fun experiences I've ever had on my PS4

The game follows a group of young adults (teenagers maybe? they might be high schoolers I forget and they look older than the game is telling me they are) having a weekend getaway in a snowy log cabin on top of a mountain.  The group pranks one of the girls who then gets upset and runs half naked into sub zero weather where she is then set upon by something or someone and ends up falling off a cliff with her sister to her death.  One year after the prank gone wrong, the group re-unite to try and have another party but this time with a bit less death and shenanigans ensue.

You, the player, are effectively watching this teen horror flick and every so often you get to make decisions for the characters or attempt to clear QTEs to see if they live or die.  There isn't quite as much weight to each choice or action as the game might have you believe in a lot of cases but some decisions are quite severe and do effect the plot in major ways and even a few of the QTE's will result in a character just outright biting the dust when failed which is a lot more than I can say for other games that I've played in this genre.  On your first go through you learn pretty quickly that this is the case but you aren't sure which decision will lead someone to their doom and which you can fail for the funnies so there is a decent sense of tension on that first run 

I'm going to get into spoiler territory  so if you haven't played it and you give a shit, stop reading here and go play it.

For example there's a part sort of early on where a boy and a girl are tied to a couple of chairs and one of you must die so the other may live.  The boy has a free hand and a gun on the table and you must decide if you are going to shoot her or yourself.  No matter what decision you make, no one dies because this is where the first of the games major twists takes place, where the whole thing is an elaborate prank being carried out by another character.  The two characters who were tied to the chair don't really talk about the effect of this decision after this scene so you may be led to believe that it's just one self contained scene for a long time, the boy and the girl even carry on their adventures and everything seems fine.

That is until the games second twist, where the game changes from a slasher movie to a supernatural monster flick and the group is being chased by the Wendigo, a lanky fucker that will rip your head off.  You get to a scene near the end of the game where the boy from the previous scene is being chased down a snowy path by the monster and when he reaches the cabin he needs the girl to open the door and let him in to safety.  If you shot yourself in the buzzsaw scene, she opens the door and you survive.  If you shot her she keeps the door tightly locked and watches you get your head ripped off by the Wendigo and sort of pretends to be sad about it.  There's even a combination of events you can do that I'm unsure of where she doesn't open the door for some reason and is distraught when she watches you get torn to shreds.  

There are plenty of scenes that play out in this way and are affected by stuff from WAY earlier in the game and it sort of invokes the same feeling that I had playing Kamaitachi no Yoru (also set in a snowy log cabin, funnily enough) on the SNES where we were working out every decision comination possible to get every possible ending scene, it was good fun there and it's good fun here.

I do have some minor complaints about the game though and while they don't ruin the experience they are worth noting.  There are some characters in the cast, two in particular spring to mind, that don't get nearly enough screen time.  They appear at the start and then either die SUPER fast or are ignored for most of the game and then get a little scene near the end.  Some of the decisions the cast decide to make on their own, outside of your choices, sometimes feel a bit stupid but I suppose you are playing a teen horror movie where this kind of thing is to be expected but it's still annoying.  Also parts of the game that involve walking from one area to another are PAINFULLY slow, with no proper run button and nothing to really do or figure out until the next set piece starts in 99% of cases.

There is one other HUGE complaint I have with the game but I'm separating it out because this is a problem that is no fault of the developer or the game itself.  Since I live in Japan, I was playing the Japanese version of the game and this version is HEAVILY censored.  Most of the deaths that the characters experience in this game involve either decapitation or amputation and in Japan, this is a big no no for games.  That means that when a character is killed the game will usually fade to black or certain parts of the kill animation will be modified.  This however goes as far to effect the story near the end.  There is a scene where you open a door and find a hall that is filled with the hanging, mangled corpses of every character who has died up to that point.  You go through the hall to rescue another member of the group and on the way out he has a sort of break down at all the death he's surrounded by.  In the Japanese version of this game not only is there a fade to black during some of it but the 3D MODELS OF THE BODIES ARE COMPLETELY REMOVED.  I had NO fucking clue what the cast was getting so upset about and I would have never have had an idea if it wasn't for someone in my stream chat explaining what was supposed to be happening.  Japanese censorship of this game really fucked some of it's best moments so if you're going to play it, don't play that version, import a UK or US version or something.

Overall though, Until Dawn was an extremely fun game that has quite a surprising amount of replay value considering the kind of genre it's in.  If you played a Quantic Dream game and found it lacking, give this game (or it's sequels Man of Medan and Little Hope) a try.  If you're a fan of the old school SNES sound novel like Kamaitachi no Yoru and Otogirisou you might also like it since it's sort of a modern version of that kind of experience.  Or if you just like trashy teen horror slasher flicks you'll probably like it as well because it plays VERY heavily into it's influences.  

Bottom line, give it a go.  Pop it in your PS4 in the evening and you'll probably be playing.....Until Dawn

Dohohoho

Dante's Inferno

 

When Dante's Inferno came out way back in 2010 I pretty much ignored it but thanks to the power of the stream request system and a friend of mine loaning me a copy to play on, I finally got around to giving it a go.

The one thing that everyone says about this game is that it's a God of War clone and it was for that reason that a lot of people I knew at the time either didn't buy it or gave it a bad rap.  Being honest, they are completely correct, Dante's Inferno is a SHAMELESS God of War clone in pretty much every detail.  The combat feels very similar, the boss fights all end in bombastic QTE's, you get souls to upgrade your character as the game goes on etc. etc. But none of that make Dante's Inferno a bad game, there are a lot worse things you could be cloning and as far as it goes, despite some jank here and there, it plays pretty well.  If you like God of War then there's no real reason I can think of as to why you wouldn't enjoy this.  

It does have some things of it's own though, such as the dual upgrade trees that are marked "holy" and "unholy" and gain experience based on if you commit gruesome murder or if you commit gruesome murder in a slightly more pious way.  Each of these trees have their own skills and upgrades, with Unholy being focused on your scythe and Holy being focused on your shooty hadoken cross thingy.  The other thing it offers is a sort of judgement system where you find lost souls and you choose to absolve them to heaven or stab them through the face for huge amounts of experience points in one of your upgrade trees.  The weird thing about this system is that if you choose to absolve a lost soul then you have to play Dance Dance Revolution for about a minute before the game gives you the exp which can bring things to a screeching halt and is generally quite an annoying thing to have to do.  

The one thing I hated more than anything else about this game was the difficulty level balancing.  I started the game on Hellish, the games hard mode and I started getting my ass kicked.  This was fine, I wasn't expecting hard mode to just let me win but as I progressed and got stuff off the upgrade tree and unlocked more equipable relics it hit me that the game wasn't really playing fair.  With a New Game+ file hard mode seems challening but reasonable but from a fresh file Hellish mode is just hair pullingly annoying.  Enemies will do damage like it's Dark Souls in Hellish but in Normal they do <1% of your health with a big wind up unblockable.  On a new game plus this would be offset by a relic you get about half way through the game and you'd have a lot more options with spells and combo upgrades from the unholy tree to deal with the scenarios but when your a baby crusader taking your first trip into the rings it's borderline impossible unless you have a lot of prior experience. 

So despite some jank, the hard mode being way too hard and the normal mode being laughably easy Dante's Inferno isn't a bad little game at all.  It's the kind of thing that would be good to play when you have gaming friends over, something to fiddle with and you don't have to think too hard about while you have conversations about whatever.  The cutscenes and game help boxes are also equal parts awesome and hilarious so even if you end up hating the gameplay it's probably worth playing just for that to be honest.  

The game ends on a very saddening "to be continued" screen as well.  I imagine the developers had plans to do games for heaven and limbo but this game probably just didn't do well enough.  Give it a go if you can get your hands on a copy.  Brain off, scythe out and just enjoy the sights and the action.

Fire Emblem 3 Houses

 Yesterday I finally beat Fire Emblem 3 Houses and I want to say it's probably the best game I've played on my Switch so far.  Although do keep in mind that I thought Breath of the Wild was shit and Mario Odyssey bored me to tears and even though Fire Emblem is way better than both of those, it's still riddled with problems that detract a fair amount of the enjoyment for me.

For those who may be living under a rock, Fire Emblem is a series of strategy RPGs that's been going since the NES days.  In the west, we were first given a taste of the series on the Game Boy Advance but since that entry it's become a fairly popular series.  If you're a Smash Brothers fan you're probably more than just a little familiar with a few of its more famous faces.  The Fire Emblem games are a series of strategy RPGs which are probably most well known for their use of perma death.  In most Fire Emblem games, if you lose a character they are gone for good and combined with some pretty challenging maps the series has a bit of a reputation for being on the tougher side.

If you're new to the series then 3 Houses might actually be a good place to start.  One thing to note is that in this game the perma-death is actually optional.  When you begin the game you are asked to pick a difficulty and if you want the mechanic turned on.  So if you want to play the game on it's hardest modes but the idea of permanently losing a character turns you off, the settings are separate so you can customize your experience, it's a nice touch even if FE snobs will poke fun for you using it.

I'm going to try and avoid talking about the story because it's quite long and there are also 4 different routes which you can go down and I've only played the one for Claude (the yellow guy) so I can't really talk about the story in much detail outside of his scenario.  On a basic level you're a Mercenary that gets picked up by a monastery and you are hired to be a teacher, train your students and save the world.

The strategy RPG gameplay in 3 Houses is actually very good.  If you're a Fire Emblem fan you'll probably enjoy it and if you're new the game goes out of its way to get you acquainted to its many systems so you won't be overwhelmed.  I have very few complaints about the core gameplay of 3 Houses but it's EVERYTHING ELSE that pisses me off to no end.

In older Fire Emblem games, you start a level, complete the level and then move on to the next level.  Each map is book ended by a bit of story and you enjoy a nice strategic adventure.  3 Houses however changed all of that and now you have a sort of Persona style system between every level.  In almost every case, you are given a bit of story and then a calendar and you have an in game month to make preparations and train your troops.  You get a few chances each month to do a few things like explore the monastery and talk to people, take seminars to up your skills, do side-battles or rest up to increase motivation and recharge your super sword.  For the first few maps, this is actually pretty fun but after a while, when you start to get access to more "activity points" it just starts to feel like a drag.  An obligation that you have to partake in to keep yourself up to speed when all you really want to do is get on with the fucking story.  3 Houses took me around 60 hours to beat the first time around but if you took out all of the stupid faffing around between story missions it probably would have been less than 20 

I said above that I was going to try to avoid talking about the story but my next problem point does involve it so spoilers ahead for those that give a shit.

The "main" route of the game involves 22 missions but, much like the between-mission gameplay, the story is also padded out to fuck.  You are sort of acting as a peace keeper in the first part of the game but some shit happens and you are presented with the big bad guy.  Your final encounter with big bad guy happens around mission 18 or 19 where you have them on their knees in front of you and you put your giant blade right in the top of their skull.  Then the game is like "oh but there's also Technowizards with ICBMs" and I didn't really mind this because they are sort of eluded to as a major player in the plot very early.  So you do a stage in Tron world with dubstep music and after you finish that the game goes "oh yeah remember this dude in the worlds lore? yeah fight him" and you have to do ONE MORE MONTH of faffing around and one more fucking mission with an enemy that barely puts up a fight.  After you beat the big bad the story ceases to be interesting and I ended up blasting through the last few missions just because I didn't give a shit.  

Funnily enough, the route I didn't do, the "secret"-ish route, only has 18 Chapters.  So I guess in that path you just do what's required and win and the game doesn't pull the Skrillex Army or Lore Man out of it's arse to pad out a few more levels. 

My final complaint with this game is the localization.  My Switch systems setting is set to English so the game displayed English text but the English voice work was probably some of the worst I've ever heard in my entire life.  I like to over exaggerate my disdain for English voice actors of Japanese anime games but 3 Houses had me literally cringing with how bad it's English voice work is.  Luckily though you don't need to suffer through it as the game has an option to turn on Japanese but that raised another issue.  The translation for this game is just off in places.

I get that translating Japanese is hard, there's plenty of things in Japanese that don't really go into English too well so you have to take liberties but some of the mistakes made completely change the way that certain characters are.  It ranges from little things like completely ignoring one characters strange way of speaking to big things like completely changing a characters personality.  The best example of this I came across is a scene between the characters Hilda and Raphael.  Raph is a big strong punchy boy with a sort of gentle giant type personality and he's trying to make a necklace for his sister for her birthday or something.  He enlists the aid of the usually lazy Hilda and she goes above and beyond to help him out and make a nice gift that his sister would really enjoy.  In the Japanese Hilda says something along the lines of  "The flowers you picked were looking a bit lonely so I added these things" while in the English she says "The flowers you picked looked so pathetic so I added my own touches"

The point of that scene is to make clear that Hilda isn't so much lazy and she just has massive confidence issues.  Shes worried about letting her superiors down and so she asks people to do shit for her so she can keep up her noble appearances but for this task with Raph it gives the idea that when it comes down to it she really is willing to put in the effort for people she cares about.  However the translation just makes her sound like a bitch.  All the nuance of the scene is sucked RIGHT out and the nature of the character is completely changed.  This is the example that stood out the most to me but things similar to this are dotted all over the place, the translators should be embarrassed.

But overall, despite my bile, FE3H is actually a pretty good game.  It's got a ton of content and if you like strategy RPGs this is one of the best franchises to turn to.  So if you don't mind slogging through weird, half baked dating sim mechanics, you'll probably have a good time  

Finish it Before You Sell It

 

A few days ago a guy by the name of John Garvin said that "If you love a game and want a sequel, buy it at full fucking price" and I just want to take a moment to talk about why I think John Garvin is a massive fucking moron.  

Back in the day, up to around the PS2 era I was more than happy to buy a game at full price upon launch.  This was usually because I knew that in most cases I could take the game home, pop it into my system and play it without any major hiccups ruining the experience for me.  Starting around the PS3/Xbox 360 era this all changed with the ability for developers to patch games after launch via the magic of the internet.  Recently there seems to be a thing with SOME games with them releasing in a buggy, almost unplayable state and then after some time the developers will upload a patch that may, or may not, fix a number of the issues.  Some recent games that spring into my mind are Bloodstained (Switch Version), Cyberpunk2077 and...Days Gone.

John Garvin, the man who gave this brain dead comment of course works for Bend Studio, the company behind the generic, buggy snoozefest that was Days Gone.  Days Gone was a game that before I patched it was crawling with game breaking bugs.  There was a few funny things like voice lines fucking up, textures not loading in and AI pathing going all wonky on escort missions.  However the smile was wiped completely off my face when I got to a mission, a main story mission needed to progress the game I might add, that bugged and completely halted my progress.  I had to download a 10+ Gigabyte patch to fix the problem and EVEN WITH THAT PATCH the game tried to halt my progress again in the final moments as it forgot how characters should interact with walls and floors.  I firmly stand by the idea that if you have an unpatched retail disc of the game that went out when the game launched, you have a good chance of never being able to finish it.  So no, John, you slimy post launch patching little cunt, I will not give you $60 on release day for your broken tired little Walking Dead ripoff, fuck off.

It's gotten to the point where buying games at launch for full price doesn't feel like a fun and exciting way to spend the weekend but instead it feels like a fucking gamble.  Will I get a fun video game to relax with or will I be tearing my hair out as the game proceeds to shit all over itself because the developers cared more about making a quick buck than actually finishing their project?

Despite all that, day 1 buys are a thing that's hard to avoid in certain cases.  I bought Final Fantasy 7 Remake day one and I bought Death Stranding day one and thankfully I was happy with those purchases.  Despite what anyone thinks about Death Stranding at least you can say it fucking worked properly.  But the bottom line here is that if you want my fucking money for a full price game, you have to at least finish the fucking thing first.  If your attitude is that people should pay full price for a generic shitty zombie game that struggles to get to the end under the weight of poor development, then maybe you should stop making fucking video games, huh?

Moonlight Syndrome

 

If you've listened to me on the stream or read this blog extensively you may be aware that one of my favorite games of all time is Killer7.  Killer7 is the brainchild of Suda Goichi, or Suda51 as he's more commonly known and he's the guy responsible for games like No More Heroes and Killer is Dead, games famous for being a bit weird to say the least.

Suda51 before starting his own studio, Grasshopper Manufacture, actually got his start making games for a company called Human Entertainment and so I decided to go back and check out some of his past work and the first game I decided to sink my teeth into was Moonlight Syndrome on the PS1.

It may have been a mistake to start with Moonlight Syndrome because from what I can understand, it's a sort of alternate universe type story based on a game called Twilight Syndrome but I was already an hour in when I realized so I just kept going.

The game follows the adventures of a high school girl called Mika who lives in a town where a series of progressively fucked up things are happening.  Mika takes it upon herself to investigate these strange happenings after a road accident kills one of her class mates and we get to join her on her weird and dark misadventures.  

Game play wise there isn't really a lot to talk about since Moonlight Syndrome is essentially a visual novel.  You control Mika or one of the other characters moving left or right along each of the games areas but there isn't really anything to do other than watch the walking animation and listen to the loud footstep noises.  You do this until you meet another character or hit an event trigger and then more story plays out for you.  They story is presented in a number of chapters and while the main characters lines are all denoted with text NPCs all get weird PS1 CGI and voice acting.  There are a couple of moments in the game where you have to solve a "puzzle" which usually involves finding an event trigger or talking to a specific character.  For example there's one bit when Mika is investigating an apartment building and you have to find someone living in room 9 on a certain floor.  If you just count the doors you go down you'll end up at the wrong door because in Japanese apartments a room 4 doesn't usually exist and the idea of calling that a "puzzle" is a bit sad really.

 Overall though, Moonlight Syndrome is a weird game that I think is worth checking out if you're a big fan of Suda51s more modern titles.  It's fun to go back and see what he was doing early in his career.  As far as I know though, the game doesn't have a fan translation and was never released outside of Japan so unless you can read and understand Japanese you may be shit out of luck.  If you do though, give it a go, it's not overly long and it's quite an interesting little game.  MAYBE check out the previous titles first if you really want to get into the series though.

Abandoning Game Collection

 

When I first moved to Japan, access to retro shops and old hardware meant that I was extremely excited to start collecting old games.  I quite enjoy playing retro games and so being able to do so on real hardware sounded really good but over the years I have come to realize that collecting games is a big pile of bullshit (for me)

As of right now, I still have a pretty sizeable chunk of my game collection.  A while ago I sold a bunch of boxed SNES games that I had bought for about 100 yen each back to local used book chain Book Off because they were eating up tons of space in my closet, but most of it remains intact.  The problem with this collection though is that it's not doing anything, it's just sat there, collecting dust, I just own it for the sake of owning it.  

I do know that there's quite a lot of people who like displaying their games.  Piling them up in shelves like in the header image, putting jewel cases and boxes side by side or, in some cases, even putting them in special display cabinets.  This is all fine and dandy but there are two problems with that.  The first is a problem personal to me and many other collectors living in Japan where our houses or apartments just don't have to the space to do that, so even though I have a pretty sizable collection of PS1 games, they are just hiding in a cardboard box in my wardrobe.  The second is that even if I could, I just don't give enough of a fuck do that, I don't see the appeal of it.  Games are meant to be PLAYED, not looked at and I'm sure as shit that if you have a full wall of SNES games you aren't playing all of them any time soon.  In fact, if what I've seen on Twitter is to be believed, you have that massive wall of games and yet all you do is sit there and play Super Mario World, Super Metriod and Tetris all day while the rest of it sits there unused and unloved.  

What I realized though, the reason I started collecting all those games all those years ago is that I care about having access to these games more than I care about owning them.  Sometimes, on a lazy afternoon, it would be nice to just grab a random handful of Saturn games, spread them around me on the floor like I'm a young lad again and whittle away the hours playing a bunch of shit I've never heard of.  But nowadays that isn't necessary.  Mini systems and more importantly, emulation exist now so you don't actually NEED to spend a ton of money and use a ton of space to have that experience, with a few clicks and some computer know how you can have that afternoon with the Saturn but at no cost and you'll still have the shelf space for a cactus or something.

"But Tau! Emulation is IlLeGaL" I hear some of the 40 year old British saddos on Twitter cry.  Yes, to some extent they are correct, companies would probably rather you not download 3rd party software and their games and play them on your PC but who is really being hurt by emulation? Let's think on it for a second

One game I love dearly is Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne.  A long while ago, after moving to Japan, I wanted to play it again on my nice PS2 that I bought in Book Off.  So I went down to that very same Book Off to find a copy, and lo and behold there it was, the regular edition of SMT3 for about 600 yen.  But wait, Nocturne in Japan isn't the same Nocturne I had in the UK, I had the Maniacs edition! So a bit more looking and I find the Maniacs edition for TWENTY THOUSAND FUCKING YEN.  So I went home and I emulated it via PCSX2.  Now who did I hurt by doing this? ATLUS? No because they got my high school pocket money when I bought it in England.  The only people that lost out was the company that runs Book Off.  Someone who wasn't related to it's production or publication missed out on $200 because I'm not willing to pay jacked up prices for game that came out in 2003.

But the, a miracle happened, a Shin Megami Tensei 3 Nocturne HD Remaster was announced for the Switch and PS4 and lemme fuckin' tell ya, I bought that shit IMMEDIATELY.  So the 20,000 yen I didn't give to whatever cunt runs Book Off I instead gave 6000 of it to ATLUS for the Switch version because SMT3 on the go is rad. The other 14,000 that I saved I can now use to buy other Atlus games like P5R (lol) and P5S or Persona Q or something like that.  Money that will go to people who actually work on those games to hopefully give me more SMT games (SMT5 release date please I'm beggin ya) If however I HAD given my money to Book Off that instead though, I probably wouldn't buy the remaster because I already had it on PS2 and ATLUS would have lost out on a sale.  Emulation reminded me just how awesome SMT3 still is after all those years, and then ATLUS sucked the money right out of my wallet with a version I can play on the go.  ATLUS, if anything, owe a big thank you to PCSX2.

If I buy a classic game, I want that money to go to the developers or the people who may be involved in making another one, I want to vote with my wallet and tell those devs or publishers that this is what I want more of.  I don't want to make some re-seller little cunt on Ebay $200 richer so he can buy more anime figurines to cum all over

I'm not saying however that game collecting is complete bullshit, if YOU personally get something out of it and you have the money to do it, then go for it.  I know a couple guys who collect for specifically the Saturn and the PC Engine and to tell you the truth, the idea of curating a collection of games for one system that you're particularly passionate about does have a sort of lure to me even now.  But if I'm being honest I'd rather save my money, support new IP and buy certain remakes of games I really like so that hopefully we can see some more from those series'

Getting Started With Shin Megami Tensei

 I am a big fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series in all of its wonderful little forms.  I don't care if it's mainline, Persona, Devil Survivor, Soul Hackers, I don't give a shit, it's all pretty good stuff.  In recent years too, SMT has seen a sort of surge in popularity thanks to Persona 4 and especially Persona 5, but whenever people talk about this game there's always some ass hat in the comments saying "Playing a real Shin Megami Tensei game, loser" and while this is off putting when phrased as such, I do think that it's something worth doing.  The series has a lot to offer and if you enjoyed P4 or P5 then there's a good chance you'll like at least some of the others.

Whats wrong with Persona?

The short answer is nothing, there is nothing inherently wrong with the Persona games.  As an entry into the series they are actually not bad.  They are, quite frankly, extremely EASY games and for old players who got their starts on the Maniacs version of SMT3 the Persona games are sort of laughable from a game play standpoint.  That's not to say they aren't fun but when a lot of people who have been playing since the PS2 and earlier, they enjoyed this series for the challenge it provided and I can sort of understand that they are upset about the easier, more wholesome spin-off games are getting the attention

Also the Persona "fandom" (fuck I hate that word) has this weird thing where it seems like a great deal of the people posting about Persona....haven't actually played it and if they have only a small portion of them have actually bothered to finish it.  When I finished vanilla Persona 5 a while ago, the trophy for seeing the ending was considered "Rare" and since 2016 it's just become "uncommon"

What's going on is that people see the nice wholesome plot about high school kids being best friends and sticking it to "the man" and get all gushy about it.  Weirdos who are happy to spend more time discussing "ships" and making weird head-cannon for members of the cast rather than just...playing the fucking games.  So I feel that SOME amount of the bile from mainline doesn't come from their dislike for the game itself, but rather the people who claim to like it.  The game is fine, but saying "Persona bad" triggers some idiots, so that's what they say

On Difficulty

One thing that the old guard will always go on about without fail is how "hard" these games are.  Do not be concerned, because like Dark Souls players, they are grossly overstating the games difficulty.  What SMT does require compared to other RPGs is some degree of adjusting.  Spell names are weird, press turn mechanics can be infuriating when they don't go your way and getting used to buffing and debuffing on the regular can be an easy thing to forget and it is VITAL in most of the series.

The reason the difficulty is so overstated I think is because a lot of people started with Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne.  Nocturne in Japan actually has 3 versions, a base version, a "maniacs" edition and a crossover game.  We never got the base version over in the west.  Nocturne in the west is actually the maniacs edition and is actually a slightly more challenging version of the base game with extra content.  Not that the other games aren't challenging, the series sort of keeps up a pretty decent degree of challenge throughout but in most cases outside of Nocturne Maniacs it isn't nearly as hard as people make it out to be

So where to start?

Well it depends what you want.  If you are into Pokemon, let's say, but you find those games too easy or too samey, they start with mainline.  SMT3 is available on PS2 and has a remaster on Switch and PS4 if you want to start the so called "real" way.  The Switch version is interesting because it's actually a re-release of the crossover edition which was a version of Nocturne Maniacs that featured a character from Devil Summoner.  SMT4 is arguably a better place to start since that game is MUCH easier and you can basically break the entire thing in half just by pumping all your stat points into magic.  I built my character NOT knowing that, did a strength build, and still coasted through the game on a chocolate surfboard so as far as starting places for mainline goes, 4 is actually really good.  

If mainline seems a bit daunting to you then, well, play Persona.  Persona 3 and up are very much the "dating sim" spinoff games but they all have extremely good RPGs behind them as well.  Demon Negotiation is less of a thing in Persona and it instead focuses on the bonds you form with people in the world.  Forming bonds makes your demon fusions stronger and there for easier to murder enemy demons in whatever dungeons you have to go through.  Persona 1 and 2 didn't have these dating sim elements but they are still good games, but a bit more....classic? I guess 

If chatting up school mates and romancing the local nurse in the clinic doesn't seem up your alley and you want something a little more traditional, go for the Digital Devil Saga duology.  The follow on from each other so you gotta play them in order but they are basically classic RPGs with a few SMT mechanics put in there.  Demon negotiation and capturing doesn't exist in these titles and instead your characters have a "demon form" that you acquire skills for via a sort of grid thing.  I've heard some people say that this ISN'T a good starting game for a reason I can't quite grasp so they are probably full of shit.  It was personally my second SMT game after 3 and my high schooler brain handled it just fine.

If you want to jump in at the deep end and REALLY go deep into the series, start at the beginning with Megami Tensei on the NES or Shin Megami Tensei on the SNES.  Classic dungeon crawls with the demon negotiation and all that good stuff.  Bring a pen and graph paper.  If you don't want to go that far back there's Strange Journey on the DS which offers a sort of similar experience but with a lot of the quality of life improvements.

If you like your battles more tactical then go for Devil Survivor.  If you like things like FF Tactics or other games in that genre, Devil Survivor should tickle your fancy just right.  If you want something more action oriented then try the Devil Summoner games, since it's just SMT with an action RPG combat system.  Raidou Kuzunoha is also a pretty cool protagonist.

There's a bunch of other games obviously that I haven't mentioned but I feel this smattering of the SMT platter is enough to get you started if you really were curious about playing a "real" Shin Megami Tensei game.

The only other word of advice I have after that is to just ignore the fucking fandom.  If you try SMT mainline, decide you don't like it and play ONLY Persona, that's fine, who gives a shit what BillyTwatface962 on Twitter thinks?  By the same token if you enjoy mainline and you think the Persona fandoms constant ranting about ships and console ports are "cringe", just ignore it.  Go do a no fusion run of 3 or something, it's far more fun and will probably make you feel better (or worse if RNG treats you shitty)

In conclusion: Just play some fucking SMT, it's great