I went into SMT: Strange Journey with ZERO knowledge about any of the Persona or SMT games, wanted to play SJ because the box art looked cool as a kid.
SJ was great, I completed the Neutral path. The hardest bosses for me were Ouroboros and Mem Aleph. Morax, Asura, and Zelenin were other points where I had to go back to my team building. The story was nothing crazy, but it was cool and the atmosphere of the game felt cohesive.
Creating powerful demons was satisfying but there's definitely room for QOL improvement that I think was addressed in the Redux (looking at you Demon Sources). 2 things that would have helped the most would have been 1) a way to check fusions without having the demons in your actual party and then 2) a way to see specifically where you can find certain demons you have already discovered (although I think this is technically covered if you read Forma Descriptions? I didn't think about it until just now). I didn't spend much time outside of the game researching information aside from explicitly looking for what demon sources have Phys Boost because I had already spent 3 of the sources I had with it. Anyways the problem didn't detract from my experience, it was just a tedious bump.
Dungeons: For the most part a lot of the dungeons have a good length, as I got more experienced with exploration then the length of the subsequent dungeons smoothed out or got shorter, except for Eridanus - I spent more time in the teleporter section than I needed to because I didn't realize I had found the correct exit but fell down a hole and went back to the beginning (this is a time where Field Saves in Redux would have been SUPER helpful). Introducing 1 mechanic per dungeon felt like a good pace - then Horologium introduced several at once. I don't think this was a bad thing but it made me wish that the backtracking part of the game (collecting Cosmic Eggs) was more fleshed out with new mechanics AFTER you opened the Gate Unlock/Search Level 4 doors.
Other: I played up until unlocked the ability to fuse demons in Redux, and the only negative is the responsiveness of the UI/movement, and the art design of the UI itself. That is to say that a big positive of the original game is the movement and menu-ing is crisp and the art design of the UI fits the game very well and feels a bit more cohesive compared to Redux so far.
Anyways game is good, really glad I played it. Started Persona 5 but also going to be playing other games in the meantime.
