Shin Megami Tensei IV

Shin Megami Tensei IV is a role-playing game for the Nintendo 3DS. Atlus developed it and published it in Japan and North America, while Sega handled the PAL release. It came out in Japan on May 23, 2013 and in North America on July 16, 2013, then arrived digitally in PAL territories on October 30, 2014. It is the fourth numbered game in the Shin Megami Tensei series, the core line of the Megami Tensei franchise, but its story does not continue from earlier entries.

Players take the role of Flynn, a newly initiated Samurai of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado, a feudal land modeled on medieval Europe. When a figure called the Black Samurai starts handing out books that turn readers into demons, Flynn and fellow Samurai Jonathan, Walter, and Isabeau are sent after her. The chase leads below Mikado to Tokyo, a modern city sealed under a rock dome and overrun by demons. Choices along the way decide whether the story follows a Law, Chaos, or Neutral path, each with its own ending.

Exploration uses a third-person view of 3D environments along with an overhead world map, while fights play out in first person. Combat runs on the turn-based Press Turn system: hitting a weakness or landing a critical hit earns an extra turn, and having an attack blocked or absorbed costs one. Flynn fights alongside three demons and one AI-controlled human ally. Demons can be recruited by talking and negotiating with them, and two demons can be fused into a new one, with the player choosing which skills carry over.

Quests are split between mandatory story missions and optional ones, and macca serves as the currency for items and equipment. After a defeat, players can pay macca or Nintendo 3DS Play Coins to continue, and dying repeatedly unlocks an easier mode. StreetPass lets players trade demons. A follow-up, Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, came to the 3DS in 2016, and a physical bundle of both games called Double Hero Pack was released in Japan in April 2018.

Development began around August 2009, after work on Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey wrapped, and lasted about three and a half years; Atlus made a new numbered entry in response to fan requests. Kazuyuki Yamai directed, Masayuki Doi designed the main characters, and Ryota Kozuka composed most of the music. The game opened at number one in Japan with 188,562 copies sold in its first week, and worldwide sales passed 600,000 by July 2015. It holds a Metacritic score of 83 out of 100, with critics praising the battle, negotiation, and fusion systems and criticizing navigation on the overworld map.