I’d been kicking this one around for a while and honestly I was kind of considering doing Devil Survivor 1 and 2 against each other instead for very similar reasons. 2 is definitely an improved game, but 1’s story was more interesting to me since the characters were actually doing survival-related things like worrying about where to find water and spots to recharge their COMPs, and 2 basically has the crew working for the SMT equivalent of NERV. Seriously, an underground agency designed for the specific unlikely crisis at hand, bizarre but powerful alien attackers appearing one at a time in intervals… and a guy named Joe who’s kind of a goofball.

When it comes to the two ‘big’ Persona games, I kind of prefer the vibe of 3- darker, more outright creepy imagery, and a blatant sense of utter wrongness to the nature of the Dark Hour, compared to the “warm and fuzzy place where murder happens” vibe in 4- but the cast in 4 is way more memorable and the tweaks to the game engine itself make going back to 3 kind of a chore.