Shin Megami Tensei/YMMV


 * Broken Base - Alignments. Game of choice. There's a lot to argue over.
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome - Go check.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome - Here.
 * Did Not Do the Research: For a series usually good for this, there are sometimes some glaring errors on the less historically popular creatures. For example selkies were misspelled as "Silky" and given the house spirit backstory of brownies. Yet they appeared as themselves in the Devil Children games so at least Atlus retcons its mistakes.
 * Draco in Leather Pants - There is nothing wrong with liking Chaos. Remember, though - that's the side that, while wanting to preserve Humanity, was the one to put the Z-Class Apocalypse How on the table and desires a Social Darwinst world with no restraint whatsoever. Just saying.
 * It really depends on the game rather than those two being the only options. Chaos is portrayed far more positively in Devil Summoner 2 and not every game wants a world of Social Darwinism. Not to mention the choice is between a Z-Class or endless cycle of X-Class Apocalypse How till all of humanity's free will is taken away by God.
 * If you were wondering what the above spoiler means,
 * Fridge Horror: It's been explained that God is not the source of all evil in the series, and that something in the Universe is causing God to be Evil. Okay, um, what could be so evil that it makes God (y'know, the guy who made everything) evil?
 * Even worse. According to Christianity, God's very nature is love itself. What in the name of everything holy could possibly have corrupted love incarnate?
 * Maybe too many people hating and killing in its name? Worse: believing that they do good and what they feel is love? This world runs on Gods Need Prayer Badly. -> Humans Are Bastards.
 * Ho Yay - Meet Persona. Hell, meet Nocturne. If it's Mega Ten, there's porn of it. Usually in this variety.
 * MST3K Mantra - Satan is based on the Jewish view of Satan, the Quirky Miniboss Squad has the Catholic Uriel and Raphael, and in Shin Megami Tensei II, which mirrors (the Hollywood version of) Jehovah's Witness teachings. Note that Thor, Narukami and various other thunder gods co-exist and move on.
 * Paranoia Fuel: An integral part of many of the Persona games.
 * The Scrappy: A LOT of fans hate whoever is on the side of Law in each game that has a Law-Neutral-Chaos axis, such as the Messians in Shin Megami Tensei I and II, Amane in Devil Survivor, and in Strange Journey. You'll see a lot of people rooting for Neutral and Chaos, and rarely anyone who likes Law. For that matter, forget about saying that you like Law.
 * Sequel Displacement - Before Shin Megami Tensei, there were two games for the Famicom called Megami Tensei (the first was adapted from the first novel of the Digital Devil Story series of novels). Few outside of Japan have heard of them, and even in Japan the number of gamers who came of age during the 90s and 00s who've actually played those games (or read the novel) are increasingly few in number.
 * Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne was not the first game released with the Shin Megami Tensei supertitle in the west. The largely forgotten Demi Kids games also had it (in small text) and predate Nocturne's release in the west by a year.
 * That One Attack: Any spell with the "Megido-" prefix. It must mean "fuck your life" in some other language.
 * In a way, it does. That series of spells is named for the mountain where Armageddon will supposedly be fought.
 * This extends to any Almighty attack, really (the Megido are the main spells but not the only ones).
 * Devil Survivor takes it Up to Eleven by adding the -dyne suffix. As if Megidolaon wasn't bad enough,  can drop Megidoladyne on the entire map. And did I mention that it gets 50% more powerful with each hit?
 * Then others like Strange Journey throws fuel on the fire by planting new spells in that are of the same type. Thought Megidolaon was awesome? Add in Big Bang which is even more powerful by a good 200 points. Then we have Babylon Goblet which has a chance to charm. Good luck recovering from that. And god forbid you get the eponymous JIHAD because not only is it one of the strongest spells in the game, but it also LOWERS THEIR STATS TOO. But to be fair while you have those, you can bet your opponent has even better shit than you.
 * That One Boss: Matador and Mot in Nocturne, the golden metal trio in Persona 2, Intrepid Knight in Persona 3, anyone in Digital Devil Saga with the second boss theme and probably a few more. Of course, if you don't use all of the options that are available to you like ailment inducing ammo, buff and debuff skills, buff and debuff cancelling skill, healing skills, elemental and ailments immunity to at least some of the bosses attacks, then expect lot of bosses to suddenly turn into Nintendo Hard That One Boss. You know what, let's just tell you we have ThatOneBoss/Atlus (where Shin Megami Tensei makes up most of the article) and leave it at that.
 * Uncanny Valley - Part of the series' aesthetic. While it remains distinctly Manga, the characters tend to share the same grayish skin color and nearly all share the distinctive eye design.
 * This was noticeably absent in Devil Survivor and the later installments of the Persona series, both of which used a more manga, cartoony style, that severely contrasted with all the Nightmare Fuel of the game.
 * Both of those series had different character designers for the human characters, while keeping Kazuma Kaneko's demon/persona designs. Kaneko is responsible for the human character designs in all the main series Shin Megami Tensei games, as well as DDS and the Raidou games.
 * Ugly Cute: Some of the demons that aren't mind-bogglingly strange or Stripperific demon babes could arguably qualify. Decarabia and Yatsufusa are some examples.
 * Values Dissonance - The ratings for each game vary greatly by the region. Nocturne (Lucifers Call) and vanilla Persona 3 have significant gaps between the PEGI (12+ ) and ESRB (17+ ) rating alone.
 * Nocturne even got an A in Japan, which basically means suitable for everyone. Note that this game is considerably more difficult than the already difficult Digital Devil Saga and Persona sub-series, you get turned into a demon by having a snake-like parasite get dropped into your eye in first-person perspective and.
 * Many speculate that the only reason many of the games--even the less violent ones such as Persona 3 and 4--have M-ratings in the United States is because of Mara, who is absent in Devil Survivor games, one of the few series in the franchise to carry a T-rating.
 * Visual Effects of Awesome - Some of the designs for demons are truly awesome (which is why they can be downright terrifying). For example, Beelzebub.