Shin Megami Tensei NINE

Shin Megami Tensei NINE is an unusual case in the series' history - it's the only entry in the main numbered line that was released exclusively for Xbox, a console few in Japan would have expected it on. The story takes place in present-day Tokyo, struck by a mysterious phenomenon that suddenly opens gates to a demonic world, and the player once again ventures through dungeons full of negotiating with demons and fusing them, this time with a protagonist who can be customized to a certain degree to fit the player's own playstyle. Compared to earlier installments set mostly on Nintendo handhelds and home consoles, it also represented a major technological leap to a fully three-dimensional environment instead of the previous 2D presentation.

The choice of Xbox was also driven by the game's intention to offer online features via Xbox Live - a service still freshly launched in Japan at the time - specifically sharing and trading demons between players across the network, a unique step toward networked play for the series in 2002 that no other installment attempted at the time. This ambition ran into the fact that Xbox was an extremely niche platform in Japan, where the game was released exclusively, alongside Sony and Nintendo, so NINE ended up more of a bold technological footnote than a mass-market title. The dungeons also abandoned the older games' purely random encounters - enemies are visible directly in the environment, and the player only clashes with them on contact, which at the time represented a noticeable change of pace compared to series accustomed to constant random interruptions of exploration. This lets the player go around enemies, ambush them from behind for a combat advantage, or avoid them entirely if they don't feel up to a particular fused demon.

Why play it: Shin Megami Tensei NINE is interesting for series fans who want to see an unusual but bold attempt to combine demon fusion with online play on a platform few would expect it on, and at the same time the series' first step into a fully three-dimensional environment.