SMT3 is one of the quintessential JRPG titles available, and has been since its release.
Just because a title is somewhat synonymous with its genre doesn't make it "the best" as books like Snow Crash prove for Cyberpunk, so it's important you know what you're getting into.

First, the good:

+Comprehensive world building with touches of deep-series lore. Anyone who played through the first 2 SMT games will understand and enjoy Hijiri's involvement and some subtle references made thereto. Beyond references to the past, SMT3 is the most consequential title for the rest of the series as well.

+Lots of gameplay. Tons of gameplay. SMT3 does the best at tricking you into entering a dissociative powerleveling fugue state for a few dozen hours, this can also be a negative if you're someone who really values going outside, talking to your friends, or getting anything done.

+Design galore. This title is still in a time period where Persona was not the dominant ATLUS title, so the artistic and stylistic integrity of the series is impossible to ignore. It is a visually intense and interesting game that compels you to see the depths of its levels, the breadth of its mechanics and the entirety of the demon compendium just to appreciate the stylization of the series to this point.

Now onto the subjective:

>SMT3 is the most "J" a JRPG can be. Shy of gacha or pachinko, you have to understand that Japanese people love little games. They like puzzles, they like mechanics, and SMT3 obliges this in spades. There are plenty of trick dungeons, plenty of odd ends that American and European audiences seem either oblivious to or too stupid to understand. A good example is the anglo insistence that dialogue for recruiting is "random." This is not true. Past the early game demons will inhabit specific places that align with their views. For Americans; think of this as people who choose to live in "blue" or "red" states. You can recruit demons by choosing the dialogue that aligns with their "politics" but because people are rather ignorant to this do not expect to find an absurd amount of help or resources like you would with Final Fantasy titles.

>Certain content is locked behind longer, more tedious puzzles, though infrequently. Puzzle Boy is a great example; a magatama is locked behind the completion of Puzzle Boy, which is a spatial reasoning minigame taking about 15-30 minutes. You can find video guides on it, but people who "value their time" too much may not find it worth it. This will bother people touched by completionism, and may handicap you slightly in late stages of the game since it will also gate you out of acquiring the best of the magatama.

>Keeping with the pace of being "the most 'J'" it is entirely possible to expend resources in a way that you have to grind for dozens more hours just to acquire your lost progress. This is a problem for people who play guideless, but is part of the fun to me, so your mileage may vary.

And of course, the negative:

-Game takes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ forever. Encounters happen almost too often without actually having a reward besides XP. I get that it came out in 2003 and people bought maybe 3-4 titles a year, but it can feel punitive.

-The DLC content that would expedite your progress is free, it also does not come installed due to some Asiatic politics that bar it from being released in China and Korea. You can not access newly installed DLC from established saves, and you can not port saves into DLC compatible ones (to my knowledge, though I may be wrong).

-RNG is rudimentary and as a result somewhat lacking in reward structure. Lucky Tickets become gacha-like, encounters become tedious, it's exhausting to only need 1-3 things and spend hours not getting them. You begin to think god might hate you. You may find yourself questioning what grievous sinning you undertook in a previous life to have earned this punishment. These things are not for you to understand, simply surrender to god's plan.

-Certain narrative devices are underutilized in future titles, and in this one, which can be very disappointing if you're someone who finds themselves totally transfixed by the story and dialogue.

-Bugs. Most notably an early encounter achieved through dialogue will almost always cause the game to hang while it transitions to the battle sequence. It's hard to assume this specific bug is so severe that it can't be fixed, but it may be a matter of spaghetti code during the port process.

If you like JRPGs you should buy it and play it, if you don't care about completionism or time sunk you should buy it and play it. If you only like JRPGs that are very western, very shallow, or very forgiving this is probably not the title for you and I would recommend not wasting your time or money because you probably lack the capacity to enjoy a title like this. SMT3 is absolutely necessary for true JRPG afficionados who enjoy something other than romancing characters and finding a surrogate for human interaction.

Old school JPRG vibes. Sucks that Dante is extra but he IS fully voice acted which is awesome to hear one more time. Game is quite fun and streamlined, but very imbalanced and extremely vague/obtuse about lots of things.

Nocturne is a game where the thematical density is genuinely off the charts, in most games about the apocalypse its usually about preventing an apocalypse or maybe surviving one, but nocturne gives an interesting/complex question which is; what the world shall be next? In the game there is six ways one can rebuild the world, which i don't want to literally just give a summarization of all would make this long post (coming back to this its already long)

The protagonist or as hes called the demi fiend is a half human half demon, and due to the half demon in him he himself is unable to conceive his own “reason” which is essentially a strong desire to see how the next world comes to be. His journey in the vortex world is a journey to find self satisfaction by creating your own meaning in life, as though he cannot create his own reason he can willingly choose to further another Reason he sees fit or to cast away his humanity and become Lucifers own champion, but do not be misinformed all of these are choices the protagonist has to bear and make a decision for himself as in the vortex world the only person he can rely on is himself.

Now to talk about the other characters at the start of the game you are introduced to a bunch of characters; Hijiri a news reporter, Isamu and Chiaki your two close friends (according to the cd drama Chiaki was close to becoming demi fiends/Naoki’s girlfriend), Yuko Takao your teacher and Hikawa a cultist? Or sum idk. All of these characters are thrust into the vortex world along with you were they are forced to face their own weakness (bar Hikawa as he himself planned for the vortex world having a strong idea of what he wanted).

Chiaki is forced to confront her own weakness and in doing so develops a mindset were the strongest are the most fit a world of Yosuga, which leads her to get into get into altercations in which she even loses her arm but thanks to a deal made with a demon her arm is recovered and is granted more strength. Funny enough even though she believes in a world were the strongest seek fit, she is the only one(before summoning their god) to be given power from a demon and the only boss in the tower of kagutsuchi to summon allies, in which she summons 2 demons my interpretation being that she wished for her to friends to have been with her from the start so she would have never had to confront or be aware of her own weakness.

As for isamu, isamu is seem to be shown as a selfish and cowardly person and seems untrusting of people at the start of the game (something answered in the cd drama but not the game like wtf atlus)tldr about the cd drama he had been attacked by one of his friends who had turned full fiend(made it to the hospital before apocalypse it seems). Even though isamu is wary of demi fiend he only fully loses trust in him when he fails to save his teacher(and among other things like torture but this post is lowk long) isamu faces his problems by turning to isolation as after all he had given hope on positive relationships with anybody after being disappointed in the demi fiend/Naoki from his failure to save him in Mantra HQ and his teacher from Assembly of Nihilo.

Isamu even though he comes of as harsh and maybe rude (well to me because I thought I was saving him but the game doesn’t make it sound like that) the way his reason comes off seems to be somewhat of a person going through extreme depression as in his world of Musubi he is essentially closing himself off and creating his own world which could be tantamount to suicide (saw a point like this somewhere I had to agree with it) kind of nihilistic, kinda sad.

Would speak about the other characters and other endings but its long il talk about the combat which I think flickers between great and WOAT. The press turn system is such an amazing system that rewards one for strategy/builds, though never being able to relearn magatama moves suck it doesn’t matter that much thanks to Big MKado. Nocturne really gives a challenge to the players with both maps and enemies (some maps are tedious though like one of the tunnels I forgot reminded me of that one sector in strange journey with all those tps). I really had fun though.

Though I really like this game it has personal issues with atleast me to downright I feel like are objective flaws; the characterization in the game feels sometimes empty or just meaningless, like hijiris sin? Like whats that about, not only that but your meet up with friends doesn’t feel like a reunion but theres no emotional weight I feel like the characters came to their reasoning so quickly well atleast Chiaki does this hikawa makes sense for why he already has one and I will say Yuko finds hers with decent pacing. This disconnect really just is apparent and in a way kind of weighs down on the whole Reasons department but it wouldn’t be as bad for me to say the characters are completely bad id still say theres good in them.

And for the Last complaint holy hell man Lucifer on TDE hard mode is genuinely not fun to fight, theres difficulty and then theres RNG runs, when you fight lucifer on hard mode it feels like youre just a victim of a rigged casino, on normal mode hes beyond easy but on hard? You genuinely have to luck out that the ai plays like it was born yesterday and normally id just say well it’s a skill issue so I wont let it affect my rating but its to the point were there is no strategizing theres no back up plan for this, His normals are like a 60% crit rate or something? Has multiple almighty aoes that will flat out do 600 unless you have both maxed out debuffs on him and a rakukaja and ontop of that… a full heal! How wonderful I genuinely started writing down the order of moves and what I did and even calculating the damage to see how long I could beat him and I never got to below 10k hp. This could be skill issue but it feels like Dokkan difficulty man still though good game I enjoyed it.

Story: 8/10
Gameplay: 8 aswell would have been 9 if not for Lucifer on tde (cant believe my shock when I first tried him on normal after spending three whole days trying to beat hard mode