Why does everyone call the whole series Shin Megami Tensei? It's the Megami Tensei series, SMT is a series of games within that series.

Probably because it says "Shin Megami Tensei" on the box. Just a hunch...

It shouldn't though, that's my point. When I said people, I was including Atlus USA.

Weren't the original Megami Tensei titles made/published by Namco, and form Shin onwards by Atlus?

The remastered version of 1 on the PSP isn't awful, and neither is the original, they're just take a bit of getting used to and the random battles occur a little bit too often for my taste, but by no means can it be said to be "awful". 2 I have no idea about.

The original Persona was "Megami Ibunroku Persona", so while it is not part of the SMT series, it is a spinoff, especially if oneis only considering the Atlus titles. In any case, there are thematic links and whatnot. Hell, there are some silly links between ALL the games from SMT onward (Persona being tangentially related to both SMT If.... and Devil Summoner via the Kuzunoha Detective Agency and Tammy/Tamaki), but eh.

As long as they have demon/character designs by Kazuma Kaneko I count them as SMT titles, hah.

Hell, if there is a subseries that has pretty much no link to the main series it is Digital Devil Saga, that one was pretty bizarre.

Edit 2: The first Raidou game SUDDENLY going all serious and referencing SMT2 was a goddamn surprise, in any case.

Heheh. Don't worry, I wasn't saying they weren't in the same overall series. Just that the series as a whole is the MT series rather than the SMT series.
They just like sticking SMT into the name when they publish them in the US for some reason even though there are only 3 or 4 actual Shin Megami Tensei games (IIRC).

This is why plebeians like me just refer to them as "Persona" and nothing else, far less confusing. XD

I played P4 on my PS3 and I have an original 80gb. Always update your firmware before playing an old PS2 title, they were improving backwards compatibility all the time.

Anyways, I played a lot of P3P on my PSP, I was sucked into that game for a whole month or two of my life. I got into it in a way I never had with a jRPG before, I honestly felt like my character was me. The writing makes every little thing in the game so significant and fun. Eventually the game wore me out after playing for 25 hours. I only got to the 100th floor of Tartarus.

But once I was done with it I picked up P4, I was hooked all over again but it didn't last as long. The game was fun for all the same reasons and the new premise was amazing but the difficulty curb wasn't as good. I jumped into the dungeons and was immediatly kicking ass and taking names, but wheras I played P3P without grinding once I found I would be forced to grind If I wanted to make it past the boss I was stuck on in P4. So, I gave up after only 12 hours but I would still recommend it. I had more fun with these titles than most new games in recent memory.

I also give a slight edge to the premise in P3P, I felt like a teenage super hero. And that's always cool. I already bought the original's remake for PSP, I'll boot it up someday when I'm in the mood for a jRPG again.

I have no problem with that whatsoever! :P

Probably because Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei 1 and 2 weren't released in North America.

I have only played Persona 3 Portable on the psp. I put something like 110 hours over 3 and half months on the first playthrough.

Neither were Shin Megami Tensei 1 and 2.

Persona 3 is my favorite game