[PSP] Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (2009)

How:
Heard about it in Japan.
Ending:
I did not play the epilogue part (a few more hours worth of gameplay).
Note:
Press Start during battles to make them considerably quicker. Without this feature, the game is an absolute pain to play.
Pros:
- Cool blend of isometric goodness and first-person dungeon crawling
- A LOT of cool monsters with funny moves and animations
- Handy auto-fight
- Very nice character graphics and animations for the different skills of all personas
- Every monster and every persona has a rationale/story behind it. For example, the くちさけおんな monster actually comes from an urban legend and behaves as the legend tells.
Cons:
- Background music is an annoying collection of distracting and out of place songs. Totally spoiled the cool mood from the original game.
- Most of the personas you create cannot be "equipped" because of level requirements, which is too high for at least the first half of the game.
- Fights can be trivially easy or frustratingly difficult even with the same exact monsters. Charmers can charm you forever, and infinite looping situations can and will take place unexpectedly.
- Too many demon combinations and too many persona skills make the game content overwhelmingly complex.
- Clichéd, unlikable playing characters (the hip-hop type, the bully, etc.).
- Very high encounter rate and repetitive gameplay.
- The game overstays its welcome by a large margin.

[FC] 月風魔伝 (1987)

How:
Found it mentioned a couple of times on hg101 forums, then read the review on the same site and immediately went out to play (and beat it in two days).
Pros:
- Fast-paced and addicting gameplay
- Cool setting
- Some levels can be rather challenging
- Nice variety of weapons and items
- Colorful and evocative levels and monsters
- The varied gameplay (side-scrolling action, dungeon crawling, boss fights, map exploration) strikes a good balance
Cons:
- Requires a good amount of backtracking
- Easy to exploit in order to max out the character stats
- Boss fights are too easy
- A bit short

[FC] ゲゲゲの鬼太郎 妖怪大魔境 (1986)

How:
Explicitly looked for Kitaro-based games for the FC, out of an interest for the manga series.
Pros:
- Some nice gameplay elements (e.g. the lit-the-candle levels)
- It's always nice to see the usual monsters from Japanese folklore in a game, including those coming from Kitaro's world (e.g. ねずみ男)
Cons:
- There is no proper ending as the game levels repeat after 8 world maps
- Very repetitive gameplay
- Some levels can get frustratingly difficult
- No introduction, no story, no plot, no ending
- Couldn't understand how to use the "special weapons" (the three monster icons appearing in the bottom part of the interface) during boss fights

[FC] デジタル・デビル物語 女神転生 (1987)

Pro:
- La meccanica di gioco principale prevede di prendere alcuni mostri come alleati, ognuno con i suoi punti di forza e le sue magie
- I mostri si possono fondere tra di loro per crearne di nuovi
- Una volta capito il meccanismo e superate le prime difficoltà diventa divertente e strategico
- I mostri sono tanti e disegnati bene
- La possibilità di combattere in AUTO permette di sbrigare rapidamente la maggior parte degli scontri
- La morte non è permanente
- Le musiche non sono male, soprattutto quelle a fine gioco
Contro:
- Troppo difficile, senza soluzione (mappe, magie, oggetti, etc.) ci vorrebbe una vita per fare progressi
- Troppo lungo e ripetitivo
- I dungeon sono praticamente tutti uguali e poco interessanti
- La storia è raccontata per modo di dire, e a mozzichi