I'm not trying to be mean, really I'm not, but you're strongly exadurating the issue. There's honestly no reason missing a preemptive strike should consistantly give you a game over unless you've got a very poorly put together team of demons. I got a bunch of game overs, and hardly any of them was from any of the times that I missed striking first. You need a more well balanced team that can handle multiple types of attacks, both offensively and defensively. You should have all your demons in your party have resistances/reflect/absorb to all 4 of the major types.

It's really not a big deal, and SMT IV was my first SMT. I was a noob. If striking first is whats giving you so much trouble, it's because you're doing other things wrong, trust me. Do what I did before I started and take a few hours to just go online and research the mechanics, even if you think you know them.

Started playing SMT IV huh? I recall a certain user doing that not too long ago too ; )

Anyways, that`s one of the most crushing parts of this game. It`s crazy how quick you can be stomped just from one weakness the enemy gets out of you. I think a good way yo combat this is to develop a diverse team of monsters  and try to cover as many weaknesses in your team as possible, thru fusion. Also, be sure to have a variety of elemental attacks, so you can exploit their weaknesses and dominate them.

The less holes you have in your team, the better off you will be in the long run. Try to make different kinds of monsters, like melee, magic, and support. You may find some monsters thrive better in certain battles. If you`re stumped, well, I suppose you`ll have to grind a bit, or try getting more monsters. Getting monsters and experimenting with them is key for this game.

I'd really like to play this game. Ideally, before SMTxFE comes out, so I can at least get a portion of the SMT references.

Prioritize having a party with: no weaknesses (seriously, this will screw you big time), plenty of members which either null or absorb or reflect many types of attacks. Also, sukukaja is your best friend. So are dekaja and dekunda and fog breath.

The game is pretty easy. Just try to do what I said above.

I agree, grind in order to fuse the best monsters with non of their normal natural weaknesses and outside of a few option bosses and the HORRIFIC world map the stick with after a certain portion of the game is reached.

Welcome to Shin Megami Tensei unforgiving difficulty. Regular SMT games are always hard, and in my opinion SMT IV is one of the easiest.
In the same 3ds you may try Soul Hackers and Devil Survivor Overclocked, which in my opinion are way harder than IV.

Yes, the beggining is really hard. It will take some time before you can get demons with good healing abilities and magic that block effects. The key in this game is to built a team with demons that have different null effects, so even if the enemy strikes first or uses an attack that is critical to one of your demons, that same attack may find a null effect on another demon of your team, then you break the chance of a Press Turn (extra attacks) from the enemy.

That's a very noble and admirable thing to go by, but I'm not sure if that will get you very far if you don't change up your monsters. Maybe you can have so more monsters to help you out, or many you can somehow make some of these monsters back into your favorites? The games sort of works that the only way to advance and keep a strong team is often fuse monsters. I'd say that's the main drive the game tries to get you to do. That's how your monsters get stronger.

I have a lot of favorites too, but sometimes I had to say goodbye to them as they had learned all that they could.

Though maybe you can pull through with this.

Haven't played IV but went trough p2-p3-p4 dds2 and smt3. I don't get the point of lowering the difficulty in a SMT game has what's unfair will stay unfair (getting ur team OSd first turn because RNGs hates you), and otherwise the difficulty is incredibly in these games. I get why someone would play, for example, catherine in easy mode or use a walktrough in a VN just to follow the story from start to end, but lowering the difficulty in a SMT game would be taking away half the fun IMO.

That's exactly why I got disinterested in the game. It is paced so poorly and the conversation/recruitment system isn't very well conceived. I'll get around to it eventually.

There's a baby mode. Use it. I'm using it and enjoying it a lot.