Played a few hours and liking it so far.

The game is like 3 games rolled into 1.

You have demon collection that you can fuse together.

You have tatical battle.

Within the tatical battle, there's RPG style battle.

It also supposedly have multiple paths for you to pick giving you replay values for Game+, ++, +++, etc

The game gives you 7 days (game time), which makes me think of TWEWY, where you got 2 weeks.

This is the first MegaTen game that I play (since I skipped console gaming entirely for the past 2 or more gens).

Are there more games like this one? The previous MegaTen games have same style?

Atlus++;

Theres that mmo Megaten, based off Persona and or DDS.

I've played for like 30 minutes so far. I just finished the Cemetery battle.

So far I'm not that impressed because it reminds me very heavily of Digimon.

wait till you guys get deeper into the game and take serious desicions. By then the story goes crazy and your demons become demigods.Also, megaten online is very different from this game.its ok but its important to buy upgrades. Its also a bit limited for a MMO. This game for DS however is among best RPGS for the system and perhaps the most mature one.

Wait are you DS exclusive or do you have PSP as well? I would try the original Persona remake if you want to stick in the series. Though it isn't the exact gameplay wise, and has much much much less cutscenes(damn does Devil Survivor have cutscenes). The stories are close enough, and both have the darkish(not necessarily dark, but close I guess) atmosphere. Persona is a lot more annoying though with the random encounters really high, and battles really long. Persona does have the monster upgrading technique in a fairly similar way, but instead of demons you use personas(Pretty much the same thing gameplay wise). What is lacks is the gameplay being so mixed up though. It is pretty much a traditional rpg with some extra strategy, and the addition of persona raising kinda deal. They are both the same series that is why I recommended it, but also these games are very rare to come by, and that is why I can't think of anything on the Handhelds anywhere similar to SMT:DS.

BTW if you had any underwhelming experiences with recent persona games(3 and 4) forget that because they are VERY different. The recent Persona games add the sim aspect, and focus on that a lot along with battle gameplay.

Wait, so you mean that the older Personas might actually be fun?

Not for people who can't stand slow games. Everything about the older personas are slow. The high amount of random encounters, getting cards so you could get a different persona(this especially a pain because if you fail you have to fight the monster which wastes like 5min of battle), and overall battles. I enjoyed them though, despite them being very long. Though, they are very different games from 3 and 4. If you don't like them though, it wouldn't be for the same reasons you seem to dislike 3 and 4 for.

My problem with Persona 4 is the pacing mostly.  6 hour dungeon, 6 hour dating sim, 6 hour dungeon, 6 hour dating sim, etc.  I'd rather have things more broken up to make it less tedius.

Devil Survivor was a great game, but it's main issue is that it's too easy. From Day 1-6 it was a breeze, and Day 7 was moderately difficult, but nothing I would call hard. The demon fusion system in the game is the best so far though.

To the TC, if you're willing to jump to a console, every single PS2 MegaTen game is worth playing/owning, otherwise, like others have said, Persona for PSP is your only other handheld option so far.

In that case then the first game is better, but not perfect. A lot of the pacing is story sequence for half an hour, travel over the map for 10minutes. Then you get more story, some battle, travel the map. Not the best pacing, but pretty normal rpg-wise.