The game begins with a series of bizarre and fleeting apocalyptic visions, before your character awakes in a more tranquil setting, and sets off, best pal in tow, for the capital city of the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado. Taking part in a coming of age ritual, you don a mystic gauntlet that has rejected countless others, but accepts you as its master - elevating you from the ranks of Casualry (the social class of Mikado's under-privelidged) to one of the nation's primo military force - a Samurai. It's not long before you realise though that many Luxurors - those from a more privelidged and wealthy background - still continue to look down their noses at you, despite being their protectors, and often brothers in arms. Still, politics aside, you soon learn of the Samurai's true job that is kept hidden away from the public - exterminating demons.
Whilst the gauntlets themselves and the technology contained within them are highly modern, looking at Mikado itself gives quite the opposite impression, and despite its name, it also bears a closer resemblance to a western civilisation within the medieval era than to anything Japanese in design. Whilst the first portion of the game carries on in this setting, with your pursuing deeper into Naraku - the dubious origin of Mikado's demon problem - it's not too long before the game opens up and sees you exploring further afield, rifling through more troubled surroundings, and dabbling into a world more versed in cyberpunk than in ancient settings. To say much more would be to say too much, but the game's impact is strengthened tremendously by the dark, and yet weirdly beautiful places it takes you. Exploration of these is handled in a variety of ways, and whilst Mikado may be navigated by a rather overbearing and restrictive list of places you can visit and folk you can talk to, later on you'll find yourself on an almost polar opposite, with a sprawling map to explore and only a variety of arrows and basic markings to help you distinguish one area from the next. On the whole, navigation may be one of the game's more cumbersome points, but many of the game's cities and dungeons do see a move into a fully realised 3D environment for you to run around in, that's much simpler but also easier on the eye.
When you are in more dangerous areas, the demon cleaning itself is not quite straightforwards either, as a common thread amongst the Shin Megami Tensei series on the whole is the art of enlisting demons, which in this case is done through the conversation system. Unsurprisingly, talking a hostile demon into joining forces with you is not always simple, and typically requires bartering with items, gold, your own life and magic points, and even the lives of your other demons - all on top of the pre-requisite chatter. It's not as simple as just saying yes to every request either - learning when to say no is important, both in terms of swaying favour but also in avoiding a demon robbing you blind only to then turn tail. Saying the wrong thing can prove deadly too, and learning which demons prefer dismissal over flattery, value humility over pride and so forth, does a great deal in offering depth to the game, and a greater personality to each of the demons.
Once enlisted, demons fight and level up alongside your character - playing essential support roles, and also offering a mutual benefit by the manner in which they level up. Typically a demon can expect to learn around three or four additional abilities as they grow, and once these are all gained they will then proceed to offer these to your main character via a 'demon whisper', a sequence allowing you to arm yourself with new abilities and further strengthen those you
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