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Majin Tensei is a series of strategy video games published by Atlus. It is a spin-off from Atlus' Megami Tensei franchise, and began with 1994's Majin Tensei. Since then, four further titles have been released: Majin Tensei II: Spiral Nemesis (1995), Ronde (1997), (2007) and (2008). The player navigates a field seen from a top-down or three-quarters perspective as a human character, and battles demons; they can also recruit demons, and fuse multiple allied demons to create new, stronger demons.
The various titles have been developed by Atlus, Multimedia Intelligence Transfer and Bbmf Corporation, and feature music by Hidehito Aoki and Misaki Okibe. Aoki made use of ambient music, while also incorporating other elements into the compositions, including funk and synthesized piano. Soundtrack albums for the first two games were published by Pony Canyon, and a Majin Tensei manga was published by Enix. The series' gameplay, visuals and music have all been well received by critics, with particular praise to the demon fusion, the large character art and backgrounds for the battle scenes, and the use of ambient music. An exception was Ronde, which was heavily criticized, particularly for its visuals.
In addition to fighting, the player can choose to talk to demons encountered on the field, and attempt to recruit them to their party; the success of this depends on the player's level, with more powerful demons only being recruitable if the player's level is sufficiently high. In Ronde, the player does not initiate these conversations themselves, however: instead, defeated demons sometimes choose to talk to the player, and sometimes decide to join their party. Like in other Megami Tensei games, the player can fuse multiple allied demons with each other, thereby creating more powerful demons. In Ronde, the player can form contracts with demons, allowing human characters to use demon magic. Demons are fueled by magnetite, so the player needs to manage the supply of this, and thus cannot have too many allied demons on the field at once or take too long to finish a battle. By clearing battles, the player can advance to the next chapter. The games' stories are affected by player choices, and have multiple endings.
Rather than the Megami Tensei series regular Tsukasa Masuko, the soundtracks for the first two games were composed by Hidehito Aoki; he composed the Majin Tensei music on his own, and cooperated with Misaki Okibe on Majin Tensei II. He made use of ambient music, while also incorporating elements of funk, electronic distortion and sound effects; for the second game, he also introduced a focus on synthesized piano in the compositions. Music albums featuring the first two games' original soundtracks, along with new arrangements, were released by Pony Canyon: Majin Tensei Excellence Sound Collection was published on March 18, 1994, and Majin Tensei II: Spiral Nemesis Excellence Sound Collection on May 19, 1995. A manga by Shinshū Ueda, Majin Tensei: The True Remembrance, was published by Enix in five volumes.
Kalata and Snelgrove criticized the first two games' field graphics for being small and only featuring little animation, while praising the battle graphics, noting their size, level of detail and high-quality backgrounds, and calling them superior to their counterparts in all other Super Famicom Megami Tensei games. They did however think that the battles in Majin Tensei II were visually a step down in quality. They criticized Ronde visuals, saying that it was among the worst looking games from the 32-bit era, with characters looking like "blobs of discolored pixels", jerky camera movements, and slow-loading and visually unpleasing battles, and called the game "a total affront to the senses". RPGFan's Patrick Gann thought that the first Majin Tensei music was weaker than Masuko's compositions, as well as Aoki's later compositions for the Megami Tensei spin-off series Persona, but still well done; in contrast, he called Majin Tensei II music a pinnacle for the Super Famicom titles in the series, but still criticized its heavy use of synth. Kalata and Snelgrove enjoyed the "moody synth soundtrack" and opening of Majin Tensei II, while calling Ronde soundtrack mediocre. Chris Greening at VGMO called Majin Tensei "one of the most individualistic and accomplished ambient scores on the Super Nintendo", enjoying the mix of conventional ambiance and funk, saying that it both enhanced the game's mood and worked as stand-alone music. On the other hand, he found Majin Tensei II soundtrack "pleasant but disappointing", saying that several of the compositions were underdeveloped, uninspired or repetitive, while noting more developed tracks such as "A.D. 1995 Story" as highlights.
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