Foppe posted... Shin Megami Tensei with all spinoffs...
SMT titles are exacerbated by the fact that the English localizations have always been doing weird things to them.
- Some of the games have the prefix Shin Megami Tensei in Japanese, but dropped it in English. I guess to make it less Japanese-y.
- Some of the games didn't have the prefix Shin Megami Tensei in Japanese, but added it in English. I guess to make it clear that it's associated with other SMT games.
- A few have another prefix like "Megami Ibunroku" in Japanese, to say that that this game is kind of a Megami Tensei-ish spinoff but not really Shin Megami Tensei. And this is either dropped in English, or replaced with Shin Megami Tensei, or translated as Revelations for some reason.
- A few have their names changed because of censorship (Devil Children -> Demikids) or because the Japanese title just straight-up does not sound very cool in English (SMTIV Final -> SMTIV Apocalypse)
- Some games are nebulously not exactly a spinoff but also not numbered, without any clear pattern. Like SMT Strange Journey could just be SMTIV, but it's just not. Despite some of the Atlus leads like Kaneko saying they were fine with it callingit SMTIV. SMT If... could have been SMTIII too if they wanted to. So then fans debate what it means to be a "real" Shin Megami Tensei and come up with arbitrary distinctions like "real SMT has to take place in Tokyo (most of the time) and it has to be apocalyptic (most of the time). Also spinoffs can be one or both of these things too."
That last one isn't unique to SMT though I guess. Like GTA Vice City and San Andreas could be GTA 4 and GTA 5 for all anyone cares and it wouldn't really change anything. Or millions of other examples.