It wouldn't be my first time playing, I already played through the game twice, once on
Saturn and once on
PSX, I just haven't played the NG+ but yes I probably wouldn't know as much as a speedrunner. I was thinking the NG+ mode might have dialogues not present on the first playthrough, at least
this guide claims that the PSX version does, I'm just not sure if that's also true on Saturn but it might be something to watch out for.
On the topic of Saturn vs PSX versions and since it was brought up earlier ITT, I'm glad you're translating the Saturn version as it is imo the better version of the two. Graphics are slightly worse on PSX, the FOV in first persons segments is lower, seams between textures are more obvious, everything is darker and on top of that they enabled PSX dithering everywhere including on 2D art for which imo it doesn't really fit.
But the worst offender are the music and sound issues, there are tons of those in the PSX version (some emulators do make it worse but I'm not talking about that, it's not just an emulation issue), here is
an exemple but it's only an exemple, for instance after a while I decided to set the music to Mono because the mixing often had 90% of a track's instruments all the way to the left.
As for the casino that the PSX version ads, yes it's optional, but the rewards really break the game, for instance in the original version if you wanted an item to raise a demon's loyalty to the max, or a Soma or Chakra Pot, you'd have to turn the appropriate demons into items at the Demon Palace after raising their loyalty, but with the casino you can simply play the dice throwing game once and win enough coins for several of those items. Same logic with the weapons and equipment casino rewards which if you acquire them are some of the strongests in the game, and thus render the entire system to turn demons into gear almost pointless except for a couple of exceptions.
As far as I'm concerned this extra content doesn't justify lower graphical and audio quality; although the Pocket Station demon breeding might be cool, I haven't tried it.
As for ZTranslates vs Google Lense, I know it's supposed to be the same thing under the hood, but I often do get better results with ZTranslate and I can't explain it. I just tried it again before making this post and I had an example of that happening after only 3 tries with Google Lense failing to translate words. For the record I'm not advocating against fan translations, obviously I wouldn't be here otherwise, AI is what it is.
I hope you consider doing Devil Summoner one of these days as the PSP version is almost a different game.
