Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner 2

• Anti-Death swords and swords that increase Mag absorption are great to have (The former is almost necessary in a certain boss fight). Hang on to them if you can.

• Try to obtain demons with the ability Sexy Voice and Sweet Talk early on. When negotiating, Sexy Voice is effective on male demons and Sweet Talk is effective on females. With both abilities, you improve your chances of negotiating successfully on almost every demon you'll encounter.

• To go with the earlier point, NEGOTIATE. A LOT. Try to recruit every demon you meet. Since the dialogue options each demon likes and dislikes is basically random, you'll fail at negotiating a lot, but just keep trying. Give them anything they want: HP, Mag, Yen or items unless they ask for rare gems like diamonds.

• FUSE A LOT. Most of the demons you get from negotiation aren't very good. You get your best demons from fusion. Fused demons can receive up to 4 abilities from their parent demons and if the moves you don't want don't inherit, cancel out of the fusion and retry. The skills are different each time. Don't worry too much about maxing loyalty before fusing, the small bonuses you get from that are nice, but aren't a big deal.

• After a certain point in the game, there will be a series of bosses that have a chance of ambushing you on the new moon. They are easily some of the toughest fights in the game. You can negotiate your way out of them, however the payment required is probably more than you'd want to lose. There's no real way to avoid these fights, but equipping a demon with the ability Unreachable Soul will reduce the rate that they appear. (There's an ability with the opposite effect as well, just save often and try to make it to a place without monster encounters if you're warned that they're approaching.)