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But I'm curious to know if there are any translations or guides out there to help the gamer who doesn't know Japanese.

It seems Devil Summoner for Saturn isn't so expensive. Not sure about the psp version. Is Soul Hackers on psp? I'd like to get that one as well, but I could settle on getting it for Saturn.

A long while back Play-Asia had the PSP version for $10. I almost imported, but didn't bother. It goes for kind of average prices on eBay. The Saturn version is basically cheap as it gets... I'd suggest searching for "devil sammoner"... seems to be a super common mistranslation.

I believe Aeon Genesis was doing a Devil Summoner translation (or maybe it was Soul Hackers?), but last I saw it didn't get very far.

There aren't really any translation guides, but GameFAQs does have some smaller guides out there that can help you understand how to play the game. Obviously you won't get terribly much out of it because of that, but you can make some progress if you're really interested.

So have you played Soul Hackers?

I think Avalon has. I should ask him, although I'm pretty sure they aren't friendly for people who don't know Japanese.

Well, if you're going to play a game in Japanese a cursory knowledge of basic katakana and hiragana is probably necessary.  A few kanji couldn't hurt either, if only to be able to navigate through menu screens.  I never played the original Devil Summoner, but Soul Hackers is kind of a slog fest.  It's a difficult game anyway but I'd imagine that not knowing any Japanese in a mostly text-based game wouldn't really be that fun to play.

It was Soul Hackers.

Here is a small faq. Better than nothing:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/saturn/shin-megami-tensei-devil-summoner/hints