u/CelesFFVI

Whenever I look into Awakening, as someone who's favourite RPG of all time is Ascension, the magic always feels a lot more restricted

It feels like I can't do as much with each rank, mixing arcana doesn't seem as encouraged as with the spheres, and Praxes and Rotes make it feel like you're just picking spells from a list like in DnD or Pathfinder and it discourages creativity.

I don't get how Prime and Spirit are meant to work in Awakening as I do in Ascension, mostly due to my lack of knowledge about CofD's cosmology when compared to WoD's, Spirit is my favourite sphere, so I'd very much like to know how to use it, and having to use mana to use arcana that aren't the ruling ones of my path also feels restrictive, as my hypothetical character fits into being an Obrimos who likes to summon stuff using Spirit.

Any help with my understanding is appreciated

So, for those who don't know, Megami Tensei is one of the biggest JRPG franchises

It started back in 1986 with the release of the novel "Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei" by Aya Nishitani, later leading to a full 9 novel series, which would lead to a licensed game released by Atlus of the same name, as the first book splitting off from the ending of the second book.

The second Megami Tensei game would deviate even further from the novels, and then Atlus decided to make a game not tied to the original novels beyond a few concepts, releasing Shin Megami Tensei in 1992.

This would lead to a giant franchise of interconnected games, though there's no official timeline similar to FNAF, with the various series within being the original Megami Tensei novels, the Megami Tensei games, the Shin Megami Tensei series, the Last Bible series, the Majin Tensei games, the Devil Summoner series split into the Raidou Kuzunoha and Soul Hackers sub-series, the Devil Children series, the Digital Devil saga duology, the Devil Survivor games...

And of course the most popular and well known series in the franchise, Persona

And all of these games have interesting lore that as I said earlier connect and have a timeline, though none official, for example the Persona series is one of the few explicit timelines in the series, taking place in a universe where the apocalypse that happens a third into Shin Megami Tensei 1 didn't happen.

I think it'd be interesting to see Tom and the other members of Game Theory try to figure out the various interconnecting lore and make it into a timeline that makes sense