Shin Megami Tensei V

Review - A Pure SMT Experience Brought to Today's Standards

Let’s first address the elephant in the room… Shin Megami Tensei  Persona. Although marketed with the Shin Megami Tensei moniker in the west for a considerable time, both games are very different outside of some shared elements. The Persona series in modern days is more about visuals, music and a cast of high schoolers setting out to prevent some tragedy from befalling society. However, SMT is more about delivering a challenging and arguably more sophisticated experience, where the protagonists are already in a world where morals are muddled, and your decisions will put an end to a direct battle between gods and demons. Just because you enjoyed Persona does not immediately correlate to you enjoying any of the Shin Megami Tensei games and vice versa.

The Shin Megami Tensei series hasn’t received much attention or as strong a marketing budget in recent years. In fact, unless you were in the know, you may have skimped the fact that there was a Shin Megami Tensei IV duology released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 and 2016, respectively. However, with Shin Megami Tensei V’s marketing, perhaps complemented by the attention received via Nintendo Direct live streams, ATLUS West appears to have found much more attention from the broader RPG audience. But is SMT:V worth playing? Does it live up to the sudden hype? Was it worth the almost 20-year wait for a new home console instalment in the franchise? Read on to find out!

Shin Megami Tensei V takes place in modern-era Japan, plagued by mysterious crimes, on a seemingly ordinary day, as you take control of the protagonist leaving school for the afternoon. Heading home alongside some other classmates, an incident leaves them unable to make it to their dorms. Leaving the rest of the group in the hunt for a classmate who wandered off, he finds himself trapped in Da’at, a Netherworld that turns out to be the ruins of a society that was destroyed 18-years-ago. What keeps the protagonist safe is that he quickly forms a bond with the Proto-Fiend Aogami, giving him the status of being a Nahobino and can summon and fight against demons with relative ease.

As they progress through the first area of Da’at, they discover that they had not fast-forwarded in time to an apocalyptic future but that their reality was merely gods attempt at salvaging the world. The outbreak of such Netherworlds poses a threat to reality, and they enlist with a secret organisation called Bethel to protect their world. From here, players progress through the game, tackling different areas of Da’at, discovering different perspectives on the LAW -> CHAOS scale of their classmates and other acquaintances, and having their decisions potentially determine the fate of the world.

The story has that level of grittiness, mystery and freedom of decision making that the Shin Megami Tensei franchise is known for. It is also wonderful for a shift in the typical RPG narrative, where rather than avoiding the apocalypse, you are thrust into the apocalypse and have to find a way to avert… or perhaps embrace it. The narrative is delivered to you in drips and drabs as you progress through each stage of the game, and while more bursts of exposition would have been welcome, there was always just enough to convince me to keep playing. On the flip side, you are left with a taciturn protagonist, and given the expansive open worlds, it can feel a little bland not having a group of characters provide commentary as you work your way through each area.

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Going back to the idea that Shin Megami Tensei ≠ Persona is very evident when it comes to the audiovisual elements of Shin Megami Tensei V. Rather than bustling cityscapes, you are treated to expansive, open-world dungeons filled with sand; rather than a catchy J-Pop / Rock / Rap soundtrack, you receive mostly subtle songs with a bit of techno mixed in; rather than on-demand fast travel, you experience the classic SMT map screen (Which is nice to see they have brought back). Also, it is really awesome that they have redone all demon models, fitting the gritty and more mature-themed environment well. 

The audiovisual style might look sparse on many occasions, but I think it works well enough given the style the developers are going for. But where Shin Megami Tensei V’s main problem stems from, I would argue, is console choice. The game is available exclusively on the Nintendo Switch, with no plans for a PC, PlayStation or Xbox release at this time. This would be all well and good if it weren’t for the Switch struggling on many occasions to handle the game during open world and battle segments. Nothing was game-breaking and I didn’t experience any crashing or overheating issues, but there were consistent frame-rate drops and lag, which were just above the threshold of being unnoticeable. It is clear that the developers were pushing the Nintendo Switch to its limits, and ambitiousness should be rewarded, but it hampered the experience overall.

Many of the game’s iconic systems and features will be familiar to those who played the recently remastered Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. This includes the return of the SMT turn-based battle system, where the protagonist, along with up to three summonable demons, can battle with any group of enemies on the overworld map. The turn-based system follows each group being granted a maximum of four actions, where characters attack in the order they are in the party. You can extend your number of actions by double by targetting weaknesses or losing an increased number by hitting an enemy resistance. There are also special “Magatsuhi Gauge” skills that can provide perks for the whole turn, the one I used for the entirety of the game from Battle 1 being guaranteed critical hits. At first, it can feel very clunky. Still, I found it quickly warms on you – providing comprehensive strategic opportunities during many boss fights, and regular mob pulls, even if not as flashy. That said, as the weaknesses of your party or those of your enemy can dictate whether even a weaker team will pummel you or be taken down in a single turn – there are times where you may need to resist hurling your controller to the floor.

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On the note of abilities, the protagonist and all demons are granted a range of physical, stat-altering, healing and elemental (Agi, Bufu, Zio, Garu, Hama, Mudo and Megido) – with every enemy and demon having specific weaknesses and skills. Until much later in the game, when you can start optimising your stats to be more resistant, it is practically impossible not to have a party weak to something. However, Shin Megami Tensei V does grant you quite a bit of freedom from the early moments of the game through the World of Shadows. The protagonist and every demon have a set of “base skills”, including stats, attributes, and skills. By collecting and fusing the essences collected from other demons, you can add their skills to your pool of abilities or rewrite your strengths/weaknesses to reflect theirs. This means that, provided you have enough essences that work in your favour, it is possible to counteract any inherent weaknesses which would render the protagonist or a favourite demon unusable. Also included in the World of Shadows is demon fusion, through fusing two or more demons to create a (hopefully) more powerful demon with inherited skills. This, being a mainstay of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, is handled perfectly and should be approachable to anyone who has played any Megami Tensei RPG in the past.

As indicated before, Shin Megami Tensei V uses less of the overworld map navigation style and replaces its traditionally linear dungeons with expansive, almost open-world style maps. Semi-linear in design, the maps always a destination you must reach to continue the main narrative. But while travelling from A->B, you can take on requests from friendly demons, destroy enemy-ridden abscesses to uncover new paths, and go on the hunt for every demon possible (In SMT:V, it is possible to Catch ’em All) through the returning TALK system. While you can go straight from Point A to Point B, much of the game’s fun is by taking it slow and exploring everything, potentially unlocking new demons through quests or getting some precious experience for the protagonist and his demons. There are also hundreds of these critters called Miman, which are hidden across each area, each providing a small amount of GLORY when discovered. This Glory, also acquired through a few other means, can be redeemed for special perks called ‘MIRACLES’, including optimising the protagonists’ competency with skill types, recovery abilities, the ability to equip more skills / gain demon slots etc. And you will need it, as Shin Megami Tensei V isn’t exactly easy.

On the note of the game’s difficulty, while it is perhaps not as challenging as the earliest of Shin Megami Tensei games, you shouldn’t expect to go into the game on normal difficulty being able to cheese your way through each dungeon. There are moments where you will be expected to grind, or at least optimise your party to ensure you don’t face too substantial a barrier to continuing the story. Even in the first area you visit, it is possible to completely miss a few areas and end up facing enemies and bosses many levels above you. The easier difficulty is available if you want an experience more aligned with a traditional ‘Normal’ difficulty. At the same time, there is free DLC ‘Safety Difficulty’ if you don’t want to try at all. Yes, ‘Safety’ is what it says on the box – don’t expect to die to anything unless you try really hard.

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The Shin Megami Tensei series as a whole feels a little underappreciated compared to other side-franchises such as Persona and Devil Survivor. For example, ATLUS has never made the first two games available outside of Japan except on the iOS in 2014, which is a real shame as both titles deserve a full remake. However, the impression I get is that Shin Megami Tensei V could serve as an effective way of ATLUS getting the mainline series on the radar of gamers worldwide and that we continue to see new instalments made available in the coming years.

As for Shin Megami Tensei V itself is a competently designed RPG that favoured making improvements to its root mechanics rather than reinventing itself into a Persona-like experience. Although performance issues lingered throughout and left me wanting the game on a new-generation platform such as the PlayStation 5, the challenge it provides alongside a captivating narrative, newly designed demon models and its approach to dungeon design all made this a good adventure through the apocalypse!

9
Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.

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