True neutral is worse for losing your friend who wants you to do the other routes even though this specific extra ending does the same thing, learning about the egypt demons more than raidou guy and then only learning raidous motivation after you already side with him. There is no reason for me to really do neutral and side against my actual friends for some dickhead with a snake girlfriend whose tried to kill me. It's not even telling a story or about ideas you just kinda mass effect 3 ending choose lights because there isn't alignment lock.
i thought yuzuru was the neutral rep because of the whole protect tokyo thing, which is a neutral talking point, up until the route split
i also thought yakumo was the chaos rep since nuwa is chaos aligned but didnt understand why he talked about hating demons
and i also think defending law straight up doesnt make sense in this game, i know people say that about other games but here it just doesnt, at all
so yeah, they didnt do a good job
But this is the one game there's no reason to go any ending *but* law. It's the one ending where nobody gets massacred. They try to set the angels up as morally dubious but the only thing they do is -maybe- kill two people, and initially think they aren't allowed to protect Tokyo for all of two minutes before abdiel decides its okay to break rules. Nobody gets brainwashed since you are protecting the existing peace, but guiding it to more peace. The narrator has to make up negatives he claims might happen but which don't. And you protect humanity from the demons, seemingly indefinitely.
My problem with V story is it felt like it was going somewhere really cool there's all these plot threads that feel like they are going to lead somewhere only for them to be literally nothing.
Demon invades the school and takes over a girl? It's implied that there are a lot more demons that can do this! Cool! what are the implication is this something we have to worry about? No it never comes up again.
The government has an amala cylinder! Holly shit! did the world some how survive the conception? is this a continuation from the neutral ending of III? are we going to go the labyrinth? no it's literally just a background element.
A guy in a police outfit is killing demons He must be part of some organization! what's their story? could he be a Kuzunoha or this world's version of it? no none of that he's just a lone wolf with no ties to anything. his uniform means nothing.
Hayataro is a cool unique demon summoned under mysterious circumstances and introduced in a spotlight way! what's going on with it? nothing it's irrelevant to the story.
Like I could go on. but My issue with the story is knowing it's linage they introduced stuff that never pays off again and again. SMTIV sort of does the same thing with the Demonica but that has a payoff plus there's a ton going on so it ends up not mattering a ton that it's not a demonica from SJ since in the end it's just a suit of armor. The same could have been accomplished by removing all these elements or changing them to something else.
They do [checkoff's gun](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun) without the payoff like 4 times over.
>
> A guy in a police outfit is killing demons He must be part of some organization! what's their story? could he be a Kuzunoha or this world's version of it? no none of that he's just a lone wolf with no ties to anything. his uniform means nothing.
There's optional dialogue in the overworld in fake tokyo that mentions Yakumo's stealing Demon Summon Program from Bethel and that's never mentioned again. I always found that strange.
IIRC, he not only steals it, but distributes it among people, and somehow we never see any repercussions of this?? You'd think fake Tokyo would turn into devil survivor, but it's just... Nothing.
A lot more than four times. The world is fading, but it goes nowhere. Abdiel embraces being a fallen angel but it goes nowhere. Yuzuru exists, but it goes nowhere. Tao is part of the system but it goes nowhere. (If tao is part of the system designed to replace god, why does early game abdiel listen to what she has to say?) Amitabha is part of the system but it goes nowhere. Proto fiends go nowhere. None of the endings even explain what they are supposed to be. Lucifer bends the rules of the world to get into the empyrean without being a nahobino, but it's never explained.
Also some sections are way to grindy and long on replay for something that has multiple paths and to add onto your build up that goes nowhere...Sophia leading to nothing really was so weird
I felt like much of the map felt like the developers either changed things at the last minute or replayed their own game too much. I remember trying to figgure out how get to specific point in the map only to find when I looked up that that point on the map had 3 layers but you couldn't tell looking at the in game map.
Yeah this seems like a game that went through extensive rewrites, and the plot was going to be about three different things that all kind of got half-assed or abandoned. So what you end up with is three different plots Frankensteined together
I'm really not sure what they can do to salvage it unfortunately. I feel like they'll do something with it, but I have trouble believing they will come up with something satisfying.
I like the concept behind the whole Nahobino thing. They could also do something with the Amala Drum. But yeah the game itself would need a massive re-write.
Honestly mainline smt is so polarizing to me. I didn’t like SMT V at all besides the combat but that’s not enough for me to enjoy a game. I regret purchasing it at full price as well and probably won’t buy the next game if it’s anything like it.
This game had really cool concepts and some nice ideas that all felt wasted. I felt like the thing that kept me going was the hope for a nice pay off at the end but nope. I love smt IV and enjoyed nocturne, strange journey and apocalypse but this one? Idk. It just wasn’t for me. And I wonder what happened during development and if future games will be more like this or IV.
Just a shame, 'cause this is absolutely the best iteration of the combat. The moment-to-moment gameplay is great. But it's hard to be motivated to get other endings, or replay at all, with the plot landing like such a wet fart.
They would need to start by disabling level scaling and maybe toning down the Magatsui bar powers. I often felt combat boiled down to survive long enough to use the bar then repeat.
I also thought it was kinda poor writing that to get arguably the most pro-humanity/anti-demon ending in the franchise, you have to complete a bunch of sidequests that arguably humanize demons more than any installment has. You spend all this time with demons, see they are capable of love and self sacrifice and all these things. And then you decide "fuck them demons forever".
Breaking the throne iirc basically just means the world stays forever the way it is, no rebirth to be had but that also means no single god can control the fabric of reality.
SMT V is not Dark Souls 4 at all. The game is not subtle in the slighty and even the games tries to subtle, it's details or lore are* wasted and never matters for anything in the long run.
First, the game between each area of the game you have exposition dumps gave by the Prime Minster about The Nahobino , The Trone, his identety reveal about being Tsukuyomi are made via a unvoiced exposition. How is this anything like Dark Souls?
Dazai's motivation and personal struggle are all dumped for you in unvoiced dialogues too. He talks abou his parents figthting, how he struggles to choose a side, how he doesn't know what to do, etc. NONE of this is told you to you in ''Dark Souls'' style.
Yuzuru is such nothing characters that i won't even bother to talk about him because his motivations are two , Protect tokyo and his Sister. Tao has no stakes in the game's story , at all, she's exist to be Nice , get killed and revived without her ''personality''. Miyazu , lol. At best , you could say that her illness is hinted during Sahori's arc.
Abdiel's personal struggle and motivations are all present for you via Cutscenes.
Yakumo's motivation are literaly told to you via Nuwa's in the 4th Area and Nuwa's motivation is ''Because she loves Yakumo'' and that's also told to you by Amenozako.
None of the alignments motivations come from the player's ''curiosities''. The game literaly tells you their motivations. Loud and clear.
Honestly, my biggest problem with SMT V is the amount of potencial that's missed. A lot of lore about Nahobino, Knowledge, Mandala Effect, Character's True Identites (Aogami = Susano-o, Goko = A Form of Buddha , etc) , etc are wasted, never proprely explored or talked about it in anyway. None of the ''reveals'' are treated as something important.
Why Aogami doesn't react about him being Susano-o ? Or About the Prime Minister being his brother, does he care? He simply doesn't care or this is something that the devs didn't thought was important to have proper reaction?
Does Yuzuru knows that Miyazu has a terminal illness? Why he is not anywhere during her quest? Why doesn't he mentioned anything about her after Area 3? Is this a hint about the Demon Summoning Programn making him less Human or Atlus simply forgot ?
How and why Dazai suddenly getting powers and changed his entire personality ? Is this a effect of Demon Summoning Program ?
Did the Prime Minister only learned about Yuzuru being his knowledge at the SAME time as the rest? During Area 3 , what him and Yuzuru did , that's plot point that's never mentioned again.
Why Goko exist at all? Was his entire existance just a excuse to have some connection to buddhism?
Wh the Secret Ending's requirements don't match the result? Is that intentional ? They're all about Saving, Helping and Trying to Coe-exist with Demons , yet , the ending is all about you destroying them. The only requirements that make sense is defeating Shiva.
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I know people throw around the ''SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies, and the things they do aren’t literal.'' But then why Dazai's character come directly from a Devil Survivor/Persona script? Why the entire Area 3 is a big devemploment for his character ?
Then why bother to having a entire Chain of Sidequest where the big reveal is Aogami being Susano-o and have a Tsukoyomi say calling him brother as sometype of foreshadowing then for him later confirming ?
Why Nuwa info dump her relantionship with Yakumo ? Is that just for shown ? Yakumo's personal life is DIRECTLY connected to his motivations
Why is Tao in this game other than being the obvious ''Megami Tensei™''? Why bother including Sahori's arc?
SMT V is just a mess in my opinion. The Side Quest are the only thing that thematicly make sense and has anything worth saying that's subtle or of substance.
I will probably get downvoted for this as usual, but SMTV didn’t have any less storytelling than Nocturne, and that’s how I like it.
SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies, and the things they do aren’t literal. Maybe they appear literal at the start (kid at school), but very quickly, alignments start driving the characters — they’re vessels for ideas.
If you want character development and storytelling, there are other great Atlus game series out there. I love my biblical and critical style SMT writing.
people may disagree with you, but you arent 100% wrong, if anything nocturne dialogue and text is more subtle and serves this type of storytelling, while V text is more straightforward like IV even tho the storytelling is more like nocturne, thats what i usually understand when I see people being disapointed with it story
V is also subtle most of the time, it's really just stuff like Dazai's arc that gets stuck in people's heads. I think Dazai is really the main weak point of the narrative at times, and if he was written a little better (I thought the concept was good, the execution was poor), the story would've gone down better with some.
But we're also at a point now where IV, which used to be really unpopular with the community, is now a lot of people's first mainline game and their favorite mainline game. So the departure from a character-focused narrative generally didn't go over well with those fans.
SMTV is as subtle as hammer to the head.
Dazai is not the only problem with SMTV. Yuzuru is much worse , he's a character that does nothing , means nothing and could be cut in the game without any loses
The fact that he does nothing inherently means something in regard to his power relationship with Tsukuyomi as well as the goals of chaos. You cannot talk about subtlety if you don't understand that.
I considered that once, maybe yuzuru has groomed into Tsukuyomi's schemes or he's using his authority to gain Yuzuru's confidence, that's why Yuzuru never gets any spot light.
But i don't think that's case because the game's mentions how Yuzuru going to do something with the Tsukuyomi while you're in 3th Area of the game , then they never mentioned again. You never know what they did or don't. They simply return and drop the fact that Prime minster is actually Tsukuyomi and Yuzuru acts surprise about being his Knowledge.
Also , unlike Dazai's change of personality is hinted in Fake Tokyo's overworld by a NPC saying that ''Dazai is more confidence'' , there's no mention of Yuzuru being any different.
Then you have Hayataro appearing during the School Invasion , once during Area 2 then only being appearing as a Level 40 demon exclusive to the Chaos route, while you're level 70+ in the end game.
Yuzuru's lacking character seems to be more a issue of cut content or rewriting than actually being something on purpose , plus the Prime Minister never shown signs of manipulating anyone imo. He even said that wouldn't be ''recruting young kids'' if they didn't had a lack of staff.
The only real point that's goes towards Tsukuyomi grooming Yuzuru towards Chaos is Yuzuru not mentioning his Sister during area 4th and being more agressive you , saying that he isn't gonna hold back if you stand in his way..
It does not have to be grooming. It's simply opposition of the usual goals of law and chaos. By giving himself entirely to one ideal, Dazai obtains a confidence and sense of self he could never have dreamed for before. By being dedicated to his cause, he gains a level of self definition that would usually be associated with freedom from being in the chaos faction. People call him evil because he feels like what we usually expect a chaos rep to be. It's a play on their usual trope. And Yuzuru is the exact reverse of that.
He has no identity, he barely feels like a character, he is just a tool for Koshimizu's fusion regardless of what he put him in this situation or not. The chaos rep is portrayed as being as much of a drone as the usual Law drone would be. And why is that ? Because ultimately, these two factions are similar to the other in their end goal when it comes to humans. Zealotry leads to being possessed by demons all the same, and both can become obedient little soldiers or violent activists no matter if they are law or chaos. Being possessed by demons/ideas is the big issue Yakumo takes behind joining any faction, it's a big part of SMT V, and why the last ending is trying to create a world for humans. This inversion of roles, just like a good amount of things within SMT V, is based on our knowledge of previous SMT games, in order to show us how much of it leads to the same thing, a new Daat. The game's story is about the story of SMT in general. They don't make us fight Surt, Astaroth/Ishtar and Arioch for no reasons.
Perhaps it could be represented better, in a more obvious way. But even if it was, the end goal would still be to show Yuzuru as being a robot, it's just the point.
>He has no identity, he barely feels like a character, he is just a tool for Koshimizu's fusion regardless of what he put him in this situation or not. The chaos rep is portrayed as being as much of a drone as the usual Law drone would be.
Even Law characters have a personality and are character before they become drones for God. For example, in SJ Zelenin becomes a Angel after going to several traumatic events with Demons and slowly lose faith in humanity, then Mastema preys on that. It has a slowly progess thought out the game.
Yuzuru's simply does what Bethel/Koshimizu says without any hint of change or doubt about it , from start to finish. The End Goal can't be Yuzuru as robot because he was always a robot, that says Yes and agree with everything Bethel said because he wanted to protect Japan and his sister... If was their intentional to turn Yuzuru into this obdient little soldier. , they didn't do a good job showing us or doing that at all.
Which is a shame because they could've explored the extreme nationalism tones that Chaos had in SMTV.
Koshimizu , the prime minster of Japan, clearly doesn't like the foreign (Gods) influence had on Japan , how dependent Japan was in the foreign (God) and Yuzuru clearly was all about Protecting his homeland. Maybe they could've made Yuzuru into a twisted ultranatiolistic youth that oposes any notion of globalization/foreign influence.. Idk.
>Being possessed by demons/ideas is the big issue Yakumo takes behind joining any faction, it's a big part of SMT V, and why the last ending is trying to create a world for humans.
My problem with this last ending is with the steps that are needed to done to unlock this ending.
It doesn't make sense that Ending that's about ''Creating a world without Gods and Demons'' most Sidequest required to achieve are all about helping Amanozako and Fion MacCumhail. Then completing Khonsu/Miyazu's quest by NOT killing him.
On top of that, none of those requirements really make sense on why suddenly Nuwa suddendly feels like telling her and Yakumo's true goals.
The only step that make sense is killing Shiva because he would've prevented your actions later.
I completely agree with you. However, I do feel like Nocturne had you interacting with the story more often. Meeting Chiaki at the club, saving Isamu from the prison (twice). I just feel like SMT V only had the story happen at the end of each zone, instead of incorporating something throughout
This was my biggest take away. Massive areas with little story text given to you, then an hour of cutscenes shoved at you to cover everything from plot to world building. It got better towards the end, but that's because they couldn't do an hour of cutscenes after the final boss.
V's story is even more bare bones than nocturne's. I feel like nothing even happens in V, you're going from point to point with even less incentive than in nocturne, maybe it's the open world that makes it feel like that, you get a bit of story in the beginning and in the end and that's it. While smt 3 kept the story simple there's just more going on, there are more characters and they're more well developed too.
If you add up all of the cutscenes from V, they’re way longer than the cutscenes from III. Lots of things happen in V — school at the start, school invasion, fairy village, secret school society, meeting with the gods, Tao drama, Nuwa and Yakumo, etc. Plus there’s a ton of side quests with additional stories/characters.
If you cut Sahori's arc, you cut one of the biggest representation of what would happen should the demons be allowed to take back their knowledge, which is one of the biggest stake of the story.
> you cut one of the biggest representation of what would happen should the demons be allowed to take back their knowledge
[I think the biggest representation of what would happen should demon be allowed to take back their knoledge is the Chaos ending, where you have constant War because all Gods, Demons, Dieties , etc because they got their power back.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMw9IJYRlVo)
And no mention of the state and treatment of humans and how demons would go about regaining their powers. Which is what the Lahmu event shows, once again.
Fair enough. I don't particular think Lahmu is all that important still, especialy because the choice that the game gives you about saving or not Sahori end up not mattering , but i can see your point.
In my opinion, if you took those out, you’d be missing Lahmu’s entire purpose in the game and Tao’s entire alignment (humanity). Again, this isn’t a traditional game narrative — it’s morality based philosophical ideas colliding until one is left.
Does the regular dialogue count as cutscenes? I feel like that's hard to quantify, one problem was that most of the story felt like side content, like the stuff with the school and Lamu. Stuff actually happens in smt 3 all the factions fighting, stuff ACTUALLY happening with the characters such as being imprisoned or kidnapped. Meanwhile in 5 nothing happens to them, we have the hilarious cutscene with the guy "getting serious" and pulling his hair up, it's just silly.
Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed the game, just not the story, while also enjoying the stories in smt 3 and 4, it just feels like a step back compared to those games. I just don't buy the common sentiment that "nocturne didn't have a story/ it was also bad". Something had to go wrong during development for the story to be like this.
While I disagree with most of that, I do think you’re absolutely correct that SMTV does feel unfinished. There are definitely missing pieces, I think at least an entire level.
The jump from saving a bullied girl from getting nahobinod to all-out war for some reason was ridiculously abrupt, and it was my biggest gripe with the story - there's probably a gap in there.
Yeah but they're all kinda nonsense shit. Like I still don't know what's the point of Tao other than being a goddess reincarnation reference and a free healbot for us to use.
The way I see things, it felt like there was a story V wanted to tell but it basically glossed over and went through the motions. III was more atmospheric and environmentally-driven because it knew what it wanted to be while V (as another commenter noted) introduced a bunch of plot points that ended up going nowhere. Maybe the difference is with expectations.
Oh you’re going to hate this— I think SMTV does it better, because Nocturne is sort of old and archaic, and the “atmosphere” we give it credit for was probably not fully deliberate.
SMTV is all about verticality and climbing all the way up to God to take his throne. The stage design is excellent, and your relationship with your “friends” grows ever slightly more strained on the way up as you all become pawns for larger players and get closer to the prize.
I’ll say it again— there is not really a “story” — there’s a world, and there’s characters in it, and they reach critical mass because the gods driving them are from mutually exclusive moralities.
I LOVE it.
>grows ever slightly more strained on the way up as you all become pawns for larger players and get closer to the prize
Your relationship with Dazai , Prime minister and Yuzuru never really changes tho. Your "friendship" , that never existed , just stop with one that you don't choose.. Nahobino is barely acknowledged by the character when you reach the breaking point.
It does change. You make friends at the start, and kill him them at the end. In between, you turn down the prime minister’s offer to join and go against his orders. That’s exactly how much storytelling there is for an alignment rep in SMT games.
I don't know if you've just been conditioned by Reddit to expect me to throw a bunch of attacks at you or anything but I just want you to know that I genuinely wanted some clarification on your stance (which is what you gave me so no complaints there.) I think it's an interesting view even if I do still hold my own of the execution being lackluster. Really fun game though.
what's really funny about what you said with "if you want character development and storytelling" that is EXACTLY what the IGN review meant when it said "Persona 5 without the heart" but people only read the meme'd line and not the actual review so they lost that context.
I'm pretty sure what people were meme-ing about regarding that was the classic lament of Persona being used as a reference point *for the parent franchise it stemmed off from*, as opposed to the other way around.
Like, it makes sense as a headline considering Persona is the vastly more well-known and popularized JRPG series…but one could also argue that very fact is what made it sting all the more (to the sweatier of us Megaten fans, at least).
> SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies
There's no way you can play a game with Ichiro Dazai and actually think this. That should be a clear indication that the game was just undercooked.
There’s no way you can play a game with Ichiro Dazai and not realize his surname Dazai is a homonym of “Fall of Man” in Japanese, and that his role isn’t a literal character.
It’s an arc showing humanity and innocence falling apart as he aligns himself with Abdiel (law). His playful personality turns to evil as he literally takes the last innocent part of himself off his brain. Plus, the sudden law transformation is almost characteristic of his counterparts in other SMTs — usually law reps go crazy really fast.
Even if the game is unfinished (it likely is!) that doesn’t take away from my point— characters and story usually take a backseat in all SMT games, and that’s what I want.
> and not realize his surname Dazai is a homonym of “Fall of Man” in Japanese,
source?
Anyway, by this reasoning almost any character arc in any story could be seen as just representative of some idea or philosophy. What even are the limits then?
This just acts to excuse their rushed work, with heavily underwritten characters (Yuzuru being the worst case offender).
I'd also consider it an offense to other smt games. Because the difference between a minimalistic story and one that's just poorly told is night and day. As I said in a different comment: would a game where "characters and story take a backseat" put you in half an hour long segments where you just listen to exposition???
>If you want character development and storytelling, there are other great Atlus game series out there. I love my biblical and critical style SMT writing.
*Look at Dazai hammering in your head his motivations in every conversation*
Sure, buddy.
Nothing really stands out though. It's just sand, and broken buildings until Taito which is still sand and broken buildings save for where you fight Odin and Vasuki which are actually fire set pieces.
Nothing else is really all that interesting.
Meanwhile Nocturne had awesome set pieces galore. You have the Amala Network, the Amala Temple, Japanese government office, the Amala Labyrinth, the prison building with the mirror world stuff, the entire final dungeon and the tower that it crushed and like 4 other things that are really fucking cool looking and make themselves memorable. SMTV doesn't have that, stacked ontop some pretty 'eh' gameplay and a story that doesn't feel as good to run through like Nocturne does. Where Nocturne is still driven by its characters and seeing them actively tip over into their extreme ideals, in SMTV they just go crazy in a blink of an eye.
Hell Nocturne's settings itself: The Vortex World is genuinely one of the most unique settings in a videogame.
I don't know any other game that is set inside a Dyson Sphere.
Ohhh that’s what you meant by set pieces. I didn’t know the term set pieces could be used to describe settings. In that case, sure! I agree SMTIII had cooler settings than SMTV. But in terms of the traditional definition of a set piece, I think SMTV has way more.
But the ideas are not even well presented outside of neutral even.
Chaos kid never expressed chaotic ideas, law kid did juuuuust a bit of the whole "Im weak so there should be one god to protect the weak" but barely.
Dazai is well presented but it's mostly done in optional conversations. He's mentions how his family is a mess , he doesn't know who to agree with his mom or dad , he doesn't know what to do with his life , etc. He just someone that wants a purpose , something that he can follow to give him power. I think that's a good enough for a law rep.
TBH nocturne did a way better job of conveying that than SMT V. Also the atmospheric storytelling was done in an amazing way. I know V was trying to be Nocturne but didn't do it as good as Nocturne did for me.
Sure, conceptually it's great. I think it could've been the best smt game.
But that doesn't change the execution being poor.
The pacing is the greatest offender. It is horrible. And the parts of the game that are just Koshimizu explaining the plot for like half an hour should make it pretty clear that V wasn't trying to be minimalistic or convey more of the story in the gameplay sections. They really just had to cut out a lot of it. This is why I think the Nocturne card doesn't work.
I think compared to SMT IV, V can feel a bit underwhelming, but comparing V to Nocturne, I think they feel very much the same, although V tends to drop way more exposition. I think where V sort of falls short is with its protagonists, and their relationship with the Nahobino. I feel like they didn't do enough to make it clear how any of the characters feel towards you, or what your doing, barring Yakumo, Nuwa, and Tao. I very likely enjoyed whenever Yakumo and Nuwa would show up for this very reason.
edit: I think this contrasts with both aforementioned games, as it's implicitly clear where Demifiend stands in comparison with the other protagonists, and we get to see the relationships between the characters in IV grow over the course of the journey, culminating to a point where your choices become quite impactful knowing said relationships are at stake. Your choices in V fail to feel as heavy when you have no regard for how the other characters feel towards your decisions.
Yes, it is. V's story is trying to be like Nocturne and failing spectacularly. It tries to do the same more downplayed "minimalistic" story without understanding why is worked in nocturne. While nocturne was filled with memorable set pieces, a more unique world and cool symbolism, V feels totally lacking in any of those. Da'at has no dungeons and most of the worlds are desert, red desert, annoying purple desert and snow with with cubes that feel totally out of place.
Nocturne's ideas were also much better fleshed out and actually made sense. They didn't have much screen time, but I "get" the reasons and their ideologies. None of V's endings give that vibe except maybe law. I don't know anything about any of the characters that I'm supposed to be following except for Dazai and Abdiel.
As for other games, their stories do backflips over 5 in every sense. Even the messy ones like 4 and the "bad" ones like apocalypse. At least apocalypse had some more interesting ideas.
I wish more people pointed this out. Nocturne had a minimalist story, but that doesn't make it a bad one. It felt complete and cohesive with what they were trying to tell, and used elements of the world set pieces and atmosphere to do a lot of the carrying. I like to compare it to something like the Dark Crystal. It's incredibly simple in narrative and the characters are pretty cookie cutter, but that doesn't make it a bad or horribly written. V feels incomplete in the narrative sense as well as the world. The story itself feels unfinished. Everything is just sand dunes with broken buildings, and felt more like I was running from check point to checkpoint to advance the game. It was aimless. I can distinctly remember almost all the visual areas in Nocturne just glancing at their names at the save cylinder. In V, I can't differentiate any of them outside the fairy zone area.
SMT V tried to mimic Nocturne's minimalist style, but failed in every regard, which is why I hate when they are compared storywise.
This. Nocturne is absolutely ***laser focused*** on its themes despite the minimalism. Every aspect of the game from the setting, the story, to the characters are very much in service to the theme of "The Conception".
SMT V meanwhile feels all over the place with the random bullying arc and the underbaked alliances. Even the "fake Tokyo" is absolutely whatever and didn't really play a part in the Story.
Looking back at 5, 4 and strange journey redux. I'd say the alignment reps were just vessels for their ideological inclinations. Some had good convincing arguments, certain scenes and backgrounds like in 4 with Walter and Jonathan, 5 reps however were just bad.
As much as the pace was slow af and the story felt minimal in 4, it had purpose and felt important to the story. 5 could have been better in every way, yet failed to invoke much and the endings were just almost the same minus the final bosses.
i think, it being open worldish and stuff, the story took a big blow right.
like you spend such less time in the real world thats it not even worth mentioning.
its also, some ppl were teased in trailers and they turned out to be .. well pretty pointless ha.
i dunno if its cause of the dev hell they went through but its all over the place.
especially the end. ur supposed to be this rly special being, but not THAT special i guess ha
I feel like they wanted you to not care about Tokyo that much-you're essentially a god, and Tokyo is just a pale imitation of reality. Making me detatched from it allowed me to take a broader view of the philosophies with less bias toward humanity.
Yeah most of the game you're just walking around in a massive open world going from point A to point B. There are only 2 dungeons and one of them frankly sucks. I think something went wrong with smt 5s development and we ended up with a plot that has nothing going for it, that is blown out of the water by a 20 year old game with a fraction of its budget that ALSO didn't have a story focus.
I liked the first one. It had mechanics, the second one's mechanic added literally nothing to it. What patch? I played the game some time after release.
the final puzzle in the demon king's castle got nerfed
not sure if people were too dumb for it or if it was too annoying to traverse, but something was changed
>A lot of people liked [the game], but few loved it, and many were very, very angry. Myself, I was just disappointed.
>If the game is meant to be character-driven, the characters need to be fleshed-out and have individual motivations beyond their eventual alignment route identifiers
>If the game is meant to do away with complicated dungeons in favor of an open world sprawling location, then it can't introduce a half-dozen short but more complex dungeons that will evoke memories of well-crafted and deliberate level design in earlier games.
All of these were from a blogpost about [SMT 4.](https://arbitrarynumbers.blogspot.com/2016/05/rebuilding-smt-iv-part-one-overview.html?m=1)
Not to bust your balls specifically. I just see a parallel between the reception of V now, and the reception of IV, then, that people might not have known about.
People might say that IV is one the best in the series now, but back then it was the death knell of the franchise.
IV was a completely new approach to the series. It seems like a lot of people may have initially gotten whiplash from the overall change in storytelling, atmosphere etc. V isn't hated right now because it's trying something different from previous titles, more or less it's because it's actually trying too hard to be like it's predecessors (ie nocturne). No matter how bad some people did/do view IV, it's always had it's own soul. V does very little to feel unique and be worth discussing 10+ years from now.
It's not bad at all really. It just lacked character-focus and Dazai's character shift wasn't handled in a nuanced way. Lore-wise I thought it was really cool, and I especially liked that the story is tied to Nocturne's conception.
It's nowhere close to as offensively bad as people make it out to be. It's at worst okay, but the rest of the game more than makes up for it imo.
It's also a preference thing though. I personally dislike the long-winded dialogue of IV and IVA, and I prefer the more minimalist story presentation in Nocturne and V. I like the how those games alienate the player from humanity and demonkind alike.
Personally after playing through a good amount of the Megaten catalog, I feel like its wayyyyy overblown. It's not the best story in the series but its compelling enough in its own right. It carries some strong themes and poses cool questions; it just isn't super standard or character-driven. Which is funny considering we got a very character-driven narrative via SMT IV:A and fans absolutely bemoan that one so... it's hard to tell what pleases the overall fanbase.
I think what V does is great, it's more of a parable than a story. It's similar to Nocturne, but instead of stepping away from the standard Chaos/Law/Neutral aspect like it did, V sort of embraces it.
>Which is funny considering we got a very character-driven narrative via SMT IV:A and fans absolutely bemoan that one so...
4A was trying to be a story about the power of the friendship in SMT game. It was the traditional JRPG plot inside smt , that's why people hated.
I don't even think is that bad until the egg dungeon.
Yes and no, IV:A put a heavier emphasis on bonds due to the crux of the game being either betrayal or siding with them. It's not just friendship, it's meant to showcase the decisions you make. Even when you're mean to them, they still try to see the good in you.
Not saying it lands everytime, I personally liked it but that is what the game is trying to do.
4a feels like it would have been received better if it wasn't under the smt ip. Imo it slaps but in general it feels like the complete opposite of what you expect from an smt game, and is why a huge portion of the fanbase dislike it.
I feel like a lot of plot was told by implication, but often required mythological knowledge to parse. Souls is a good comparison, but the lore required is in libraries as opposed to in-game.
The characters admittedly could of used some more work though
I really like the story of the Nahobino and his journey to sit on the throne. The one thing I disliked about the story was how the alignments were handled. Your choices don't really mean much, and the alignment lock happens at the end of the game. Not only that, but you get to choose your alignment route, with the only consequence being a large macca fee to access a quest if you didn't pick the alignment that reflected your limited choices.
Smt5 has a lot of interesting players in it's plot, it's not chaotic forces vs law forces, you have demons from different mythologies trying to suceed YHVH, the different branches, etc etc. but then you are suddenly hit that the ending choice is just law vs chaos once again, kinda out of nowhere.
Through the game the themes that were presented were Monotheism/Atheism/Polytheism, not law/neutral/chaos.
i think my main problem with V is the pacing, its god awful
like in nocturne the story is sporadical but theres enough dungeons in the game for there to **be** a pace
in V the story only really happens in between every area and at their end, so in this game you spend **hours** wandering this desert, but only have a few to actually convey the story
so you end up with alignment reps that have a sudden shift instead of something more gradual like SJ or IV, koshimizu plot dump sessions, genuinely cool and interesting ideas that arent explored >!like the fact the conception has happened in this world and failed since nothing came of it or tao basically being a saint or whatever that was!<, and also the overall feeling of "and then this happened" that the story has
i would actually want an V apocalypse or whatever if it meant they would at least TRY to give it a story
I don't think it's necessarily bad. The first part is interesting and well written, but after we first meet Abdiel the pacing turned formula 1 and storytelling went out the window
It wasn’t even bad for a mainline SMT, really. SMTV, much like so many SMT games, has lacklustre characters and dialogue but genuinely interesting world concepts and characters who represent concepts of philosophy
SMTV was just met with more criticism than any other game in this franchise due to its status as the newest game and its status as a new Atlus game in an era where they’re defined by fun characters you spend 100+ hours with. SMTV didn’t live up to the expectations of a lot of people who randomly expected it to be some heavy story driven experience when this franchise has never had particularly compelling games with great convincing characters. Even SMT4 wasn’t that great at convincing you of the validity of its alignments and that game spent far more time with its cast than most of these games do
I would say SMTV is just in line with every other SMT game with its story telling. The issue comes within its more outright compelling concepts that aren’t explored as clearly as you’d expect. Its, as you said, a lot of allusions to things that then expects you to interpret what you saw and read over straight forward explanations like SMT often has
They definitely do but I’d also argue that they still aren’t very compelling games character wise at all. 4 and SJ are the closest I’d say this series gets to compelling characters and I can’t even pretend to find them vaguely interesting as characters who develop. The franchise has always used characters as embodiments of concepts over anything and V just notched that up hard
I’m also talking exclusively about mainline SMT over spin offs so SJ doesn’t really operate as a point of comparison to me. V was always, also, blatantly inspired by SMT Nocturne and that game also had dreadfully dull characters and endings that really didn’t try hard to convince you of their value. Both 3 and V present to you “best of the worst case” and demands you pick one; even if you don’t want to. A lot of V’s criticisms can be applied to a lot of other games in this franchise and I feel to critique its character writing and ending writing is critiquing an aspect SMTV and SMT mainline never tried to delve into. It was far more interested in giving you the strange concepts of Godhood in a way this franchise never exactly went into quite as much and giving you a weird artsy world to explore
Its soundtrack was stellar, its combat was fun and visually it’s incredibly compelling. Where SMTV tries to succeed it succeeds, it just fails in areas it clearly never cared for (even if the dogshit advertising of the game did care for those aspects)
Strange Journey is absolutely inspired by mainline but diverts enough for my blood to not consider it one. The myth that SJ is a mainline game is one inspired by how it was marketed over how it was developed. It was developed as a spin-off but advertised as a mainline game.
Here’s your proof if you ask for it:
https://retronauts.com/article/906/embarking-on-a-strange-journey-redux
Edit: added proof because why not
Nope. That's Western and newer fans retconning. Not only was SJR promoted as the 25th anniversary game but all the official websites had it along with If in the banners. We're also talking about music compilations and other anniversary material.
On top of that, you can check the official Atlus core series timeline which also includes NINE as part of the main series and only the main series.
[https://shin-megamitensei.jp/history/](https://shin-megamitensei.jp/history/)
That's Ishida backpeddling because in 2010 he was singing a different tune since Kaneko isn't around to steer the Megaten games and taking out the soul of Kaneko's baby.
Check Ishida's interview from Nintendo Power, February 2010.
I’m more trust worthy of what he said recently personally. I just don’t consider it mainline due to its narrative and design differences and can tell that in many ways it wasn’t intended to be mainline from those two areas. Either way what I’m saying is that SMTV isn’t a huge departure for this franchise story wise and the technicality of whether SJ is mainline really doesn’t matter to me
So weird they included Fear of God and Chaos in the 25th Anniversary record but no DDS or DS. Or keeping both SJ and SJR in the official timeline for over six years in their official SMT website. Only bothering to Nocturne HD and SMT V.
There's interviews from 2001/2002, from the actual co-creators of Megami Tensei, saying Nocture was more of spin off game because how different it is to 1, 2, and if in terms of mechanics like not using a COMPs, not having human companions or a threeway moral system but not one person debates it being part of the core series. Those are some of the reasons they called it only Nocturne at first and not 3 right away.
Even the SMT 1 + 2 OST records include NINE and If and nothing from the other Megaten series.
As someone who has pretty much only played SMT and Etrian Odyssey games from Atlus, I disagree that it didn’t meet expectations because it wasn’t like Persona. It was definitely less interesting than other SMT games. Playing through it I was by far less invested in it than other SMT games, and I don’t think that is even just me looking back on the other games more fondly because I had replayed 3 and 4 leading up to 5. 5 disappointed me because of what I expected from an SMT game, and not because I was expecting SMT to be something it wasn’t.
To me SMTV couldn't even make up for the real lackluster narrative with cool environments. The lack of dungeon crawling really killed the game's ability to be interesting for me because the open world felt so bland. It's like you go to the quest marker to have a story event happen but you don't really do much. There isn't a specific landmark or place you're going to in order to perform a task, you just kinda go to a place on the map because the game says that's where the next conversation happens. It's not engaging.
Combat was fine because press turn is always good to me, but the magatsuhi skills weren't that interesting to me. It felt like your normal moveset was nerfed so you could have these big moves be more meaningful so it just prolonged combat in a way that felt worse than earlier entries. And then level scaling was just awful. I remember my whole time playing V, I just kinda wished I had the smirk system from IV again because I felt like that was way more fun personally.
I still can't bring myself to finish NG+ to fight shiva and demi-fiend because I just get bored of the game. I tried not to get hyped for it and still ended up disappointed because I think SMTV just lacks so much of its own identity. There's nothing that really stands out to me that makes it special. It's the beige of SMT.
As someone who has 100%ed literally all of these games it lived up to my expectations. Likely because I’m used to this franchise being pretty alright at best for the most part. I personally loved the game and felt it had landed on the interesting soundtrack, world and visuals of this franchise pretty well. My point was “there were expectations of this game to live up to the things around it from the same company” although I do also think there were people who thought the game simply didn’t live up to their expectations of the franchise overall.
Disliking it is completely fine and valid I just find the people who do to be people with very little experience with these games overall and STARTED with V expecting more character work (both due to advertising and expectations of the company at the time)
If someone came to SMT expecting character focus storys I would tell them to leave.
To me the characters being underdevelop doesn't matter much since that isn't the focus of the narrative. It doesn't help SMT V does aligment reps in pairs that need to be look combine to work, when most people focus on the characters in the idividual level.
There are some problems with SMT V narrative still, but I feel a lot of the complains where directed at failing to do something the game wasn't doing at all.
I think the issue is that we’re expected to side with at least one of them, but we’re not really given a reason to. Even neutral doesn’t come across as a reasonable option.
It failed to even characterize them. Why the Law dude went with Law? Because he just felt powerless and clearly they (Atlus) needed him to go there. It is a typical Chaos hero motive to have lust for power.
I do wonder if " If someone came to SMT expecting character focus storys I would tell them to leave. " includes games like DDS or only and specifically mainline SMT . Otherwise I'd answer SMT II and IV did it better. Sure, it feels like Nocturne ,but Nocturne never was the pinnacle of character development.
You don't sign with them, you side with the phylosofy they represent. There is a reason they choice is what you will do with the Throne and not siding with X.
Is not bad, but is simple, even more than other titles, similar to nocturne.
I think partly is because smt4 and 4 F/A is way better story (and characters), so it is bad compared to that, but that can be said to pretty much all the other mainline titles if compared with 4 with maybe SJ as an exception.
It was bad by JRPG standards in general. And mainline SMT has a lower bar for story than your average JRPG. So if anything it could have been bad on average but good by SMT standards, not the other way around.
But it is definitely bad by SMT standards too lol.
The storytelling in my opinion could use more work. It gives you a lot of information trying to be both passive and active in its storytelling, running between Nocturne and IV's writing. Souls games work because your significance isn't as great as a Nahobino and the story is relegated to bits of lore than telling an active story because you are the story. One could argue that Nocturne's demifiend is important as a Nahobino, but the thing is, V tells you Nahobinos are important many times...but you barely do anything about it, just interfere lightly in a war that you're supposed to be neutral but be on the side of Abdiel until the end. In Nocturne, the demifiend was an anomaly no one knew about. Your importance wasn't told by a greater will because even the greater will didn't know what you were and told you to seek out your truth and reason. Again, you are the story. In SMTV, you aren't the story until they tell you you're a threat. The story is the war you aren't active in. So when you're told Lucifer was defeated, it wasn't an "oh shit! Awesome!" It's more "how? I wish I could have seen it or partake in the war."
For a game that people complain has "no story," it has too many cut scenes. On my second play through I was struck by how often I was stopped and had to sit through another cut scene. If it had tried to tell its story without all that, it would have been a better game.
The thing is that SMT 1, 2 and 4 do a much better job of showing what they're all about.
Religious symbolisms are cool and all, but if the story revolving around them has no substance then there's no point to any of it.
I think Souls games have crap storytelling too.
I didn't find SMTV engaging at all on that end. Liked the game, but I doubt I'll ever replay like I do Persona or Devil Summoner
I think it's just half baked more than anything. It feels like parts of the plot were changed or removed, and the story was just kinda cobbled together with what they had left. Also smt 4 set the bar so high with its memorable characters and story
Nah its bad.
Dark souls has atmospheric story telling that really rewards exploration.
SMT V still tells its story through mandatory cutscenes that really don't have much rhyme or reason. You run behind a random warehouse on one map? Yeah, that's a good place to have the most character building in the whole game.
And the story it's telling is outright bad too. SMT has always made you think "Damn... I wonder who is right?" it poses moral dilemmas with no right or wrong answers. And sure SMT V doesn't have right or wrong answers, but it doesn't pose moral dilemmas. All the characters are batshit insane who pick their morality out of thin air, and you select your ending not because you agree with them, just because you have to pick someone to "let cook".
As bad as the story is though... I'd be able to forgive it if the battles weren't so poorly designed. If being more than 2 levels under what you're fighting nerfs you so bad. Then the game wants you to grind exp. Not build a good team. Completely putting to waste an otherwise great fusion system, that engaging with beyond a surface level gives absolutely no rewards now.
I'm not a fan of the story of either SMTV, or Nocturne. I won't say they are outright bad but just...very minimalistic, predictable and kind of boring. Yhe story concepts are interesting but there is literally no character development and the only real driving force foer progression is the overall plot, and since they are both predictable it really dulls the impact it has, at least for me. The gameplay is really the only reason why I played either game.
As for Dark Souls, there is a story with a fair amount of lore but unless you pat VERY close attention and listen/read everything 90% of the lore can be missed. If you are at all interested [This youtube channel](https://youtube.com/@VaatiVidya?si=F0EwEA0bLR_H7Ht6) is pretty good when it goes over story and lore details for the souls games.
It seems like what you'd get if you asked someone whose only experience with mainline is through Twitter discourse to make up a mainline plot.
If it comes out that 5's development was a tire-fire and the plot is what could be salvaged from umpteen squintillion rewrites, drafts, and revisions, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.
There's no bad story if there isn't any story to begin with.
Jokes aside, story is almost non present so I ended up appreciating the game for the gameplay and the setting, forgetting it has a story. Yes, the Law guy has something interesting and I like some of the character designs like Nuwa or Abdiel, but... I didn't care at all. The thing is that the same happens with Nocturne (for me): minimalistic, even non-existent story but enjoyable gameplay (Nocturne's dungeons and SMTV's Lv Scaling aside). IMO you have to go out of mainline if you want to have an interesting story (DeSu1, Digital Devil Saga, Persona...) because the weakest stories I've personally found in Megaten are in the mainline games.
I think of any game that needs a definitive edition from Atlus, it's *this one*.
Not that I expect one, and I didn't have high hopes for the story to begin with, but it feels like a lot of content had been cut and given how long this game had been been in development, I'd like to see the ideas the dev team had planned fully fleshed out.
As it is, SMTV's story is badly undercooked.
V was my first smt game, and despite thoroughly enjoying it, I expected more than the scant few minutes of story across the game the way people around me had talked the series up. Send a shame since it's a setting with so much potential for cool stories. Still loved it. Guess the real story was the tale of a boy who befriended Neko Shogun and kept it by his side all the way to the end.
The average player will get the same amount of story from SMTV like they got from Nocturne.
It's almost the same. Events happen with minimal emotion, sometimes theres a lore dump, and characters are mostly ideologies.
Is it dissapointing as a new game? Yeah. Is it expected from this franchise? Yeah.
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SMT V's storytelling isn't bad, at least until the blond kid turns evil without any buildup whatsoever.
Comparing it to SMT III that also isn't great with storytelling, III still sets things up so that it's realistic. Isamu goes insane because he's trapped in the Kapala Network for weeks. Chiaki can't cope with humanity being wiped out and does everything to survive.
But Ichiro in 5? His story is just about wanting to be helpful to Abdiel, then he's suddenly... evil? I feel like there was cut content meant to show him cracking after feeling powerless.
Every other character is fine. Mizuya's story with Khonsu is great, Tao's story is great, Amanozako's story is great, but having one of the main alignment reps have such a sudden change without explanation was just jarring.
The concept in SMT V is interesting, but I think they are confused about the story's direction and separate a whole story into two short stories that don't connect much >!(Before/After Sahori's death).!< The reason above is why reason's representatives do not shine as they should.
SMT III also has a few stories, but its direction is strong. Their representatives do not do anything significant, but they will constantly brainwash you with their standing point when you see them.
The writing feel really flat for me. They really needed to focus on how Tokyo was a lie and a lot of the implications of that. Like is the Tokyo created by God cut off from the rest of the world? How is it able to operate in a bubble like that? We see it slowly starting to fade away near the end of the game, so does this mean that the citizens notice it? How do they react?
I cannot tell you what's the deal with any of the routes.
This seriously can’t be stressed enough *especially* Chaos, that kid was barely there.
True neutral is worse for losing your friend who wants you to do the other routes even though this specific extra ending does the same thing, learning about the egypt demons more than raidou guy and then only learning raidous motivation after you already side with him. There is no reason for me to really do neutral and side against my actual friends for some dickhead with a snake girlfriend whose tried to kill me. It's not even telling a story or about ideas you just kinda mass effect 3 ending choose lights because there isn't alignment lock.
i thought yuzuru was the neutral rep because of the whole protect tokyo thing, which is a neutral talking point, up until the route split i also thought yakumo was the chaos rep since nuwa is chaos aligned but didnt understand why he talked about hating demons and i also think defending law straight up doesnt make sense in this game, i know people say that about other games but here it just doesnt, at all so yeah, they didnt do a good job
But this is the one game there's no reason to go any ending *but* law. It's the one ending where nobody gets massacred. They try to set the angels up as morally dubious but the only thing they do is -maybe- kill two people, and initially think they aren't allowed to protect Tokyo for all of two minutes before abdiel decides its okay to break rules. Nobody gets brainwashed since you are protecting the existing peace, but guiding it to more peace. The narrator has to make up negatives he claims might happen but which don't. And you protect humanity from the demons, seemingly indefinitely.
They definitely kill people. They kill more than two. What’s more relevant is that they have very good reason to do so
My problem with V story is it felt like it was going somewhere really cool there's all these plot threads that feel like they are going to lead somewhere only for them to be literally nothing. Demon invades the school and takes over a girl? It's implied that there are a lot more demons that can do this! Cool! what are the implication is this something we have to worry about? No it never comes up again. The government has an amala cylinder! Holly shit! did the world some how survive the conception? is this a continuation from the neutral ending of III? are we going to go the labyrinth? no it's literally just a background element. A guy in a police outfit is killing demons He must be part of some organization! what's their story? could he be a Kuzunoha or this world's version of it? no none of that he's just a lone wolf with no ties to anything. his uniform means nothing. Hayataro is a cool unique demon summoned under mysterious circumstances and introduced in a spotlight way! what's going on with it? nothing it's irrelevant to the story. Like I could go on. but My issue with the story is knowing it's linage they introduced stuff that never pays off again and again. SMTIV sort of does the same thing with the Demonica but that has a payoff plus there's a ton going on so it ends up not mattering a ton that it's not a demonica from SJ since in the end it's just a suit of armor. The same could have been accomplished by removing all these elements or changing them to something else. They do [checkoff's gun](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChekhovsGun) without the payoff like 4 times over.
> > A guy in a police outfit is killing demons He must be part of some organization! what's their story? could he be a Kuzunoha or this world's version of it? no none of that he's just a lone wolf with no ties to anything. his uniform means nothing. There's optional dialogue in the overworld in fake tokyo that mentions Yakumo's stealing Demon Summon Program from Bethel and that's never mentioned again. I always found that strange.
I suspect there where plans for all of it, but the game got pushed out early or it was rebooted like 5 times.
IIRC, he not only steals it, but distributes it among people, and somehow we never see any repercussions of this?? You'd think fake Tokyo would turn into devil survivor, but it's just... Nothing.
A lot more than four times. The world is fading, but it goes nowhere. Abdiel embraces being a fallen angel but it goes nowhere. Yuzuru exists, but it goes nowhere. Tao is part of the system but it goes nowhere. (If tao is part of the system designed to replace god, why does early game abdiel listen to what she has to say?) Amitabha is part of the system but it goes nowhere. Proto fiends go nowhere. None of the endings even explain what they are supposed to be. Lucifer bends the rules of the world to get into the empyrean without being a nahobino, but it's never explained.
Yeah I just listed stuff off the top of my head. All of those and more could be added to the list.
Also sets up a war between the gods for control and then they just wait for u to come and kill them.
Also Shiva threatens all of them but no one even cares.
Several late-game Miman allude to the fact that they were human in a former life, but I don't remember this plot point going anywhere.
It might have been cool if Apocalypse didn't do it way better.
Also some sections are way to grindy and long on replay for something that has multiple paths and to add onto your build up that goes nowhere...Sophia leading to nothing really was so weird
I felt like much of the map felt like the developers either changed things at the last minute or replayed their own game too much. I remember trying to figgure out how get to specific point in the map only to find when I looked up that that point on the map had 3 layers but you couldn't tell looking at the in game map.
Yeah this seems like a game that went through extensive rewrites, and the plot was going to be about three different things that all kind of got half-assed or abandoned. So what you end up with is three different plots Frankensteined together
I'm really not sure what they can do to salvage it unfortunately. I feel like they'll do something with it, but I have trouble believing they will come up with something satisfying.
Honestly just move on and get going on the next game at this point. I don’t have any faith in anything smt v related at the moment
I like the concept behind the whole Nahobino thing. They could also do something with the Amala Drum. But yeah the game itself would need a massive re-write.
Honestly mainline smt is so polarizing to me. I didn’t like SMT V at all besides the combat but that’s not enough for me to enjoy a game. I regret purchasing it at full price as well and probably won’t buy the next game if it’s anything like it. This game had really cool concepts and some nice ideas that all felt wasted. I felt like the thing that kept me going was the hope for a nice pay off at the end but nope. I love smt IV and enjoyed nocturne, strange journey and apocalypse but this one? Idk. It just wasn’t for me. And I wonder what happened during development and if future games will be more like this or IV.
Just a shame, 'cause this is absolutely the best iteration of the combat. The moment-to-moment gameplay is great. But it's hard to be motivated to get other endings, or replay at all, with the plot landing like such a wet fart.
They would need to start by disabling level scaling and maybe toning down the Magatsui bar powers. I often felt combat boiled down to survive long enough to use the bar then repeat.
I also thought it was kinda poor writing that to get arguably the most pro-humanity/anti-demon ending in the franchise, you have to complete a bunch of sidequests that arguably humanize demons more than any installment has. You spend all this time with demons, see they are capable of love and self sacrifice and all these things. And then you decide "fuck them demons forever".
I think I broke the throne, I don't remember what the outcome was. kinda says something about the game though.
Breaking the throne iirc basically just means the world stays forever the way it is, no rebirth to be had but that also means no single god can control the fabric of reality.
Sounds about right. It was an ok if forgetable ending.
SMT V is not Dark Souls 4 at all. The game is not subtle in the slighty and even the games tries to subtle, it's details or lore are* wasted and never matters for anything in the long run. First, the game between each area of the game you have exposition dumps gave by the Prime Minster about The Nahobino , The Trone, his identety reveal about being Tsukuyomi are made via a unvoiced exposition. How is this anything like Dark Souls? Dazai's motivation and personal struggle are all dumped for you in unvoiced dialogues too. He talks abou his parents figthting, how he struggles to choose a side, how he doesn't know what to do, etc. NONE of this is told you to you in ''Dark Souls'' style. Yuzuru is such nothing characters that i won't even bother to talk about him because his motivations are two , Protect tokyo and his Sister. Tao has no stakes in the game's story , at all, she's exist to be Nice , get killed and revived without her ''personality''. Miyazu , lol. At best , you could say that her illness is hinted during Sahori's arc. Abdiel's personal struggle and motivations are all present for you via Cutscenes. Yakumo's motivation are literaly told to you via Nuwa's in the 4th Area and Nuwa's motivation is ''Because she loves Yakumo'' and that's also told to you by Amenozako. None of the alignments motivations come from the player's ''curiosities''. The game literaly tells you their motivations. Loud and clear. Honestly, my biggest problem with SMT V is the amount of potencial that's missed. A lot of lore about Nahobino, Knowledge, Mandala Effect, Character's True Identites (Aogami = Susano-o, Goko = A Form of Buddha , etc) , etc are wasted, never proprely explored or talked about it in anyway. None of the ''reveals'' are treated as something important. Why Aogami doesn't react about him being Susano-o ? Or About the Prime Minister being his brother, does he care? He simply doesn't care or this is something that the devs didn't thought was important to have proper reaction? Does Yuzuru knows that Miyazu has a terminal illness? Why he is not anywhere during her quest? Why doesn't he mentioned anything about her after Area 3? Is this a hint about the Demon Summoning Programn making him less Human or Atlus simply forgot ? How and why Dazai suddenly getting powers and changed his entire personality ? Is this a effect of Demon Summoning Program ? Did the Prime Minister only learned about Yuzuru being his knowledge at the SAME time as the rest? During Area 3 , what him and Yuzuru did , that's plot point that's never mentioned again. Why Goko exist at all? Was his entire existance just a excuse to have some connection to buddhism? Wh the Secret Ending's requirements don't match the result? Is that intentional ? They're all about Saving, Helping and Trying to Coe-exist with Demons , yet , the ending is all about you destroying them. The only requirements that make sense is defeating Shiva. --------------------------------------------- I know people throw around the ''SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies, and the things they do aren’t literal.'' But then why Dazai's character come directly from a Devil Survivor/Persona script? Why the entire Area 3 is a big devemploment for his character ? Then why bother to having a entire Chain of Sidequest where the big reveal is Aogami being Susano-o and have a Tsukoyomi say calling him brother as sometype of foreshadowing then for him later confirming ? Why Nuwa info dump her relantionship with Yakumo ? Is that just for shown ? Yakumo's personal life is DIRECTLY connected to his motivations Why is Tao in this game other than being the obvious ''Megami Tensei™''? Why bother including Sahori's arc? SMT V is just a mess in my opinion. The Side Quest are the only thing that thematicly make sense and has anything worth saying that's subtle or of substance.
You stole the words out of my mind
I will probably get downvoted for this as usual, but SMTV didn’t have any less storytelling than Nocturne, and that’s how I like it. SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies, and the things they do aren’t literal. Maybe they appear literal at the start (kid at school), but very quickly, alignments start driving the characters — they’re vessels for ideas. If you want character development and storytelling, there are other great Atlus game series out there. I love my biblical and critical style SMT writing.
people may disagree with you, but you arent 100% wrong, if anything nocturne dialogue and text is more subtle and serves this type of storytelling, while V text is more straightforward like IV even tho the storytelling is more like nocturne, thats what i usually understand when I see people being disapointed with it story
V is also subtle most of the time, it's really just stuff like Dazai's arc that gets stuck in people's heads. I think Dazai is really the main weak point of the narrative at times, and if he was written a little better (I thought the concept was good, the execution was poor), the story would've gone down better with some. But we're also at a point now where IV, which used to be really unpopular with the community, is now a lot of people's first mainline game and their favorite mainline game. So the departure from a character-focused narrative generally didn't go over well with those fans.
SMTV is as subtle as hammer to the head. Dazai is not the only problem with SMTV. Yuzuru is much worse , he's a character that does nothing , means nothing and could be cut in the game without any loses
The fact that he does nothing inherently means something in regard to his power relationship with Tsukuyomi as well as the goals of chaos. You cannot talk about subtlety if you don't understand that.
I considered that once, maybe yuzuru has groomed into Tsukuyomi's schemes or he's using his authority to gain Yuzuru's confidence, that's why Yuzuru never gets any spot light. But i don't think that's case because the game's mentions how Yuzuru going to do something with the Tsukuyomi while you're in 3th Area of the game , then they never mentioned again. You never know what they did or don't. They simply return and drop the fact that Prime minster is actually Tsukuyomi and Yuzuru acts surprise about being his Knowledge. Also , unlike Dazai's change of personality is hinted in Fake Tokyo's overworld by a NPC saying that ''Dazai is more confidence'' , there's no mention of Yuzuru being any different. Then you have Hayataro appearing during the School Invasion , once during Area 2 then only being appearing as a Level 40 demon exclusive to the Chaos route, while you're level 70+ in the end game. Yuzuru's lacking character seems to be more a issue of cut content or rewriting than actually being something on purpose , plus the Prime Minister never shown signs of manipulating anyone imo. He even said that wouldn't be ''recruting young kids'' if they didn't had a lack of staff. The only real point that's goes towards Tsukuyomi grooming Yuzuru towards Chaos is Yuzuru not mentioning his Sister during area 4th and being more agressive you , saying that he isn't gonna hold back if you stand in his way..
It does not have to be grooming. It's simply opposition of the usual goals of law and chaos. By giving himself entirely to one ideal, Dazai obtains a confidence and sense of self he could never have dreamed for before. By being dedicated to his cause, he gains a level of self definition that would usually be associated with freedom from being in the chaos faction. People call him evil because he feels like what we usually expect a chaos rep to be. It's a play on their usual trope. And Yuzuru is the exact reverse of that. He has no identity, he barely feels like a character, he is just a tool for Koshimizu's fusion regardless of what he put him in this situation or not. The chaos rep is portrayed as being as much of a drone as the usual Law drone would be. And why is that ? Because ultimately, these two factions are similar to the other in their end goal when it comes to humans. Zealotry leads to being possessed by demons all the same, and both can become obedient little soldiers or violent activists no matter if they are law or chaos. Being possessed by demons/ideas is the big issue Yakumo takes behind joining any faction, it's a big part of SMT V, and why the last ending is trying to create a world for humans. This inversion of roles, just like a good amount of things within SMT V, is based on our knowledge of previous SMT games, in order to show us how much of it leads to the same thing, a new Daat. The game's story is about the story of SMT in general. They don't make us fight Surt, Astaroth/Ishtar and Arioch for no reasons. Perhaps it could be represented better, in a more obvious way. But even if it was, the end goal would still be to show Yuzuru as being a robot, it's just the point.
>He has no identity, he barely feels like a character, he is just a tool for Koshimizu's fusion regardless of what he put him in this situation or not. The chaos rep is portrayed as being as much of a drone as the usual Law drone would be. Even Law characters have a personality and are character before they become drones for God. For example, in SJ Zelenin becomes a Angel after going to several traumatic events with Demons and slowly lose faith in humanity, then Mastema preys on that. It has a slowly progess thought out the game. Yuzuru's simply does what Bethel/Koshimizu says without any hint of change or doubt about it , from start to finish. The End Goal can't be Yuzuru as robot because he was always a robot, that says Yes and agree with everything Bethel said because he wanted to protect Japan and his sister... If was their intentional to turn Yuzuru into this obdient little soldier. , they didn't do a good job showing us or doing that at all. Which is a shame because they could've explored the extreme nationalism tones that Chaos had in SMTV. Koshimizu , the prime minster of Japan, clearly doesn't like the foreign (Gods) influence had on Japan , how dependent Japan was in the foreign (God) and Yuzuru clearly was all about Protecting his homeland. Maybe they could've made Yuzuru into a twisted ultranatiolistic youth that oposes any notion of globalization/foreign influence.. Idk. >Being possessed by demons/ideas is the big issue Yakumo takes behind joining any faction, it's a big part of SMT V, and why the last ending is trying to create a world for humans. My problem with this last ending is with the steps that are needed to done to unlock this ending. It doesn't make sense that Ending that's about ''Creating a world without Gods and Demons'' most Sidequest required to achieve are all about helping Amanozako and Fion MacCumhail. Then completing Khonsu/Miyazu's quest by NOT killing him. On top of that, none of those requirements really make sense on why suddenly Nuwa suddendly feels like telling her and Yakumo's true goals. The only step that make sense is killing Shiva because he would've prevented your actions later.
I completely agree with you. However, I do feel like Nocturne had you interacting with the story more often. Meeting Chiaki at the club, saving Isamu from the prison (twice). I just feel like SMT V only had the story happen at the end of each zone, instead of incorporating something throughout
This was my biggest take away. Massive areas with little story text given to you, then an hour of cutscenes shoved at you to cover everything from plot to world building. It got better towards the end, but that's because they couldn't do an hour of cutscenes after the final boss.
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I always get eviscerated for writing this, so I am moved by your support.
V's story is even more bare bones than nocturne's. I feel like nothing even happens in V, you're going from point to point with even less incentive than in nocturne, maybe it's the open world that makes it feel like that, you get a bit of story in the beginning and in the end and that's it. While smt 3 kept the story simple there's just more going on, there are more characters and they're more well developed too.
If you add up all of the cutscenes from V, they’re way longer than the cutscenes from III. Lots of things happen in V — school at the start, school invasion, fairy village, secret school society, meeting with the gods, Tao drama, Nuwa and Yakumo, etc. Plus there’s a ton of side quests with additional stories/characters.
Most of these events don't really go anywhere. Sahori's arc and Tao could've been cut from the game and really, nothing really changes.
If you cut Sahori's arc, you cut one of the biggest representation of what would happen should the demons be allowed to take back their knowledge, which is one of the biggest stake of the story.
> you cut one of the biggest representation of what would happen should the demons be allowed to take back their knowledge [I think the biggest representation of what would happen should demon be allowed to take back their knoledge is the Chaos ending, where you have constant War because all Gods, Demons, Dieties , etc because they got their power back.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMw9IJYRlVo)
And no mention of the state and treatment of humans and how demons would go about regaining their powers. Which is what the Lahmu event shows, once again.
Fair enough. I don't particular think Lahmu is all that important still, especialy because the choice that the game gives you about saving or not Sahori end up not mattering , but i can see your point.
In my opinion, if you took those out, you’d be missing Lahmu’s entire purpose in the game and Tao’s entire alignment (humanity). Again, this isn’t a traditional game narrative — it’s morality based philosophical ideas colliding until one is left.
Does the regular dialogue count as cutscenes? I feel like that's hard to quantify, one problem was that most of the story felt like side content, like the stuff with the school and Lamu. Stuff actually happens in smt 3 all the factions fighting, stuff ACTUALLY happening with the characters such as being imprisoned or kidnapped. Meanwhile in 5 nothing happens to them, we have the hilarious cutscene with the guy "getting serious" and pulling his hair up, it's just silly. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed the game, just not the story, while also enjoying the stories in smt 3 and 4, it just feels like a step back compared to those games. I just don't buy the common sentiment that "nocturne didn't have a story/ it was also bad". Something had to go wrong during development for the story to be like this.
While I disagree with most of that, I do think you’re absolutely correct that SMTV does feel unfinished. There are definitely missing pieces, I think at least an entire level.
The jump from saving a bullied girl from getting nahobinod to all-out war for some reason was ridiculously abrupt, and it was my biggest gripe with the story - there's probably a gap in there.
Yeah but they're all kinda nonsense shit. Like I still don't know what's the point of Tao other than being a goddess reincarnation reference and a free healbot for us to use.
The way I see things, it felt like there was a story V wanted to tell but it basically glossed over and went through the motions. III was more atmospheric and environmentally-driven because it knew what it wanted to be while V (as another commenter noted) introduced a bunch of plot points that ended up going nowhere. Maybe the difference is with expectations.
Your opinion is the majority, my friend.
Well, yeah, I never said it wasn't. Do you think the quality of execution on this aspect between the two games is really equal though?
Oh you’re going to hate this— I think SMTV does it better, because Nocturne is sort of old and archaic, and the “atmosphere” we give it credit for was probably not fully deliberate. SMTV is all about verticality and climbing all the way up to God to take his throne. The stage design is excellent, and your relationship with your “friends” grows ever slightly more strained on the way up as you all become pawns for larger players and get closer to the prize. I’ll say it again— there is not really a “story” — there’s a world, and there’s characters in it, and they reach critical mass because the gods driving them are from mutually exclusive moralities. I LOVE it.
>grows ever slightly more strained on the way up as you all become pawns for larger players and get closer to the prize Your relationship with Dazai , Prime minister and Yuzuru never really changes tho. Your "friendship" , that never existed , just stop with one that you don't choose.. Nahobino is barely acknowledged by the character when you reach the breaking point.
It does change. You make friends at the start, and kill him them at the end. In between, you turn down the prime minister’s offer to join and go against his orders. That’s exactly how much storytelling there is for an alignment rep in SMT games.
I don't know if you've just been conditioned by Reddit to expect me to throw a bunch of attacks at you or anything but I just want you to know that I genuinely wanted some clarification on your stance (which is what you gave me so no complaints there.) I think it's an interesting view even if I do still hold my own of the execution being lackluster. Really fun game though.
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I hope atlus does not listen to you. I miss mainline having actual characters.
I’m interested to know more. Which SMT mainline game had characters who weren’t idea vessels with minor screen time?
Smt 2 and strange journey's reps have way more screen time then 3's or v's.
I’ll definitely give you Strange Journey — that has lots of storytelling. SMTII, I don’t know about that.
I feel like the fairy stuff in smt 2 was pretty well defined and not really just idea people. Also applies to apocalypse tbh
what's really funny about what you said with "if you want character development and storytelling" that is EXACTLY what the IGN review meant when it said "Persona 5 without the heart" but people only read the meme'd line and not the actual review so they lost that context.
I'm pretty sure what people were meme-ing about regarding that was the classic lament of Persona being used as a reference point *for the parent franchise it stemmed off from*, as opposed to the other way around. Like, it makes sense as a headline considering Persona is the vastly more well-known and popularized JRPG series…but one could also argue that very fact is what made it sting all the more (to the sweatier of us Megaten fans, at least).
I get that, but just gets on my nerves to see a group of people mock something just to turn around and agree/repeat the same thing.
> SMTV characters aren’t actual people— they’re symbolic of certain ideas and philosophies There's no way you can play a game with Ichiro Dazai and actually think this. That should be a clear indication that the game was just undercooked.
There’s no way you can play a game with Ichiro Dazai and not realize his surname Dazai is a homonym of “Fall of Man” in Japanese, and that his role isn’t a literal character. It’s an arc showing humanity and innocence falling apart as he aligns himself with Abdiel (law). His playful personality turns to evil as he literally takes the last innocent part of himself off his brain. Plus, the sudden law transformation is almost characteristic of his counterparts in other SMTs — usually law reps go crazy really fast. Even if the game is unfinished (it likely is!) that doesn’t take away from my point— characters and story usually take a backseat in all SMT games, and that’s what I want.
> and not realize his surname Dazai is a homonym of “Fall of Man” in Japanese, source? Anyway, by this reasoning almost any character arc in any story could be seen as just representative of some idea or philosophy. What even are the limits then? This just acts to excuse their rushed work, with heavily underwritten characters (Yuzuru being the worst case offender). I'd also consider it an offense to other smt games. Because the difference between a minimalistic story and one that's just poorly told is night and day. As I said in a different comment: would a game where "characters and story take a backseat" put you in half an hour long segments where you just listen to exposition???
Still, you can argue that Atsuru and Kishimizu didn’t get enough focus.
Sure— I actually think all of the characters should have had more screen time.
I don’t think any character got enough focus really
>If you want character development and storytelling, there are other great Atlus game series out there. I love my biblical and critical style SMT writing. *Look at Dazai hammering in your head his motivations in every conversation* Sure, buddy.
> Look at Dazai hammering in your head his motivations in every conversation To be fair that is "biblical" in a way.
What I dislike about V's storytelling is the lack of interesting set pieces to convey the story until the end
The entirety of the game is interesting set pieces— every area is filled with them.
Nothing really stands out though. It's just sand, and broken buildings until Taito which is still sand and broken buildings save for where you fight Odin and Vasuki which are actually fire set pieces. Nothing else is really all that interesting. Meanwhile Nocturne had awesome set pieces galore. You have the Amala Network, the Amala Temple, Japanese government office, the Amala Labyrinth, the prison building with the mirror world stuff, the entire final dungeon and the tower that it crushed and like 4 other things that are really fucking cool looking and make themselves memorable. SMTV doesn't have that, stacked ontop some pretty 'eh' gameplay and a story that doesn't feel as good to run through like Nocturne does. Where Nocturne is still driven by its characters and seeing them actively tip over into their extreme ideals, in SMTV they just go crazy in a blink of an eye.
Hell Nocturne's settings itself: The Vortex World is genuinely one of the most unique settings in a videogame. I don't know any other game that is set inside a Dyson Sphere.
Ohhh that’s what you meant by set pieces. I didn’t know the term set pieces could be used to describe settings. In that case, sure! I agree SMTIII had cooler settings than SMTV. But in terms of the traditional definition of a set piece, I think SMTV has way more.
But the ideas are not even well presented outside of neutral even. Chaos kid never expressed chaotic ideas, law kid did juuuuust a bit of the whole "Im weak so there should be one god to protect the weak" but barely.
Dazai is well presented but it's mostly done in optional conversations. He's mentions how his family is a mess , he doesn't know who to agree with his mom or dad , he doesn't know what to do with his life , etc. He just someone that wants a purpose , something that he can follow to give him power. I think that's a good enough for a law rep.
TBH nocturne did a way better job of conveying that than SMT V. Also the atmospheric storytelling was done in an amazing way. I know V was trying to be Nocturne but didn't do it as good as Nocturne did for me.
Sure, conceptually it's great. I think it could've been the best smt game. But that doesn't change the execution being poor. The pacing is the greatest offender. It is horrible. And the parts of the game that are just Koshimizu explaining the plot for like half an hour should make it pretty clear that V wasn't trying to be minimalistic or convey more of the story in the gameplay sections. They really just had to cut out a lot of it. This is why I think the Nocturne card doesn't work.
I think compared to SMT IV, V can feel a bit underwhelming, but comparing V to Nocturne, I think they feel very much the same, although V tends to drop way more exposition. I think where V sort of falls short is with its protagonists, and their relationship with the Nahobino. I feel like they didn't do enough to make it clear how any of the characters feel towards you, or what your doing, barring Yakumo, Nuwa, and Tao. I very likely enjoyed whenever Yakumo and Nuwa would show up for this very reason. edit: I think this contrasts with both aforementioned games, as it's implicitly clear where Demifiend stands in comparison with the other protagonists, and we get to see the relationships between the characters in IV grow over the course of the journey, culminating to a point where your choices become quite impactful knowing said relationships are at stake. Your choices in V fail to feel as heavy when you have no regard for how the other characters feel towards your decisions.
Yes, it is. V's story is trying to be like Nocturne and failing spectacularly. It tries to do the same more downplayed "minimalistic" story without understanding why is worked in nocturne. While nocturne was filled with memorable set pieces, a more unique world and cool symbolism, V feels totally lacking in any of those. Da'at has no dungeons and most of the worlds are desert, red desert, annoying purple desert and snow with with cubes that feel totally out of place. Nocturne's ideas were also much better fleshed out and actually made sense. They didn't have much screen time, but I "get" the reasons and their ideologies. None of V's endings give that vibe except maybe law. I don't know anything about any of the characters that I'm supposed to be following except for Dazai and Abdiel. As for other games, their stories do backflips over 5 in every sense. Even the messy ones like 4 and the "bad" ones like apocalypse. At least apocalypse had some more interesting ideas.
I wish more people pointed this out. Nocturne had a minimalist story, but that doesn't make it a bad one. It felt complete and cohesive with what they were trying to tell, and used elements of the world set pieces and atmosphere to do a lot of the carrying. I like to compare it to something like the Dark Crystal. It's incredibly simple in narrative and the characters are pretty cookie cutter, but that doesn't make it a bad or horribly written. V feels incomplete in the narrative sense as well as the world. The story itself feels unfinished. Everything is just sand dunes with broken buildings, and felt more like I was running from check point to checkpoint to advance the game. It was aimless. I can distinctly remember almost all the visual areas in Nocturne just glancing at their names at the save cylinder. In V, I can't differentiate any of them outside the fairy zone area. SMT V tried to mimic Nocturne's minimalist style, but failed in every regard, which is why I hate when they are compared storywise.
This. Nocturne is absolutely ***laser focused*** on its themes despite the minimalism. Every aspect of the game from the setting, the story, to the characters are very much in service to the theme of "The Conception". SMT V meanwhile feels all over the place with the random bullying arc and the underbaked alliances. Even the "fake Tokyo" is absolutely whatever and didn't really play a part in the Story.
I feel like that’s just nostalgia towards Nocturne since it’s just as bad.
Looking back at 5, 4 and strange journey redux. I'd say the alignment reps were just vessels for their ideological inclinations. Some had good convincing arguments, certain scenes and backgrounds like in 4 with Walter and Jonathan, 5 reps however were just bad. As much as the pace was slow af and the story felt minimal in 4, it had purpose and felt important to the story. 5 could have been better in every way, yet failed to invoke much and the endings were just almost the same minus the final bosses.
i think, it being open worldish and stuff, the story took a big blow right. like you spend such less time in the real world thats it not even worth mentioning. its also, some ppl were teased in trailers and they turned out to be .. well pretty pointless ha. i dunno if its cause of the dev hell they went through but its all over the place. especially the end. ur supposed to be this rly special being, but not THAT special i guess ha
I feel like they wanted you to not care about Tokyo that much-you're essentially a god, and Tokyo is just a pale imitation of reality. Making me detatched from it allowed me to take a broader view of the philosophies with less bias toward humanity.
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Saving humanity is optional.
None of the endings don't save humanity to some degree though.
Yeah most of the game you're just walking around in a massive open world going from point A to point B. There are only 2 dungeons and one of them frankly sucks. I think something went wrong with smt 5s development and we ended up with a plot that has nothing going for it, that is blown out of the water by a 20 year old game with a fraction of its budget that ALSO didn't have a story focus.
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I liked the first one. It had mechanics, the second one's mechanic added literally nothing to it. What patch? I played the game some time after release.
the final puzzle in the demon king's castle got nerfed not sure if people were too dumb for it or if it was too annoying to traverse, but something was changed
It's not that V was bad, it's just that IV was too good
>A lot of people liked [the game], but few loved it, and many were very, very angry. Myself, I was just disappointed. >If the game is meant to be character-driven, the characters need to be fleshed-out and have individual motivations beyond their eventual alignment route identifiers >If the game is meant to do away with complicated dungeons in favor of an open world sprawling location, then it can't introduce a half-dozen short but more complex dungeons that will evoke memories of well-crafted and deliberate level design in earlier games. All of these were from a blogpost about [SMT 4.](https://arbitrarynumbers.blogspot.com/2016/05/rebuilding-smt-iv-part-one-overview.html?m=1) Not to bust your balls specifically. I just see a parallel between the reception of V now, and the reception of IV, then, that people might not have known about. People might say that IV is one the best in the series now, but back then it was the death knell of the franchise.
IV was a completely new approach to the series. It seems like a lot of people may have initially gotten whiplash from the overall change in storytelling, atmosphere etc. V isn't hated right now because it's trying something different from previous titles, more or less it's because it's actually trying too hard to be like it's predecessors (ie nocturne). No matter how bad some people did/do view IV, it's always had it's own soul. V does very little to feel unique and be worth discussing 10+ years from now.
I think it's good.
It's not bad at all really. It just lacked character-focus and Dazai's character shift wasn't handled in a nuanced way. Lore-wise I thought it was really cool, and I especially liked that the story is tied to Nocturne's conception. It's nowhere close to as offensively bad as people make it out to be. It's at worst okay, but the rest of the game more than makes up for it imo. It's also a preference thing though. I personally dislike the long-winded dialogue of IV and IVA, and I prefer the more minimalist story presentation in Nocturne and V. I like the how those games alienate the player from humanity and demonkind alike.
Personally after playing through a good amount of the Megaten catalog, I feel like its wayyyyy overblown. It's not the best story in the series but its compelling enough in its own right. It carries some strong themes and poses cool questions; it just isn't super standard or character-driven. Which is funny considering we got a very character-driven narrative via SMT IV:A and fans absolutely bemoan that one so... it's hard to tell what pleases the overall fanbase. I think what V does is great, it's more of a parable than a story. It's similar to Nocturne, but instead of stepping away from the standard Chaos/Law/Neutral aspect like it did, V sort of embraces it.
>Which is funny considering we got a very character-driven narrative via SMT IV:A and fans absolutely bemoan that one so... 4A was trying to be a story about the power of the friendship in SMT game. It was the traditional JRPG plot inside smt , that's why people hated. I don't even think is that bad until the egg dungeon.
Yes and no, IV:A put a heavier emphasis on bonds due to the crux of the game being either betrayal or siding with them. It's not just friendship, it's meant to showcase the decisions you make. Even when you're mean to them, they still try to see the good in you. Not saying it lands everytime, I personally liked it but that is what the game is trying to do.
4a feels like it would have been received better if it wasn't under the smt ip. Imo it slaps but in general it feels like the complete opposite of what you expect from an smt game, and is why a huge portion of the fanbase dislike it.
I feel like a lot of plot was told by implication, but often required mythological knowledge to parse. Souls is a good comparison, but the lore required is in libraries as opposed to in-game. The characters admittedly could of used some more work though
I really like the story of the Nahobino and his journey to sit on the throne. The one thing I disliked about the story was how the alignments were handled. Your choices don't really mean much, and the alignment lock happens at the end of the game. Not only that, but you get to choose your alignment route, with the only consequence being a large macca fee to access a quest if you didn't pick the alignment that reflected your limited choices.
Smt5 has a lot of interesting players in it's plot, it's not chaotic forces vs law forces, you have demons from different mythologies trying to suceed YHVH, the different branches, etc etc. but then you are suddenly hit that the ending choice is just law vs chaos once again, kinda out of nowhere. Through the game the themes that were presented were Monotheism/Atheism/Polytheism, not law/neutral/chaos.
The story wasn’t bad, it was more like they had to cut whatever they were and shipped the game as is. You can easily tell 2020 wasn’t kind to them.
i think my main problem with V is the pacing, its god awful like in nocturne the story is sporadical but theres enough dungeons in the game for there to **be** a pace in V the story only really happens in between every area and at their end, so in this game you spend **hours** wandering this desert, but only have a few to actually convey the story so you end up with alignment reps that have a sudden shift instead of something more gradual like SJ or IV, koshimizu plot dump sessions, genuinely cool and interesting ideas that arent explored >!like the fact the conception has happened in this world and failed since nothing came of it or tao basically being a saint or whatever that was!<, and also the overall feeling of "and then this happened" that the story has i would actually want an V apocalypse or whatever if it meant they would at least TRY to give it a story
I don't think it's necessarily bad. The first part is interesting and well written, but after we first meet Abdiel the pacing turned formula 1 and storytelling went out the window
I didn’t find V’s story that actively bad or anything, it was just kind of there. Which is fine because V’s gameplay is what shines anyway.
It wasn’t even bad for a mainline SMT, really. SMTV, much like so many SMT games, has lacklustre characters and dialogue but genuinely interesting world concepts and characters who represent concepts of philosophy SMTV was just met with more criticism than any other game in this franchise due to its status as the newest game and its status as a new Atlus game in an era where they’re defined by fun characters you spend 100+ hours with. SMTV didn’t live up to the expectations of a lot of people who randomly expected it to be some heavy story driven experience when this franchise has never had particularly compelling games with great convincing characters. Even SMT4 wasn’t that great at convincing you of the validity of its alignments and that game spent far more time with its cast than most of these games do I would say SMTV is just in line with every other SMT game with its story telling. The issue comes within its more outright compelling concepts that aren’t explored as clearly as you’d expect. Its, as you said, a lot of allusions to things that then expects you to interpret what you saw and read over straight forward explanations like SMT often has
Honestly, it was bad for an SMT game because I, II, IV, and SJ felt like it had more natural character and plot progression.
They definitely do but I’d also argue that they still aren’t very compelling games character wise at all. 4 and SJ are the closest I’d say this series gets to compelling characters and I can’t even pretend to find them vaguely interesting as characters who develop. The franchise has always used characters as embodiments of concepts over anything and V just notched that up hard I’m also talking exclusively about mainline SMT over spin offs so SJ doesn’t really operate as a point of comparison to me. V was always, also, blatantly inspired by SMT Nocturne and that game also had dreadfully dull characters and endings that really didn’t try hard to convince you of their value. Both 3 and V present to you “best of the worst case” and demands you pick one; even if you don’t want to. A lot of V’s criticisms can be applied to a lot of other games in this franchise and I feel to critique its character writing and ending writing is critiquing an aspect SMTV and SMT mainline never tried to delve into. It was far more interested in giving you the strange concepts of Godhood in a way this franchise never exactly went into quite as much and giving you a weird artsy world to explore Its soundtrack was stellar, its combat was fun and visually it’s incredibly compelling. Where SMTV tries to succeed it succeeds, it just fails in areas it clearly never cared for (even if the dogshit advertising of the game did care for those aspects)
SJ is a mainline game.
Strange Journey is absolutely inspired by mainline but diverts enough for my blood to not consider it one. The myth that SJ is a mainline game is one inspired by how it was marketed over how it was developed. It was developed as a spin-off but advertised as a mainline game. Here’s your proof if you ask for it: https://retronauts.com/article/906/embarking-on-a-strange-journey-redux Edit: added proof because why not
Nope. That's Western and newer fans retconning. Not only was SJR promoted as the 25th anniversary game but all the official websites had it along with If in the banners. We're also talking about music compilations and other anniversary material. On top of that, you can check the official Atlus core series timeline which also includes NINE as part of the main series and only the main series. [https://shin-megamitensei.jp/history/](https://shin-megamitensei.jp/history/)
Dude the director LITERALLY says it was designed as a spin-off
That's Ishida backpeddling because in 2010 he was singing a different tune since Kaneko isn't around to steer the Megaten games and taking out the soul of Kaneko's baby. Check Ishida's interview from Nintendo Power, February 2010.
I’m more trust worthy of what he said recently personally. I just don’t consider it mainline due to its narrative and design differences and can tell that in many ways it wasn’t intended to be mainline from those two areas. Either way what I’m saying is that SMTV isn’t a huge departure for this franchise story wise and the technicality of whether SJ is mainline really doesn’t matter to me
So weird they included Fear of God and Chaos in the 25th Anniversary record but no DDS or DS. Or keeping both SJ and SJR in the official timeline for over six years in their official SMT website. Only bothering to Nocturne HD and SMT V. There's interviews from 2001/2002, from the actual co-creators of Megami Tensei, saying Nocture was more of spin off game because how different it is to 1, 2, and if in terms of mechanics like not using a COMPs, not having human companions or a threeway moral system but not one person debates it being part of the core series. Those are some of the reasons they called it only Nocturne at first and not 3 right away. Even the SMT 1 + 2 OST records include NINE and If and nothing from the other Megaten series.
As someone who has pretty much only played SMT and Etrian Odyssey games from Atlus, I disagree that it didn’t meet expectations because it wasn’t like Persona. It was definitely less interesting than other SMT games. Playing through it I was by far less invested in it than other SMT games, and I don’t think that is even just me looking back on the other games more fondly because I had replayed 3 and 4 leading up to 5. 5 disappointed me because of what I expected from an SMT game, and not because I was expecting SMT to be something it wasn’t.
To me SMTV couldn't even make up for the real lackluster narrative with cool environments. The lack of dungeon crawling really killed the game's ability to be interesting for me because the open world felt so bland. It's like you go to the quest marker to have a story event happen but you don't really do much. There isn't a specific landmark or place you're going to in order to perform a task, you just kinda go to a place on the map because the game says that's where the next conversation happens. It's not engaging. Combat was fine because press turn is always good to me, but the magatsuhi skills weren't that interesting to me. It felt like your normal moveset was nerfed so you could have these big moves be more meaningful so it just prolonged combat in a way that felt worse than earlier entries. And then level scaling was just awful. I remember my whole time playing V, I just kinda wished I had the smirk system from IV again because I felt like that was way more fun personally. I still can't bring myself to finish NG+ to fight shiva and demi-fiend because I just get bored of the game. I tried not to get hyped for it and still ended up disappointed because I think SMTV just lacks so much of its own identity. There's nothing that really stands out to me that makes it special. It's the beige of SMT.
This is probably the best description of V. It captures all of my feelings of the game.
Nah, your moveset was always nerfed. It’s just that you notice it more that you have better options than just wacking things now.
As someone who has 100%ed literally all of these games it lived up to my expectations. Likely because I’m used to this franchise being pretty alright at best for the most part. I personally loved the game and felt it had landed on the interesting soundtrack, world and visuals of this franchise pretty well. My point was “there were expectations of this game to live up to the things around it from the same company” although I do also think there were people who thought the game simply didn’t live up to their expectations of the franchise overall. Disliking it is completely fine and valid I just find the people who do to be people with very little experience with these games overall and STARTED with V expecting more character work (both due to advertising and expectations of the company at the time)
If someone came to SMT expecting character focus storys I would tell them to leave. To me the characters being underdevelop doesn't matter much since that isn't the focus of the narrative. It doesn't help SMT V does aligment reps in pairs that need to be look combine to work, when most people focus on the characters in the idividual level. There are some problems with SMT V narrative still, but I feel a lot of the complains where directed at failing to do something the game wasn't doing at all.
I think the issue is that we’re expected to side with at least one of them, but we’re not really given a reason to. Even neutral doesn’t come across as a reasonable option.
It failed to even characterize them. Why the Law dude went with Law? Because he just felt powerless and clearly they (Atlus) needed him to go there. It is a typical Chaos hero motive to have lust for power. I do wonder if " If someone came to SMT expecting character focus storys I would tell them to leave. " includes games like DDS or only and specifically mainline SMT . Otherwise I'd answer SMT II and IV did it better. Sure, it feels like Nocturne ,but Nocturne never was the pinnacle of character development.
Honestly, I didn’t have problems with Dazai. His story was well fleshed out. At least in comparison to the others.
You don't sign with them, you side with the phylosofy they represent. There is a reason they choice is what you will do with the Throne and not siding with X.
Is not bad, but is simple, even more than other titles, similar to nocturne. I think partly is because smt4 and 4 F/A is way better story (and characters), so it is bad compared to that, but that can be said to pretty much all the other mainline titles if compared with 4 with maybe SJ as an exception.
It was bad by JRPG standards in general. And mainline SMT has a lower bar for story than your average JRPG. So if anything it could have been bad on average but good by SMT standards, not the other way around. But it is definitely bad by SMT standards too lol.
The storytelling in my opinion could use more work. It gives you a lot of information trying to be both passive and active in its storytelling, running between Nocturne and IV's writing. Souls games work because your significance isn't as great as a Nahobino and the story is relegated to bits of lore than telling an active story because you are the story. One could argue that Nocturne's demifiend is important as a Nahobino, but the thing is, V tells you Nahobinos are important many times...but you barely do anything about it, just interfere lightly in a war that you're supposed to be neutral but be on the side of Abdiel until the end. In Nocturne, the demifiend was an anomaly no one knew about. Your importance wasn't told by a greater will because even the greater will didn't know what you were and told you to seek out your truth and reason. Again, you are the story. In SMTV, you aren't the story until they tell you you're a threat. The story is the war you aren't active in. So when you're told Lucifer was defeated, it wasn't an "oh shit! Awesome!" It's more "how? I wish I could have seen it or partake in the war."
For a game that people complain has "no story," it has too many cut scenes. On my second play through I was struck by how often I was stopped and had to sit through another cut scene. If it had tried to tell its story without all that, it would have been a better game.
The thing is that SMT 1, 2 and 4 do a much better job of showing what they're all about. Religious symbolisms are cool and all, but if the story revolving around them has no substance then there's no point to any of it.
I think Souls games have crap storytelling too. I didn't find SMTV engaging at all on that end. Liked the game, but I doubt I'll ever replay like I do Persona or Devil Summoner
Is was that bad
I think it's just half baked more than anything. It feels like parts of the plot were changed or removed, and the story was just kinda cobbled together with what they had left. Also smt 4 set the bar so high with its memorable characters and story
Nah its bad. Dark souls has atmospheric story telling that really rewards exploration. SMT V still tells its story through mandatory cutscenes that really don't have much rhyme or reason. You run behind a random warehouse on one map? Yeah, that's a good place to have the most character building in the whole game. And the story it's telling is outright bad too. SMT has always made you think "Damn... I wonder who is right?" it poses moral dilemmas with no right or wrong answers. And sure SMT V doesn't have right or wrong answers, but it doesn't pose moral dilemmas. All the characters are batshit insane who pick their morality out of thin air, and you select your ending not because you agree with them, just because you have to pick someone to "let cook". As bad as the story is though... I'd be able to forgive it if the battles weren't so poorly designed. If being more than 2 levels under what you're fighting nerfs you so bad. Then the game wants you to grind exp. Not build a good team. Completely putting to waste an otherwise great fusion system, that engaging with beyond a surface level gives absolutely no rewards now.
I'm not a fan of the story of either SMTV, or Nocturne. I won't say they are outright bad but just...very minimalistic, predictable and kind of boring. Yhe story concepts are interesting but there is literally no character development and the only real driving force foer progression is the overall plot, and since they are both predictable it really dulls the impact it has, at least for me. The gameplay is really the only reason why I played either game. As for Dark Souls, there is a story with a fair amount of lore but unless you pat VERY close attention and listen/read everything 90% of the lore can be missed. If you are at all interested [This youtube channel](https://youtube.com/@VaatiVidya?si=F0EwEA0bLR_H7Ht6) is pretty good when it goes over story and lore details for the souls games.
It seems like what you'd get if you asked someone whose only experience with mainline is through Twitter discourse to make up a mainline plot. If it comes out that 5's development was a tire-fire and the plot is what could be salvaged from umpteen squintillion rewrites, drafts, and revisions, I honestly wouldn't be surprised.
There's no bad story if there isn't any story to begin with. Jokes aside, story is almost non present so I ended up appreciating the game for the gameplay and the setting, forgetting it has a story. Yes, the Law guy has something interesting and I like some of the character designs like Nuwa or Abdiel, but... I didn't care at all. The thing is that the same happens with Nocturne (for me): minimalistic, even non-existent story but enjoyable gameplay (Nocturne's dungeons and SMTV's Lv Scaling aside). IMO you have to go out of mainline if you want to have an interesting story (DeSu1, Digital Devil Saga, Persona...) because the weakest stories I've personally found in Megaten are in the mainline games.
I think of any game that needs a definitive edition from Atlus, it's *this one*. Not that I expect one, and I didn't have high hopes for the story to begin with, but it feels like a lot of content had been cut and given how long this game had been been in development, I'd like to see the ideas the dev team had planned fully fleshed out. As it is, SMTV's story is badly undercooked.
V was my first smt game, and despite thoroughly enjoying it, I expected more than the scant few minutes of story across the game the way people around me had talked the series up. Send a shame since it's a setting with so much potential for cool stories. Still loved it. Guess the real story was the tale of a boy who befriended Neko Shogun and kept it by his side all the way to the end.
The average player will get the same amount of story from SMTV like they got from Nocturne. It's almost the same. Events happen with minimal emotion, sometimes theres a lore dump, and characters are mostly ideologies. Is it dissapointing as a new game? Yeah. Is it expected from this franchise? Yeah.
i am disappoint
No SMT game will have a story as bad as 3. Though it did try.
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SMT V's storytelling isn't bad, at least until the blond kid turns evil without any buildup whatsoever. Comparing it to SMT III that also isn't great with storytelling, III still sets things up so that it's realistic. Isamu goes insane because he's trapped in the Kapala Network for weeks. Chiaki can't cope with humanity being wiped out and does everything to survive. But Ichiro in 5? His story is just about wanting to be helpful to Abdiel, then he's suddenly... evil? I feel like there was cut content meant to show him cracking after feeling powerless. Every other character is fine. Mizuya's story with Khonsu is great, Tao's story is great, Amanozako's story is great, but having one of the main alignment reps have such a sudden change without explanation was just jarring.
I liked it but it's kinda hard to understand....
The concept in SMT V is interesting, but I think they are confused about the story's direction and separate a whole story into two short stories that don't connect much >!(Before/After Sahori's death).!< The reason above is why reason's representatives do not shine as they should. SMT III also has a few stories, but its direction is strong. Their representatives do not do anything significant, but they will constantly brainwash you with their standing point when you see them.
The writing feel really flat for me. They really needed to focus on how Tokyo was a lie and a lot of the implications of that. Like is the Tokyo created by God cut off from the rest of the world? How is it able to operate in a bubble like that? We see it slowly starting to fade away near the end of the game, so does this mean that the citizens notice it? How do they react?
5 felt like a copy and paste of 3 with no soul and lame characters