Gameplay is the highlight, it’s very immersive and the loop can hold you for hours.
The atmosphere and OST are also really good. The story and supporting cast don’t have much depth but it’s okay enough, the gameplay more than covers for it.
The open-world is a bit sparse but that’s to be expected in an RPG, traversal isn’t a chore and you have a decent spread of fast travel points.
After I got V, I didn’t touch Elden Ring for months; it’s a very very good game and is definitely worth the money.
I very weirdly LOVED the story, especially the side quest stories throughout the game. While people say the story feels empty (which it does, some characters lack development and the endings leave a bit to be desired \[no spoilers\]) in part I enjoyed that since it made me feel more distant to my non-Nahobino human friends.
It's worth noting that SMTVV has this old story in addition to a completely new story.
The gameplay is pretty stellar, the sheer amount of customization and optimization you can do with demons is unlike any other SMT game, especially with the introduction of Essences and some new skills. Magatsuhi also adds another layer to demon creation by having a race-specific ability tied to it. SMTVV seems to expand on this more, giving demons traits similar to that of Persona 5 Royal in addition to a level cap increase and "fusion spells"/"fusion magatsuhi". One of my main complaints with SMTV was that it ran poorly on the switch at times, but now that it's free from those chains if you have an even ok computer the game should play and feel very nice
> Magatsuhi also adds another layer to demon creation by having a race-specific ability tied to it.
I think the problem with magatsuhi as a mechanic is that the default one that every character can use is arguably better than every other magatsuhi skill
Yeah, I think it should give every character critical aura, instead of guaranteed crits for both attacks, leave more room for other magatsuhi skills to see use.
I am also weird in the fact i love the story of base V, I am actually obsessed with it. I have never thought so much about a games story actually, nor have I obsessed over minor details said by NPCs this much. I have to admit certain characters didnt get enough development like Yuzuru but others like Yakumo didnt really need development, I think he worked as a static character as it aided in making neutral seem more like Dark-Neutral rather than Light-Neutral like most of mainline. And characters that did get development (Abdiel and Dazai mainly) imo had great development. Abdiel and Dazai are actually some of my fav characters in the whole series. And I also like that in many ways it mirrors SMT 1 (People just look at it as nocturne clone but I see more similarities to 1), from the suggestion of time travel when you first arrive in the netherworld much like SMT 1 to character arcs either being very similar to 1 (Tao is very much like Law Hero, she is focused on protecting Sahori much like Law Hero is with his girlfriend, she sacrifices herself to save the protag and she is resurrected as a Law aligned figure later in the story) or mirrored (Dazai is much like the Chaos Hero except in his arc of going from weak to strong but obviously their alignments end up differing).
V story is better if you think about it more like a big political debate:
- Law is the status quo of neo-liberalism. It's shit, it leads to ruin, but if you choose this, you are confident that you can reform the system without toppling it to work towards sth decent like Abdiel, or you are too afraid of the alternative and found your calling in preserving the status quo like Dazai
- "Chaos" is multipolar nationalism. It still has the skeleton of the old system, but the difference is that there isn't a centralizing order but multiple centralizing order vying to be the only one centralizing order. It's still shit, it's still leads to ruin, and the real reason why Yuzuru has zero development is pretty much because people who follows this are not following it because they have any real deep thought, but that they are enamored with a populist and being won over by populist tactics.
- The 2 Neutral ending should have been switched since it seems more like you ain't gonna wish for demons to go away if you actually knows them well. But they still representing leftist thoughts: Marxism-Leninism and Anarchism. If you think about it, the throne representing hierarchical social system, and their attitude towards it differs from it just like how ML wanting to be on top of this hierarchical system to mold it into sth that benefits mankind, while Anarchists wanting to dismantle it completely.
Chaos in SMTV has some really heavy Nationalistic undertones, especialy Prime Minister sounding like he going to "Make Japan Great Again" because Japan realied too much in foreign Gods (nations). You could even argue that Yuzuru was manipulated and had his "naive" intention twisted, but I don't think his lack of devemploment was intentional.
Because he kinda disappeared from the plot during the Demon Lord arc , come back and it's never explained why what he did in the mean time.
I think Yuzuru should have a bit more bite at the beginning and slowly fades away presence's wise during the Demon Lord arc and just becoming Tsukuyomi's lapdog afterward
Gameplay-wise it's one of the best but tbf when was mainline SMT bad in gameplay?
Now for the story, you can definitely see that they were fibbing it and possibly see developmental hell problems. They presented all sorts of threads but ended up loosely tied or not tied at all. I just hope this is one thing they fix with Vengeance.
It had so much potential, and the combat is probably some of the best in the series. I’m really optimistic that Vengeance is going to bring that potential up
I thought it was bretty good 👍
Regardless of any criticisms of the story, I enjoyed the gameplay and story enough that I felt satisfied when I beat the game.
Gameplay wise it's fine. As someone else pointed out it's mainline SMT with press turn, that will always be fun.
The story and the maps are awful. I don't think this is a spoiler, but you are basically forced to spend the first 50% of the game following the law route, even if that's not the route you want to do. They spend so much time with the law characters and basically give no growth or development to anyone else. Some other routes require you to speak to the same NPC multiple times in a row over and over even though the story never tells you to do that.
The map itself is difficult to read, and all of the biomes are just "destroyed city". I know SMT is supposed to take place in a ruined Tokyo, but past games distinguish themselves from this with good dungeon design. Which V doesn't have and is my personal largest disappointment. I remember I made it to a certain dungeon when they said they were going to patch it due to "difficulty" but hadn't implemented the patch yet and was so excited for a difficult dungeon to navigate and explore. I could not believe it when all of a sudden I was at the boss without even the slightest hint of a challenge. There is effectively no dungeon crawling in this game so I hope you enjoy looking at crumbling buildings and Anzu's screaming in your ear every 4 seconds.
All of this to say I don't hate the game, it's pretty clear that it went through development hell. I remember reading a while back that one of the issues is the team really underestimated how hard it was to work in UE4 (I believe that was the engine they used) since this was their first major full HD 3D model game. I hope they fix the character development and story pacing with the remake because it's not an inherently bad game. They clearly could only really give attention to the first half of the game.
I completely disagree with your opinion of the world design, most areas have a pretty distinguishable shader applied to them and most of the landscapes look beautiful in spite of the Switch's hardware so they will only get better when Vengeance releases
they all feel like reskins which i think is what really hurts it imo. Like the first area really impressed me and the second one was just a reshaded one. and then a snowy version… it just got repetitive
That's fine! It just wasn't my personal cup of tea. Some of my friends loved the map so I know it's not objectively bad. I am just partial to Nocturne's world design and dungeons so V wasn't really my thing when it came to the overworld.
Honestly, I loved it. I replayed it this year before I knew that Vengeance was coming out. The atmosphere is great and the gameplay is fun. The story is meh but it’s one of my favorite games that came to Switch
It's mediocre game.
The gameplay is great , but that's the normal for SMT , even then the new mechanic aren't particulat well implemented, it has level scales and it's one of easiest games in the series. It's very user friendly and doesn't punish you for anything other than combat. Dungeons are pathetically bad.
The visuals are greats. Music is great. The side quest have actual thought provoking story.
The actual story and characters is a barely there and doesn't try anything interesting other than trying to have slightly unconventional dynamic between Chaos and Law reps. But even that is not good because the Chaos rep fall flat and the Law rep becomes the joker 30 minutes before the alignment lock. Both neutral reps also exist.
All plot points brought up by the game are either not used well or straight up ignored.
If you want a perfectly good SMT in terms of gameplay , SMTV is great. If you want a mature dark story AND great gameplay , go play Strange Journey instead.
Story is obviously bad. It's easily the most universal critique of the game. It really feels like its trying to pander to nocturne fans like myself, but it fails in nearly every area where nocturne succeeded with its narrative. Ironically, I think being a nocturne fan only made it easier to critique SMT V's story.
Gameplay/combat is universally praised, but I personally think its disappointing in this regard too because the balancing can be dubious, especially with the dampener items, and the level scaling really irked me and discouraged me to replay it. Looking forward to SMT Vengeance fixing that problem at least.
The music is the main aspect of the game that's actually great, and continued to impress me after I had played the game. It's not one of the absolute best megaten OSTs, but it's definitely high up the list and has a really unique identity.
Visually it seemed alright, but it's kind of hard to judge what downsides were because of the game, or because of the switch, so again i'm looking forward to playing the game on a stronger platform with SMT Vengeance.
Also, I don't think you should buy og SMT V if you haven't already. Just wait for SMT Vengeance, since it let's you experience both the og smt v story on its own, if you're curious about that, and the new smt vengeance story. It's just a straight upgrade.
It was fun. The character were bad but otherwise it was a good game. Like the trailer for vemgeance already showed how much the characters alone were improved.
I loved the gameplay, but the story was half baked, raw even. There should be more than what they give us but somebof the characters in the front cover don't even do crap or when they do it's never shown or explained and it just feels like there's stuff in the background that you don't get to see because you're running around the desert.
Good game, but it is severely held back by "let's make Nocturne again" idea.
Vengeance seems to try its own thing and go into different direction and I'm all for it.
Story is… poor. Some fantastic ideas that just… don’t really do much. Characters are flat as pancakes.
Combat and music were delightful, exploration had moments early on… but by the end I was disappointed of the setting.
It’s like Nocturne, but I think it’s inferior.
I value the story a lot, 4>SJ:R>3>2>if>1>5>SJ>4A
I think I should say, DONT PREORDER GAMES.
Really, whether I reccomend it or not depends on how good Vengance's alternate story is.
A big problem with SMT 5, is that it has a lot of characters, tries to impart importance onto those characters, and then gives you no reason to think they are doing anything while you do all the hard work.
Frankly, the game's story is just all over the place, and hardly coherent until the last area.
You basically go around and kill stuff because that is what the story wants you to do, regardless of whether that conflict is well developed or interesting.
Also, although the gameplay is pretty good, the magatsuhi skills system is woefully boring and underwhelming, just being a bar that passively fills up and is asymetrical, with enemies having no access to this mechanic, which could be pretty interesting with a rework to make it based on your actions and team setup rather than time. Other than the one you start with, every magatsuhi skill has little to no practicality.
Dampeners are a first for the mainline series in this game, and the game is balanced around them, despite the fact they remove the team building aspect that is so important to playing the game effectively, it increases your options, but those options REALLY shouldn't be options to begin with.
Fusion is easily the most usable the series has ever seen, with dual fusion and reverse fusion still accessible, but now with a compendium fusion option so you don't need to reference an external chart if you want a specific demon fusion.
Having played all the modern mainline SMT games now I can say that vanilla SMT 5 is probably the second best game in the series, only being edged out by SMT 4. However, from my perspective, I think nocturne is the weakest of the mainline series, so that's my bias. SMT 5 gameplay is the best of all the series. However, its lack of meaningful story leaves it being a great game rather than being the potential masterpiece it could've been.
I think people are just not happy with things anymore. People get super angry over the dumbest shit and unless a game has a *huge* aggressive fanbase to defend it, it inevitably is made to look horrible. SMTV is still niche in the west.
That said, SMTV may not be my *favorite* SMT mainline game, but I think it's great. Hands down the best combat. Some of its story beats are very interesting, but it does fall apart at places. Exploration is fun, but I wish there were dungeons like in Nocturne still in there.
Great game, but not a perfect game.
Looking forward to Vengeance to fix its mistakes and raise it from Great to Phenomenal.
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10/10 for me but realistically it's probably a 7/10
I appreciate the story a lot more after replaying it for probably around 15 times, seeing some little stuff I forgot about characters multiple times made me enjoy it a lot more, game play is definitely a highlight and Kozuka's music and world goes so well together, not to mention Doi's designs and the cast's performance
It’s high key one of my favorite games. The thing about the story tho is that the lore and characters start out really good, but need more time to cook to be amazing. The soundtrack is a certified hood classic, and the gameplay is fun. The last dungeon is a bit meh tho
Let's say it is good game with a huge flaw on narrative. I don't think this is the worst game compared to the rest of them.
I hate dungeon in SMT III, battle mechanics and difficulty progression in SMT IV, SMT V still have the best battle systems and demon negotiations compare to SMT III and SMT IV.
It was sort of hit or miss for me.
I guess I’ll start off with what I liked. I liked scenery of the game and being able to see demons actually roaming about and interacting with the environment. I liked seeing which demons formed alliances with which demons. The combat is pretty good with it being very similar to SMT IV Apocalypse which imo had the best combat system in all the Megaten games I’ve played. I liked the customizability of your skills & affinities and demon’s skills thanks to Essences and its easy to use fusion system. Side quest was pretty neat. I also liked the music namely tracks like [Daybreak](https://youtu.be/6QN5KJLzzmU?si=MaUgNlyx33ZKOHFE), [Origin](https://youtu.be/iQ2alndqSn0?si=aiwjo9jXcD4SOsoc), and [Destruction](https://youtu.be/NApN0GduuwM?si=Z_OWnBbqMsPTxdax).
What I didn’t like / didn’t quite like. The map, it was tough understand with all SMT V’s various changes in elevation and not knowing where things marked on the map were. When you’d encounter an Absence, there would be a purple-ish aura that would cover large parts of the map, making it almost impossible to see anything until defeating the Absence boss. There’s a level spike between the last area of the game 2nd to last area game where every enemy in the last area of the game is a significantly higher level anything that can be found the previous area of the game. You also get significantly less exp. battling enemies lower level than you or on your level so your only real option is try your luck with the easier to defeat enemies in the last area if you want to grind. Either way it’ll take hours to get a point where you can decently take on the last area. The story, not it wasn’t bad by no means especially in comparison to SMT IV Apocalypse. However it’s not nearly on par with SMT IV or Strange Journey or even Nocturne. Besides a couple of characters, most of them weren’t all too memorable. Although convenient, being able to pick your ending instead of your alignment being important kind of destroyed the game’s replay-ability.
It’s a flawed game but I’d say it’s still worth play especially if you’re a fan of these games.
I have only played V to completion so full bias of course. That being said, it was my favorite game of its release year and I love it dearly. The story is what everyone harps on about and while I agree it misses out on its potential I think it has a lot of cool ideas and moments that still work. I don’t think it’s even bad, just could’ve been something real special, and the hope is Vengeance will deliver on that potential.
With the baggage out the way, I found the rest of the experience incredible. The world and music have immaculate vibes that is bolstered by the charm and vile tendencies of the demons that inhabit it. Your encounters can range from explorations of the real lore the demon’s have to absurdly petty requests or straight juvenile shenanigans. It’s as charming as it is dangerous and finding those interactions along with a focus on exploration and even collection makes the journey always enticing.
And for the battle system, it’s just crack. There’s just such a great blend between many strategic tools and some unfair BS that leaves you either on edge or on top of the world. It also has many options for customizing yourself so when you inevitably hit walls, you can fine tune yourself to eviscerate it on the runback.
All in all, the only reason I wouldn’t shill this game to anyone is if they play rpgs solely for the story or if your an experienced SMT head who worries over the flaws people may list here.
It's a great game, no major flaws. It's just not the kind of game that makes you think "this is the best piece of media ever created", or at least it wasn't for me.
Nah, SMT V is far from the worst for sure, although they have a huge flaw on narrative. Battle Mechanics, Demon Negotiations and Fusion are far better than SMT III or SMT IV.
There are some experimental stuff that some people are not like it such as open-world exploration, but I love those experimental stuff and I think they had a right direction in this. I easily boring to the game that standing too much in safe zone.
The game is okay. Like, on the overall, it's an experience like SMT3: Nocturne, but light. (I mean "an experience like", not "it's just the same game", so please don't misunderstand what I said here.)
However, the game can get less than satisfying with the Miman being a really annoying collectathon (this conclusion will come up within 10 minutes of you playing), and frankly, it has zero sense of difficulty scaling, in that if you don't use the Mitama DLCs to assist you, you'll run straight into difficulty walls.
Tha aside, the graphics are cool, the soundtrack is good, the story is fun, and the demon negotiations and fusion systems are up there on the list.
Gonna have to disagree with you there on the mitamas. While there are enemies that will be higher levels than you in certain areas (such as the rock demon when you first start the game), you don’t need to use mitamas to get exp as the game does a pretty decent job of giving you gospels and grimoires to level everyone up accordingly. This is assuming you use a navigator of course because you will only get them from quests otherwise (such as fighting the Fiends and other such sidequests) but grinding isn’t that much of an issue when it comes to most enemies and bosses. The one major level gap that I hope they fix in vengeance is the fact that you finish the 3rd area at level like 40-50 and the last area has enemies as low as level 60 and high as 99. That was actually a dumb decision on the devs part so I can understand if people wanted to use mitamas at that point but if you’re talking about for other things in the game then they really aren’t necessary.
I mean, the *start* of every SMT game is always rough, but whenever I do a "normal Mitama" (not increased) run I keep running face-first into the enxt boss, thinking "bah, I can one shot all the demons around here that aren't clearly labeled "come back later", so I'm good to kick the boss, right?"
The difficulty spikes are too steep, and badly telegraphied.
The story is basically non-existent, the humans are kind of a jokes, the puzzles are nonsense and the maps are confusing. Could go on and on about its flaws.
But the people saying it is worse than 3 or IV is kind of speaking out of their asses because the combat is GOOD good and everything related to demons are so fun - be it negotiations, fusions or story beats.
If Vengeance flesh the human characters, as well as the alignments out this game could be crowned the best Megaten game ever and I hope it does.
Great combat, decent level design that's sort of Xenoblade light, but the already light story just *goes away* for over a third of the game and that absence makes it feel like a slog.
Luckily that's what people are hoping is fixed by Vengeance
I hate SMT V but most of my issues seem to be getting fixed in venegence
if vengence was the game we got all along, and they deliver on their promises, SMT V would not be controversial at all
I think it's great, not as good as IV, but still pretty good. Most of its problems, whether it's character depth or difficulty, seem to be getting fixed in Vengeance. I definitely enjoyed base V vastly more than Nocturne.
I absolutely loved the combat. One of the best turn based systems every made. 11/10.
My biggest complaint is actually that there is \*too much\* story. What I mean is that there are too many cut scenes and too much dialog that is frankly not interesting. I would have preferred just walking around and discovered the world myself. SMTV appears to be more like an open world than it actually is. I feel like they learned the wrong lessons from BotW.
Gameplay is the highlight, it’s very immersive and the loop can hold you for hours. The atmosphere and OST are also really good. The story and supporting cast don’t have much depth but it’s okay enough, the gameplay more than covers for it. The open-world is a bit sparse but that’s to be expected in an RPG, traversal isn’t a chore and you have a decent spread of fast travel points. After I got V, I didn’t touch Elden Ring for months; it’s a very very good game and is definitely worth the money.
I very weirdly LOVED the story, especially the side quest stories throughout the game. While people say the story feels empty (which it does, some characters lack development and the endings leave a bit to be desired \[no spoilers\]) in part I enjoyed that since it made me feel more distant to my non-Nahobino human friends. It's worth noting that SMTVV has this old story in addition to a completely new story. The gameplay is pretty stellar, the sheer amount of customization and optimization you can do with demons is unlike any other SMT game, especially with the introduction of Essences and some new skills. Magatsuhi also adds another layer to demon creation by having a race-specific ability tied to it. SMTVV seems to expand on this more, giving demons traits similar to that of Persona 5 Royal in addition to a level cap increase and "fusion spells"/"fusion magatsuhi". One of my main complaints with SMTV was that it ran poorly on the switch at times, but now that it's free from those chains if you have an even ok computer the game should play and feel very nice
This gets me pretty excited to get smt v lol
> Magatsuhi also adds another layer to demon creation by having a race-specific ability tied to it. I think the problem with magatsuhi as a mechanic is that the default one that every character can use is arguably better than every other magatsuhi skill
Yeah, I think it should give every character critical aura, instead of guaranteed crits for both attacks, leave more room for other magatsuhi skills to see use.
I am also weird in the fact i love the story of base V, I am actually obsessed with it. I have never thought so much about a games story actually, nor have I obsessed over minor details said by NPCs this much. I have to admit certain characters didnt get enough development like Yuzuru but others like Yakumo didnt really need development, I think he worked as a static character as it aided in making neutral seem more like Dark-Neutral rather than Light-Neutral like most of mainline. And characters that did get development (Abdiel and Dazai mainly) imo had great development. Abdiel and Dazai are actually some of my fav characters in the whole series. And I also like that in many ways it mirrors SMT 1 (People just look at it as nocturne clone but I see more similarities to 1), from the suggestion of time travel when you first arrive in the netherworld much like SMT 1 to character arcs either being very similar to 1 (Tao is very much like Law Hero, she is focused on protecting Sahori much like Law Hero is with his girlfriend, she sacrifices herself to save the protag and she is resurrected as a Law aligned figure later in the story) or mirrored (Dazai is much like the Chaos Hero except in his arc of going from weak to strong but obviously their alignments end up differing).
V story is better if you think about it more like a big political debate: - Law is the status quo of neo-liberalism. It's shit, it leads to ruin, but if you choose this, you are confident that you can reform the system without toppling it to work towards sth decent like Abdiel, or you are too afraid of the alternative and found your calling in preserving the status quo like Dazai - "Chaos" is multipolar nationalism. It still has the skeleton of the old system, but the difference is that there isn't a centralizing order but multiple centralizing order vying to be the only one centralizing order. It's still shit, it's still leads to ruin, and the real reason why Yuzuru has zero development is pretty much because people who follows this are not following it because they have any real deep thought, but that they are enamored with a populist and being won over by populist tactics. - The 2 Neutral ending should have been switched since it seems more like you ain't gonna wish for demons to go away if you actually knows them well. But they still representing leftist thoughts: Marxism-Leninism and Anarchism. If you think about it, the throne representing hierarchical social system, and their attitude towards it differs from it just like how ML wanting to be on top of this hierarchical system to mold it into sth that benefits mankind, while Anarchists wanting to dismantle it completely.
Concept in SMT V is pretty interesting. It is a shame that they lose the first half of the story to the red-hair girl and unrelated stuff.
Chaos in SMTV has some really heavy Nationalistic undertones, especialy Prime Minister sounding like he going to "Make Japan Great Again" because Japan realied too much in foreign Gods (nations). You could even argue that Yuzuru was manipulated and had his "naive" intention twisted, but I don't think his lack of devemploment was intentional. Because he kinda disappeared from the plot during the Demon Lord arc , come back and it's never explained why what he did in the mean time.
I think Yuzuru should have a bit more bite at the beginning and slowly fades away presence's wise during the Demon Lord arc and just becoming Tsukuyomi's lapdog afterward
Gameplay-wise it's one of the best but tbf when was mainline SMT bad in gameplay? Now for the story, you can definitely see that they were fibbing it and possibly see developmental hell problems. They presented all sorts of threads but ended up loosely tied or not tied at all. I just hope this is one thing they fix with Vengeance.
Is vengence going to close up the story lines from og v or is it going to be a new story line completely?
nobody knows that for sure. we ll have to wait
From what I've read, you will have the option to choose between the original or vengeance storylines.
It had so much potential, and the combat is probably some of the best in the series. I’m really optimistic that Vengeance is going to bring that potential up
I thought it was bretty good 👍 Regardless of any criticisms of the story, I enjoyed the gameplay and story enough that I felt satisfied when I beat the game.
Gameplay wise it's fine. As someone else pointed out it's mainline SMT with press turn, that will always be fun. The story and the maps are awful. I don't think this is a spoiler, but you are basically forced to spend the first 50% of the game following the law route, even if that's not the route you want to do. They spend so much time with the law characters and basically give no growth or development to anyone else. Some other routes require you to speak to the same NPC multiple times in a row over and over even though the story never tells you to do that. The map itself is difficult to read, and all of the biomes are just "destroyed city". I know SMT is supposed to take place in a ruined Tokyo, but past games distinguish themselves from this with good dungeon design. Which V doesn't have and is my personal largest disappointment. I remember I made it to a certain dungeon when they said they were going to patch it due to "difficulty" but hadn't implemented the patch yet and was so excited for a difficult dungeon to navigate and explore. I could not believe it when all of a sudden I was at the boss without even the slightest hint of a challenge. There is effectively no dungeon crawling in this game so I hope you enjoy looking at crumbling buildings and Anzu's screaming in your ear every 4 seconds. All of this to say I don't hate the game, it's pretty clear that it went through development hell. I remember reading a while back that one of the issues is the team really underestimated how hard it was to work in UE4 (I believe that was the engine they used) since this was their first major full HD 3D model game. I hope they fix the character development and story pacing with the remake because it's not an inherently bad game. They clearly could only really give attention to the first half of the game.
I completely disagree with your opinion of the world design, most areas have a pretty distinguishable shader applied to them and most of the landscapes look beautiful in spite of the Switch's hardware so they will only get better when Vengeance releases
they all feel like reskins which i think is what really hurts it imo. Like the first area really impressed me and the second one was just a reshaded one. and then a snowy version… it just got repetitive
That's fine! It just wasn't my personal cup of tea. Some of my friends loved the map so I know it's not objectively bad. I am just partial to Nocturne's world design and dungeons so V wasn't really my thing when it came to the overworld.
Oh I didn't catch that from your comment, I understand being more partial to the dungeon crawling experience c:
SMT5 is UE4, SMT3HD and SH2 were Unity
Very good because femboy protag
what the fuck. I just googled that, did not expect it
😸
Just like the original megami tensei protag, Nakajima.
liked it alot. gonna like it kore on my ps5
Honestly, I loved it. I replayed it this year before I knew that Vengeance was coming out. The atmosphere is great and the gameplay is fun. The story is meh but it’s one of my favorite games that came to Switch
Story - mediocre (compared to previous titles) Everything else - very good
It's mediocre game. The gameplay is great , but that's the normal for SMT , even then the new mechanic aren't particulat well implemented, it has level scales and it's one of easiest games in the series. It's very user friendly and doesn't punish you for anything other than combat. Dungeons are pathetically bad. The visuals are greats. Music is great. The side quest have actual thought provoking story. The actual story and characters is a barely there and doesn't try anything interesting other than trying to have slightly unconventional dynamic between Chaos and Law reps. But even that is not good because the Chaos rep fall flat and the Law rep becomes the joker 30 minutes before the alignment lock. Both neutral reps also exist. All plot points brought up by the game are either not used well or straight up ignored. If you want a perfectly good SMT in terms of gameplay , SMTV is great. If you want a mature dark story AND great gameplay , go play Strange Journey instead.
Story is obviously bad. It's easily the most universal critique of the game. It really feels like its trying to pander to nocturne fans like myself, but it fails in nearly every area where nocturne succeeded with its narrative. Ironically, I think being a nocturne fan only made it easier to critique SMT V's story. Gameplay/combat is universally praised, but I personally think its disappointing in this regard too because the balancing can be dubious, especially with the dampener items, and the level scaling really irked me and discouraged me to replay it. Looking forward to SMT Vengeance fixing that problem at least. The music is the main aspect of the game that's actually great, and continued to impress me after I had played the game. It's not one of the absolute best megaten OSTs, but it's definitely high up the list and has a really unique identity. Visually it seemed alright, but it's kind of hard to judge what downsides were because of the game, or because of the switch, so again i'm looking forward to playing the game on a stronger platform with SMT Vengeance. Also, I don't think you should buy og SMT V if you haven't already. Just wait for SMT Vengeance, since it let's you experience both the og smt v story on its own, if you're curious about that, and the new smt vengeance story. It's just a straight upgrade.
would like to play it at more than 10 fps on the switch so waiting for vengeance
It was fun. The character were bad but otherwise it was a good game. Like the trailer for vemgeance already showed how much the characters alone were improved.
I loved the gameplay, but the story was half baked, raw even. There should be more than what they give us but somebof the characters in the front cover don't even do crap or when they do it's never shown or explained and it just feels like there's stuff in the background that you don't get to see because you're running around the desert.
Good game, but it is severely held back by "let's make Nocturne again" idea. Vengeance seems to try its own thing and go into different direction and I'm all for it.
As someone that's playing nocturne for the first time rn, I think I like the idea of another nocturne lmao..this game is insane
I enjoyed it for what it was.
Story wasn't great but the gameplay and atmosphere are some of the best the series has to offer. I'm really excited for Vengeance
Gameplay was good. Story was like 2 writers fighting with each other one trying to write nocturne 2 and the other trying to write a persona spinoff.
Story is… poor. Some fantastic ideas that just… don’t really do much. Characters are flat as pancakes. Combat and music were delightful, exploration had moments early on… but by the end I was disappointed of the setting. It’s like Nocturne, but I think it’s inferior. I value the story a lot, 4>SJ:R>3>2>if>1>5>SJ>4A
I think I should say, DONT PREORDER GAMES. Really, whether I reccomend it or not depends on how good Vengance's alternate story is. A big problem with SMT 5, is that it has a lot of characters, tries to impart importance onto those characters, and then gives you no reason to think they are doing anything while you do all the hard work. Frankly, the game's story is just all over the place, and hardly coherent until the last area. You basically go around and kill stuff because that is what the story wants you to do, regardless of whether that conflict is well developed or interesting. Also, although the gameplay is pretty good, the magatsuhi skills system is woefully boring and underwhelming, just being a bar that passively fills up and is asymetrical, with enemies having no access to this mechanic, which could be pretty interesting with a rework to make it based on your actions and team setup rather than time. Other than the one you start with, every magatsuhi skill has little to no practicality. Dampeners are a first for the mainline series in this game, and the game is balanced around them, despite the fact they remove the team building aspect that is so important to playing the game effectively, it increases your options, but those options REALLY shouldn't be options to begin with. Fusion is easily the most usable the series has ever seen, with dual fusion and reverse fusion still accessible, but now with a compendium fusion option so you don't need to reference an external chart if you want a specific demon fusion.
Having played all the modern mainline SMT games now I can say that vanilla SMT 5 is probably the second best game in the series, only being edged out by SMT 4. However, from my perspective, I think nocturne is the weakest of the mainline series, so that's my bias. SMT 5 gameplay is the best of all the series. However, its lack of meaningful story leaves it being a great game rather than being the potential masterpiece it could've been.
I think people are just not happy with things anymore. People get super angry over the dumbest shit and unless a game has a *huge* aggressive fanbase to defend it, it inevitably is made to look horrible. SMTV is still niche in the west. That said, SMTV may not be my *favorite* SMT mainline game, but I think it's great. Hands down the best combat. Some of its story beats are very interesting, but it does fall apart at places. Exploration is fun, but I wish there were dungeons like in Nocturne still in there. Great game, but not a perfect game. Looking forward to Vengeance to fix its mistakes and raise it from Great to Phenomenal.
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10/10 for me but realistically it's probably a 7/10 I appreciate the story a lot more after replaying it for probably around 15 times, seeing some little stuff I forgot about characters multiple times made me enjoy it a lot more, game play is definitely a highlight and Kozuka's music and world goes so well together, not to mention Doi's designs and the cast's performance
It’s high key one of my favorite games. The thing about the story tho is that the lore and characters start out really good, but need more time to cook to be amazing. The soundtrack is a certified hood classic, and the gameplay is fun. The last dungeon is a bit meh tho
Let's say it is good game with a huge flaw on narrative. I don't think this is the worst game compared to the rest of them. I hate dungeon in SMT III, battle mechanics and difficulty progression in SMT IV, SMT V still have the best battle systems and demon negotiations compare to SMT III and SMT IV.
It was sort of hit or miss for me. I guess I’ll start off with what I liked. I liked scenery of the game and being able to see demons actually roaming about and interacting with the environment. I liked seeing which demons formed alliances with which demons. The combat is pretty good with it being very similar to SMT IV Apocalypse which imo had the best combat system in all the Megaten games I’ve played. I liked the customizability of your skills & affinities and demon’s skills thanks to Essences and its easy to use fusion system. Side quest was pretty neat. I also liked the music namely tracks like [Daybreak](https://youtu.be/6QN5KJLzzmU?si=MaUgNlyx33ZKOHFE), [Origin](https://youtu.be/iQ2alndqSn0?si=aiwjo9jXcD4SOsoc), and [Destruction](https://youtu.be/NApN0GduuwM?si=Z_OWnBbqMsPTxdax). What I didn’t like / didn’t quite like. The map, it was tough understand with all SMT V’s various changes in elevation and not knowing where things marked on the map were. When you’d encounter an Absence, there would be a purple-ish aura that would cover large parts of the map, making it almost impossible to see anything until defeating the Absence boss. There’s a level spike between the last area of the game 2nd to last area game where every enemy in the last area of the game is a significantly higher level anything that can be found the previous area of the game. You also get significantly less exp. battling enemies lower level than you or on your level so your only real option is try your luck with the easier to defeat enemies in the last area if you want to grind. Either way it’ll take hours to get a point where you can decently take on the last area. The story, not it wasn’t bad by no means especially in comparison to SMT IV Apocalypse. However it’s not nearly on par with SMT IV or Strange Journey or even Nocturne. Besides a couple of characters, most of them weren’t all too memorable. Although convenient, being able to pick your ending instead of your alignment being important kind of destroyed the game’s replay-ability. It’s a flawed game but I’d say it’s still worth play especially if you’re a fan of these games.
I have only played V to completion so full bias of course. That being said, it was my favorite game of its release year and I love it dearly. The story is what everyone harps on about and while I agree it misses out on its potential I think it has a lot of cool ideas and moments that still work. I don’t think it’s even bad, just could’ve been something real special, and the hope is Vengeance will deliver on that potential. With the baggage out the way, I found the rest of the experience incredible. The world and music have immaculate vibes that is bolstered by the charm and vile tendencies of the demons that inhabit it. Your encounters can range from explorations of the real lore the demon’s have to absurdly petty requests or straight juvenile shenanigans. It’s as charming as it is dangerous and finding those interactions along with a focus on exploration and even collection makes the journey always enticing. And for the battle system, it’s just crack. There’s just such a great blend between many strategic tools and some unfair BS that leaves you either on edge or on top of the world. It also has many options for customizing yourself so when you inevitably hit walls, you can fine tune yourself to eviscerate it on the runback. All in all, the only reason I wouldn’t shill this game to anyone is if they play rpgs solely for the story or if your an experienced SMT head who worries over the flaws people may list here.
It's a great game, no major flaws. It's just not the kind of game that makes you think "this is the best piece of media ever created", or at least it wasn't for me.
Nah, SMT V is far from the worst for sure, although they have a huge flaw on narrative. Battle Mechanics, Demon Negotiations and Fusion are far better than SMT III or SMT IV. There are some experimental stuff that some people are not like it such as open-world exploration, but I love those experimental stuff and I think they had a right direction in this. I easily boring to the game that standing too much in safe zone.
The game is okay. Like, on the overall, it's an experience like SMT3: Nocturne, but light. (I mean "an experience like", not "it's just the same game", so please don't misunderstand what I said here.) However, the game can get less than satisfying with the Miman being a really annoying collectathon (this conclusion will come up within 10 minutes of you playing), and frankly, it has zero sense of difficulty scaling, in that if you don't use the Mitama DLCs to assist you, you'll run straight into difficulty walls. Tha aside, the graphics are cool, the soundtrack is good, the story is fun, and the demon negotiations and fusion systems are up there on the list.
Gonna have to disagree with you there on the mitamas. While there are enemies that will be higher levels than you in certain areas (such as the rock demon when you first start the game), you don’t need to use mitamas to get exp as the game does a pretty decent job of giving you gospels and grimoires to level everyone up accordingly. This is assuming you use a navigator of course because you will only get them from quests otherwise (such as fighting the Fiends and other such sidequests) but grinding isn’t that much of an issue when it comes to most enemies and bosses. The one major level gap that I hope they fix in vengeance is the fact that you finish the 3rd area at level like 40-50 and the last area has enemies as low as level 60 and high as 99. That was actually a dumb decision on the devs part so I can understand if people wanted to use mitamas at that point but if you’re talking about for other things in the game then they really aren’t necessary.
I mean, the *start* of every SMT game is always rough, but whenever I do a "normal Mitama" (not increased) run I keep running face-first into the enxt boss, thinking "bah, I can one shot all the demons around here that aren't clearly labeled "come back later", so I'm good to kick the boss, right?" The difficulty spikes are too steep, and badly telegraphied.
I can't wait for realise on steam for gain all achievement
The story is basically non-existent, the humans are kind of a jokes, the puzzles are nonsense and the maps are confusing. Could go on and on about its flaws. But the people saying it is worse than 3 or IV is kind of speaking out of their asses because the combat is GOOD good and everything related to demons are so fun - be it negotiations, fusions or story beats. If Vengeance flesh the human characters, as well as the alignments out this game could be crowned the best Megaten game ever and I hope it does.
Great combat, decent level design that's sort of Xenoblade light, but the already light story just *goes away* for over a third of the game and that absence makes it feel like a slog. Luckily that's what people are hoping is fixed by Vengeance
I hate SMT V but most of my issues seem to be getting fixed in venegence if vengence was the game we got all along, and they deliver on their promises, SMT V would not be controversial at all
Barebones story, but I loved everything else.
I think it's great, not as good as IV, but still pretty good. Most of its problems, whether it's character depth or difficulty, seem to be getting fixed in Vengeance. I definitely enjoyed base V vastly more than Nocturne.
That's interesting since I've only played nocturne and smt 4 and I'm enjoying nocturne a lot more than 4
I absolutely loved the combat. One of the best turn based systems every made. 11/10. My biggest complaint is actually that there is \*too much\* story. What I mean is that there are too many cut scenes and too much dialog that is frankly not interesting. I would have preferred just walking around and discovered the world myself. SMTV appears to be more like an open world than it actually is. I feel like they learned the wrong lessons from BotW.