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LTTP: Shin Megami Tensei V

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
This is my first SMT game. I actually own a bunch of the others, but for my collection and to get to one day eventually. This game got super high praise. Some gamers whose opinions I value gave it their game of the year 2021.

I'm a few hours in and so far I like it, but I'm not blown away by it or anything. I like the freedom of movement in the areas. I like looking around for collectibles. I like recruiting demons and messing with fusion and stuff like that. The battle system is.... okay. So far, nothing to write home about. The story is decent so far. Don't know a ton about it yet, but I've heard the story is one of the weaker aspects about this particular game.

I'm sure some more systems and other stuff will be introduced as I play. I could see this being a game though where once the newness of this game wears off for me since it's my first SMT game, that I could hit a major wall like 20 hours in and start to get bored. But I do enjoy it so far, I plan to continue. I haven't experienced any GOTY material so far though, but I can't fully judge until I play a lot more.

Based on my thoughts of the game so far, do you think it's something I'm going to end up really liking as I play? Or is this something that SMT fans thought was amazing right out of the gate and if I don't love it already, I probably won't end up loving this game like others do?
 

Kimahri

Banned
The story is one of the many strong points of this gem.

Why? It stays in the background and doesn't impose on you, unlike most jrpgs these days who think they're a shitty YA novel and shoves so much inane dialogue about uninteresting bullshit in your face that you wanna pull your hair out.

I like a good story, but jrpgs rarely tell those these days. And if they do, it's through layers of neverending bla bla, yadda yadda, etc etc.

SMT is a god damn glorious vacation from all that shit.
 

e0n

Member
The structure of the game doesn't radically change. The characters aren't going to become more endearing. If you like theorizing team-building options and tense boss battles, the game basically caters to that mindset and provides it in spades.
 

Manji Uzuki

Member
The game is great and as others said the story is told a lot different than in the usual jrpg. There are way less cutscenes and long conversations. The game relies a lot on its atmosphere and music which are great. The combat system is lot of fun. As you advance the game will be more tricky and force you to understand and use all its mechanics. Personally I think its one of the best Switch games
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
The game is great and as others said the story is told a lot different than in the usual jrpg. There are way less cutscenes and long conversations. The game relies a lot on its atmosphere and music which are great. The combat system is lot of fun. As you advance the game will be more tricky and force you to understand and use all its mechanics. Personally I think its one of the best Switch games
I do like that there’s not a ton of dialogue. It wears on me in RPGs. Some RPGs they just blather on and on and on and make conversations that could be 5 lines into 35 lines with mindless banter and characters trying to be cute or witty. It’s so annoying. Haven’t had that in SMT5 so far. Definitely a plus
 
SMT V is 100% gameplay. Don't expect many changes on the formula, since you'll spend 99% of the time either exploring, battling or demon fusing.

And I think that's the main draw of those games, the constant loop of doing battles, getting new demons and then fusing them to get even stronger demons. It's very satisfying since you keep changing your team constantly through the whole game (rather than the opposite which is what Pokemon does, for example), so you have to make sure your party stays up-to-date and at the same time making sure it's versatile enough so you always have all kinds of damage types plus some supporting demons.

So yeah... don't expect the game changing too much going forward. It's long and kinda samey, and it relies I'd say 100% on it's gameplay to keep you hooked. Worked for me and I wish it works for you too!
 

MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
It'll mean a lot less if you haven't played Nocturne but I'd really recommend the Demi Fiend DLC. Additional boss fights throughout the game providing a nice challenge, additional fusions, and some bonus glory.
 
Yeah the real fun in this game comes from the challenge/secret bosses. Besides the battle system, it is a pretty far departure from the rest of the mainline SMT games and not for the better in my opinion.
 
My first SMT game if we're not including Persona. I remember being recommended IV back when I had a DS but never bought it. I would've probably avoided SMTV if it wasn't for Persona. I know they are different games but having played them helped prepare for SMTV.

I felt SMTV was punishing at first but once it clicked I was loving it. I want to go back for another playthrough at some point. If I have the time I might pick up SMTIII.
 
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Hot5pur

Member
I liked the game at the beginning, but then it became tedious and boring.
It's basically Pokémon for adults, which is nice, and the demon collecting and fighting is fairly interesting.
The problem comes in the form of a massive grind towards the end with major difficulty spikes, you need to be within 5-6 levels of the bosses to have a chance. I had enough patience for the last big open area of the game, but then gave up once I realized the grind for the final castle.
The gameplay outside of monster fighting is fairly boring and the open areas are bland. The music is also not particularly good. The story feels like it's targeted towards a younger audience, teenagers maybe.
So overall something that started out fairly positive ended up being fairly grindy and frustrating, at least for me. Just keep that in mind. If you get too frustrated there is an easy mode you can switch to in order to grind faster in order to level up to be able to appropriately face certain bosses. I did that as well, but even for the very last section it was barely enough lol (at that point I wasn't grinding, just trying to get through the story to see the end).
 
I liked the game at the beginning, but then it became tedious and boring.
It's basically Pokémon for adults, which is nice, and the demon collecting and fighting is fairly interesting.
The problem comes in the form of a massive grind towards the end with major difficulty spikes, you need to be within 5-6 levels of the bosses to have a chance. I had enough patience for the last big open area of the game, but then gave up once I realized the grind for the final castle.
The gameplay outside of monster fighting is fairly boring and the open areas are bland. The music is also not particularly good. The story feels like it's targeted towards a younger audience, teenagers maybe.
So overall something that started out fairly positive ended up being fairly grindy and frustrating, at least for me. Just keep that in mind. If you get too frustrated there is an easy mode you can switch to in order to grind faster in order to level up to be able to appropriately face certain bosses. I did that as well, but even for the very last section it was barely enough lol (at that point I wasn't grinding, just trying to get through the story to see the end).
What do you mean with "grind"? Doing random battles to get level ups? Because I beat the game on hard without doing any of that.

SMT is not about levelling up, it's about fusing weaker demons to get stronger ones. Near endgame you get tons of buffs when fusing demons, and it's a much better way of increasing your team's strength than doing random battles for xp.

The battle system allows for a lot of strategy too, so even if you are underpowered you can still be succesfull if you play it right.

Also the music not particularly good? The fuck bro.



 

Graciaus

Member
The story is one of the many strong points of this gem.

Why? It stays in the background and doesn't impose on you, unlike most jrpgs these days who think they're a shitty YA novel and shoves so much inane dialogue about uninteresting bullshit in your face that you wanna pull your hair out.

I like a good story, but jrpgs rarely tell those these days. And if they do, it's through layers of neverending bla bla, yadda yadda, etc etc.

SMT is a god damn glorious vacation from all that shit.
Dungeon crawlers are usually light on story.
 
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drganon

Member
I've only played nocturne and V, but they're both fun. V is less dungeon oriented and more about these big outdoor open areas compared to nocturne.
 
I finished it. Also my first SMT game, even though I love Persona.

Honestly, I didn't really like it. The whole thing was ugly, boring and felt B-tier. The combat was fine, but even that got old way before it was over.
 
I've only played nocturne and V, but they're both fun. V is less dungeon oriented and more about these big outdoor open areas compared to nocturne.
Don't sleep on IV, it's also great and imo, the one with the better realized world and setting. Only downside is that's stuck on the 3DS.

Really wish for a remake of IV with 3D battles, that'd be awesome.
 
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This was my first SMT game and I liked it for about the first 20 hours or so. It's just too grindy for my tastes. I would fight pretty much all enemies up to the bosses and then still be underleveled. So it turned into me grinding for 4-5 hours every time I got to a boss and that became uninteresting to me. I think I noped out about 35-40 hours into it.
 

Maitreya

Neophyte
Even if the story didnt take front and center stage it was still one of the weaker ones in the series. The narrative feels lazy. Also some of the coolest demon fusions are locked behind paid DLC, demons that were included in most other titles in the franchise. Solid gameplay, atmosphere/music as usual though.
 

sigmaZ

Member
I liked the atmosphere and the open world aspects, but I still don't like press turn for the same reason I don't like FF10's battle system. I like games that don't care what moves you use in battle and random chaos ensues for the most part. The game is grindy, but you can grind out those special demons for lots of xp, but grind is grind. I was into Shin Megami back in the early 90's when it meshed with the anime culture of the time. It's still a nice relic of the past, but the games don't exactly motivate me to complete them.
 

Rambone

Member
I really enjoyed SMT-V. If it ever releases on PC I definitely would go back for a second playthrough. As far as SMT goes, Nocturnes version of Tokyo wasn't really my favorite compared to IV. I thought V did a great job of adapting Nocturnes version of Tokyo and making it better. I absolutely loved the music and combat in V. Music in SMT mainline games are all pretty good I think anyway.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
This game is really started to fucking piss me off. Either I don't quite get the machinations of it yet, or they implemented very illogical systems.

For one: why do they give you the option to use revival beads on your demons if it won't let you revive them? I was in a boss battle, used one, it gave me who to use it on, I chose the demon, and my MC just used it on himself. Well, since when demons die they get bumped out of your active party, and apparently you can't revive them back to your active party in battle, then why the fuck can you even use them in battle? Unless there's something I'm missing.

Also: when doing the demon essences, is there any logical reason why it makes you reapply all the skills you currently already have rather than the ones you want? I thought the purpose of this process was to find demons that have skills you want and apply them to other demons or your MC. Well, then just give me all the skills the demons have. It for some reason lists all those, plus the ones I already have. I was messing with it, and didn't realize if I just added the skills I want and approved it, I'd lose all my skills. And now my MC lost the ability to heal as a skill, because I learned it from another demon and I no longer have the essence for that demon.

It just seems like the game makes things overly convoluted just for the hell of it.
 

Danjin44

The nicest person on this forum
For one: why do they give you the option to use revival beads on your demons if it won't let you revive them? I was in a boss battle, used one, it gave me who to use it on, I chose the demon, and my MC just used it on himself. Well, since when demons die they get bumped out of your active party, and apparently you can't revive them back to your active party in battle, then why the fuck can you even use them in battle? Unless there's something I'm missing.
When Demon in your party die they got back to your stock, so you first you need to revive them and then re-summon them, this is why its good idea to have backup powerful demon on your stock so you can just summon different demon instead of trying to revive the dead ones, unless that demon is important.
Also: when doing the demon essences, is there any logical reason why it makes you reapply all the skills you currently already have rather than the ones you want? I thought the purpose of this process was to find demons that have skills you want and apply them to other demons or your MC. Well, then just give me all the skills the demons have. It for some reason lists all those, plus the ones I already have. I was messing with it, and didn't realize if I just added the skills I want and approved it, I'd lose all my skills. And now my MC lost the ability to heal as a skill, because I learned it from another demon and I no longer have the essence for that demon.
MC has limited space of what skill you can have, its for you organize what skill you want to keep and what skill you want replace.

Also there is two ways to use demon essences, one to get skill or get their affinities.
SMTV_Essences1.jpg
 
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DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
My experience with this game is a roller coaster. After I made this thread I started to get into it a lot more. Messing with the demon fusions and creating demons, swapping out skills and stuff. And then when I got back to Tokyo is a chill experience walking around. But once I got to Shinagawa, I started to hit a wall. I realized, at least so far, that none of the demons are unique. I fused some cool demons and was enjoying using them and in the next area they're just regular enemies I fight. That started to take a bit of the steam away from it. I like exploring the areas, but they can be pretty confusing keeping track of all the collectibles. I wish there was a way to track the Mimans early on. In the first area I didn't find the NPC who put them on the map until the very end, which kinda defeats the purpose. It would be a lot better if they put the NPC in the beginning so you could find them organically as you play. It's definitely a good game, but it's starting to get repetitive.

And I think the biggest thing for me overall is I don't really feel like my character is progressing. He's only as strong as the skills he has, and this game doesn't really have that many skills at all. So far I've only come across like 15-20 different skills total so far. There doesn't feel like much uniqueness at all between demons other than aesthetics. If each of them or a bunch of them had completely unique skills only to that demon, and I could inherit those skills on my main character to me that would be awesome. But I've been using the same damn skills over and over since the beginning of the game pretty much. Just stronger and more potent now.

Thinking about taking a pause to play some platformers and get back to it later, I'll see after I play one more session tonight. I'm almost done Shinagawa, I don't know how close I am to the end. If I'm halfway I may decide to power through to the end. If I'm not even close, I'll likely take a pause and go with some other games for a few weeks and get back to this later.
 
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KXVXII9X

Member
My experience with this game is a roller coaster. After I made this thread I started to get into it a lot more. Messing with the demon fusions and creating demons, swapping out skills and stuff. And then when I got back to Tokyo is a chill experience walking around. But once I got to Shinagawa, I started to hit a wall. I realized, at least so far, that none of the demons are unique. I fused some cool demons and was enjoying using them and in the next area they're just regular enemies I fight. That started to take a bit of the steam away from it. I like exploring the areas, but they can be pretty confusing keeping track of all the collectibles. I wish there was a way to track the Mimans early on. In the first area I didn't find the NPC who put them on the map until the very end, which kinda defeats the purpose. It would be a lot better if they put the NPC in the beginning so you could find them organically as you play. It's definitely a good game, but it's starting to get repetitive.

And I think the biggest thing for me overall is I don't really feel like my character is progressing. He's only as strong as the skills he has, and this game doesn't really have that many skills at all. So far I've only come across like 15-20 different skills total so far. There doesn't feel like much uniqueness at all between demons other than aesthetics. If each of them or a bunch of them had completely unique skills only to that demon, and I could inherit those skills on my main character to me that would be awesome. But I've been using the same damn skills over and over since the beginning of the game pretty much. Just stronger and more potent now.

Thinking about taking a pause to play some platformers and get back to it later, I'll see after I play one more session tonight. I'm almost done Shinagawa, I don't know how close I am to the end. If I'm halfway I may decide to power through to the end. If I'm not even close, I'll likely take a pause and go with some other games for a few weeks and get back to this later.
I've reached a similar realization after playing for a while. It is unfortunate since this was one of my most anticipated games for the Switch when it was announced at the pre-launch Switch presentation.

The point where I had to stop playing was when I reached a certain "snek" boss. It wiped me out easily due to not understanding defending on powerful attacks. So, I train some more and learn about that tactic. I start readily chipping their health and no matter what, I am heavily struggling to keep my party alive. Somehow, I still manage to have my MC survive with full health who could finish the job and the thing takes me out in one hit while defending. Absolutely not. I don't have the time nor energy for that kind of difficulty and grinding some more felt like a massive chore at this stage.
 

DragoonKain

Neighbours from Hell
I've reached a similar realization after playing for a while. It is unfortunate since this was one of my most anticipated games for the Switch when it was announced at the pre-launch Switch presentation.

The point where I had to stop playing was when I reached a certain "snek" boss. It wiped me out easily due to not understanding defending on powerful attacks. So, I train some more and learn about that tactic. I start readily chipping their health and no matter what, I am heavily struggling to keep my party alive. Somehow, I still manage to have my MC survive with full health who could finish the job and the thing takes me out in one hit while defending. Absolutely not. I don't have the time nor energy for that kind of difficulty and grinding some more felt like a massive chore at this stage.
Yes, I've noticed the "hard bosses" aren't really "hard" as in, they have unique attacks or skills or whatever. They just have massively inflated health bars. That's about it. But they use the same damn attacks as my demons do. I'm really disappointed in the lack of variety of skills in this game. Every boss and demon feels so generic. To me the best part of the game is not the battles. I've come to hate fighting battles. They feel like a major chore. It's customization and exploring.

There's really no depth to the battle system at all. You basically just find weaknesses, most enemies are weak to one or two things, so every battle is basically figuring out which of the handful of elements they're weak to and spamming them over and over until they die. And bosses are slightly more elaborate with casting debuffs and protections so you can survive their massive HP until all your MP runs out.
 

KXVXII9X

Member
Yes, I've noticed the "hard bosses" aren't really "hard" as in, they have unique attacks or skills or whatever. They just have massively inflated health bars. That's about it. But they use the same damn attacks as my demons do. I'm really disappointed in the lack of variety of skills in this game. Every boss and demon feels so generic. To me the best part of the game is not the battles. I've come to hate fighting battles. They feel like a major chore. It's customization and exploring.

There's really no depth to the battle system at all. You basically just find weaknesses, most enemies are weak to one or two things, so every battle is basically figuring out which of the handful of elements they're weak to and spamming them over and over until they die. And bosses are slightly more elaborate with casting debuffs and protections so you can survive their massive HP until all your MP runs out.
Agreed. I don't remember SMIV being this bad. It is very "going through the motions".

I am currently playing an indie game on mobile called Siralim and it seems to have much more depth to it's combat since it is infinitely more customizable. It doesn't really have much of a story, but the turn based combat is insane.
 

Y0ssarian

Banned
Shit Megami Tensei V was the only one I gave up on. Too boring, easy. I liked the open world for the first act, it was very impressive. After that, nah. I dropped it just after you go back to the school and demons are attacking it. It was after the Diet building or something
 
Shit Megami Tensei V was the only one I gave up on. Too boring, easy. I liked the open world for the first act, it was very impressive. After that, nah. I dropped it just after you go back to the school and demons are attacking it. It was after the Diet building or something
Right after that part you go to a new level, but it's just another apocalyptic desert world but with a slightly different colour tint. Apparently everything in the game is just that one type of area lol I pretty much gave up on it at that point. I really hate the game being set in this bland open level with enemy mobs milling about like an MMO, there's no real feeling of progress unless you sit there for ten hours slowly grinding your way through.

Actually, the other thing that peeved me now I think about it is how the game feels way too 'balanced'. It was always cool in SMT games how you'd discover some OP demon, it made the fusion feel meaningful since it was how you'd stumble on stuff like that... meanwhile in SMT5 every demon seems to have very calculated elemental strengths & weaknesses and abilities to the point where it loses all sense of discovery. Maybe that improves later on but I didn't care to find out.

Anyway OP, play SMT 3 Nocturne/Lucifer's Call and SMT 4 Apocalypse, those are the best ones.
 
SMTV has excellent gameplay, but everything surrounding it is so painfully mediocre. I don’t regret playing it, but I find it to be the absolute weakest entry in the franchise. Feels heavily rushed.
 

nocsi

Member
SMTV has excellent gameplay, but everything surrounding it is so painfully mediocre. I don’t regret playing it, but I find it to be the absolute weakest entry in the franchise. Feels heavily rushed.
That's cause an apocalypse/definitive version is coming as well as PC port
 
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