When SMTV was released in 2021, I thoroughly enjoyed it, the gameplay was neat and exploring was a good time, but I would say that some of it's shortcomings come from it's archaic approach on certain RPG elements that can take hours away from the game if you do the wrong thing. I never completely finished the original game before I had to sell it to get some extra money for an emergency. I've been meaning to repurchase the game all these years until there was an announcement of Vengeance. This was the perfect opportunity to start from scratch and experience all the new changes that this updated version will have, and I have to say, I was NOT disappointed.

To say that this is one of my favorite experiences playing an RPG would not be overstating it. I will say that, mechanically, this is my favorite RPG. How the turn based fights work, the fusion system, the magatsuhi skills, having synergy in your team, the complete customization of your party and more thing they added from SMTV Vengeance makes this one of the more exhilarating games to play. Fusing Demons in general was one of my favorite things to do here. I love collecting Demons and seeing what skills I can bring with them as I try to get the Ideal demon with the skills that I want, they make it super easy to do. You can also upgrade certain game mechanics by unlocking miracles and making either Fusing, Battling or Traversing alot easier for you. Once you have ideal Demons, you can use Essences that you get from demons to either give yourself different weaknesses or resistances or give yourself or other demons new skills that they can't normally achieve. It's yet another useful option if fusing makes things complicated to get the skills you wanted.
Traversing here is alot better than it was in SMTV, the biggest thing for me is being able to insta-travel to the last Leyline that you use so that you can travel faster in the world. Very nifty if you are doing side quests or just trying to find Glory to use for your Miracles. And saving anywhere is the most important. The original game you only could save at the Leyline and if you died at some random fight, you have a potential of losings a couple hours of playtime, it can be frustrating as this game can kick you in the ass in times you don't expect it. Saving anywhere really makes everything feel so much faster to do and they make it even easier by having that function on the Dpad for easy access. Also new here are the Magatsu Rails, which are these weird red areas that unlock a grind rail that lead to shortcuts in parts of the world. Yet another thing that makes backtracking alot easier most of the time.

The turn based gameplay is fantastic. Basically it's Persona 5 Royale's mechanics but fleshed out a little more. Hitting a weakness on the enemy gives you one more turn slot to use and hitting a resistance or getting dodge can make you lose that turn point, simple enough. As long as you can figure out the weakness of you enemies the fight can go your way, but the same can be said with the enemy themselves, they follow the same rule. The thing that makes SMTV more fun is the Magatsuhi bar that can lead into powerful skills. Think limiter break from FF7. If you fill out the gauge in certain conditions, each party member can have one or more special skill that uses the Magatsuhi. They can either be powerful attacks or a full heal ability or something else. The cooler thing about these though is that if you have certain demons in your party or even in your bench they can give access to even more powerful skills to use. One example is getting all the [REDACTED] in your team can unlock a magatsuhi skill that does heavy almighty attacks while also heaking your entire team, and it was super helpful. It's also super simple but these games already have a simple yet expansive way of beating the crap out of the enemy demons.

The world, too, is pretty in a...depressing end-of-the-world kind of way. It Tokyo but destroyed and full of weird structures and covered with all the bad guys you can see. It's fun to walk around and see the mayhem that was from a war created by the demons and the angels. There's a decent amount of platforming in the areas and alot of different treasures to be found, and possible some secrets too! Each area feels different from each other too either but different color motifs or just how the general layout is as well. It's all very eerie and desolate but I really dig the vibe it all gives out. The music too needs to be noted, it's all a bit creepy and adds alot of ambience to the whole game, and quite a bit of bangers here as well. Certain boss fight music are a great listen just on it's own (and Atlus was nice enough to put the whole soundtrack on youtube, I recommend listening to it.)

Now, for the story, it's pretty good. In the beginning you get the choice of either playing the original story or playing the brand new story for vengeance. My first playthrough I went for the new story, and you can tell that they smoothed out some of the story and added some more depth to the existing characters and giving time to either care or seethe for the new ones, like Yoko. Yoko is the focus on the new story and essentially gives you options that would make you think of what exactly is the right choice here, and pretty much everything here is in a grey area, for me it's a solid way of making you think exactly who is in the right or wrong here. After playing through the story and getting the ending i got, it definitely went into a direction i wasn't completely expecting and I was all in for it. Getting a clear on your save file you also unlock a new icon that represents what ending you can get, and finding out that there are 6 different endings you can get, makes me want to go into New Game + and see what exactly changes if I were to change my dialogue choices here...or maybe there are side quests i didn't do that may or may not change certain outcomes. The characters here are pretty interesting in their own right. Yoko being new, she's ean exorcists in her own school in Tokyo that has a pretty straight outlook in life that you may or may not agree with, but she has a few interesting layers to her. Tao is, almost like a priest, lol. She has a vision of everyone being able to live happily ever after and goes for the side of justice. I thought she may be a little annoying but no, she's okay and has her reason and can see different points of views made by Yoko herself. Dazai, Yuzuru and Miyazu from the original are all here as well, with some having some interesting wrinkles to their personalities as you go along with the game. They all have their own agenda and it plays along well with the overall plot. The group of baddies shown in the trailers, the Qadištu, are also pretty cool both in character and in design. They give off a curiosity to you, the Nabahino, and they play a good foil to you as you progress through the story. The original story, however from memory, wasn't as good. I remember it gave you the essential plot points needed to get to your destination, but not much fluff was in that to give you more context, it can still be a good time but you're better off playing the original story first, imo.

One random thing I really liked was the demons themselves...or rather the IRL mythologies these demons and angels have and how they play put in this game. I never noticed this in other Megaten games before, but here they really do feel like they do originate from their respective cultures. It was fun and interesting to learn about these in their bios and see how they interact in the story. A random event happened too while playing, with the Greek demons that I had. I was going against a Greek Mythology demon and one of mine in my party decided to hop in and talk to them. They actually caught up about their history and talked about the nabahino as well, and then the enemy just walked away from the fight. It was super random but it really stuck to me as i found that pretty damn fascinating that something like this could happen.

Overall, this is one of my all time favorite RPGs i have played in years, which is shocking because I have been playing some crazy great games lately. The vibe it gives off is eerie and pretty awesome i gotta say. If I could word what I think of this game, it would be "It's as if Metallica decided to make an RPG and created Metalocalypse, it's one helluva guitar solo and you're taking the throne to become the King of Kings."

Lol, but yes, highest recommendation for me. What an awesome game, I want to play again!

This was my first SMT game, and my other Megaten experiences include P4G and P5R prior. I went with the Canon of Vengeance route.
I knew what I was getting into in terms of combat, and (as usual) I loved it. The gameplay loop with recruiting and fusing demons remain as fun and addicting as ever, and the music was great.
Unfortunately for me, the story wasn't very interesting and I didn't really relate to any of the characters. I know this isn't a Persona game, so it's normal here to feel alienated as the main character.
The first few hours in the wasteland were incredible, I loved the barred and desolate setting; but there came a point where it became rather monotonous.
The bosses were absolutely incredible, some of the coolest I have fought in a JRPG thus far.
If you're into Megaten games, SMTV Vengeance gets my recommendation.

Let me start off this with saying that I didn't buy this game I borrowed it from my local library and that it should have been either a free update or heavily discounted for people who bought the original I know they wouldn't ever do that but with lackluster and the original game was and now sega delisting the original on the Eshop its clear even sega wants you to forget about it as here comes 3 years after that pitiful release a version that fixes major issues that the original had so basically anyone who got the original release was a fkin beta tester Im still upset over that fact 3 years later hence why I was the utmost pessimistic with this rerelease which also didn't help since the last sega product I bought was Yakuza 8 which didn't leave the greatest taste in my mouth

So needless to say I wasn't in high spirits with this game the only reason I decided to give the game a chance was because I saw a friend play it and the changes looked like they solved a lot of my complaints and Now after playing I can confidently say they solved a good amount of my problems but not all

First off the game running in 60 fps unlike the original which ran the game between 20 to 28 fps makes for a much faster-paced game that doesn't make you feel sick to play like the original (fps doesn't always matter in an RPG but the original was terrible) and the hugest change is the removal of level scaling between you and the enemies some fucking numbnuts over on the development team made it to where if you nowhere near the same level as boss fights and certain enemy encounters you were gonna get punished hard making some bosses in the original literally impossible unless you grinded to their level which already made a game with bad structure even worse thankfully its been removed completely now and what matters is your team comp and skill as it fuckin should have been from the start like the games that came before

Honestly tho that's where my praises do end for this game as much as I enjoyed myself more this time around at the end of the day it's smt v a game I find design-wise flawed with a kind of identity crisis that wants to combine 3 and 4 but doesn't 100% know what made those games so special and loved to begin with 3 is a game where you explore a broken world you're constantly going from place to place so there's always variety in locale 4 had great world-building as you mostly spent your time in the destroyed tokyo seeing how people function and live this apocalyptic hellspace this game doesnt really do anything with its world its all destroyed city and desert and you're told how the world ended up in the state that it's in in the first 15 minutes leaving no room for any type of mystery and world building

I'd have been more ok with this if this game had the variety in the dungeons like 3 did but in both versions, they only have 2.... and they're not that fun to go through in all honestly puzzles that are stupid simple a 2-year-old can figure them out so get used to seeing sand and debris a lot cause that's the majority of the game

For Vengence, they completely changed the third area of Da'at that you visit which intailly sounded interesting until i played it cause at this point the game's formula of desert and looting was already starting to get stale like it did in the of for me but now here comes this huge ass section that took multiple days to finish they really did not need to make this map as big as it ended up being i wish they used some of the time to expand the other 3 areas of Da'at more instead having a map that's big for the sake of being big doesnt help the pacing is also annoying here since you need to leave 3 times for plot stuff in Tokyo

Storywise I don't have much to say in all honesty it's way better than the original but that's not a high bar to jump over since the original was just a random series of events that barely connected in Vengence thankfully everything in Vengence is connected and was halfway entertaining to make me pay attention to the overall plot although i cant lie i did tend to skip dialogue mainly those interactions between Tao and Yoko discussing their world views mainly for the reason being Tao is fucking annoying IMO Yoko is a baddie tho can't lie still I appreciate Vengence developing the characters more than the original did but the cast was never my cup of tea so yeah gimme smt 4's crew anyday

Final thoughts while i did enjoy this game my feelings on it remain kind of mixed due my previous venture with the OG release does it compare to the ps2 games or 4? nah not even close IMO however it makes good steps in the right direction and I hope the team are able to make something truly unique and special (hopefully not brought down by a underpowered system this time and not announced way too early) for SMT 6