1. Story
Once again, I will not go into spoilers here but the story of SMT V is easily the most disappointing aspect of the game. But first, let us get into the main premise. You are a student in modern day Tokyo and go about your daily life at school. One day you are on your way home as there is a safety notice for going outside, and everyone has to go in pairs to avoid possible demon murders, since there have been some. As you try to go home with your partner, your partner wants to investigate a bridge that ends up transporting you and your other school mates to the Netherworld, Da'at. You wander this world with little direction and do not know what is going on in the slightest, but still manage to make your way through before being stopped by DEMONS! WHAT A SURPRISE! You are about to be fucked in the ass by these demons before a BADASS SUPER COOL DEMON CALLED AOGAMI decides to help you out. You two fuse together, do a cute little dance, and become the Nahobino. This is your main form for the entire game as you explore Da'at and explore the many areas it has to offer. This is as far I will go as any thing more here will be spoilers. Now I want to say, at the very beginning I was very invested in this story setup. I love the idea of Nahobino, a fusion between demons and humans, and the ideas the story gave us. I think this story was very much in conflict with itself, between the ideas presented, but the execution of them being very inconsistent and spotty. For example, a lot of the side characters get very little time on screen. They are introduced very fast, not given much time throughout the game to develop and some are just straight up shafted. They have interesting ideas and character arcs I can kind of get from them, but the problem is the game does not give them ample time to properly run with these ideas.
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
And this is a pain because I do really enjoy some of these characters, design wise, personality wise and concept wise but the plot does not do these characters who could be much greater justice. Some events in this story just make little sense, and a lot of times during events playing on screen I felt no urgency, I felt no surprise things just kinda happened and I went "Alright." Bringing in some personal feelings here, I do not really think Nocturnes and Vs story really work for me personally. The story of this game, like Nocturnes is very hands off and focuses more on BIG THEMES rather than the characters embodying those themes. Its more about the ideas and the game tries to leave things up to your interpretation and discretion when it comes to the facts of the story, and the endings you can get throughout the game but I feel it just does not engage me enough to actively want to think about these things. Speaking of endings, there are 4 in this game. The ending that feels the most complete, and the most true of all the endings is the True Neutral ending. This ending has the most story, and explanation for things that happen and has a more definitive ending but the problem is in order to get this ending you have to do a lot of things, certain quests, defeat the super boss. The game also does not telegraph this to you at all, so the only way I knew was because Boss told me, or I would have seen it on the guide. But I needed a guide to get that, I would not have known this game had that otherwise. I feel like the fact the best ending in the game is locked behind a lot of different tasks you must do is kind of annoying and I feel it should have been the normal neutral ending instead, because the neutral ending is very lackluster in comparison. Either way, like I reiterated before this story has great ideas but the problem is they do not go far enough with developing the characters behind the ideas, so it feels literally half baked. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
2. Gameplay
On the opposite side here, the gameplay in this game does not disappoint. Like most SMT games up until now, the classic press turn battle systems returns here in its full glory. You attack a weakness, you get an extra turn for that character, and if you block an element, your enemy loses two turns, and if you reflect an attack your enemies lose all their turns. But this also applies to your enemies as well, so this game is very challenging and strategic. If that was not enough, this game makes a lot of changes to mainline SMT gameplay as well, some I do not like, some I do. The biggest change here gameplay wise is the open area design of the world traversal. You can run, jump, and attack enemies you can see in the overworld. Unlike SMT IV, this time you can like see the entire demon models on the screen because of the Switch's power and seeing these giant demons running around, a lot of demons in groups together just makes the world come alive. Adding to this, you can fuse, recruit demons just as before. The demon compendium you can summon from as usual, but this game adds the reverse compendium option to fusion which is a VERY, VERY, welcome addition to fusion in this series. Using this allows you to see every single demon possible for fusion in your entire compendium, so its easier than ever to see what you are missing demon wise and fill that shit in. Not only that, but like in SMT IV, you can transfer essences to Nahobino and other demons. These allow you to transfer skills to truly customize your demons move sets and build them to be the best they can possibly be. You can really lose hours just building the best builds here. Sadly, that just is not my style so this feature was not really my thing but it is really beneficial for those who love building demons. You can also change Nahobinos affinities here, so that is a good idea for covering weaknesses when it comes to boss fights. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
Element affinity is also back from IV apocalypse, and these boost damage and effects of all types of attacks, from physical to support skills. The last major part of the World of Shadows is Apotheosis. This is like the apps in SMT IV which grant you perks and buffs based on how much glory points you have, which you collect from collecting these little mimans across the map and big glowing crystals too. You can get these miracles by beating these abcesses on the map, which are these mini boss fights that you can fight on the map to clear it up, as they block your map coverage. All these additions help feed the games flow, which is get to a new area, find as many abcesses as you can, beat them, clear up the map, and find as many mimans as you can to get as many glory points to make you stronger. Another welcome change to the gameplay here is the leylines, which are your main hubs for everything you need as a player. You get a save point, a shop, recovery, world of shadows, and can transport to any other leyline you have encountered thus far. These leylines really streamline everything you need in one place, so it is very convenient for players. You also eventually get an item to make this even more convenient which lets you transport yourself back to the last leyline you came back to at any place in the map, which has saved me on many occasions and is just one more way to give as much freedom to the player as possible when exploring these areas. The game flows super well with exploring the world, which helps you get stronger and get buffs, and also rewards you with other items that help you. Its all a good feedback loop the game developers at atlus really really shined with, and I feel the most effort was placed here. Overall, there were a couple of areas that were a pain to explore, but for the most part I enjoyed exploration. With even more fine tuning, this gameplay style has a lot of potential in future games and it especially shined here. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
However, compared to the open areas in the game, the 2 dungeons feel rather lackluster in comparison. They were a nice change of pace from the games large areas, but the problem was they were not as tightly designed as previous dungeons in the series. This is one area where the game drops the ball. It is mostly just corridors, with save points, demons, with light small puzzles that are not used in any interesting way. The dungeon is usually over before it has a chance to truly show off those mechanics. It felt like Atlus spent the most time on the large areas, and the dungeons were kind of an afterthought. The aesthetics are very interesting and the dungeons themselves look amazing design wise but the problem is the actual content inside of them was average and I just wanted to get through them to move on with the story. Going back to gameplay for a bit, I talked about some good changes but lets talk about some problems I had. When it comes to battles in SMT, buffs and debuffs and magic are all very important things to have. The problem with SMT V is that it nerfs buffs tremendously from previous games and makes them less useful than before. The buffs now work like persona, where you get single targets beginning of the game, and eventually you get group buffs later on instead of one buff for everyone being able to be stacked 4 times. You can only stack them twice now. I much prefer the way previous games handled buffs and debuffs. In the early game I hardly even used them. Another change I do not like is the fact that in previous SMT games physical attacks used HP. In V they use MP instead. This adds a weird balancing act where demons with high strength need high MP to be able to use a lot of physical skills, and a lot of demons with high strength have low MP compared to demons with more magic points having higher MP. If they wanted to make this change, fine, but there should have been a better balancing of these stats to make MP as one source viable.
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
For more demons. Also, concerning MP, this game has very very high skill costs, even with affinity maxed, even with physical skills and buffs, and throughout the entire game I found myself running out of MP pretty consistently. Even passive skills that restored a little mp for getting a weakness still did not help much in the long run. Even at the super boss of the game, at near max level and with some of the strongest demons of the game, i still ran out of MP and had to use items to restore it mid battle. I really do not like the massive increase in skill cost here because it really makes fights drag on longer. I feel the game wants you to use lots of demons to switch out, but I prefer just sticking with one party and i was able to do this in nocturne but here its much more difficult and not really viable. For reference, in Nocturne using Agi at the beginning of the game only costs you 3 mp. At the beginning of SMT V, it costs 10 mp. It is just too much for me and it really hampered my enjoyment of gameplay at points. Another interesting mechanic SMT V adds is the Magatsuhi gauge, which charges up during a fight in many different ways to allow for all sorts of special skills to be used, from all sorts of demons. Most have their own special one including Nahobino, but the problem here is a lot of them just do not feel as useful as the very first skill you get, which is onimagotoki critical. This allows every single attack you do to be a critical, as long as it isnt blocked. Any physical or magic attack will crit, so I used this for free extra turns. A lot of the other skills as cool as they could be just did not have as good of use as this one did, so I feel they made the first skill you got too good. Maybe in another game with this system, they can make the other options more interesting. Overall, SMT Vs gameplay is very very solid, and I liked a lot about it. With a sequel they can iron out the kinks and make it even better!
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(FIN.)
One more thing, this game has quests similar to IV and IV apocalypse, the main thing here which I like is that unlike IV you get requests straight from demons, so they feel more personal and grounded this time around. Lots of quests give you good rewards, and exp. But a lot of them usually amount to kill this thing, or gather x amount of things. These are fine and are serviceable, but some quests are actually interesting because you can get other quests depending on how you deal with them. For example, there is one quest where Apsaras asks you to kill Leanan Sidhe because she does not agree with her ways, so you can go to her and kill her right then and there or talk to her and reverse the quest, where you can kill Apsaras instead. This leads to an interest dynamic of being able to change certain quest lines and giving more agency to the player which I quite enjoy! More of these quests in future games would be appreciated.
[11:02 AM]
3. Music
Oh MAN THE MUSIC! THIS IS ONE AREA THE GAME ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DISSAPOINT! THE MUSIC BY RYOTA KOZUKA ABSOLUTELY SELLS THE ATMOSPHERE AND VIBES OF THIS GAME! Everything from the area music, cutscene music, and especially battle themes shine here. Lots of synth, electric guitar, and some odd vibes to the songs give you that distinct SMT feel. Here, they even get funky with lots of different genres of music. They even use disco style for one of the boss themes, and it is one of my favorite songs in the entire game. Not only that, but they even gave side quests their own music! There is so much music in this game its insane. I absolutely love it, and its one of the best aspects of this game!
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
4. Presentation
This is another aspect of the game I really enjoyed. Atlus went all out with the presentation here, in their most ambitious game presentation wise to date. The use of unreal engine here really makes the graphics look amazing, the new demons and models look fantastic, the scaling of the demons in the overworld does look fantastic and breathtaking even, at times. They really took it to the next level with this presentation and it was nearly flawless, if only the switch could handle it well...
Well, I did not encounter a ton of technical problems on my playthrough but there were frame drops, during not only running around, saving, transporting around, but also during even cutscenes. These made some scenes lose some impact for me as the inconsistent framerate took me out of the experience at times. But, I am willing to overlook it considering this game is still really impressive despite that, and it being on the switch definitely is not helping. Another aspect I want to mention is battle animations. These are especially fantastic, with not only the demons being more animated than ever with voice acting, and unique special animation attacks, but this basically applies to every demon. There are tons of unique animations for special moves, and even normal moves still have an unrivaled flair to them in this series thus far. My favorite animations in this game though have to be the special Nahobino attacks you get from essences throughout the game. These are my favorite attacks, and just watching them is so damn hype! Atlus spared no expense with the presentation in this game and it really goes to show how well they amazing their games can look and play. SMT V is another addition to the catalogue of fantastic looking ATLUS games. Knowing the future of the unreal engine, I cannot wait to see more projects using this really gorgeous presentation style without the performance problems!
[11:13 AM]
5. Conclusion
In my humble opinion, SMT V is a game that is most thoroughly enjoyed through the gameplay, presentation, and music. The story is a clashing of ideas versus execution of said ideas, and drops the ball when it comes to character development. The gameplay has a lot of positive quality of life improvements but also has detrimental changes that actively hurt my enjoyment of the game. The music was fantastic, and the presentation was massively ambitious. For the most part, SMT V is a shining example of what ATLUS is capable of when they really try their hardest, and the gameplay is what matters most here. They got it right for the most part, and while it is a shame that the story was not as fleshed out as possible, I still enjoyed my experience here. Hopefully in future projects they can take what worked and craft a more intriguing story around it.
FINAL REVIEW SCORE: 7.5/10
Once again, I will not go into spoilers here but the story of SMT V is easily the most disappointing aspect of the game. But first, let us get into the main premise. You are a student in modern day Tokyo and go about your daily life at school. One day you are on your way home as there is a safety notice for going outside, and everyone has to go in pairs to avoid possible demon murders, since there have been some. As you try to go home with your partner, your partner wants to investigate a bridge that ends up transporting you and your other school mates to the Netherworld, Da'at. You wander this world with little direction and do not know what is going on in the slightest, but still manage to make your way through before being stopped by DEMONS! WHAT A SURPRISE! You are about to be fucked in the ass by these demons before a BADASS SUPER COOL DEMON CALLED AOGAMI decides to help you out. You two fuse together, do a cute little dance, and become the Nahobino. This is your main form for the entire game as you explore Da'at and explore the many areas it has to offer. This is as far I will go as any thing more here will be spoilers. Now I want to say, at the very beginning I was very invested in this story setup. I love the idea of Nahobino, a fusion between demons and humans, and the ideas the story gave us. I think this story was very much in conflict with itself, between the ideas presented, but the execution of them being very inconsistent and spotty. For example, a lot of the side characters get very little time on screen. They are introduced very fast, not given much time throughout the game to develop and some are just straight up shafted. They have interesting ideas and character arcs I can kind of get from them, but the problem is the game does not give them ample time to properly run with these ideas.
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
And this is a pain because I do really enjoy some of these characters, design wise, personality wise and concept wise but the plot does not do these characters who could be much greater justice. Some events in this story just make little sense, and a lot of times during events playing on screen I felt no urgency, I felt no surprise things just kinda happened and I went "Alright." Bringing in some personal feelings here, I do not really think Nocturnes and Vs story really work for me personally. The story of this game, like Nocturnes is very hands off and focuses more on BIG THEMES rather than the characters embodying those themes. Its more about the ideas and the game tries to leave things up to your interpretation and discretion when it comes to the facts of the story, and the endings you can get throughout the game but I feel it just does not engage me enough to actively want to think about these things. Speaking of endings, there are 4 in this game. The ending that feels the most complete, and the most true of all the endings is the True Neutral ending. This ending has the most story, and explanation for things that happen and has a more definitive ending but the problem is in order to get this ending you have to do a lot of things, certain quests, defeat the super boss. The game also does not telegraph this to you at all, so the only way I knew was because Boss told me, or I would have seen it on the guide. But I needed a guide to get that, I would not have known this game had that otherwise. I feel like the fact the best ending in the game is locked behind a lot of different tasks you must do is kind of annoying and I feel it should have been the normal neutral ending instead, because the neutral ending is very lackluster in comparison. Either way, like I reiterated before this story has great ideas but the problem is they do not go far enough with developing the characters behind the ideas, so it feels literally half baked. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
2. Gameplay
On the opposite side here, the gameplay in this game does not disappoint. Like most SMT games up until now, the classic press turn battle systems returns here in its full glory. You attack a weakness, you get an extra turn for that character, and if you block an element, your enemy loses two turns, and if you reflect an attack your enemies lose all their turns. But this also applies to your enemies as well, so this game is very challenging and strategic. If that was not enough, this game makes a lot of changes to mainline SMT gameplay as well, some I do not like, some I do. The biggest change here gameplay wise is the open area design of the world traversal. You can run, jump, and attack enemies you can see in the overworld. Unlike SMT IV, this time you can like see the entire demon models on the screen because of the Switch's power and seeing these giant demons running around, a lot of demons in groups together just makes the world come alive. Adding to this, you can fuse, recruit demons just as before. The demon compendium you can summon from as usual, but this game adds the reverse compendium option to fusion which is a VERY, VERY, welcome addition to fusion in this series. Using this allows you to see every single demon possible for fusion in your entire compendium, so its easier than ever to see what you are missing demon wise and fill that shit in. Not only that, but like in SMT IV, you can transfer essences to Nahobino and other demons. These allow you to transfer skills to truly customize your demons move sets and build them to be the best they can possibly be. You can really lose hours just building the best builds here. Sadly, that just is not my style so this feature was not really my thing but it is really beneficial for those who love building demons. You can also change Nahobinos affinities here, so that is a good idea for covering weaknesses when it comes to boss fights. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
Element affinity is also back from IV apocalypse, and these boost damage and effects of all types of attacks, from physical to support skills. The last major part of the World of Shadows is Apotheosis. This is like the apps in SMT IV which grant you perks and buffs based on how much glory points you have, which you collect from collecting these little mimans across the map and big glowing crystals too. You can get these miracles by beating these abcesses on the map, which are these mini boss fights that you can fight on the map to clear it up, as they block your map coverage. All these additions help feed the games flow, which is get to a new area, find as many abcesses as you can, beat them, clear up the map, and find as many mimans as you can to get as many glory points to make you stronger. Another welcome change to the gameplay here is the leylines, which are your main hubs for everything you need as a player. You get a save point, a shop, recovery, world of shadows, and can transport to any other leyline you have encountered thus far. These leylines really streamline everything you need in one place, so it is very convenient for players. You also eventually get an item to make this even more convenient which lets you transport yourself back to the last leyline you came back to at any place in the map, which has saved me on many occasions and is just one more way to give as much freedom to the player as possible when exploring these areas. The game flows super well with exploring the world, which helps you get stronger and get buffs, and also rewards you with other items that help you. Its all a good feedback loop the game developers at atlus really really shined with, and I feel the most effort was placed here. Overall, there were a couple of areas that were a pain to explore, but for the most part I enjoyed exploration. With even more fine tuning, this gameplay style has a lot of potential in future games and it especially shined here. (edited)
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
However, compared to the open areas in the game, the 2 dungeons feel rather lackluster in comparison. They were a nice change of pace from the games large areas, but the problem was they were not as tightly designed as previous dungeons in the series. This is one area where the game drops the ball. It is mostly just corridors, with save points, demons, with light small puzzles that are not used in any interesting way. The dungeon is usually over before it has a chance to truly show off those mechanics. It felt like Atlus spent the most time on the large areas, and the dungeons were kind of an afterthought. The aesthetics are very interesting and the dungeons themselves look amazing design wise but the problem is the actual content inside of them was average and I just wanted to get through them to move on with the story. Going back to gameplay for a bit, I talked about some good changes but lets talk about some problems I had. When it comes to battles in SMT, buffs and debuffs and magic are all very important things to have. The problem with SMT V is that it nerfs buffs tremendously from previous games and makes them less useful than before. The buffs now work like persona, where you get single targets beginning of the game, and eventually you get group buffs later on instead of one buff for everyone being able to be stacked 4 times. You can only stack them twice now. I much prefer the way previous games handled buffs and debuffs. In the early game I hardly even used them. Another change I do not like is the fact that in previous SMT games physical attacks used HP. In V they use MP instead. This adds a weird balancing act where demons with high strength need high MP to be able to use a lot of physical skills, and a lot of demons with high strength have low MP compared to demons with more magic points having higher MP. If they wanted to make this change, fine, but there should have been a better balancing of these stats to make MP as one source viable.
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(CONT.)
For more demons. Also, concerning MP, this game has very very high skill costs, even with affinity maxed, even with physical skills and buffs, and throughout the entire game I found myself running out of MP pretty consistently. Even passive skills that restored a little mp for getting a weakness still did not help much in the long run. Even at the super boss of the game, at near max level and with some of the strongest demons of the game, i still ran out of MP and had to use items to restore it mid battle. I really do not like the massive increase in skill cost here because it really makes fights drag on longer. I feel the game wants you to use lots of demons to switch out, but I prefer just sticking with one party and i was able to do this in nocturne but here its much more difficult and not really viable. For reference, in Nocturne using Agi at the beginning of the game only costs you 3 mp. At the beginning of SMT V, it costs 10 mp. It is just too much for me and it really hampered my enjoyment of gameplay at points. Another interesting mechanic SMT V adds is the Magatsuhi gauge, which charges up during a fight in many different ways to allow for all sorts of special skills to be used, from all sorts of demons. Most have their own special one including Nahobino, but the problem here is a lot of them just do not feel as useful as the very first skill you get, which is onimagotoki critical. This allows every single attack you do to be a critical, as long as it isnt blocked. Any physical or magic attack will crit, so I used this for free extra turns. A lot of the other skills as cool as they could be just did not have as good of use as this one did, so I feel they made the first skill you got too good. Maybe in another game with this system, they can make the other options more interesting. Overall, SMT Vs gameplay is very very solid, and I liked a lot about it. With a sequel they can iron out the kinks and make it even better!
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
(FIN.)
One more thing, this game has quests similar to IV and IV apocalypse, the main thing here which I like is that unlike IV you get requests straight from demons, so they feel more personal and grounded this time around. Lots of quests give you good rewards, and exp. But a lot of them usually amount to kill this thing, or gather x amount of things. These are fine and are serviceable, but some quests are actually interesting because you can get other quests depending on how you deal with them. For example, there is one quest where Apsaras asks you to kill Leanan Sidhe because she does not agree with her ways, so you can go to her and kill her right then and there or talk to her and reverse the quest, where you can kill Apsaras instead. This leads to an interest dynamic of being able to change certain quest lines and giving more agency to the player which I quite enjoy! More of these quests in future games would be appreciated.
[11:02 AM]
3. Music
Oh MAN THE MUSIC! THIS IS ONE AREA THE GAME ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DISSAPOINT! THE MUSIC BY RYOTA KOZUKA ABSOLUTELY SELLS THE ATMOSPHERE AND VIBES OF THIS GAME! Everything from the area music, cutscene music, and especially battle themes shine here. Lots of synth, electric guitar, and some odd vibes to the songs give you that distinct SMT feel. Here, they even get funky with lots of different genres of music. They even use disco style for one of the boss themes, and it is one of my favorite songs in the entire game. Not only that, but they even gave side quests their own music! There is so much music in this game its insane. I absolutely love it, and its one of the best aspects of this game!
King of Hearts 👑 — 04/21/2022
4. Presentation
This is another aspect of the game I really enjoyed. Atlus went all out with the presentation here, in their most ambitious game presentation wise to date. The use of unreal engine here really makes the graphics look amazing, the new demons and models look fantastic, the scaling of the demons in the overworld does look fantastic and breathtaking even, at times. They really took it to the next level with this presentation and it was nearly flawless, if only the switch could handle it well...
Well, I did not encounter a ton of technical problems on my playthrough but there were frame drops, during not only running around, saving, transporting around, but also during even cutscenes. These made some scenes lose some impact for me as the inconsistent framerate took me out of the experience at times. But, I am willing to overlook it considering this game is still really impressive despite that, and it being on the switch definitely is not helping. Another aspect I want to mention is battle animations. These are especially fantastic, with not only the demons being more animated than ever with voice acting, and unique special animation attacks, but this basically applies to every demon. There are tons of unique animations for special moves, and even normal moves still have an unrivaled flair to them in this series thus far. My favorite animations in this game though have to be the special Nahobino attacks you get from essences throughout the game. These are my favorite attacks, and just watching them is so damn hype! Atlus spared no expense with the presentation in this game and it really goes to show how well they amazing their games can look and play. SMT V is another addition to the catalogue of fantastic looking ATLUS games. Knowing the future of the unreal engine, I cannot wait to see more projects using this really gorgeous presentation style without the performance problems!
[11:13 AM]
5. Conclusion
In my humble opinion, SMT V is a game that is most thoroughly enjoyed through the gameplay, presentation, and music. The story is a clashing of ideas versus execution of said ideas, and drops the ball when it comes to character development. The gameplay has a lot of positive quality of life improvements but also has detrimental changes that actively hurt my enjoyment of the game. The music was fantastic, and the presentation was massively ambitious. For the most part, SMT V is a shining example of what ATLUS is capable of when they really try their hardest, and the gameplay is what matters most here. They got it right for the most part, and while it is a shame that the story was not as fleshed out as possible, I still enjoyed my experience here. Hopefully in future projects they can take what worked and craft a more intriguing story around it.
FINAL REVIEW SCORE: 7.5/10