This game was cursed for me for the longest time. It took seven years, across multiple save files, across multiple platforms, to finally sit down and finish a playthrough. I don't know why (I do, for some reason if I take a break from a game for an extended period of time, I always feel compelled to restart) it took me this long, because what is here is an extremely unique experience. You have press turn combat here in it's purest, rawest form, and it's still fantastic. Building your protagonist is alright, I like the Magatama system but it feels very unforgiving, with how you only get once chance to learn each of the skills when you're prompted. If you plan ahead this isn't an issue, but compared to whispering/essences from 4/5, it's just not as good. Building demons here is just fine too, although I found myself getting annoyed with Fiends clogging up the fusion charts. The dungeons here are also the best compared to the JRPGs I've played so far. Granted, I haven't played many dungeon crawlers, but the dungeons in this game are great, especially the Diet Building and Tower of Kagutsuchi. Exploring the Vortex World is a blast, although it can be a bit slow at times. Also fuck Puzzle Boy.

Tied to that is a minimalistic story, which lends itself well to this games lonely atmosphere. The story here is pretty alright, although the characters do end up being a bit on the weaker side. Dante/Raidou's inclusion to the story here is basically seamless, as they only show up for one boss fight, and after they're exclusively in the Labyrinth of Amala. I much prefer this approach compared to the other rerelease characters in Atlus games.

Lastly, it isn't as much of an issue nowadays but this port is atrocious, especially on the Switch. The new lighting here is a huge downgrade, and it honestly ends up looking worse than the original release on the PS2. Even more damning though is the performance, as it also runs worse than on the PS2, at least on the Nintendo Switch. Even looking past the performance, there's basically zero effort to actually update this game to modern standards, asides from Skill Inheritance (which wasn't even in the Japanese release of the game at launch lol). If you can, get this game on sale on PC and install some mods, I'll link some below.

Graphics Configurator

HD Audio

HD Cutscenes

Display Buffs

Minimap over Compass

During the few hours I've played of the PC release, I've had zero issues with these mods. There's some other QoL mods listed there, so it's definitely worth taking a look and seeing if there's more you want to install.

This game is a masterpiece among JRPGs. If you like the genre in any capacity, you should try this game out. If you don't, still give it a shot. SMT3 doesn't fall into many of the more common trappings of JRPGs, and it's a very unique, worthwhile experience.

Shin Megami Tensei V is my favorite SMT game, which is really odd to say because it is so deeply flawed. Exploring Da'at is very fun, and the combat is fantastic. Building your protagonist and demons is at its best here too. On the contrary, the level scaling and the elemental dampeners just take away from SMTs kickass combat. The two dungeons are pretty mediocre as well. Even then, the gameplay loop was just so compelling. The Superbosses here are some of my favorites in recent memory.

The story on the other hand has no swag lmfao. While there's some interesting ideas, it goes about them so half-assed. Aside from Dazai, there is zero time spent to develop any of the characters, and even then he isn't that great. The different routes are also very underwhelming, and the implementation of the True Neutral route is frustrating; especially after the shit Atlus got for the Neutral route in IV. Fortunately though, outside of a few exposition dumps in-between regions of Da'at and the finale, it doesn't really get in the way of the gameplay.

If you want to play this game, just wait for Vengeance. It appears to be fixing a lot of issues with SMTV, and it won't be trapped on outdated hardware.