Shin Megami Tensei V

[Steven Pendleton]

Am I the only person here who is getting this game? This game is the reason that I bought a Switch in 2017 before they even officially announced the game. Atlus was hinting at a game in development for the Switch and I was hoping it would be Shin Megami Tensei V. About 2 weeks after I bought my Switch, Atlus announced this game, so I was very happy.

 

I have been intentionally avoiding pretty much everything regarding this game aside from insta-preordering 2 copies on Amazon (one Japanese copy and one NA copy), but I'm definitely looking forward to finally playing this game.

[MrBeefy]

I have Noturne and Devil Summoner on PS2. They are nice looking games and my younger bro liked playing them. I've never been able to get into them. However, that is probably partially due to extra life duties. Do you typically need to play any previous ones to enjoy the newer ones?

 

I'm finding with Switch, I can fit in RPGs a little easier.

[Steven Pendleton]

2 hours ago, MrBeefy said:

I have Noturne and Devil Summoner on PS2. They are nice looking games and my younger bro liked playing them. I've never been able to get into them. However, that is probably partially due to extra life duties. Do you typically need to play any previous ones to enjoy the newer ones?

 

I'm finding with Switch, I can fit in RPGs a little easier.

The only ones that you really should play in a specific order are I -> II and especially IV -> IV Final. II is a sequel to the neutral ending in I. IV Final is a sequel to part of the neutral ending in IV, where it actually interrupts the neutral ending of IV in a certain timeline and only part of the events in IV's neutral ending actually end up happening because of the interruption. Honestly I greatly prefer the timeline in which IV Final never happens because the story and characters in IV Final are truly wretched crap lol. Extremely minor spoilers about how that works:

Spoiler

basically, at the beginning of IV Final, the protagonist Nanashi dies while Flynn, who is of course the player character from IV, is on his way to kill the final bosses of IV's neutral ending. This happens in both timelines. In the IV timeline, Nanashi stays dead. In the IV Final timeline, Nanashi comes back to life and meets Flynn and interrupts Flynn as he's about to carry out the IV neutral ending, altering the path of IV to being that of IV Final instead.

 

You can play III, Strange Journey, and IV any time you want, but there are lots of references to I and II in IV as well as a single rather blatant reference to Strange Journey with the presence of the Demonica suit.

 

I suppose you should also definitely play Avatar Tuner 2 (Digital Devil Saga 2) after the original Avatar Tuner, but that's not actually a Shin Megami Tensei game. Like pretty much everything else including Devil Survivor, Soul Hackers, and Persona, Atlus West slapped the Shin Megami Tensei title on those and lots of other spinoffs to help them sell after Shin Megami Tensei III was well-received.

[Downland1983]

I'm definitely going to be picking it up when it releases.  I have a few games in the series, although the only 1 that I got so hooked on that I played it start to finish without getting sidetracked by other games was SMT Devil Survivor Overclocked on 3DS.  I think it helped that I had a days long power outage due to Hurricane Irene just after that 3DS enhanced port released in 2011.  So, I was playing a lot of 3DS at home with no TV or console games to distract me.  Not to say that's the only reason I enjoyed the game though, far from it.  I also have Devil Summoner Soul Hackers and Shin Megami Tensei IV on 3DS, which I started but haven't gotten back to finishing yet.  And, I also started the SMT III Nocturne remaster on Switch recently.

[youxia]

The SMT series sucked me in with its amazing style and vibe, but when I actually started playing the main games I was much less enamoured. I guess that's because I was already in my my jRPG TB combat disillusionment phase. The SMT tries to spice things up in this department and offers bit more than the really pointless auto-battle Dragon Quest template, but the ones I've tried were still flawed. For example, not remember the exact game, but there was one which basically asks you to gamble huge amounts of XP on some unknown, irreversible and possibly useless outcomes (some sort of upgrade path that was)...and XP comes from hours of grind, of course. I just can't do this anymore, after being converted to the everything-matters roguelike style.

 

On the other hand, Digital Devil Saga is the total opposite, having one of the best combat systems seen in jRPGs. With an amzing soundtrack and mood/story to boot, this is the real winner.

[Steven Pendleton]

Game get!!! Good bye for now, thread. I will not come back until I'm done with my first playthrough. I will say that the framerate is disappointing, though.

Edited November 11, 2021 by Steven Pendleton

[cybercylon]

My copy of the premium edition came from Amazon yesterday, though I won't be playing it in the near future.

 

If anyone is interested in the premium edition that missed out on it on release, I would recommend some patience. I had read that Atlus intended to make more available after the initial release sold out (sorry... I didn't save link). It has been available on and off from Amazon, Gamestop, etc at retail price. 

[Tanooki]

Atlus usually does that as their unique model of distribution has served them well.

They do run after run, gauging the next runs size on how many/how fast the existing one burns through coupled with the level of bitching and scalping turds online taking advantage of others and at what price over retail.

 

As long as the demand continues they will print more of the game, so the only losers as the losers who can't wait and let scum take advantage of them more often than not.  Given the wide base of owners on the Switch, that it's a real sequel to a Nintendo 3DS based prequel that got pumped out runs too, it would be easy to expect this will see more and more run and maybe some revised spinoff too like SMT4 got.

[Steven Pendleton]

I know I said I'd stay away from here until I am finished with the game, and I most definitely am taking my time, but Gamestop in the USA has this game for $36.99 right now

 

https://www.gamestop.com/video-games/nintendo-switch/products/shin-megami-tensei-v-steelbook-launch-edition----nintendo-switch/299575.html

[Tanooki]

Gamestop is still running sale where it's like $37 for this game new down from $60, not sure when the deal expires.  I took advantage of it the moment I noticed it as I wanted this last month and couldn't get it.

[Steven Pendleton]

After having stopped playing the game for a while, I restarted a few days ago. This game is actually pretty easy even on hard once you've played it once already and know what to do. Unfortunately, I think this game is worse than IV is in most aspects and is overall a weaker game than IV is.

[Steven Pendleton]

I finally finished this game. It... exists, I suppose. I have little else to say about it.

[Tanooki]

That seems to be about how I felt about it, when I stopped, then sat on it for a couple months and sold it.

[Steven Pendleton]

Yeah, the game's fine, but it doesn't really do anything for me. You say "Shin Megami Tensei" to me and I automatically think "early 90s cyberpunk edgelord post-nuclear holocaust dungeon RPG with digital entities from other dimensions invading", and that's what I want, and that's not what this game is. V is fine, but not what I am looking for.

 

I actually would rather like to see the series go back to a combination of what it started as and what it is now: that stuff ^ I mentioned above in a first-person dungeon RPG, just like it used to be, but with press turn and modern design conveniences, and a not-bland story would be pretty helpful. That would be awesome, but it's not going to happen, I think; Sega needs these games to sell and I don't think first person dungeon RPGs are widely liked anymore. SMT IV got LOTS of criticism for its first person battle system, even though it was fast-paced, ultra-violent, and extremely satisfying, which is exactly what it needed to be, so I doubt that going back to a first person dungeon RPG would be well-received by consumers, sadly. I'd buy the hell out of it.

[Tanooki]

I never finished it either, but it was more a sign of the times for me and interest all over the place than lack of liking it because SMT4 I enjoyed for dozens of hours and got nowhere near finishing it I think when it originally came out on 3DS, solid game.  SMT5 has nothing on it other than a more advanced graphical engine and that's a debatable plus anyway.

[Steven Pendleton]

V's major advantage over IV is that it's slightly better balanced, and I do mean slightly: the Smirk mechanic in IV is completely broken to the point where it severely unbalances the game in favour of whichever side gets the effect, and although it only lasts for a turn, it is extremely powerful. V has no Smirk, but it does have super cheap items available from the beginning of the game that protect your entire party from elemental damage, and since bosses blatantly telegraph the timing for you to use these items, you end up just giving yourself a free turn in most cases, as most bosses only have 2 press turns, while taking no damage at all in that case. There's a physical version, too, although you can't buy it and there are not a lot of bosses that will try to hit you with an all-hitting physical attack anyway.

 

That they only cost 150 Macca and completely negate the respective element for your entire party is a bit too powerful, I think, although this game gives you ridiculous amounts of Macca anyway and you can only hold 3 of each item, but I never once ran out of them in a boss fight that I entered with 3 of them. I've forgotten to restock afterwards and run out that way, but 3 is enough for any boss in the game aside from maybe the Demi-fiend, who I skipped for this playthrough and didn't fight, but he probable has pierce on everything anyway. A price increase and probably changing the effect from null to resist might have been a better idea, but too late now.

 

The other major balance problem with V is Shiva, or, rather, what comes after Shiva. You don't have to fight him, but doing so will let you get a certain ending, and the devs really should have increased the difficulty of everything that comes after him if you fight him, because if you are strong enough to beat Shiva, the rest of the game is completely trivialized. I had to prepare for Shiva. After I beat Shiva, I didn't have to do anything at all for the rest of the game since I was way too powerful, so I just used my Shiva-killing team and never bothered to change Nahobino from the anti-Shiva build back to my regular build and never once was in danger from anything.

 

The other other major balance problem with V is that damage dealt and received is heavily weighted by the difference in level between target and attacker, so low-level strategies, like if you found a good demon for a certain fight, aren't really practical unless that demon is around the same level as the boss you need to kill, because if it isn't that demon's going to do no damage and die in 1~3 hits at most, regardless of buffs/debuffs, which also seem quite weak in this game, especially Sukukaja and Sukunda, which barely make any difference at all that I've noticed, but I am playing on hard.

[Matt_B]

I enjoyed it enough to do all four endings, but I can't say I've been tempted to replay it since.

 

Shiva is certainly a tougher fight than the final bosses, but by the time you face him you'll have finished the game three times already so they're getting a bit old by then.

 

What's stayed with me most is the soundtrack. It's thoroughly excellent, from spooky ambient themes while you're exploring to cacophonous battle ones when you enter combat.

[Steven Pendleton]

Yeah, I wasn't sure if I was going to replay this game, so I decided that if I'm only going to play it once, I'm going to do everything but Demi-fiend, so I ended up killing Shiva on my first playthrough to get the secret ending to get the most out of it as I could in one playthrough. Turns out that I am replaying it, and partially because of Shiva; I want to try again, but this time with a magic build and without fighting Shiva, so I should hopefully get some challenge out of the final few fights, as I ended up killing them in 3~4 hits last time due to how extremely powerful I was by that point because of my Shiva preparation.

 

I do like this game's soundtrack more as I play the game more, though. It's really good, but it's still nowhere close to IV's soundtrack. That thing is impossibly good, and one of the absolute best soundtracks in the entire history of soundtracks, so in comparison V's OST is quite weak as a follow-up to that, but disregarding the fact that I was hoping for an even better OST than what IV has and being disappointed by that, I actually really like V's soundtrack. I have the Japanese limited edition, and that has a soundtrack in it... and I just now realized that I was so damn excited to play the game that I never even looked at the other stuff in the LE. Time to go open up that soundtrack and put it on my computer, I think!

[Steven Pendleton]

So it's a partial soundtrack. It consists of arranged strings versions of music from I, II, if... (yes, they remembered that if... exists!), III, Strange Journey, IV, and IV Final on disc 1 and then disc 2 basically covers the music that you will hear in V in Minato-ku, which is easily one of the nicest cities in Tokyo Prefecture in real life, by the way, so go there if you can.

 

I will probably pick up the full soundtrack for this at some point. Fortunately, IV's soundtrack is back in stock on Amazon Japan after being sold out for some time, so definitely don't miss that if you want it.

Edited October 1, 2022 by Steven Pendleton