With Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance around the corner I decided to see what rating I gave the original version of the game. It somewhat surprised me that I gave it a 3/5, which is to say, I guess it's grown on me. This game has a fundamental flaw that prevents it from being anywhere close to 5-stars (I'll get to this later), but there's a lot about this game that works very well.

The music is not only top-tier, but is quite unique and catchy. I haven't touched the game in two years and I can hear the battle music and level-up theme clear as day in my head. And they're absolute bops. The textures they layered into the the guitar tone and the overall mix really makes the OST stand out from its contemporaries.

The press-turn battle system is delightfully crunchy, but not too hard. This was my first exposure to the press-turn battle system, and while I had to knock the difficulty down a bit to learn the mechanics, I really enjoyed how you could battle out of pretty dire situations by playing cleverly.

Nahobino's character design rules. I loved running around with my flowing locks of neon blue hair, and surfing down long hills and sand dunes. That all ruled. Additionally the design of the demons new to this game were excellent.

However, there is a fundamental flaw with this game. No, its not the story. While the story isn't ground breaking, it at least uses multiple endings interestingly and has it's highs as well as its lows. It's the performance of the game. It really chugs on the Switch hardware, which would be ostensibly fine for a turn-based RPG, but there's required platforming sections. When the game is struggling to hit mid-20's and you have to time your jumps precisely, its just a terrible time.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance will be out later this month, and while I don't typically like Atlus re-releasing games, I am excited to see what the game can be like on a platform that can actually deliver the visuals it was going for. Apparently it also adds a new 90 hour alternative main story, so hopefully it addresses my story complaints as well.

The developers kind of went mad with power during the late game, which is frankly too hard. I've beaten Sekiro, Hollow Knight, Bloodborne, Elden Ring... none of those games are as hard as Lies of P.

The difficulty comes in that you can seriously make purchasing and upgrade mistakes that limits your endgame power substantially. I opted to go for an "all weapons" run with the boss ergo, and locked myself out of end-game amulets. Additionally, I switched which boss weapon I was using, and the game punishes you by not supplying enough upgrade material to facilitate switching weapons.

Additionally, after 40 points in your primary stat, any additional levels only give you 1 or 2 extra damage, which makes your power curve logarithmic. In other souls games this is fine because the inflection point of the curve is past the end-game material. In Lies of P, this happens about 2/3rds of the way through the game. The bosses get more health and hit harder, but you don't get substantially more powerful once you hit level 65-70.

There's just little design issues like this sprinkled throughout the game that add up to a "it could have been a masterpiece" kind of experience. Ultimately, I can't recommend to the average person who plays games.

That said, there is an Easy Mode built into the game by the devs, but you have to re-enable it via mods. I stand firmly that when I review a game I can't factor in mods that fix its shortcomings, but if you're like me and just want a game that respects your time, google it.