Shin Megami Tensei V is rough. I first got the game years ago, and I played it for a bit, but distracted by other new releases. Because of that, I’ve always wanted to actually continue and finish SMTV, but only did I get around to doing that. Now obviously, I think the game is good, of the SMT titles I’ve played though, this is probably my least favorite. The short and sweet of is because while this game’s gameplay is ludicrously good, I don’t particularly like the game’s balancing, and the story is really weak.

I definitely think as a series overall, SMT has always shined in its gameplay and combat. Press Turns are as fun as they are in other titles, exploiting weaknesses to get additional turns is always really fun. I think the Magatsuhi mechanic is interesting, though I never really utilized it, maybe it’s just me but between using my regular abilities and using Magatsuhi, my regular abilities always seemed to be more useful in battle. Having this system affect both enemy and your turns is really fun, especially when you dodge an enemy’s attack and suddenly they lose two of their turns, though it can also happen in the opposite order. It’s a great battle system to having great tension and it’s exhilarating.

And the new essence fusion system is really interesting, though I’m not 100% confident if I particularly like it. Essences aren’t bad, however I think I prefer the Demon Whisper system from SMTIV. While they function nearly the same, as it grants you abilities learned by specific demons, my confliction comes about how you find them. Rarely, a demon will give you them upon level up, though yet again that’s rare. You can also guarantee finding them by doing certain quests, or finding them in treasure littered around the map, while these aren’t bad, sometimes it’s just hard to get to them, and sometimes they wont have the skills you need. Compare that to Demon Whispers which are guaranteed to happen once your demon learns all of its skills, for me at least, I prefer it more than the essence fusions.

While I love the press turn system, and SMTV’s combat is solid, I don’t particularly like how SMTV is balanced. I’m no stranger to the franchise, I’ve played and beaten SMTIV, IV:A, and Strange Journey to name a few, I’m not an expert of course, but I’m not new to it. However something about V’s difficulty balancing and scaling is off to me. Even while playing on casual, the game’s difficulty scaling is littered with constant jumps upwards, instead of a more smooth ascent. And even though I was only slightly underleveled (1-2 levels below the boss), I was completely destroyed by them. If I have to hypothesize, I imagine there’s a system in place where there’s a hidden modifier that weakens a demon if it’s lower leveled than one it’s fighting, and for a game like this I don’t particularly like that. Maybe it could work, but it feels too drastic, and it became more of a nuisance than anything actually challenging. Around halfway into the game, where I was around level 44, I switched to Safety, which sucks because I love the challenge of SMT games, and to me, what I was experiencing wasn’t a challenge, it was an annoyance.

With the discussion of gameplay and combat done, now it brings us to the aspect of SMTV that is the most rough, incomplete even. I’m of course referring to the game’s story. For general reference it took me about 38 hours total to beat SMTV, though if I didn’t switch to Safety halfway through it probably would’ve taken longer. I would say the game has 5 chapters to it, though the 5 chapter is shorter than the others as it’s centered around the game’s finale.

When it comes to the overall story, I think it really peaks at Chapter 2. Chapter 2 is a really solid isolated storyline, centering around a specific character, and seeing their arc through that chapter, and the main boss of that chapter is arguably one of the more memorable aspects of the game. Though Chapter 2 also shows one of the biggest problems that SMTV’s story has, which is the characters. SMTV’s characters could be so much better if given the allowance to. Particularly, for a majority of the game, they’re absent, not apart of the story itself. At times they actively tell you to go somewhere else, isolating you from them. There’s a point in the game where a character disappears and is gone for the entire following chapter, and even though they do return, even though they should become more important they take a sideline. One character who you meet at the start of the game is entirely sidelined until you do a very specific set of sidequests, and they only become relevant for the final sidequest in that set. And I think the most egregious examples are the characters that are meant to represent Law and Chaos, while they do appear more often than the two prior examples, they still don’t appear enough. Their character arcs don’t feel fluid enough, and it makes it difficult to properly care about these characters and how they change, even though the game feels like it expects you to. There are some great character moments in the last bits of Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5, but they don’t feel deserved because these characters did not have enough time to feel as important as they should. I’m certain if the game allowed there to be more time with these characters, I would care about them, but I just am unable to with how little time you get with them.

The other aspect of SMTV’s story that I wish was better was the game’s worldbuilding. There’s so many interesting aspects to the world of SMTV, and stuff that I would love to see further explored. But there lies the problem, it isn’t as explored as much as I feel it should. From what it feels like, you get only a quick glance at most aspects of SMTV’s world, which hurts because these aspects could provide so much cool stuff to them. And with that as well, the game continuously introduces ideas throughout the game, which not only means there’s less time to explore those ideas, but also it makes other ideas have less time to be explored as well. Even when you’re fighting the final boss you’re introduced to a new aspect of the world that, because you’re fighting the final boss, there’s very little time to explore that aspect of the world as well. I think if the game shrunk it’s scope of its world, or if it spent more time exploring ideas and aspects of the world that are interesting, this wouldn’t be as big of an issue as it was.

And it’s so odd. Difficulty balancing aside, SMTV has some of the best gameplay in the series, and its mechanics are really fun. This game has so much potential, though I don’t think it was able to execute all of its potential properly, unfortunate as it is. Though with that in mind, I’m honestly really excited for SMTV Vengeance, and I do plan on playing it when it releases. My hopes are that its new story improves upon the game, and the changes to gameplay improve upon the aspects that I felt aren’t as good as they could be. That of course is wishful thinking, as we won’t know what it’s like until the game comes out, but I like to dream. I’m glad I finally got around to playing SMTV, but I don’t think I’ll be replaying it anytime soon (excluding Vengeance of course).