The best-written game ever made. The RPG system is begging to be unleashed on more characters and settings with this being the most psychologically driven RPG system I've played, eclipsing even my love for the social link system in Persona. The voice acting is superb and the music is iconic. And I cannot stress enough the quality of the writing from the narrative, to the theme thematic weight, to the characters. You just don’t see this level of quality with such thoughtfulness enough in the gaming industry. Its in a league of its own.

I like it a lot despite its flaws. The plot and characters are garbage. The only arcs I cared about was with Lahmu and towards the end with the race for the throne of creation. Exploration is super fun and rewarding. The rewards for exploring and doing side quests are so huge and greatly reduce the need for grinding combat. Exploration isn't always a hit though, as by the third area you will be exhausted by hidden miiman, dangerous paths you can't easily return from, and invisible enemies. The dungeons are GOOD but not great, in particular, the second dungeon is just a pain in the ass to maneuver through. I've played probably 200 hours of the game, and I could really nitpick it and pull it apart with its many flaws, but there are some areas that shine through and put it at the 4-star status to me. Those areas are party building, lore, and combat.

Quick lore summary with spoilers before I go into team building and combat:
Long ago the Judeo-Christian God ascended to the throne of creation granting him the ability to shape reality. He used the power to create mankind and the earth but also to strip all other gods from all other religions/mythologies of their divine knowledge. From there, the gods degenerated into angels and demons, maintaining their forms and their power but without any divinity. Pretty soon into the game, you find out God is dead, killed by Lucifer, and that the earth was turned into the post-apocalyptic netherworld. God also made it so that in the event of his death, only beings known as Nahobino could ascend the throne and take his place. Nahobino are the fusion of humans with divine knowledge originating from the garden of Eden and the demons and angels that now exist below god. You play as a Japanese high school student who fuses with a demon to become the first Nahobino. By the end of the game, there are 3 other Nahobino all lusting for the throne, each with their own guiding philosophy and goal. You get to pick which other Nahobino you want to side with which will determine your ending and the kind of world that will exist once you ascend the throne. Or you can go for the true ending and not side with any of the others and go your own path! Anyways, I left out some details for the sake of brevity, but I just adore the world of SMT V and the lore surrounding it. It's so interesting and the 4 philosophies to choose from when going for the ending leave a lot to chew on.

OK LASTLY THE GAMEPLAY. COMBAT AND TEAM BUILDING. Fusing demons has never been easier, with the reverse compendium fusion you can see ALL fusion recipes right there in the game without need for any online resources. Just being able to see possible fusions from your registered demons is life-saving. You can just look at the demon you want, find a recipe that works for you, and then go for it. Or you can just straight up summon demons from you compendium to immediately fuse them. It's so simple but it saves so many headaches. Furthermore, character building! You get to allocate one stat point per level and can infuse yourself with the essences of demons to take their skills or elemental strengths. The more you explore, the more essences you get, the more you can fine tune your protagonist. Not to mention you can infuse your demons with essences as well, which moderately reduces the need to do chain fusions for that perfect team build you want. Despite these great additions, SMT is known for being brutal and this game is no exception. These quality of life changes will make the grind shorter and save you from a headache but what they won't do is save you from brutality of bosses. You will have to spend a good amount of time theorizing a team that can beat each boss. This means finding weaknesses, determining the turn order for your team, and make the right moment-to-moment choices in combat. Remember, if the protags health drops to zero, you lose the fight, no matter what state your other demons are in. This, combined with devasting magatsuhi attacks that bosses and overworld enemies can utilize to get guaranteed critical hits, means you will be redoing a lot of encounters as you figure out your enemies moves, weaknesses and attack patterns. Its an addicting and rewarding cycle of constantly reinventing your team to challenge new bosses and explore new areas.

The greatest Pokemon game ever made that is just screaming out to have a follow-up because of it's deficiencies. The game is simply just too easy. I wish there was a mode in here akin to BOTW's master mode but even that wouldn't fix everything. The fact is that Pokemon are not nearly scary enough to justify the narrative and marketing for this game. This is supposed to be a world before humans and Pokemon lived together, where Pokemon are dangerous wild animals. But you can instantly back out of any encounter, or dodge encounters completely with the VERY FIRST mount that you get. What's more odd is the random difficulty spikes that make no sense. You can breeze through most of the game but there are a few fights towards the end that are unreasonable considering how the rest of the game plays. Also, anyone who says this is Pokemon + BOTW is straight up lying to you. This is an open areas game not an open world game, and it is not nearly packed in with as much meaningful content. Grinding the pokedex is also pretty tedious. The controls are unintuitive. The resource economy is frustrating because it can't keep up with the pace of game (you have to grind resources more than you have to grind the dex, meaning you'll have to explore areas with no real reason to catch or battle pokemon). That all being said, the change up to the battle system plus stealth action sniping of wild pokemon and the grit system easily puts this above any mainline entry. I am very critical of this game, but at the end of the day its pokemon with a bunch of innovations that are very welcome.

Damn near perfect. On a personal level, this is my favorite game of all time, but when taking a step back I can't help but notice a few flaws. Not all the shrines are fun or fair, the dungeons don't scale and yet have varying difficulties, you have to grind dragon materials for late-game armor (IMO there should never be grinding in a Zelda game), and it's just a damn shame that an otherwise gorgeous game can't hit 1080p and struggles at 30 fps.

Otherwise, though, this is the best open-world game ever made. I doubt anyone needs to hear this at this point, but this game is filled to brim with content. Everywhere you go there is something to do. The main quest has iconic and loveable characters, the music is incredible, the combat is fast-paced and exciting, and the climbing mechanic is possibly the greatest design innovation Nintendo has ever pulled off.

SO CLOSE TO PERFECTION. I despise that Joker can date adults and some of the overall decisions for female characters. I also think the Strength arcana is way too OP and ruins the balance. There are some poorly designed encounters as well, particularly in the 5th palace. And fusion doesn't make a ton of sense.

BUT
With this being my first MegaTen game (and me not really being into JRPGs before this), I quickly became addicted to this game and even bought Shin Megami Tensei V as a result of playing this. I'm hooked on Atlus. This is how you make turn-based combat engaging. It isn't always challenging but it'll also throw a few curve balls at you to keep you on your toes. Not to mention the beauty and absolute perfection of the social link system that merges narrative/characters with gameplay in a really unique way. There are so many possibilities for the future of the social link system and I cannot wait to play the other Persona games and I also can't wait to see what they do with 6. Also, I've listened to the soundtrack COUNTLESS times it's just so damn perfect.

(I haven't done a genocide run)

Not like anyone needs to hear an Undertale take but every element of this game comes together to bring what I truly believe is a perfect experience. Depending on if you spare or kill your enemies, you're either going to be playing an RPG or a Bullet Hell. Choose bullet hell. It's incredibly inventive and decently challenging. But what really makes it perfect is the way the themes and bullet hell gameplay come together to reinforce each other. If you're ok with taking this path, the gameplay directly reflects the themes of forgiveness, shame, and yeah also the power of friendship.

I'll admit I think the game is a little overhyped, but it's also the best Mario game option out there. The controls are PERFECT. The amount of freedom you have in how you want to move and platform is unlike any other game I've played. It's no doubt the game is incredibly fun, but it really gets bogged down by the moons. Maybe you don't want to get all the moons and just want to get to the credits. But for me, I tried getting all the moons and then gave up. The problem is it isn't intuitive how you get them all. Some of the ways you acquire moons are just straight-up frustrating or at the very least suck some of the fun out of the game.