Spoilers will follow


A majority of RPGs today have their roots in Dungeons and Dragons. Even though these roots have often been obfuscated by some 40 years of iteration, they still provide an invaluable lens for observing RPGs. D&D is unique from most video games in that to play it you must actually roleplay, that is to say, you must be willing to partake in the fantasy of the game. The compellingness of this fantasy is, of course, the primary factor in your willingness to partake, and, as such, is critical to the integrity of the work as a whole. While traditional narrative driven video games are inherently quite different from Dungeons and Dragons, the player’s agency over a character who is part of a fictional world offers a similar kind of fantasy which is equally important. Satoshi Tajiri, the man behind Pokemon’s original concept, shared this sentiment in an interview, stating that, “Even though the presentation was limited by the console (referring to the original gameboy) the idea of exploring the natural world and forming bonds with the creatures around you is something most people can relate to passionately. The dream of an ideal world for exploration is the core of Pokemon.” A universal, engaging fantasy like the one found in Pokemon is an essential component to the success of any given JRPG.

And it’s for this exact reason that Shin Megami Tensei V is so foundationally rotten. I’m a huge fan of the Megami Tensei franchise and most of Atlus’ broader catalog, but despite my love — and despite beating the game four whole times — I still came away from this most recent entry extremely disappointed. So, what is Shin Megami Tensei V’s fantasy? What core of the human psyche is it trying to evoke? Luckily for me, Atlus was pretty transparent about what they were aiming for. It's very clear that they were trying to recapture the ideas that made Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne such a fan-favorite. In both games, the player is dropped in a desertified, hellscape version of Tokyo, and must use the power they gain while fighting their way through this world to shape its rebirth into one they consider to be more righteous. There’s a lot to love about this premise; The fear of isolation, the tension of struggle, the agency of being able to change the world. It’s a setup with the potential for deep catharsis. While Nocturne does fall short of its lofty ideas in some ways, that just means Shin Megami Tensei V had the potential to actualize them similarly to how Shin Megami Tensei IV did for the first game in the series. But knowing a developer’s intent can be a poisonous thing when it comes to observing a work as it actually exists instead of how it was intended to be. It's possible that I somehow simply overlooked the fantasy Shin Megami Tensei V was trying to evoke due to my familiarity with its predecessors. However, assuming that Atlus was trying to invoke similar ideas here, this game shows a jarring lack of commitment and focus to them in comparison to earlier entries in the series. This lack of commitment, more than any individual failing of the design, is ultimately what damns the game to mediocrity for me. Let’s start by looking at how the mechanics fail this game, as this series has quite the reputation for an intense gameplay focus atypical for JRPGs.

When discussing the mechanics, and more specifically, the combat mechanics of Shin Megami Tensei V, one thing sticks out to me as particularly garish in how it undercuts the player’s agency. This is the fact that the level difference between the attacker and defender in any given combat scenario applies a modifier to damage outside of stat differences. Put more plainly, if the attacker is lower level than the defender, then the attack will do less damage regardless of stat differences. This may seem like a sensible choice at first. “If the player notices this, then they can use the enemy’s levels to gauge what their own level should be, and stay on the difficulty curve.” I question the necessity of this, as levels serve this function in most RPGs even when they lack a damage modifier mechanic. Players will naturally appraise themselves against their enemies based on their level and will decide for themselves the range where they feel comfortable fighting enemies. More skilled players don’t look at an enemy that is five levels above them the same way as new players. While it’s true that if your level is on par with the enemies in Shin Megami Tensei V they will be more tightly balanced around your capabilities, it’s also true that this makes any encounter where your levels are mismatched extremely lopsided. You either outlevel the enemy and they can barely touch you, or they outlevel you and every encounter feels like a boss fight. This effectively narrows the range of engaging, fun experiences the player can have.​​ Thankfully, completing challenge runs or playing below the level curve is still possible in Shin Megami Tensei V, however, this mechanic pushes them out of reach for a large portion of the player base and often forces players who aren’t actively doing the game’s many below average side quests into grinding. This is further compounded by the baffling ways Atlus has chosen to diversify the pool of demons.

A commonly cited issue with Shin Megami Tensei IV was that demons felt too similar. The freedom of being able to select any skill from the demons being fused to give to the resulting demon allowed players to optimize most of their party members into one or two generic builds based on whether they were physical or magical attackers. While it could be argued that this level of freedom is a point in the game's favor, a more diversified demonic lineup would only be a good thing. Shin Megami Tensei V (and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse) both agreed, and attempted to solve this problem in two major ways. The first was by expanding the number of skills that are exclusive to specific demons. Only seven demons had unique skills in Shin Megami Tensei IV, five of which are DLC bosses. Meanwhile Shin Megami Tensei V has almost seventy unique skills split across its roster despite having half as many demons to spread them to when compared with Shin Megami Tensei IV. Their other method for introducing variety was the affinity system. Starting in Apocalypse, demons have values intrinsic to them that dictate what types of spells they’re good at using. Both of these ideas sound good on paper but are once again, critically flawed. The demon affinity system only gives the most surface level difference to demons’ optimal builds while directly harming the player’s ability to come up with interesting viable skill sets for their favorites. An optimized electric demon still looks the same as an optimized ice demon in terms of their abilities. The only difference is which flavor of damage they do which also becomes a more meaningless distinction in the late game when bosses have fewer weaknesses and you’re adding a pierce effect to your attacks anyways. Unique skills are a much more appealing system on the face of it and that’s probably why they’ve been around in all parts of Megami Tensei since the first mainline game. The major issue being that it once again limits any player trying to optimize their party into a select few demons of any given type. Give up on making your favorite demon your healer if they aren’t Demeter or Idun because they will never be able to cast Eleusinian Harvest or Golden Apple.

JRPG players often seem to forget that combat is only one part of the gameplay experience. For the mainline series' big return to home consoles for the first time in around two decades Atlus decided to supplement the combat sections with the largest freely explorable areas in the series so far. By my estimation this just above mediocre exploration gameplay makes up the largest share of the game’s runtime and is where I was most personally disappointed with the game mechanically. This is because, beyond the fact that the set dressing is apocalyptic and demons are present, nothing is done to sell you on the experience of being a human (or technically a Nahobino I guess) exploring this foreign dangerous world. Enemies move much too slowly and simplistically to ever be considered threatening, outside of the very few instances where the level design funnels you into them. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the overworld enemies were not all functionally identical to the glitchy blobs present in Shin Megami Tensei IV. Enemies can fly, fire projectiles, vary in size and movement speed, and a few late game demons even have some unique tricks. That being said, all this effort is effectively wasted when you can easily outrun enemies in almost any situation, and even when they maybe catch you off guard, you can still instantly warp yourself back to the last save point with no down side thanks to how frequently they’re placed. Even if the save points were incredibly sparse it wouldn’t make these journeys more intense because movement, and by extension, navigating around enemies is always incredibly simple. Your jump doesn’t even carry dash momentum so your journey back to where you warped from is always as simple as just walking there. There is pretty much never any tension in the exploration segments of Shin Megami Tensei V. You never have to consider the journey you’re about to make mechanically beyond remembering to hit the heal button before you leave the save point. There is also pretty much nothing to actually “discover” in these segments. All possible rewards for exploration are clearly shown within the first couple hours of gameplay and the surprisingly good level design can only do so much to make you feel like you’re actually exploring when the only thing waiting for you at the end is a Miman. The decision to hide portions of the map behind the abscess fights is shockingly clever as it forces the player to really observe the surroundings to find a way to these blights. This is undermined by the fact that 80% of them by my estimation are just placed out in the open to be combat tests. I would have loved to have seen Atlus solve two problems at once by allowing the demons in your possession to interact with the environment in some way unique to them. This would at once introduce a new way to vary demons and also maybe require the player to be a little more thoughtful during their preparations for a trip into the Da’at. With combat, demon fusion, and exploration the game sees fit to limit both the players and its own expressive ability in some vague pursuit of balance. Instant kill spells and the tension they provided have been drastically toned down assumedly because they don’t provide a “fair combat scenario.” Enemy ambushes are infrequent because they could be considered “classic smt bullshit” if the player died to one. If there was anything I expected from a mainline Shin Megami Tensei post Dark Souls’ blowing up, it would be that the game would revel in its edgy, punishing reputation and push its classic RPG gameplay to new expressive heights much like Nocturne and Strange Journey did before it. Instead the edges have been sanded down and any punishment amounts to a slap on the wrist. The game instead is too concerned with presenting a pretty, polished version of a battle system we’ve been using for two decades now, for whatever that’s worth. If this vapid gameplay was constructed in service of some narrative component of the setting I could understand it, but sadly the setting falls flat there as well.

The setting is the aspect where this game is most directly comparable to Nocturne and anywhere it differs, it does so in a way that detracts from the game. Shin Megami Tensei IV saw no shortage of deserved praise for how it used its dozens of characters to really bring the worlds of Mikado and Tokyo to life. Nocturne similarly saw praise for the way its sparse storytelling and barren wasteland of a world imparted a sense of awe and isolation. Shin Megami Tensei V manages to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and draw on the worst aspects of both of these approaches while reaping none of the benefits. It is both too lacking in compelling dialogue or developed characters to flesh out its world, while also being too populated for the player to feel any kind of isolation. The non plot critical humans all exist mostly unaware of the Da’at and as such have very little to say beyond “Oh man the world sure is scary huh.” Meanwhile the non plot critical demons are mostly delegated to very mediocre sidequests. There are some standouts in this group. Khonsu, Fionn, and Shiva are all tangentially related to the narrative in a way that makes their quests feel more impactful. A few others like the succubus quest stick out for how you engage with them but the vast majority are MMO level fetch quests or the most reductive law/chaos choices in the franchise, which the discussion around this game seems to hype up for some reason. I think this largely stems from the fact that the demons haven’t really formed communities or social hierarchies with the humans the way they have in Shin Megami Tensei IV. There’s nothing really unique to observe here in the characters or the way they interact beyond the group of Egyptian Deities that forms right at the end of the game. Even the fairy forest, which may at first seem to be exactly what I’m looking for, is incredibly minor and entirely derivative of prior mainline games. Every single mainline game barring If… to my memory has the fairies establish a community that serves as a uniquely peaceful place amidst the apocalypse. None of this is helped by the games lackluster aesthetic design.

Much has already been said about the games liberal palette swapping of the four major areas even by avid fans of the game, so I trust I don’t need to reiterate that here, but even beyond that this game desperately needs some visual variety. When speaking about Shin Megami Tensei IV, art director Eiji Ishida said “If we’d applied the ‘infernal’ design to the whole game, though, it would start to resemble one of those trite Western games with their overused post-apocalyptic motifs.” Sadly, it seems Ishida was not involved with Shin Megami Tensei V and as a result, the entirety of the Da’at is the trite apocalypse he was referring to. No room for interesting communities and cultures to form in this world. All we have is blasted out buildings and Miman. Not to mention the almost complete lack of any iconic Tokyo architecture which makes this apocalypse seem even more generic. Unfortunately the lackluster visual design extends beyond the environments themselves.

I consider myself quite the fan of both Masayuki Doi and Kazuma Kaneko. I have a few of their works framed on my walls and think that their work, more than any other individuals’, is what shapes mainline Shin Megami Tensei into something I love. That isn’t to discount creatives like Okada, Ishida, Yamai, or Kozuka of course. I just find an incredible amount of meaning in the art of this series. That being said, I don’t feel like either artist's work is used to its full potential here. It is cool to see a lot of Kaneko’s iconic demon designs rendered in 3D but with the man himself long since gone from Atlus, there is a notable lack of cohesion amongst his demons in V. One of the greatest strengths of Nocturne is the way the entire world felt blended together in the style of his art. His and Shiraishi’s oversight in the modeling process no doubt contributed to this. In IV, Kaneko had already passed on the mantle of the demon painter and as such cohesion is lacking there as well. That being said, IV used this to its advantage with a roster of over 400 demons and a plethora of designs from guest artists as well. While it is true that not all of these were hits, it led to some absolute standouts such as the four archangels and chemtrail. You could say that the absolute chaos of IV’s bestiary is what made it stand out in a good way. V once again threads the needle into an unsatisfying middle ground. The pool of demons is understandably smaller given the game's scope, but the game splits this small pool between old Kaneko designs, more modern ones, and Doi’s designs. Doi’s demon designs this time around also vary wildly in quality. He was given more demons to design than ever and was even allowed to handle the ones found in random encounters, which he had historically stayed away from. Two things stick out as in this set: . Legs, and tokusatsu. As if mandated by some marketing executives, most of Shin Megami Tensei V’s new female demon designs are constantly showing off their legs and seem designed primarily as cute anime girls with light mythological theming as opposed to actually being those myths. I’m not a prude or anything; I’m even a fan of Kaneko’s famous bondage angel design and his many literal gential demons. The problem here is they feel pandering. Abdiel for example is not served as a character or mythological figure in any way by her skimpy outfit. The trend of demons being characterized by their place in the story as opposed to their mythology actually began in Shin Megami Tensei IV and I would highly recommend @eirikrjs writings on the subject if you want a more thorough exploration of that in particular. That being said, Shin Megami Tensei V takes this further by seemingly having a large amount of its characters be designed in contrast to BOTH their mythology and their character. Beyond this issue (which could totally be a symptom of marketing focused direction or something) one of Doi’s eccentricities as an artist works its way into this game in a way that clashes horribly. This being the aforementioned tokusatsu influence. Aogami, the Nahobino, Tsukuyomi, Odin and even Lucifer stick out like they’re entirely different categories of creatures from the rest of the demons. Honestly it isn’t even an aesthetic I’m entirely negative on but I question its haphazard implementation here as it only serves to undermine any sort of focus the art direction may have had. For a future mainline game I would prefer to see Doi keep his stuff more in line with the Kaneko designs they seem intent on using for the rest of eternity, or for Doi to be fully unchained and Atlus allow the game to take shape around his unique aesthetic identity. Ultimately, the visuals fracture the setting in a way that makes it impossible for you to ground yourself in it while never quite reaching the surreal heights of other games in the franchise.

Visuals are only one portion of the iconic Shin Megami Tensei aesthetic and thankfully the music fared much better in this outing. Kozuka returns as lead composer for this entry and after his beyond stellar work for IV and IV: Apocalypse I wouldn’t have anyone else. His crunchy, distorted synths and pained, furious guitars capture similar emotions to tracks in IV but in the decade since that game they’ve only grown more intense. Tracks like ‘Humans, Demons, and…’ are absolutely electrifying and haunting at the same time. Compensating for this more blown-out depiction of Tokyo, a lot of the funkier tracks have been sidelined in favor of a huge amount of sparse, industrial influenced, sandblasted ones. The theme of the Tokyo Diet Building shows off this new sound incredibly well alongside the instrument at the core of a huge portion of this game's soundtrack, a feminine voice that is absolutely haunting in an almost spiritual way. A perfect fit for the franchise if you ask me. Of course Kozuka’s famous bells make a return in the level up theme and even the game's credits, sounding even better than before. But apparently Kozuka didn’t do all the tracks on the OST (and I have my suspicions about which tracks may have been done by Atlus Sound Team) but ultimately the music is one aspect where Shin Megami Tensei V does not disappoint. It feels like this is the score to the ideal game SMTV fell short of. (Just as an aside about the sound design though: Can we stop with the atrocious voice filters that all the demons use? They rob their lines of any sort of weight every single time. Oh, and play the game with Japanese audio.)

Earlier I mentioned how non plot critical characters harm the setting, but unfortunately the plot critical ones, along with the plot itself, hamstring not just the setting but player agency as a concept. The player spends the bulk of the game pushed around by forces greater than themselves that they may not even agree with. I cannot stress enough how just the concept of Bethel is entirely antithetical to anything this game had going for it. Working for an organization whose goals you only partially understand removes your agency. Working with other people ensures you never feel properly isolated and accountable for your decisions. Exploring the Da’at isn’t your adventure, it's your 9-5 job. You spend so much time doing meaningless work for Bethel that the game retreading Nocturne’s climax of the opposing parties fighting for the right to literally recreate the world came as a surprise to me just by sheer virtue of how poorly it was built up. Of course most Megami Tensei games end like that in some way or another but this game's pacing seriously just does not build to that at all. The first quarter of the game is spent confused as to the nature of the world. The second is a monster of the week story. The third is suddenly an assault on the final bastion of the forces of chaos which is pretty confusing in and of itself because last I checked we were getting smoked. Then, all of a sudden, in one of the games like hour long exposition dumps, the final act is set up to essentially be Nocturne’s Tower of Kagutsuchi. It might sound like I’m paraphrasing but I promise you it feels exactly like that as you play it. An entire half of the game is dedicated to telling you what a Nahobino is and then like 3 finales are crammed into the back half. You have no ability to decide what you do, you have no real stake in the story other than the fact that you want to live, why should you care about anything happening in the narrative? Oh and of course the one area Atlus decides to give the player total control of the story they do so in the worst way possible. In an utterly baffling move for the series, the player's ending is no longer determined by the summation of their decisions throughout their journey but a literal ending select screen. This is some of the worst streamlining I’ve ever seen in a video game. It cheapens every single decision the player makes throughout the game retroactively. You no longer have to roleplay in Shin Megami Tensei V because that’s not what this series is about anymore apparently. The cultural zeitgeist has turned this series into every vapid, reductive, twitter generalization you have ever heard about it. Shin Megami Tensei is a series with cRaZy hard gameplay and penis demons where you kill your friends now. Nothing more.