Let me start out the review by saying I do NOT like this game. But ranking it lower than Sonic 06 feels dishonest, so I gave it what I think the objective rating is at 3 stars. It's a completely functional game, but it's vapid and soulless. But trust me I like a good number of actual bad games way more than a mediocre soulless game like Shin Megami Tensei V.

It's crazy how quick the fanbase switched from "SMT stories are good, actually" to "you shouldn't factor in SMT V's story in your review because SMT games are not about the story". What changed? Well, apparently SMT V's story was so bad that the fanbase decided to throw away the entire idea that SMT stories could ever be worthwhile. Now you got a bunch of fans saying that you shouldn't play SMT for the story. Nevermind that entire appeal of the alignment system in SMT games IS. THE. STORY. The excuses that people will make for this mediocre game are insane.

The game lacks much of an identity of its own. It's trying to be Nocturne but it doesn't have the same conditions that made Nocturne work. The music is too catchy and the atmosphere is not oppressive enough to carry a minimalist story. Also, even though the story is minimalist, it's still bad. None of the separate chapters of the game feel consequential to each other. What does helping Sahori with her bullying problems have to do with fighting the demon king? The story events don't go anywhere. The characters are horrible. They're both unlikable and uninteresting. And some characters have an extremely low amount of screentime or just disappear from the story. Also a good portion of the story you can't even take seriously due to Dazai's edgelord transformation. The worldbuilding is bad. You're in the apocalypse but you can freely go back to not-destroyed Tokyo? Lame. The alignment is system is a complete joke. You just choose an ending. And there's a 'True Ending' so I guess that's the only valid choice anyway.

This game SUCKS as an RPG experience for all the things that RPGs usually excel at. And it can take the player anywhere from 50 to 100 hours to beat. Now yes, the combat is still good, but should the game really be considered exceptional for the sole reason that it keeps the same combat system they've been using for 20 years? Press turn is in better games. Just play one of those instead.

There are a bunch of other flaws such as the low quality dungeons, the level scaling, the 4 large areas all looking the same, the performance issues, the exploration feeling underbaked at times...

In the game's favor I can say that it works as a proof of concept for SMT gameplay within an open world.

Shin Megami Tensei V is a shell of an RPG. While the gameplay is the typical SMT fare, nothing about the story or world or characters or dungeons is exemplary of the things that people love about this series. The open world is fun to play around in but exploration stops being exciting when all the areas look the same and the worldbuilding is so dull. The characters, story, and alignment systems are REALLY bad.

Playing a real SMT game isn't enough.
Now the message should be 'play a better SMT game'.

In the days of early PC gaming, the oft repeated query whether you had a powerful rig was "Can it run Crysis?"

Well the year is 2021, nearly 2022, and Nintendo is a few years in to its beautiful marriage of portable and home consoles, the Nintendo Switch. Now we must ask yourself: "Can your Switch Run SMTV?" The answer at the moment, is no.

SMTV Pros:
-Awesome Demon Design
-Cool TMS#FE UI

SMTV Cons:
-Horrendous Performance: Frame drops, odd blurs, defiantly ugly movement
-Camera Control: This was horrendous in the open world
-Atrocious Platforming
-Drab and Boring Open Worlds: Each zone, unlike Nocturne, is a tremendously sized zone-segmented (near) open world that requires traversal to accomplish objectives. It's a needless and lifeless touch to a series that had some awesome success in dungeon design in SMTIII. Enemies fill this open world ad nauseum and make even moving around or trying to find the next place to go an absolute rage inducing nightmare.
-Levelling: I fought every single enemy I saw en route to the first boss, I was still five levels down and was decimated.
-Horrible Maze Design: Just like SMTIII, SMTV returned with some maze/labyrinth action, and just like in Nocturne it is absolutely infuriating and overstays its welcome.
-Underwhelming OST: Given this is SMT and Atlus, I thought the OST would again be something to remember as it had been in Persona and in Nocturne. Unfortunately it was largely forgettable and added little to the overall game.
-Story and Characters: These were rather underwhelming as many other reviewers have said.

All in all, this was just a less exciting or unique experience as SMTIII was. SMTV is much less exciting and adds many frustrating gameplay elements to the between the lore segments, and the lore is largely unfulfilling. Of course this game is hard, and many players look forward to that in SMT, but to me this felt a little too much in the unrewarding sense. I didn't feel rewarded for the grinding I had done or party I had put together as I had in Nocturne.

I try not to regret purchases, but I cannot recommend this game.

Because this game has gathered some controversy now with more and more people talking about the flaws and criticizing it, I am rewriting this review to be more elaborate and to explain better what I dislike about this game. I will leave the original parts of the review commented out.

---- ART DIRECTION ----
>>>>>>>> The art direction is mediocre. Game looks awful on the Switch. They knew this was a Switch exclusive and they should have chosen a gameplay style and art style suitable for the system.<<<<<<<<<<

Art direction in SMT has always been a highlight and Atlus is pretty much one of the most "artistically" focused video game studios out there and always has been, SMT has initially stood out with Kaneko's fantastic demon designs that according to some revolutionized the perception of myth in Japanese otaku circles. Nocturne to this game is one of the best looking games of all time for me. But SMTV completely misses the mark in so many ways.
- The UI is very generic, people have pointed out right away that it looks like a mobile UI and that's because it is true. The theming of the UI has nothing to do with the game itself or its themes. SMTIV's UI looked like the interface of a cheap smartphone, with app-like icons, because it's the interface of your gauntlet, which LITERALLY is a cheap 2013 smartphone. SJ's UI is fantastic and looks like you're seeing the world through the demonica. What the fuck is this? They put a "circles" themeing everywhere but what exactly does it have to do with the game? Where are the circles OUTSIDE the UI? There's nothing circle-like anywhere at all. That sucks on top of the UI just being ugly in general with the same fonts and assets that were created for TMS.
- There is so much meaningless and confusing in the designs of the characters. The triangle/gold theme on Abdiel for example is unnecessary and overdesigned, the patterns on Aogami's body, Nahobino himself. Nahobino is supposed to be Susano-o's true form but he looks absolutely nothing like any depiction or description of Susano-o, there is nothing about him that would make you think he could commit the acts he commited, neither Aogami nor Nahobino himself. All you're left with is a lingering confusing and a feeling of a lack of coherence when it comes to the designs, which are a huge contrast with Nocturne, although was present in IV due to the absence of Kaneko as well
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Every area looks the same. The same cars. The same buildings. The same sand. The same guard rails all the way to the end. There are only very small things that are actually unique to each area. SMTIV, on the 3DS, managed to make areas look unique much better than this. If you go to Shinjuku you actually see buildings that the actual Shinjuku has in IV. Ginza just looks exactly like Tamachi except in a dark filter, when it was supposed to be this massive commercial district in the past, but you see literally nothing commercial there, no former shops, no malls, nothing. The only thing that makes Ginza or Akihabara feel like Ginza or Akihabara is a sidequest of a Mokoi asking you to collect otaku items, which are only glowing balls on the map. It's very ugly. For me, that kind of stuff is the very definition of soulless. It's the very opposite of attention to detail or care. I'd much rather have a map of 4 buildings that actually looked like Ginza rather than a massive map of recycled assets. In SMT1, if you get to Ginza, it's a massive underground area with TONS of NPCs to talk to and every shop imaginable. This is one of the worst, if not even the worst aspect of the game, and if only this was fixed, if the environments were interesting in any way or varied or rooted in the actual Tokyo, I could have enjoyed this game a lot. But the combination of godawful, zero story and godawful, uninteresting, bland, generic environments were a little too much. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

--- STORY ---

The story is utterly laughable and an insult to writing. Definitely some of the worst "story" and "writing" ever put out in the realm of JRPGs unfortunately. It's genuinely hilarious how Atlus West's twitter banner says that they release "story-driven role playing experiences" or something and then release a game whose story is so laughably bad, the only time people defend it is by saying "well at least it barely exists haha". But it does exist, and what exists is terrible.
Analyzing it would take too much space so I will just list 20 issues I have with the story in bullet points.
- Strictly tell and don't show. We are told Tao is charismatic (she never does something charismatic), we are told Ichiro live streams (that never comes up again) we are told Yuzuwho cares about his sister (never mentions her after the 2nd act of the game), we are told Koshimizu is a prime minister everyone loves and respects (we never see him do any politics), we are told Yakumo distributed demon summoning programs (nothing comes from it) etc.
- Ichiro has a cringe (and extremely funny) Vergil scene
- Yuzuru only has a single line ("we must save tokyo!" which he repeats a gazillion times throughout the game, he never explains why he cares so much about tokyo)
- Amanozako could have been a vehicle to explore aogami's protectiveness towards the MC, nothing comes of it
- Amanozako is curious about humans and asks questions, nothing comes of it
- Tao hangs out with you for 20 hours, in act 2 and act 4, never says a single word that could give her some character
- nahobino sacrifices himself to save tao even though tao never said a single word and didn't do anything to make you care for her, and all that when this is a game series that's all about self-inserting into the protagonist and seeing him as an extension to yourself, and yet he does something completely irrational from the player's point of view
- the bullying arc begins too suddenly without making you even care about any of the characters or the school in the first place, no set-up whatsoever
- the nahobino concept is trash because it devalues kaneko's demon designs as "not their true form" which makes everything confusing
- the dialogue, especially of the alignment reps, is cliched and terrible and beyond one or two lines neither point of view gets properly fleshed out or justified, which was the same in nocturne but that game made up for it with artistically impressive and intriguing cutscenes that invited you to make up the gaps in their ideology yourself
- you're bethel's lapdog for the entirety of the game and it doesn't make sense why the mc would just do whatever the PM is telling him to do, especially hwen he's sent to kill the demon king when he could've been a chaos-aligned mc
- tao becomes a goddess, no explaination
- amanozako changes her voice and personality, no explaination
- ichiro can suddenly teleport, no explaination
- "japan has had a long history with proto-fiends", no explaination
- proto-fiends are artificial demons, no explaination how that even works or makes sense at all, these are clearly spiritual beings made of magatsuhi, not fucking aliens like in evangelion that you can just clone
- yakumo has a cringe "demons killed my entire family" backstory
anyway you get the idea the story is absolute garbage if you don't think it's garbage you just haven't paid enough attention.

----- GAMEPLAY ----

The gameplay is good. It's not flawless. If the gameplay were truly perfect then I could have looked over the other issues but it is not. Bosses are fun. Encounters on the overworld are pointless and only there to recruit demons, you can run past everything otherwise. Hard mode is appropriately difficult - for a while only. Yakumo in Ginza is the last difficult boss. Customization got much improved, fusion got much improved and is more easy than ever, the affinity system got improved and magatsuhi from the player side is a pretty cool tech, albeit unbalanced.

The level-design is generally great, varied from area to area, with secrets to find. The problem with it is that every area looks the same, thus exploration isn't as rewarding, but I will not count gameplay to that for now. Traversal and movement is fun and sliding down sand dunes never gets old.

Now to the negatives
- dampeners turn Magatsuhi from a big scary threat you have to prepare for to a free-turn for you, which is honestly hilarious and sad.
- Some demons are clearly superior to the rest due to their unique moves and this is the first game in the series where it's recommended you keep a level 45 demon all the way to the end. yoshitsune and idun in particular are too overpowered, limiting creativity
- the map is the worst i have ever seen in any game ever, practically useless for navigation
- the lack of visual variety makes traversal a pain, since so much of it looks exactly the same
- bosses lack gimmicks or unique features you have to play around outside of like lahmu and hydra, which is very disappointing
- low number of demons for a 2021 game. they really only added 30 demons not from persona 5? really? nocturne had 190 demons most of which were done from scratch. this game reused almost the entire roster from persona 5 and only created 30 extra ones?
- the dungeons are UNGODLY bad. wow!!! i have never seen such shitty dungeons in a modern JRPG and I played tales of arise. the final dungeon is so bland and anti-climactic i genuinely couldn't believe that this was it. what the hell, etrian odyssey dev team?

The gameplay is good, but not flawless, it's simply not nearly good enough to outweight the GAZILLION of other issues the game has.


>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The level design is pretty good. The level designer tried his best making each area feel unique when he was given the same 5 assets for each of them. Man, I don't envy that guy. He deserved to work on a better game. I can just imagine the level designers begging for more assets but whatever development problem they had that made this game end up such a mess must have denied them that.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Character designs are very good from a technical level. They look cool, they look handsome and pretty. Doi did a fantastic job there, too bad the writers and director let him down by not fleshing out any of the characters he designed, and making a certain heroine more obnoxious than even IVA characters
And as mentioned earlier making a story that is incoherent with the designs. (The designs came first, the story second, it was rewritten multiple times)

-----------TECHNICAL-------------
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The game runs at, pretty much, 25FPS. It sometimes runs at 30FPS when you are lucky. The menus are laggy. Sometimes the game just stands still for 5 seconds in combat and you wonder if you softlocked your game.

The OST and the dub is compressed, and sounds awful on the Switch. I couldn't believe they would do that.

I was extremely hyped for this game. I spent ungodly amount of hours soaking up all information about this game that was available. I even ratio'd the IGN reviewer for unfairly comparing it to Persona 5 because I thought it was an unfair comparision. But in the end it's a very mediocre game and after playing it I don't give a rats ass about it anymore. The only thing this game has going for it is QoL features and streamlined gameplay. I thought I only cared about gameplay before I played this game, and this game really opened my eyes that this is not true. I'm still not a story-focused person, but I want an experience where everything fits together for a coherent, convincing vision. This game is the opposite of that. The sidequests are barren and repetitive, there are five quests which are just about "kill this guy or that guy" and they are THE BEST QUESTS IN THE GAME, because they have some flavor text at least. The Tokyo overworld is bland and there is nothing to do there, why even add that shit? Because everything looks the same, the more you play, the more you get tired of the visuals, and they turn from "wow this looks nice" to "wow, this is so ugly man". Small things like, why is all of the loot only to be found in vending machines when IVA had such an interesting system?

The game just overall comes off as cheap, passionless, like nobody who worked on this game actually cared, nobody sat down to write some additional dialogue for some quests or the main characters to flesh them out, nobody bothered to create more than 3 unique assets per area, nobody cared to make you actually find something interesting in the Tokyo overworld, nobody cared about the trillion of plot issues, nobody cared that you get hayataro at level 40 right before the end of the game, nobody cared the conditions for the "kill all demons" ending is "be the nicest person ever to demons, always help them and be on their side", just nobody cared about this game it seems.