Shin Megami Tensei V is a strange beast, one I equally recommend and advise against playing. It's certainly the most approachable of the mainline games, making an excellent jumping in point for those who have been curious about the series, whether they have familiarity with the larger franchise or not. However, SMTV also lacks a certain amount of depth and atmosphere that prior games have in droves, potentially making for a lackluster experience for those already initiated and a poor representation of what SMT is for those that aren't.
Gameplay is, in a word, broken. Broken in the player's favor, mind you. It's the easiest mainline game, and quite possibly one of the easier titles in the broader franchise. Early on the in the game you'll learn about Magatsuhi skills, which are essentially special abilities unique between classes of demons which you can pop off once a meter fills (the conditions for which vary and can be amplified to make the process faster.) However, you'll never lean on a magatsuhi skill quite as much as the Omagatoki: Critical skill, which you get quite early. This skill makes all attacks, magical or physical, strike as a critical hit. In addition to dealing improved damage, critical hits buy you an additional action in battle, potentially taking your 4 standard actions and maxing them out at 8. Now, just dump skill points into the physical stat, invest in moves that scale with HP (at least until later in the game) and bring in some demons that can pump your HP over its limit while buffing your attack and you'll start clearing bosses in a minute or two. At times I had to play poorly just to get any sort of a challenge out of SMTV, and anyone who has been told simply to not do something trivializing in a game can attest to how hard it is to not use the tools given to you.
This is in stark contrast to SMTIV, where the early game has the habit of crushing new players, making for a very discouraging experience. I can't pretend to know what the development of these games has been like, but between the PS2 era - the proverbial Golden Age of SMT - and now, it seems like Atlus can't quite get the balancing right with the mainline games. Odd considering it feels great in Persona.
Speaking of, Persona fans might thumb their noses at the story in SMTV. Not that there's much of it. For some that might be a problem, but I prefer the fairly bereft storytelling of Nocturne, so it's fine by me. Unfortunately, the narrative itself is kind of dull and the characters never really land. Picking a faction is a key aspect of all mainline SMT games, and the success of these branching storylines hinges on the strength of their ideological arguments and respective representatives. SMTV, however, doesn't hit you with meaningful choices or consequences until the very end of the game, and by then you'll only get to know one particular rep, Dazai, really well. Even then, he's written as a pathetic mewling simp who only at the 11th hour grows a backbone in a heel turn that's hilarious for all the wrong reasons. There's so much wasted potential, and it's unfortunate to see V falter where the previous four games have been so consistently strong.
There's also a distinct lack of dungeons, which I'll admit I am bothered by. This might be a weird sticking point as SMT and even Persona haven't been well regarded for dungeon design until Persona 5. However, SMTV's main four maps are all just city streets with varying amounts of sand and a different color pallet. It gets boring very quickly. There's so much that could be done with interior locations to break up the monotony, like exploring a hospital, a subway system, a government building... Yeah, they've been done before in other games, but the few glimpses we get in this particular aesthetic are great, and it's a shame they didn't explore them more fully. That's not to say there aren't any dungeons at all, of course. There's a few, but they're all pretty boring and regressive in their design, so maybe it's a good thing Atlus didn't put in even more. I don't know. All-in-all, I suppose I just didn't find Da'at to be particularly interesting.
Ryota Kozuka is a fantastic composer but I do not think SMTV is their best work. There's a few great stand out tracks, the bulk of which being in the rather large assortment of battle themes, but many of the other tracks failed to illicit any kind of response from me. They're just kinda there, filling up the space.
The SMT fanboy in me wants to at least say this game is decent, and I do think that others might get a lot more out of it than I did, but I really can't help but feel letdown by SMTV. Perhaps I set my expectations too high and some of my disappointment is undue, but I feel disappointed all the same, and it's really hard to shake that feeling that V could've been so much better. It's still a far cry from IV, which is possibly my least favorite in the mainline series for reasons I will inevitably get into once I finish my current playthrough, so at least it has that going for it!
Gameplay is, in a word, broken. Broken in the player's favor, mind you. It's the easiest mainline game, and quite possibly one of the easier titles in the broader franchise. Early on the in the game you'll learn about Magatsuhi skills, which are essentially special abilities unique between classes of demons which you can pop off once a meter fills (the conditions for which vary and can be amplified to make the process faster.) However, you'll never lean on a magatsuhi skill quite as much as the Omagatoki: Critical skill, which you get quite early. This skill makes all attacks, magical or physical, strike as a critical hit. In addition to dealing improved damage, critical hits buy you an additional action in battle, potentially taking your 4 standard actions and maxing them out at 8. Now, just dump skill points into the physical stat, invest in moves that scale with HP (at least until later in the game) and bring in some demons that can pump your HP over its limit while buffing your attack and you'll start clearing bosses in a minute or two. At times I had to play poorly just to get any sort of a challenge out of SMTV, and anyone who has been told simply to not do something trivializing in a game can attest to how hard it is to not use the tools given to you.
This is in stark contrast to SMTIV, where the early game has the habit of crushing new players, making for a very discouraging experience. I can't pretend to know what the development of these games has been like, but between the PS2 era - the proverbial Golden Age of SMT - and now, it seems like Atlus can't quite get the balancing right with the mainline games. Odd considering it feels great in Persona.
Speaking of, Persona fans might thumb their noses at the story in SMTV. Not that there's much of it. For some that might be a problem, but I prefer the fairly bereft storytelling of Nocturne, so it's fine by me. Unfortunately, the narrative itself is kind of dull and the characters never really land. Picking a faction is a key aspect of all mainline SMT games, and the success of these branching storylines hinges on the strength of their ideological arguments and respective representatives. SMTV, however, doesn't hit you with meaningful choices or consequences until the very end of the game, and by then you'll only get to know one particular rep, Dazai, really well. Even then, he's written as a pathetic mewling simp who only at the 11th hour grows a backbone in a heel turn that's hilarious for all the wrong reasons. There's so much wasted potential, and it's unfortunate to see V falter where the previous four games have been so consistently strong.
There's also a distinct lack of dungeons, which I'll admit I am bothered by. This might be a weird sticking point as SMT and even Persona haven't been well regarded for dungeon design until Persona 5. However, SMTV's main four maps are all just city streets with varying amounts of sand and a different color pallet. It gets boring very quickly. There's so much that could be done with interior locations to break up the monotony, like exploring a hospital, a subway system, a government building... Yeah, they've been done before in other games, but the few glimpses we get in this particular aesthetic are great, and it's a shame they didn't explore them more fully. That's not to say there aren't any dungeons at all, of course. There's a few, but they're all pretty boring and regressive in their design, so maybe it's a good thing Atlus didn't put in even more. I don't know. All-in-all, I suppose I just didn't find Da'at to be particularly interesting.
Ryota Kozuka is a fantastic composer but I do not think SMTV is their best work. There's a few great stand out tracks, the bulk of which being in the rather large assortment of battle themes, but many of the other tracks failed to illicit any kind of response from me. They're just kinda there, filling up the space.
The SMT fanboy in me wants to at least say this game is decent, and I do think that others might get a lot more out of it than I did, but I really can't help but feel letdown by SMTV. Perhaps I set my expectations too high and some of my disappointment is undue, but I feel disappointed all the same, and it's really hard to shake that feeling that V could've been so much better. It's still a far cry from IV, which is possibly my least favorite in the mainline series for reasons I will inevitably get into once I finish my current playthrough, so at least it has that going for it!