A lot of gamers leading up to SMT5's release had a lot of questions along the line of "How is this going to top SMT3? SMT4? Apocalypse???"

It doesn't.

I'd explain myself, but you're going to have to wait three more years for this review to be rereleased with more content.

I saw a youtube video about this and I knew I had to play it I am a sucker for gimmicky horror games so I immediately went on eBay to get one and they are surprisingly expensive there whatever happened to eBay being like a cheap place to buy stuff but whatever luckily my local used game stores ships stock from there other stores and I managed to grab a black wii balance board for just 10buckaroos I didn't even know they came in black so used the image of the white wii fit one but anyways surprisingly easy to connect it to the dolphin to play the the fan translation of this ironic I own 3 wii's 2 of them who could play this and I still choose to play on emulators lol... now on to the actual game the gimmick is pretty obvious it's YOU DO THE WALKING lol because of course and honestly you do need to play this with the balance board you can just use a controller but its too basic for that the game is very much built in a way to accommodate its unique controls it also has wii fps aiming that is quite slow honestly I feel like most of my deaths were because that are just running straight into an enemies as they are all one hit kill enemies no falling your arms around here or shaking the controller here you die when you get caught and I think its better for it the game is not hard and the checkpoints are plenty that this never felt frustrating that being said I definitely still felt that if the controls were better I probably would never have died in the game aside from some dark souls level of cheeky enemy jump scares. It also helps that the controls are fairly simple, you walk and you look around and you click on things sometimes to pick up an object or 99% time to open a door, there are not a lot of puzzles most of I think the puzzle like design comes from the game kinda playing around with you and trying to scare you in situations where it blocks your path with a ghost and you finding a way around it, only a couple of levels really differ from this idea and while this could get old the game is short enough that it never does, speaking of the shortness of the game the game is divided into levels ones on the story side and others on the case side both of them you have to do to finish the game and honestly they are very similar both in length and design not sure why they arent all just lumped together my guess does not go beyond it maybe be an excuse to re-use levels since you do see quite a bit of overlap of locations but the whole game takes place within a relatively confined location so its not egregious. Speaking of that then the story its a very typical Japanese horror story the stand out here being the game telling you to name the characters in the game after your real life friends 5 of them which I am sorry game but your asking too much idk 5 people jokes aside its cute I get whats its trying to do with making the characters in the game in some be people you know in real life but it doesn't really work and it just ends up feeling like the gimmick that it is. graphicly this also adds to a bit of a weird quirk with this game as the friends have a completely different art style the rest of the game really standing out but honestly I didn't mind it since It did make for moments in the game where it created like a sense of safety that ofc the game ends up playing with as well. overall I was surprised by the quality of this game it works in its simplicity, one of my biggest issues with another gimmicky horror game Rise of Nightmares on the Xbox Kinect was how over-complicated the controls and the problems it created with making a playable game but this is very playable you walk and the walking is for the most part responsive and you run and that's responsive as well as someone who is fairly used to wii aiming from having grown up with it that also didn't bother me at all. it's not an easy game recommend given you do have to jump a lot of hoops to play it given its a Japanese game with a fan translation but I think if you are like me and you enjoy playing gimmicky things and you're always looking for the next weird horror game then definitely give this a shot just be sure to use a balance board I do think this would be rather boring with a controller only.
also, final stat after finishing the game the main menu said I had done 13k steps how realistic is that idk but the amount seems believable for the length of the game a little over 3hours