I finished Shin Megami Tensei V on Hard. I fused and got as many demons as possible in a first run. I aligned with “chaos”.

I always enjoy the ideology-based narrative in SMT, the hilarious humor when talking to demons, the harsh and satirical criticism on mankind and hierarchies, the most interesting symbolism, the world building and lore, the challenging combat and yes, the exploration.

The cutscenes are amazing, better than ever in the MegaTen series. It does have some qualities even a most modern JRPG like Persona 5 Royal did not have. In general, this game looks great, but suffers from performance issues a bit.

My biggest complaint is how same-y the four major areas are. The same assets everywhere: the same buildings, the same ruins, the same cars, the same sand, the same trees and the same streets. Almost no sights or points of interest. They just use different filter effects for each area.

Ginza is a commercial district, but you won’t recognize it as such, not even a little bit. Even after the apocalypse and destruction, you should be able to see that it once was a shopping district. But it looks like any other area in this game. It’s so normal that video games look varied in different areas that I’m actually baffled, disappointed and even a bit angry that a game taking place in Tokyo lacks variation. Honestly, that’s an imposition!

I also think that this game gets a lot easier after the Hydra boss battle. The Essence system, some Miracles and Magatsuhi are too broken. You are literally able to create an almost invincible Nahobino and almost invincible demons early on.

And while this game has two dungeons, I wish they would’ve given us some more for subquests and story. It’s a shame that we can’t enter the Tokyo Tower for example, one of the very very few known sights of Tokyo being in this game.

Sigh… I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, me saying this, but I even like SMT IV: Apocalypse more than SMT V.

i really wish i enjoyed this game as much as everyone else does (or people said i would).

for a game described to me as "metroidvania with precision platforming meets Dark Souls," it really comes out feeling like less than a sum of those parts. in terms of the world design and exploration, the game is great at matching the joy of breaking into every tiny crevasse to find secrets and lore that Dark Souls does. the characters and lightly revealed lore that's steeped in mystery is great. the platforming is serviceable, but whenever the game decides to flip the switch to try and turn into Super Meat Boy (sometimes quite literally with buzzsaws) it feels very disjointed and out of place.

the combat (mainly by way of the bosses) by comparison feels like a chore. even by the end of the game when i had gotten a lot better at maneuvering in fights, most of the boss fights were not engaging or challenging beyond "hope you get the good pattern that allows you to heal". in addition to this, why not be more generous with benches in regards to boss placements?

it's small decisions like this that continued to baffle me as time went on. you get more movement options as the game unfolds, but trekking between areas connected by stags still feels arduous enough to dissuade me from wanting to explore more. i enjoy the lore of the stags, but would fast travelling between benches break the game so much to prevent it from being included?

it's things like this that makes me feel like the game is bloated. this may be a problem of playing the game now that there's 4 extra content patches (give players a way to play the launch version pleaseeeee), but there's just so much in the game that feels like Content For Content's Sake. the game like a love letter to the old metroidvanias the developers loved that has been weighed down by AAA games' addiction to More. i can see the mechanics (literally) taken 1-to-1 from Super Metroid, but i don't see the tightly crafted world, simplicity, or elegance of it. i see a checklist of things to waste time doing rather than a curated experience.