"this game fucking sucks play monkey ball instead"

SMT V is easily the Megaten game with the most potential. All the pieces are there for a fantastic game; amazing gameplay, great boss design, good story elements, banging soundtrack, and open areas to explore. However, the game falls flat on delivering some of these elements, leading to a game that lived up to expectations but had the potential to be so much more.

To start off, the best thing about this game is easily the visuals. This game is not only fantastic looking for a Switch game but for any game in general. It has a specific style that it just nails. The character and demon models in particular are incredible, they're super expressive and well detailed. I especially love how well each artist's styles were maintained in the demons. The Kaneko demons are clearly Kaneko while Doi's are clearly his, they let each exist as one. And speaking of that, the demons in this game literally look like the drawings hopped off the paper they were drawn on. They're all scarily accurate, and some of them I genuinely wasn't able to tell if it was a 2D image or a 3D model inside of the Party menu. The modelers did a fantastic job and I can't wait to see more in this style.

Another thing I loved was the gameplay. While not my favorite in Megaten (IV/A still hold that), it's a very good gameplay system nonetheless. Press Turn is always a plus, and I'm glad it's been established as SMT's combat system. It's easily the best JRPG combat system I've ever used, adding a perfect amount of strategy and intensity to JRPG content without incorporating action. There were a few changes made to Press Turn, the most notable being how passes work. Rather than passes either halving the next turn icon, it will always half any available full icon before halving halves. This change is great and adds a new area of strategy to fights, without making them easy. Speaking of strategy, this game now lets you choose your exact turn order in the Party menu, rather then relying on agility. I love this change a lot, as it removes the feeling of getting fucked over for having a bad turn order. And trust me, in some of these fights, you NEED to have a good turn order, at least on hard mode.

Outside of Press Turn, the combat system is pretty much the same; weaknesses, buffs and debuffs, status effects, passive skills, demons, etc. The only notable difference is with buffs and debuffs. Not only did they split them into both single target and multitarget versions, but they also made them only last 3 turns. However, you can stack them twice. I'm not 100% sure how to feel about this. On one hand, it easily makes buffs and debuffs more balanced, and adds more of a "fight" to keep them up. On the other hand though, it makes SMT lose a bit of its identity, as it's obvious it took inspiration from Persona. Not that that's inherently a bad thing, but I feel like having the combat systems feel different is important. SMT V does alleviate some of this though by keeping the stacking (though only up to 2 now) while also letting you use passive skills like Boon Boost to increase the amount of turns they last. I'll have to replay a game with the traditional SMT buff/debuff system to truly get a good feel on it, but for now I'm just in the middle about it.

The battles themselves are great too. I can't say for certain this experience was universal, as I played on hard mode, but I liked the way the bosses were designed. I feel like they took a note from Strange Journey's boss design, where it feels like every boss needs a new team layout to get through. I feel like this game doesn't execute it as well as SJ though, as the bosses in this game feel very spongey at times. It got to the point where I was exhausted from fighting bosses and having to reshape my team for every encounter, though once again that might be a fault of me choosing hard on my first playthrough.

Now is where my opinion on the game starts to falter slightly. The exploration is a good start for this. Going into this game, I wasn't expecting Strange Journey levels of dungeon design, which has the best designed dungeons in any game I've ever played. I was realistically hoping for a middle ground between IV and Nocturne, with some more competent dungeons but still a lot of overworld. Instead, I feel like it didn't even reach IV. There are a total of two dungeons in this game. One is actually pretty good with a fun gimmick, while the other has a really cool idea for a gimmick but does literally nothing with it. Outside of the dungeons, there's 4 main overworlds to explore. The first one was actually quite fun to explore, there's a lot to explore and fun stuff like demon caves and habitats. However after the first area, the design starts to fall off. The overworld stays the same, but it feels like there's less little things to find. You're still just walking around big spaces full of sand and abandoned buildings. Hell, even the fairy village, which I hoped would look slightly different, was still literally just abandoned buildings and sand but with a white filter. This is easily the most disappointing factor, and I wasn't expecting that much. I will admit, I am partly biased, as after SJ I've had an itch for a game with similar dungeon design but I've never found any.

And now, the moment we've all been waiting for; the story. And yeah, the story in this game isn't that good. However thankfully for me, after Apocalypse, I didn't go in with much expectations for a good story, so I wasn't that disappointed. What sucks though is, as I alluded to earlier, I think this game had the most potential for a good story. All the pieces are there for one of the best stories in Megaten; Lucifer kills God, and now the throne is open for anyone to take, as long as they are a Nahobino, which is the completed form of a God and their Knowledge, aka humans. All the humans are kept in a fake Tokyo, which was created by God, however after God's death, the Tokyo is starting to disappear and collide with the Da'at, the real state of Tokyo. Because of this, Gods are now finding their Knowledge, and they begin to fight for the throne. In this war of Gods, you have to ascend. This is a great structure for a story, however the game just doesn't do much with it. The characters in particular just never do anything. One of my favorite parts of SMT is watching people get placed into insane apocalyptic scenarios filled with demons, and seeing them get influenced by the world around them, eventually turning into ideologic extremists who would stop at nothing to change the world into their vision. SMT V tries that... kind of? None of the characters really go to the extreme besides Dazai. Dazai is easily the best of the main cast, as you do somewhat watch him become extreme. However, the change is extremely sudden with the most comically stupid cutscene of him throwing away a hat that says "Sucker" on it before gaining confidence. Think back to Strange Journey's characters. You have Jimenez, who is a relatively normal guy, if a bit crass, and Zelenin, who is also pretty normal, if a bit strict. You watch them both fall into the pits of their alignments; Jimenez finding Bugaboo and gaining an attachment to Demons and chaos, and Zelenin talking with Mastema and getting an affection for God and law. While I don't believe SJ has an amazing story, it does its job and supplements the game itself well. SMT V feels like it wants to do that, while also having the deeper lore of Nocturne, however it just doesn't. I could go on about the story forever, however so has everyone else, so I'll end it there.

The endings in this game are actually really good. Everything from the end of the Temple of Infinity and onward is actually quite good, and easily the part of the game I enjoyed most. However, the Neutral and True Neutral endings have problems. Neutral sucks in this game, as you're basically cucked out of a final boss. Tsukuyomi is a good fight, but not as a final boss. The ending is also quite unsatisfying, and you don't even get to see what happens afterwards. True Neutral is much better, however there is a major problem with it. To achieve True Neutral, you have to do some side quests. This is fine, as these side quests are actually quite good and provide some of the more interesting stories in this game. However, the side quests they make you do don't make sense with the route they're placed in. The goal of True Neutral is to basically kill all demons and Gods forever, and to create a world only for humans. This is fine, and probably overall the best ending, however the game forces you to do side quests where you befriend demons like Khonsu, Demeter, and Fionn Mac Cumhaill, characterizing all of them. I genuinely don't understand how they didn't see this huge contradiction. The only quest that makes sense being here is Shiva's, as he literally plans to destroy the entire universe. Outside of that problem, the ending itself is still quite good. The fight with Lucifer II in particular is incredible, though I don't think it was balanced well. To do this fight, you HAVE to beat Shiva, who is MUCH more challenging then Lucifer. The only thing that got me in Lucifer's fight was the final Morning Star, but that's only because I obliterated him so quickly due to my build to see it before, and I survived either way.

To end it on a positive note, the soundtrack was as good as ever. It took a while to grow on me, especially tracks like that weird Indian club song that plays on the Ishtar fight, however after hearing the Fionn/Shohei fight theme, I fell in love with the soundtrack instantly. There's a crazy number of battle themes in this game and all of them are scarily good. The overworld themes are also so good, with most of them just adding this great atmosphere. Highlight of the OST goes to the Shiva boss theme though. It's a very moody track that makes Shiva's fight incredibly atmospheric and hopeless, but also tense.

Overall, despite my issues with the game, it's still a solid
megaten game. The issues in this game aren't as big compared to its fantastic combat, visuals, and music. This game also does have it's moments, and those moments are honestly really good. If this game had better story and exploration, it could easily be one of the best Megaten games, but for now it kinda feels like an awkward transition back into home console Megaten.

Edit: Just learned about the level scaling in this game. And Jesus, it's bad. If you don't know, this game added a level scaling system, so that if you are just a handful of levels below or above a boss, your stats will be heavily decreased or increased respectively. If you can't see why this is bad, let me explain.

In past SMT games (at least the ones I played), all that mattered in battle was the stats of your characters. You did have a level, however the levels in these games were basically just a number to provide a barrier to your next stat increase. If you wanted to, you could stack all your points into one stat, meaning you could have lets say a Strength stat that's as high as late game during the middle of the game. This allowed for a lot of flexibility in fights, and made it so that you could clear the game at relatively low levels if you wanted too. In SMT V, however, you cannot. You HAVE to be very close to the level of the demon you're fighting. And even then, if the stat punishment wasn't that bad, I wouldn't mind. But no, you do barely any damage if you're even 5 levels below the boss. This is genuinely terrible design.

The only reason I was able to avoid this is because I played on hard mode. Whenever I found myself having trouble with an encounter, my first thought wasn't "Oh, my level is too low", but rather "Oh, my strategy is bad. I'm going to change Demons. Oh, look at that, there's a demon that's perfect for this fight that's only 2 levels away. I'm going to grind for a bit so I can fuse it". This mentality made me completely avoid the problem of level scaling accidentally.

While the combat system is still well made outside of it, and I had PLENTY of fun with it, this just forces grinding and takes away a huge chunk of replayability and openness previous SMT games had, for no reason.