Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

If there's one consistent trend you can ding Atlus for, it's their love of enhanced rereleases, with a modest amount of extra content, a healthy level of QoL, a new character or two, and a new price tag. It's certainly consistent enough that even Sega has noted that it's harming their sales. Still, while it's always a bit hit or miss if it's worth picking up and replaying an Atlus RPG when it gets the obligatory enhanced edition and port, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance more than justifies the double dip and is well worth it if you never got it back on Switch. The mainline SMT games are relatively broad in their overall style and focus compared to the popular Persona branch of the family tree. You can generally assume that a SMT game sticks you in the middle of (or after) the apocalypse, left to fend for yourself by making a party of a handful of human allies and a lot of demons, and generally deals with What Comes Next, often a factional battle for the right to decide which moral alignment or philosophy will create a new world. SMTV sticks in this lane; your student character finds himself in a ruined desert wasteland (the Netherworld) with indications that Tokyo was destroyed in the apocalypse 18 years prior, and the journey peels back what exactly happened and who's jockeying for the right to claim the throne of creation and start the world's next cycle. The actual contours of the lore in SMTV are an interesting take on creation and divine mythologies, even if the game ends up being story light at times, and centers around demigods known as Nahobino, fusions of humans and demons. Your character becomes Nahobino at the start of the game by fusing with Aogami, an artificial deity, and gains both a healthy set of protagonist powers and an absolutely incredible head of hair. From there you explore the Netherworld, fighting and recruiting allies, doing a whole bunch of demon fusion, finding items, and so forth. One of the main swerves with the Vengeance edition is the presence of an entirely new story campaign, and it's just as big as the original. The original game's story, known as the Canon of Creation, is still there and playable, and focuses primarily on the philosophical and factional conflicts around the recreation of the world. It's interesting enough and functional and if you've never played SMTV, it's still a pretty good baseline for things. The curveball is the brand new Canon of Vengeance route. While there is some overlap of the Creation route, the Vengeance route introduces an entirely new set of adversaries seeking revenge for ancient wrongs, curves the plot quite appreciably, and even places you in entirely new areas for the middle third of the game. Vengeance also introduces a new main character in Yoko Hiromine, a delightful addition to the cast and effective Chaos alignment representative; she's smart, has a dry sense of humor, hates cars, and asks a girl she's known for two minutes if she would be willing to commit murder to stop school bullying. Yoko's great. A new player wouldn't be lost playing the Vengeance route first, but it's definitely a harder experience and in many ways feels like a fun remixed twist on the story and campaign meant to keep you guessing. When so much of the time an enhanced release of an Atlus game throws one or two more moderately sized dungeons at you and calls it a day, an entire new campaign and content supporting it is an impressive level of commitment here and makes it easy to recommend the new release if you liked the original. Regardless of which route you choose, SMTV follows the same general gameplay trajectory. Instead of being a set of linear dungeons or small areas to explore, V scales up and is mostly set in a few large regions. It's not full open world design, as your path through the regions is still somewhat linear, but there's a ton of secrets and items to find, loopbacks, quests to find and solve, and general freedom to travel where you need. It feels manageable but still rewards diligence. SMTV doesn't lean on random battles, but instead populates these areas with demons for you either to directly engage, ambush, or avoid; it's very possible to fight a relatively small number of normal battles and instead level and power up from the abundant number of boss fights and quests scattered across the game. You'll recruit and fuse demons to flesh out your party and best prepare for the battles ahead using relatively standard franchise conversation processes, and there's hundreds of possible demons to interact with and fight or use. SMTV also follows from other mainline SMT games and gives you full freedom to customize your Nahobino, both in terms of stat allocations but also choosing which skills you want to slot in, which affinities you want to prioritize, and which resistances and weaknesses are most manageable at present. There's a lot of flexibility and replayability here and the sense of growth over time is very well done. The combat system is your standard-at-this-point Press Turn system with a few tweaks but it's accessible yet instantly familiar if you've played SMT, Persona, or Metaphor in the last fifteen years. The Vengeance release of the game further fleshes things out with a bunch of content and quality of life enhancements across both storylines. There's more demons, more sidequests, more new boss fights, more active and passive skills to learn, and there's new passive 'miracles' to grant your Nahobino and party new capabilities . Every demon in the game has a new inherent passive ability that can have dramatic impacts on battle performance and lead to new party building considerations. There's new key items you can get that unlock the equivalent of the fusion spells from prior games - special abilities that can be used if you have specific sets of demons in your frontline or reserve. Map traversal is easier with a new rail system that grants you point to point shortcuts to new hidden areas and between different parts of the main region maps. You can save anywhere you want now. A new "Demon Haunt" feature lets you chat with your demons and get extra items or power boosts on the side. Overall pretty much every aspect of gameplay has been touched and improved for the better. Much like the original release, the presentation values are good, if a bit small in scale at times due to the original Switch hardware. Demons look great, animations are good, the maps are a little bit samey but have enough twists to them that it's still pleasant to engage. The voice acting is reasonably solid. The real winner here is the soundtrack, which is just full of wonderful tracks, ranging from peaceful ethereal songs to one of the most diverse sets of high energy combat tracks you'll ever find. The Vengeance campaign adds even more of them and it's definitely a game to keep music volume maxed out for; there's hours of great battle music to just enjoy and it's one of those situations where a really great album happens to come with a cool game on the side. You can point your finger at some of the pacing issues that SMTV has and retains in this edition, and if you want to take full advantage of the variety of fusions available here you'll probably do a lot of extra relic and treasure hunting over the course of your game. The story can still be a bit light or thin at times. Difficulty can spike unexpectedly at certain points. If you don't like combat heavy RPGs, this definitely won't be for you. All this said though, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is a fantastic game that's worth a look for anyone who likes console flavored RPGs and is even worth a look if you played through the original 2021 release. There's a lot of game here waiting.

if you hate yourself and love hardcores rpgs this is your good start of the game also the demons are very very...very good looking, especially the masked ones, just saying~

悪魔のお尻が煽情的ですが誘惑に負けてはなりません 天使のお尻も魅力的です

Having played Atlus games for the first time in recent years, and really enjoying Metaphor: ReFantazio, Persona 5 Royal, and Persona 3 Reload, the Shin Megami Tensei series seemed like a good place for me to continue exploring their work. Unfortunately, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance didn’t click for me the way that the other Atlus games did. My main issue with Shin Megami Tensei V was that it became incredibly repetitive to play. While the minute-to-minute gameplay was very fun, there just wasn’t enough else going on to break up the similar battles and frequent fetch quests. In some ways, this felt a bit like the problem I had with Persona 3 Reload: Episode Aigis. While I really enjoyed the main game in Persona 3 Reload, I found the relentless dungeon crawling in Episode Aigis much less fun. The turn based battle system is great, as is usual for Atlus games. In order to find success with the press-turn mechanic, you need to think about fusing demons and building a team that can account for a variety of different enemy weaknesses. Every time you fuse a new demon, you need to ensure that you’re selecting a set of skills that not only are strong individually but also complement the rest of the team you’re bringing along. I also enjoyed the system of getting stronger through miracles, which are unlocked via a currency you find from exploring the world. Being able to afford a new powerful miracle felt like a great reward for exploration, and was one of the highlights of the game. For me, having the life-sim sections of the Persona games and Metaphor: ReFantazio alternate between dungeon sections really helped to keep things fresh, and avoid that burned out feeling that I was getting from Shin Megami Tensei V. Persona 5 Royal really nails that for me by not only frequently changing up what you are doing, but also by giving each dungeon its own unique theme. That contrasts with the very similar desert environments and slowly changing cast of demons that eventually burned me out. I found the story of Shin Megami Tensei V uncompelling, and it wasn’t driving me forward to keep finding out what was happening. Without anything pushing me forward, the fun individual elements of the game weren’t enough to keep me from bouncing off of it. The point where I decided to move on was after completing a fetch quest, only for the quest giver to immediately ambush and one-shot my team before I had a chance to save. I hadn’t lost a ton of progress, but it did make me realize that the moment-to-moment gameplay just wasn’t enough fun for me to want to redo work I had already finished.

1st game to teach you that you should save after every breath as god could decide to kill you at any point in time

I was hooked by the initial trailer of the original SMT V, so much so that it became one of the main reasons to get a Nintendo Switch. The game took its sweet time to come out ever since that trailer, the story and characters were also unfortunately lacking, but the atmosphere, aesthetic and combat were some of the best I have ever encountered. The game occupied a part of my memory and never left ever since. While the classic Atlus rerelease strategy is hard to defend, the original game was a prime candidate for an improved version. Learning that SMT V was going to receive an enhanced edition on multiple platforms was very exciting. The game runs and looks great on PC and the Steam Deck. Vengeance brings an absolute ton of improvements. New campaign, soundtrack, sidequests, demons and so much more. There are Magatsuhi Rails, which make getting around in the maps much smoother, Demon Haunt for hanging out with demons, which have also received a lot of opportunities for additional lore, unique abilities and customization. The original story, Canon of Creation left a lot to be desired. The general premise was pretty cool, but the story beats and characters did not have much impact. Vengeance, while definitely better, is not quite there either. The story begins similarly and slowly starts to branch out into its own thing. You actually have guest characters in your party every now and then, which sneaks in a good chunk of new character interactions throughout the story. While there are more interesting story beats and more good character interactions in this route, some aspects, like Dazai’s character, have not been fixed. I think that relying on the foundations set by the original story, instead of making a completely new one is part of the reason that Canon of Vengeance also suffers similar issues. But I do understand that making a completely new thing was not really sustainable. The gameplay loop was endlessly entertaining to me. SMT V introduced multiple open zones as a replacement of classic dungeons and while I understand that not everyone liked this decision, I definitely did. Starting off, controlling the Nahobino felt very good. The controls were responsive, sliding down hills felt very cool and the slash attack very smooth to use. Navigating the world felt incredibly good considering that this is still very much a turn based combat game. The environments were very interesting to explore. There was a lot of verticality in each map and finding your way to points of interest sometimes felt like a little puzzle to solve. I loved the post-apocalyptic designs and the soundtrack accompanying the exploration was divine. The music consists of an amazing blend of rock, metal, electronic with ethereal and otherworldly qualities. This might be my favorite video game soundtrack of all time and I have been keeping my eyes on Ryota Kozuka’s, the composers, work ever since. Also, there are a small number of classic dungeons as well. To be honest, while they were pretty okay and had decent puzzles, I much preferred the open zone approach. I also have to point out the interesting approach to the demons roaming the levels. At its core, you have the classic behavior of demons chasing you when spotted, or running away if their level is too low. However, the game’s approach to how demons act evolves over time. Some demons fly way beyond your reach and dive down to get you when close. Other demons perform attacks even before a fight breaks out, like the Nozuchi attempting to suck you in or the Mad Gasser spraying gas to get you. There are some demons that move in a formation or ambush you from out of nowhere. Sometimes, the demons even form a wall that you have to break through if you want to move past them. There are also colossal demons, with far bigger in-game models that you have to avoid because they are usually far stronger when you encounter them for the first time. The combat is the classic press-turn system, tuned to perfection. Hitting weaknesses gives you more moves per turn, while defending them with some kind of affinity resistance reduces the enemy’s. These rules apply to both you and the opponent. There are Magatsuhi skills, basically a special move to perform after filling out a meter. Starting with a basic always-crit ability, depending on the demons you carry, the additional Magatsuhi skills come in all kinds of offensive, defensive and utility forms. Enemy demons have these as well. With the endless customization options for both the Nahobino and demons, any difficulty you encounter during combat is always solvable by adjusting your party setup and grinding is never a necessity. The demons are an absolute highlight. They have a lot of individuality in terms of their unique abilities, but can be heavily customized as well. There are a lot of funny conversations during negotiations, sometimes, if you carry a specific demon, they pop out to join the talk. They also have an absolute ton of small convos in the Demon Haunt, where you can also give them gifts to increase their strength. In some side quests, you end up actually controlling the demon to investigate, which leads to some funny demon scenes that do not involve any humans at all. Overall, Vengeance is an incredible JRPG, could have easily been my favorite from Atlus if not for the shortcomings in the story and character departments. The atmosphere, style, music and combat are absolutely stellar.

建议人群：回合制爱好者，战斗爽，阿特拉斯凯子 不建议：剧情党，全成就玩家 [strike] 本作又名《胧一闪转生五》 [/strike],游戏流程是抓宝可梦，合成新宝可梦，去新地图，继续抓宝可梦，合成宝可梦，与宝可梦培养感情。 本作战斗系统很优秀，有深度，上限极高。各种专属被动，祸灵技，可以构筑各种各样的玩法。隐藏boss也有难度，并不无脑。 地图设计顶级，充分发掘了立体地图，有小地图和类似于上帝视角的云上视角，又使得其地图较复杂，尤其是魔王城，神中神。 剧情方面一般，剧情量少，空洞，人物塑造也不算好。但世界观比较吸引人，融合了世界各种神话传说。 成就方面不算困难，但是很恶心，需要一个档连续打六周目观看全部六种结局，最后七周目打boss连战。非常枯燥乏味。 最后[spoiler] 物理盈满的 物理兆倍盈满的 专注会心的 贯穿之斗气+5的 专注会心的 龙眼的 无恙的胧一闪+9 [/spoiler]

I really liked it because I'm a total fan of the persona. It's nice to see a story with a darker. Also, thank you for the Turkish language support. 📸Graphics📸 ❌ Potato ❌ Ideal ✅ Beautiful ❌ Awesome ❌ Beyond the extraordinary ❌ Graphics are not important in this game 📚 Story 📚 ❌ What does story mean? ❌ Competes with Akasya Durağı ❌ Medium ✅ It was good ❌ Super ❌ Impressive 💸 Price - Performance 💸 ❌ Free ❌ Cheap ✅ Medium ❌ Buy at Discount ❌ Expensive ❌ Too Expensive 💻 System Requirements 💻 ❌ Toaster ✅ Average PC ❌ Good PC ❌ A good Graphics card and Processor ❌ NASA PC ⌛️ Gameplay Time ⌛️ ❌ Finished in one sitting (1-2 Hours) It varies from person to person. ❌ Short (2-8 Hours) ❌ Normal (8-12 Hours) ❌ Long (12+ Hours) ✅ Too long (At least it looks like it will be that way for me) ⚙️ Difficulty ⚙️ ❌ Even my grandmother plays it ❌ Easy ❌ Medium ✅ Easy - Difficult selection 🧿 Turkish Language Support 🧿 ❌ No, but there is no need ❌ Unfortunately, no. ✅ Turkish Language Support Available. 📀 Sound - Music 📀 ✅ Makes you feel the atmosphere ❌ It is necessary to turn down the volume of the headphones during action scenes ❌ There is a disturbing amount of music ❌ Sound/Music should be turned off completely 📡 Are there any bugs? 📡 ❌ (I'm still at the beginning, I have no idea.) ✅ None (Maybe not encountered) ❌ They reduced it with the updates. But you may encounter it from time to time. ❌ Extremely 🎮 Does it wrap? 🎮 ✅ Yes ❌ Ehhh that's it ❌ No