Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance

I really wanted to like this game but it's just not for me. I'm a fan of Persona 5, so I was looking forward to this game. However, even though I enjoyed the combat system, the lack of an engaging story or interesting characters makes the game unenjoyable for me. If you're looking for a game with good strategical depth and interesting fusion mechanics, this is it. If not, then skip this game.

SMT V was a very underbaked game, Vengeance fixes many of the problems but doesn't address any of the real problems the game has. Magic in the base game was bad because the end game skills have way higher cost than comparable physical skills. Murakumo costs when maxed out around 10 MP when maxed out, does almighty damage, and has a base power of 275 and 330 on a crit. Moonlight frost, a move that's new to this game and gotten later, is a all hit pierce move that costs 100 MP (so about 20 when its maxed) and only has 200 base power. Magic can not crit. You have ONLY a max at 999 MP in this game, meaning in a lot of fights you just....won't have the MP to fight. Physical builds will. While magic can exploit the press turn system, its disingenuous to say that it "balances" the game as critting gives you extra press turns and you eventually will be critting more than you not crit on a physical build. There's other moves the nahobino gets in this game that DOES magic magic a bit better, but for the most part you might as well just die in a ditch. You need way more set up to get the magic MC to be on par with physical vs physical (you can get crits on magic but you need several demons, vs phys mc who just get phys almighty in the first area and does nothing.) in additon, phys almighty means that a phys MC gets to spend less on miracles. You wanna play around the cool press turn system exploiting weaknesses constantly to get more turns and do damage? Well too bad! Your better off playing a phys MC who can steam roll the game on even on the hardest difficulty! As the phys MC can invest in passives that increases his damage while the magic MC can't afford to until the end of the game unless you want to grind 5+ hours every boss. Whilst you CAN get magic to crit (and a skill that acts a charge to give out pierce, though impaler's animus is pretty terrible and remember, physical builds get phys almighty early meaning they do not have to deal with it, nor in the base game does impalers stack with concentrate or charge. You are JUST ♥♥♥♥♥♥ for using it) The game doesn't feel challenging, it just feels tedius. So many quest changes compared to the base game genuines ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks. You just flat out can not rely on your previous knowledge, the game OUTRIGHT has changes in it that punish you for doing so. You buy it on sale if you really want. I bought base V on release. If you want there's a safety DLC which means you can breeze though the game and just see the story.