Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance is now out, and it certainly belongs at the top of the JRPG genre. Check out our Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance review.
Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance review
This review was conducted on PC via Steam.
SMT V Vengeance marks the game’s freedom from the shackles of the Nintendo Switch. Having access to more powerful hardware in modern consoles and the PC means the game can take more resources and turn this into graphical or performance improvements.
However, the additions in SMT V Vengeance do not end here. Vengeance adds a whole new route to the base game. This brings us to the caveats of this review.
The Caveats
I am not new to the JRPG genre. But, Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance was my first (official, not counting later Persona games) foray into the SMT franchise. This includes the base SMT V game.
Considering all of these, this review will have my first-hand experience of the game on its own and not what it appends to the base game. For this review, I chose the “Canon of Vengeance,” the new path added by the Vengeance version.
Story and Characters – Nahobino and Friends
Early on, SMT V introduces you to the “base” ensemble from the protagonist’s school. When the story develops, you meet a couple more humans and a lot of demons.
Eventually, our protag’s normal human self is turned into the Nahobino. It is at this point that I was reminded that SMTV was indeed a JRPG. By this point, I also figured that my goal was some form of “defeat God.”
Each demon is different in their attitude, conversational (or lack thereof) skills, and appearance. There are notable ones, of course, like the companion demon Amanozako. Her cycling through the same three voice lines each time she found a collectible on the map for hours on end drove me to near insanity.
Nonetheless, it’s fun speaking to the Aogami that possesses our dear Nahobino and the rest of the demons in the Demon Haunt. It’s a nice break to have in-between bouts of farming and sidequest hunting. I also get battle items, which is extremely useful since…
There’s an extra human on the party. From my (shallow) understanding of the base Shin Megami Tensei V game, the only human party member in the early game is Nahobino. With one “human” and three demons, there’s only one turn out of four where you can use battle items. For Vengeance and the introduction of Yoko Hiromine, this is no longer the case. This also allows for more interactions, building up the story and significance of the characters apart from Nahobino.
From my 20-odd hours of gameplay, SMT V Vengeance definitely has a solid foundation for its story. As somebody who hasn’t played the base game, it made me ask a lot of questions which became the drive for me to continue playing: I wanted answers.
The G in gameplay stands for Grind
You will grind. A lot. Vengeance advertises improvements to the battle system, which could be a way to entice people who have already gone through the game to give it another go.
The battle eventually became second nature to me. This might be attributed to how long I was doing them, my experience with JRPGs, or a different thing altogether. Regardless of the reason, I was intuitively clearing the game’s trash mobs until I encountered more difficult ones.
These more difficult enemies came in the form of the grossly (but justifiably) over-leveled mini-bosses or the main bosses required to progress the game’s story. For the over-leveled mini-bosses, the game did warn me about them, but some of them are tricky to avoid. I’m looking at you, flying demons camping my way to the chest.
The bosses are what would filter out a lot of the uninspired players if the grinding or the story hadn’t already. It took me a few tries to get the hang of the boss fights and not be stingy with my battle items to get through them reliably.
These fights were challenging but satisfying once beaten. It helped that their turns were telegraphed, at least in the early stages of the game, and I felt like I was eased into the boss fights quite well. Just remember to save often!
Again, another note that I’ve only played about 20 hours. Most have been spent grinding or doing side quests. With this being the case, I haven’t encountered many boss fights yet.
SMT V, Un-Switched!
Next up is performance. I didn’t encounter performance issues, the game was running on a stable framerate on most of the presets when I tested them out. I played the game mostly on the High preset with some of the settings like motion blur and bloom turned off due to personal preferences.
There were graphical issues though, like the sand in the Da’at causing dithering that I could not get rid of. Apart from that and some weird camera angles that I pushed Nahobino into, SMT V Vengeance ran smoothly.
Hey, hey! Over here!
I played on the English voiceover, and the dubbing was fantastic. The performances were all good, but the writing (and timing) definitely could have been better. Daman Mills returns as Aogami, once again displaying his impressive range. Erin Yvette joins the main cast as Yoko Hiromine, on top of her existing role as Sophia.
All in all, the performances and dubbing have been great so far. But please, can we do something about Amanozako saying the same two voicelines over and over again?
Final Verdict – 8/10
Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance is as JRPG as it gets. If you consider yourself a fan of the genre, then SMT V Vengeance is a must-play. It is, however, still punishing for players who may not have the energy to spare for grinding, or to explore vast areas, or run around for side quests. The “Safety” difficulty exists as a Free DLC for players who would rather play for the story, though.
SMT V Vengeance is also a celebration of its freedom from the Nintendo Switch. Now utilizing better hardware, the game can take more liberties in both its quality in performance. Unfortunately, the cutscenes are still pre-rendered at 720p 30 FPS. This isn’t noticeable on a 1080p screen, but your mileage may vary.
Editor’s note: SEGA provided ClutchPoints a copy of the game for this review. The review was conducted on version 1.0.1.
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