Shin Megami Tensei V

[Peklo]

Releases on November 12th.

Whatever tribulations Nocturne's recent remaster can be viewed to have as a port and rerelease, it's effectively done its job in reminding me of why I ever liked the series in the first place. I'm not going to carry all of that goodwill from a game almost two decades old into subsequent projects devoid of skepticism, but if they're leading with a genuine first look like this, I am proper tantalized. Just seeing demons wandering about on the field as themselves is a selling point to me. The protagonist is one of the best-designed in the series. The new models look beautiful. Fionn mac Cumhaill is there, and the design looks... good?? The cynicism that swallowed discourse about the IV duology was entirely warranted and needed, but if that was the nadir, at this point one can only hope this really does promise something better for the days ahead.

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, this is the one new game I'm looking forward to the most in the Direct (the Game & Watch looks awesome but that's hardly new haha. Also, I think it comes out on the same day as SMTV? Going to be dropping a lot of money on November 12th, I guess).

 

[falz]

SMT IV is a great game? And I am so hyped about the return of the Press Turn system!

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Japanese preview with alternate footage not seen in any Direct

Some points:
You can have a demon ally follow you around the map
Cathedral of Shadows ditched the old guy for a younger woman
Love the shop keeper's design

 

[Peklo]

They've restored Vitality as a stat in this and ditched Dexterity, which alleviates one of my biggest mechanical criticisms about IV right off. It's a good sign!

 

[Pajaro Pete]

a close up of the cover art, i'm not crazy about the composition

 

[Poster]

Love the shop keeper's design

I honestly thought it was a Belphegor redesign at first.

 

[estragon]

I get why but the gap in tone and content between the English and Japanese trailers is hilarious.

The Japanese trailer is playing it cool and evocative. The English trailer is... extremely Electronic 3 presentation style. "Life as a Japanese high school student is fairly normal... (RECORD SCRATCH)" and "Don't forget to hit weak points for massive damage! (Zooms into elemental weak point icons)"

(Again, I get why, it's just funny...)

 

[pudik]

SMT IV is a great game? And I am so hyped about the return of the Press Turn system!

is it a great game? i dont think so
is it acceptable/not bad/even good? yes
does it maintain the tone and tact that made nocturne or strange journey so exceptional (in comparison to other rpgs in general)? no
does it, nonetheless, have chemtrail? absolutely


I think this would have to look really bad for me to not be excited, or at least expectant. It's also just on par to build up disappointment in premeditation these days, furthermore for decades long series that have changed management and talent throughout its existence. That this looks good, and good in unexpected ways, is kind of a relief and really just something of a shred of optimism in my age-grown cynicism and media-nihilism.

 

[Ludendorkk]

I really like the MC's design. Otherwise I know nothing about SMT other than it has pokemon demons

 

[Pajaro Pete]

~25 minutes of gameplay (in Japanese)

the giant blue vortex we saw is a Save Point/Shopping/Fusion thing, like the dragon pulse thing in raidou 2
sophia is our cathedral of shadows worker

the masked angels from the trailer are confirmed to be the design for the low level divine angels, the generic demonic entities are Daimon
there doesn't appear to be a healing attendant, it just opened up a menu when they picked the option
main menu has an "Essence" option, which i'm guessing is connected to the MC's abilities, and a Quest log

 

[Zef]

Sophia replacing Mido, and the new Vortex World being called after the "hidden" Sphere of Emanation, where all of the sefira join as one, gives me big hopes that we're moving away from Neutral/Law/Chaos and into a Kabbalistic system inspired by the Demiurge and the Sefirotic Tree.

(I mean, Apocalypse already heavily hinted at YHWH and his successors being essentially demiurges, as per the cosmology it developed with the Axiom and everything.)

 

[Peklo]

It didn't take long for the first cracks in the otherwise massively improved demon design direction to form.

This is Amanozako, a frightening, violent and powerful goddess whose visage matches her temper. Moreover, she is a mother who was so fiercely independent and ornery that she willed herself a child without any other partner. These characteristics make for a pretty memorable and distinct figure to base a modern depiction around, but somehow that translates to a... cheeky, diminutive child to whom fearsomeness is the last thing to attribute in how she's portrayed here. It's bizarre and waste of good source material. I don't think any additional context, should there be any, could salvage it.

 

[Zef]

Uuuugh, yeah. Guess they decided to double down on dƎEp Strange Journey's Demeter, which I hated back then. I wonder if there's something Doi et al need to work out regarding taking powerful goddesses who successfully stood up to their respective patriarchies, and turning them into moe girls.

 

[estragon]

oh hey it looks like they officially subtitled the JPN E3 trailer in English and put it up as a "Gameplay Trailer"

i think this one is a lot more appealing to people in the "i already know what this series is" demographic, personally

 

[Pajaro Pete]

atlus japan has been posting daily demons, some of them new designs, some of them in 3D for the very first time, and some are kaneko classics.

and i just want to reiterate that these skill animations better be skippable because yikes

 

[Pajaro Pete]

new trailer. oh the friends you'll kill.

 

[Zef]

Looks good! The cultivation vats at the beginning make me wonder if the Aogami you fuse with is the result of Bethel's mystical experimentation. Though the very basic "two male friends of opposing perspectives, one female friend who stands by you" structure has grown pretty stale by now and I had wished for a more Nocturnal approach to the clash of ideologies.

Incidentally...

 

[Pajaro Pete]

NEWS Shin Megami Tensei V - Volume 1
Introduces the characters properly with names and everything, and briefly talks about Magatsuhi skills. English closed captioning available.

We've got all the hits, Classmate With Psychic Powers, Serious Glasses Guy, His Sickly Little Sister, Mark from Persona 1, the Prime Minister of Japan.

 

[Zef]

On the one hand, the archetypes are following the SMT (non 3) model so blatantly, I'm almost expecting a reversal where, say, the sickly girl goes full Chaos and her uptight bro joins her, while Mark goes Law because he wants to be a Serious Adult. But even that small divergence would be unheard of from Atlus's scenario writers

On the other, "They all join Bethel" gives me big DeSu 2 vibes and I'm not comfortable with that.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

to be fair, both shin megami tensei 4 and shin megami tensei 2 featured "the main character(s) join a Law-aligned organization early in the game and do assorted missions for them" so i'm hoping it leans more in that direction than DeSurvivor 2

the official website also includes some art and a name (Sahori Kijima) for the red woman from the cover, as well as a new demon named Manananggal, a demon of Philippine origin, which can separate it's upper and lower body to fly through the night to hunt pregnant women to eat, here depicted as a naked woman with a severed torso, so maybe exercise caution when clicking this link to the artwork.

 

[Peklo]

Demeter's return with the design she's saddled with isn't thrilling, but Manananggal is very welcome.

 

[Pombar]

Seems like you hop between the empty wasteland and the city this time, somewhat like a Persona game? The main reason I never liked Nocturne was the setting, which felt like a truly dull empty chore, so this bodes a little better for my tastes. Not as engaging as 4's little pockets of infighting humanity huddling in subway tunnels and occasionally venturing out onto the demon-infested streets above, but still, seems like a setting people actually live in will be a continual part of the plot.

Glad I'm not along in getting DeSu 2 vibes from Bethel, though I'll wait and see how that pans out.

 

[Zef]

I'm now wondering how Manananggal moves around if she's a roaming map enemy.

Do her legs crawl behind her flying half.

Does she pick up and carry them.

But yeah Not Happy with Child Demeter STILL representing her here, but adding the Apocalypse demons gives me a bit of hope that we'll see Good Quetzalcoatl instead of boring snek.

 

[q 3]

the official website also includes some art and a name (Sahori Kijima) for the red woman from the cover,

Those tentacles are making me nervous.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

I'm now wondering how Manananggal moves around if she's a roaming map enemy.

Do her legs crawl behind her flying half.

Does she pick up and carry them.

they released her daily demon video, which seems to indicate her legs just kind of.... slide around on the ground under her

(CW: Again, this demon is kinda gross looking and it's definitely not less gross when it's animated, and also the preview for tomorrow's demon is really depressing)

 

[Zef]

Yeah, the Demeter discourse has already flared up on Twitter all over again. It was already relevant when Doi's Amanozako design notes were translated and lines were drawn across the fanbase, but confirmation of Persephone's unusually youthful mom reignited the issue.

 

[YangusKhan]

Reviews for this are out now, and I think I'm gonna be into it a lot more than SMT IV. A lot of the discourse about it on Twitter has been some extremely tiresome back-and-forth between Persona and anti-Persona-in-SMT fans and I just don't. care.

 

[Seven]

Reviews for this are out now, and I think I'm gonna be into it a lot more than SMT IV. A lot of the discourse about it on Twitter has been some extremely tiresome back-and-forth between Persona and anti-Persona-in-SMT fans and I just don't. care.

It's either that or "this game is wasted on the Switch" complaints. I swear the gaming community just loves being miserable all the time.

 

[Peklo]

Entirely too early to form much of an opinion about the narrative, but from a mechanical perspective this addresses practically all the issues I had with IV and which prevented me from investing in it even on that level. To note:

• dexterity is out, vitality is back in. Two distinct types of physical skills may have worked if it had been a strictly additive delineation between melee and ranged variables, but as it effectively removed physical durability from the mechanics as a result, I could never agree with the decision. Everything became identically composed of paper tissue, the early game much more arbitrarily brutal for the sky-high damage values, and demons were robbed of a key aspect of conveying their mythic aspects through storytelling via stats, where endurance is a crucial tool. I'm glad it's been walked back.
• demons have default skills that cannot be overwritten through fusion, as has typically been the case. It helps characterizing them both mechanically and narratively, instead of simply treating them as vehicles for interchangeable loadouts, passed identically along into perpetuity. Apocalypse's skill affinity system is retained, which along with unique signature skills that cannot be inherited further make each individual demon matter more. These are the best mediating factors to the sometimes too free baseline of manual skill inheritance that I've seen.
• you can fuse demons by ingredient, instead of only by result. I cannot overstate how much this killed my enthusiasm for IV, in its confusingly laid out, results-first and semi-automated in spirit fusion style and interface. The interface here isn't quite on the level of the textual rows and columns of old in legibility, but it's fine enough, and allows me to manually consult my options without having to reverse-engineer the process mentally. For those that liked the newer style of arranging fusion information, that is available too.
• there are distinct savepoints which are your only restore spots. I'm not hardline at all about autosaving or saving on the spot in games, but for the design and atmospheric intent of some games they are not the right choice, and in here they've seemed to recognize the difference. It has not been too taxing this early on but still the backbeat of potentially risky exploration and overextending oneself exists in the game, and it gels well with the vast environmental sprawl to navigate through.

Thematics may soar, faceplant or flail without direction, but in light of all of these reconsiderations in how to evoke an RPG with old roots through an unfamiliarly modern context, I think I'll enjoy playing it on those terms in ways I could not previously.