Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
yeah SMT endings tend to be pretty bare bones.
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Shin Megami Tensei V
- Thread starter Peklo
- Start date
Shit, I'm more evil than I thought. (I'm the only one in my house who uses milk, if I don't get one with a long date it'll go bad!)
I am loving this final area, folks. It feels like the game is finally playing around with the established field/map/symbol encounters structure. And it's even got gameplay-inspired jokes! A couple of my favorite things in here so far...
Two of the abscesses around the starting leyline are great:
- 1 features four level 99 demons consisting of... Faerie, Preta, Onmoraki, and Slime. I audibly gasped/laughed out loud when this fight loaded. I tried my damndest for about 20-30 minutes but ultimately gave up and will have to come back with some slightly higher levels and hopefully better resistances on my demons. This fight did teach me how abusable the Miracle that boosts your Magatsuhi gauge when an ally dies could be (I haven't learned it yet but maybe soon??).
- Another has an incredibly dangerous and aggressive spawning routine leading up to it, where it will summon Yamata-no-Orochi enemies right in front of your path (these guys are level ~72 and I'm still not quite 60), but then when you get to the abscess the fight itself was... a single Yamata-no-Orochi that's lower level than the regular ones. Love it!
I want to call this out for how excellent it is, as well. Now more than ever, it's been soooo useful to swap demons in and out throughout a tough fight. I need to revisit some of the previous SMT games to understand what they changed about mechanics/balance to make this so much more usable in this game; mostly I remember it being a waste of time or way too much of an opportunity cost.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
the scale of the world feels a bit strange because this shipping yard seems to be about the size of three different downtown tokyo districts
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This is on sale at Gamestop for $37 (new) and $35 (used) if anyone is interested. That's a decent price drop so soon after release!
I am not saying this is a bad thing, but does Atlus/Sega just rely on its Persona/SMT output to be sold at an initial premium to its dedicated fans with its "$120, includes a tote bag" versions, and then immediately price drops for the rest of an audience that doesn't have strong opinions on Thor designs? I feel like the ol' Persona price drop has been a consistent thing for the last two years, and impacted SMT3Remake, too. Or is it just Sega thing at this point? I see Sonic Colors and Monkey Ball both get sales continually, too...
I finally finished this tonight. Clocked in just shy of 104 hours, and there were still a few sidequests I didn't finish, but I also tend to play SMT games comparatively slowly. Will probably write up an effort post later, but I thought it was great.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
And it appears my copy got stolen off my porch. Bah.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
love the new patch allowing you to adjust the camera zoom, having a wider field of view has made the exploration elements a bit easier for me personally.
because there's visible encounters, and you get so much EXP from completing side quests (and main missions i guess), and i guess because level impacts damage dealt and received, it feels like i out level the demons in my party more quickly than in regular SMT game. it may also be because even though the regions are broken up into discreet areas around save points they aren't quite as distinctly themed as standard dungeons in SMT games.
anyway gonna go steal some applies i guess.
because there's visible encounters, and you get so much EXP from completing side quests (and main missions i guess), and i guess because level impacts damage dealt and received, it feels like i out level the demons in my party more quickly than in regular SMT game. it may also be because even though the regions are broken up into discreet areas around save points they aren't quite as distinctly themed as standard dungeons in SMT games.
anyway gonna go steal some applies i guess.
When it comes to mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, the things that stick out in my memory in the years following a playthrough are roughly in this order: a) the music, b) the demons/boss fights, c) its narrative thematics and/or atmosphere, and d) how hard it was. With this perspective in mind, to me SMTV is a rousing success.
I will admit that everything involving the gender roles of the principle characters would've been incredibly basic and bad even 20 years ago, so there really is no excuse for it being present in this game's writing. For me it wasn't standout enough to markedly diminish my enjoyment of the narrative, but I do think it's because the central story scenes are so sparse and spaced out that it really didn't give me enough time to even dwell on it. And that's ultimately my take on the overall story as well: it gets the job done, but there's really nothing new or interesting there that previous games haven't already done better or with more nuance. By my assessment, really the only "new" thing the story goes into is using the Judeo-Christian basis of the Garden of Eden/Fruit of Knowledge concept to drive the fantasy mechanics of Nahobino and the motivations of all the other major god-demons. Ultimately it doesn't really use that for anything other than fantasy mechanics and, in my opinion, a "default" interpretation of Chaos being the "canon" ending (which is the one I chose).
But the reasons I played this game for over 100 hours are all things other than the story: the music is excellent, the field exploration and atmosphere it evokes is excellent, the combat and character progression tweaks introduced are excellent, and the boss fights are quite satisfying. I really don't know what else I can say about these things to get the point across, and it feels a little silly to use less words talking about everything good in the game compared to my previous paragraph describing its story issues, but sometimes that's all I can say about a good RPG experience.
I will admit that everything involving the gender roles of the principle characters would've been incredibly basic and bad even 20 years ago, so there really is no excuse for it being present in this game's writing. For me it wasn't standout enough to markedly diminish my enjoyment of the narrative, but I do think it's because the central story scenes are so sparse and spaced out that it really didn't give me enough time to even dwell on it. And that's ultimately my take on the overall story as well: it gets the job done, but there's really nothing new or interesting there that previous games haven't already done better or with more nuance. By my assessment, really the only "new" thing the story goes into is using the Judeo-Christian basis of the Garden of Eden/Fruit of Knowledge concept to drive the fantasy mechanics of Nahobino and the motivations of all the other major god-demons. Ultimately it doesn't really use that for anything other than fantasy mechanics and, in my opinion, a "default" interpretation of Chaos being the "canon" ending (which is the one I chose).
But the reasons I played this game for over 100 hours are all things other than the story: the music is excellent, the field exploration and atmosphere it evokes is excellent, the combat and character progression tweaks introduced are excellent, and the boss fights are quite satisfying. I really don't know what else I can say about these things to get the point across, and it feels a little silly to use less words talking about everything good in the game compared to my previous paragraph describing its story issues, but sometimes that's all I can say about a good RPG experience.
And now I've completed everything I could in one playthrough. The optional super boss was fantastic and also has the best battle theme in a game full of amazing battle themes. I did not get any of the DLC and probably won't unless something more substantial comes out.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This showed up yesterday and I started playing but it's just not grabbing me yet. I'm also frustrated that I seem to constantly be out of MP and don't have enough money to replenish it. I don't remember that being an issue at the start of 4, although obviously it was structured quite differently.
Might drop down to casual difficulty level just so I can have more fun as hitting weaknesses and getting bonus turns is what I enjoy about these games.
Might drop down to casual difficulty level just so I can have more fun as hitting weaknesses and getting bonus turns is what I enjoy about these games.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I am really not getting into this. I've fallen asleep the last three times I tried to play.
I just got to Hydra, about how much longer does the desert area after last that? I'd like to get through the first zone and try a bit more but I just don't care about anything that's happening so far. I read something about a safety mode patch that makes restarting easier too although I don't think that's really my issue anymore now that I found a bunch of vending machines and have money.
I just got to Hydra, about how much longer does the desert area after last that? I'd like to get through the first zone and try a bit more but I just don't care about anything that's happening so far. I read something about a safety mode patch that makes restarting easier too although I don't think that's really my issue anymore now that I found a bunch of vending machines and have money.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
There's still a fair bit to go after that. Once you do finish that zone you get some story stuff so if you do intend to stick with the game maybe try and push through the first zone (but at the same time it's like, if you're not enjoying it there's no sense in spending your time trying to push yourself on through it)
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Got it, thanks. I'm definitely surprised I'm bouncing off of it so hard and want to give it a bit more of a chance since I do like these games. Maybe the weekend will help when I have less going on and can focus on it more and will be less tired when I try to play.
The structure of Shin Megami Tensei V is similar to something like an Etrian Odyssey game or perhaps Final Fantasy XII -- the real point of the game is exploring the game space and mastering the combat, and so the game offers only as much narrative as is necessary to justify that. (Unsuprisingly, given the presence of EO veteran Shigeo Komori in the director's chair.) You can play for literally tens of hours just fighting demons, exploring the world, running quests, searching for treasure and Mimans, and tinkering with fusion without ever even coming near a plot-important cutscene. But you can see traces of a more involved plot in there that was pared down at some point. My read is that the game's plot was originally more Persona-esque, with several individual arcs each featuring their own villain and focusing on particular members of the human cast. Then, once you'd gotten to know all the principal players and learned why and how they believed what they did, the endgame would occur and you would choose which you would side with and which you'd have to put down. That decision would be all the more meaningful knowing that these were people you'd fought beside and whose struggles you'd shared.
As it is, though, you get basically one arc structured like that (the second one), then you move directly into the final battle between order and chaos. I suspect that at some point in development, they realized that if they did it the way they'd planned, they were looking at a 300-hour game with dozens of additional demons and environments to design and model. Since the game's gameplay flow and structure was less malleable, the extraneous plot threads were chopped down and we were left with the very spare, accelerated version that we got in the final game. The characters are all painfully static, with the exceptions of Abdiel and Dazai (and even they are baby's first character arc). It's difficult to imagine a Megaten game struggling more with the tension between wanting to characterize the protagonist as a blank slate who can be all things to all players (both within and without the game) and the singular force who must decide the fate of the world based on his own beliefs than this one does. When even the quote-unquote "chaos" route requires you to just blandly go along with what your boss tells you to do, we might be having some issues with plotting here.
The game's narrative has some good bones, but they don't cohere into a skeleton. Megaten is narratively at its most interesting when it really examines the effects of the mythological world of the demons colliding with the secular, modern human world. SMTV has some elements of this... Bethel, in principle, is a pretty interesting plot element. The gods of various pantheons realizing that in their weakened state they can best defend themselves by working together is a very cool idea that is underutilized. In the final game, Bethel is be represented solely by the angels for 90% of the game's run time, even during the so-called "joint offensive" during the third arc. I also appreciate it when the series makes some effort to indicate that a demon's mythological history is not the sum total of their character, and that they are still attempting to move forward and accomplish goals even in the present day, and SMTV does offer some nods at this. Abdiel's race changing from Herald to Fallen after disobeying the Creator's will, Khonsu's romance with a human causing him to refrain from trying to become a Nahobino, the conspicuous absence of the Amatsu race, even the blink-and-you'll-miss it suggestion that the previous holder of Zeus's Knowledge was Alexander the Great all do a good job of grounding the mythological aspects of the characters in the world of the story. It's easy to pluck out a god or monster from your mythology textbook and plop them down as a generic quest-giver or boss battle (and make no mistake, SMTV does that plenty as well), but it's significantly harder and more interesting if you give the impression that these eons-old entities are trying to understand and adapt to the modern world and the events they find themselves entangled in.
That said, I don't really think modern-day, undestroyed Tokyo was at all necessary for this game. My read was, again, that it was originally intended to be your home base between missions, but when the missions got axed, it became a vestigal remnant of that concept. I honestly feel it's included only so that they can use the traditional Megaten world map. The whole game should have taken place in Da'at. Even the world is fully post-apocalyptic and humanity and its works are done as a relevant force, as in Nocturne, or it's not, as in the other Megaten games. Trying to combine the two visions of the end of the world so inexpertly was a mistake.
Lucifer's angle in this game is pretty fascinating, and slots into his previous appearances in a compelling and unexpected way. It's about time we get to see what becomes of him after he finally catches the car, instead of rolling credits right after it happens as all the other Megaten games do.
As for the gameplay, the world design and overall movement is excellent. Between Persona 5 and SMTV, Atlus is lapping the field in terms of making just moving around in an RPG feel great. It'll feel terrible going back to RPG systems where your overworld actions are limited to moving around while nailed to the floor and using the action button to examine things and speak to people after these two games demonstrate how much more is possible even within the framework of a turn-based RPG. The feeling of seeing somewhere you want to go and wondering "how do I even get there?" is much more reminiscent of Mario or Zelda than your typical JRPG. The maps could have maybe used some work, though -- it's frequently difficult to determine elevation from the 2-D image, and elevation is vastly more important in this game than it usually is. (Ironically, the map wouldn't have been a problem if the game was less fun to control in general.)
As for the combat... eh. I think I'm kind of over Press Turn by now? We've had seven games that used this exact same system, plus variants in Persona, Devil Survivor, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and I feel like I've seen just about everything it can do. The combat in SMTV is technically competent, but I was rarely surprised by it. There are very few gimmick encounters that force you to reconsider how the whole thing works, demons rarely have good elemental coverage (since they're restricted to eight possible moves at all times), and they seem to have extremely low turn counts in general (rarely more than two for a boss, plus an additional one for each flunky). (The big innovation this time around, the Magatsuhi skills, would matter more if the absolute strongest one wasn't the one you started with that every single demon can use, which is also the only one the enemies ever use.) Even early in the game it's quite easy to build setups where bosses have no choice but to blow their Press Turns ineffectively. Succeeding at the system feels less like you've overcome a difficult obstacle and more like you've broken the game's AI. Even the superboss can be defeated pretty straightforwardly by insulating yourself against its strongest moves and then letting its adds hang around and waste its Press Turns. I gather Press Turn is basically synonymous with the series at this point, and it's difficult to picture them not making any more games in this engine after they spent five-plus years working on it, but I'm hoping that the next Megaten game builds a battle system that is as much a series-defining revelation as Press Turn was the first time.
Honestly, I feel like part of the reason the battle system felt a little limp this time around was that some of the user-friendly conveniences served to defang it. I have extremely mixed feelings about the Spyglass item -- while feeling out enemy weaknesses at random was never more than an irritation in older Megaten games, making it easy to determine not only an enemy's elemental affinities but also its full array of attacks makes encounters extremely predictable. It's easier than ever to make a suicide run to determine what a boss can do and then return with a party you know it can't possibly defeat. And that feels good a few times... but every single time? It's great that the game has a lot of optional content, but doing all or even some of it rapidly breaks the level curve (in a game with unforgiving level-scaling) and turns a bunch of would-be difficult bosses into pussycats. Probably the worst aspect is that the endurance/resource-management is completely gone. As long as the Nahobino is standing, no random encounter is more than a Smoke Ball away from being over, and a full heal is never more than a press of L away. You're basically completely done with hoping you can stretch your SP long enough to reach the next save point the moment Goko hands you the Return Pillar, and it was an element I honestly missed even as I was fast-traveling willy-nilly all over the map. In isolation it's tough to argue that any of these additions were a bad inclusion, but in concert they tend to sand down the edge.
So I dunno. I devoured this game, did as much as is possible in a single playthrough, and while I was playing it I was thinking "easy GOTY, no problem, just don't go in expecting a great narrative" but after I finished it and let it digest I found more to be skeptical about, even on the gameplay side. Weirdly I think it's easier to recommend the fewer previous SMT games you've played, which is a strange place to be three decades into a franchise.
As it is, though, you get basically one arc structured like that (the second one), then you move directly into the final battle between order and chaos. I suspect that at some point in development, they realized that if they did it the way they'd planned, they were looking at a 300-hour game with dozens of additional demons and environments to design and model. Since the game's gameplay flow and structure was less malleable, the extraneous plot threads were chopped down and we were left with the very spare, accelerated version that we got in the final game. The characters are all painfully static, with the exceptions of Abdiel and Dazai (and even they are baby's first character arc). It's difficult to imagine a Megaten game struggling more with the tension between wanting to characterize the protagonist as a blank slate who can be all things to all players (both within and without the game) and the singular force who must decide the fate of the world based on his own beliefs than this one does. When even the quote-unquote "chaos" route requires you to just blandly go along with what your boss tells you to do, we might be having some issues with plotting here.
The game's narrative has some good bones, but they don't cohere into a skeleton. Megaten is narratively at its most interesting when it really examines the effects of the mythological world of the demons colliding with the secular, modern human world. SMTV has some elements of this... Bethel, in principle, is a pretty interesting plot element. The gods of various pantheons realizing that in their weakened state they can best defend themselves by working together is a very cool idea that is underutilized. In the final game, Bethel is be represented solely by the angels for 90% of the game's run time, even during the so-called "joint offensive" during the third arc. I also appreciate it when the series makes some effort to indicate that a demon's mythological history is not the sum total of their character, and that they are still attempting to move forward and accomplish goals even in the present day, and SMTV does offer some nods at this. Abdiel's race changing from Herald to Fallen after disobeying the Creator's will, Khonsu's romance with a human causing him to refrain from trying to become a Nahobino, the conspicuous absence of the Amatsu race, even the blink-and-you'll-miss it suggestion that the previous holder of Zeus's Knowledge was Alexander the Great all do a good job of grounding the mythological aspects of the characters in the world of the story. It's easy to pluck out a god or monster from your mythology textbook and plop them down as a generic quest-giver or boss battle (and make no mistake, SMTV does that plenty as well), but it's significantly harder and more interesting if you give the impression that these eons-old entities are trying to understand and adapt to the modern world and the events they find themselves entangled in.
That said, I don't really think modern-day, undestroyed Tokyo was at all necessary for this game. My read was, again, that it was originally intended to be your home base between missions, but when the missions got axed, it became a vestigal remnant of that concept. I honestly feel it's included only so that they can use the traditional Megaten world map. The whole game should have taken place in Da'at. Even the world is fully post-apocalyptic and humanity and its works are done as a relevant force, as in Nocturne, or it's not, as in the other Megaten games. Trying to combine the two visions of the end of the world so inexpertly was a mistake.
Lucifer's angle in this game is pretty fascinating, and slots into his previous appearances in a compelling and unexpected way. It's about time we get to see what becomes of him after he finally catches the car, instead of rolling credits right after it happens as all the other Megaten games do.
As for the gameplay, the world design and overall movement is excellent. Between Persona 5 and SMTV, Atlus is lapping the field in terms of making just moving around in an RPG feel great. It'll feel terrible going back to RPG systems where your overworld actions are limited to moving around while nailed to the floor and using the action button to examine things and speak to people after these two games demonstrate how much more is possible even within the framework of a turn-based RPG. The feeling of seeing somewhere you want to go and wondering "how do I even get there?" is much more reminiscent of Mario or Zelda than your typical JRPG. The maps could have maybe used some work, though -- it's frequently difficult to determine elevation from the 2-D image, and elevation is vastly more important in this game than it usually is. (Ironically, the map wouldn't have been a problem if the game was less fun to control in general.)
As for the combat... eh. I think I'm kind of over Press Turn by now? We've had seven games that used this exact same system, plus variants in Persona, Devil Survivor, and Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and I feel like I've seen just about everything it can do. The combat in SMTV is technically competent, but I was rarely surprised by it. There are very few gimmick encounters that force you to reconsider how the whole thing works, demons rarely have good elemental coverage (since they're restricted to eight possible moves at all times), and they seem to have extremely low turn counts in general (rarely more than two for a boss, plus an additional one for each flunky). (The big innovation this time around, the Magatsuhi skills, would matter more if the absolute strongest one wasn't the one you started with that every single demon can use, which is also the only one the enemies ever use.) Even early in the game it's quite easy to build setups where bosses have no choice but to blow their Press Turns ineffectively. Succeeding at the system feels less like you've overcome a difficult obstacle and more like you've broken the game's AI. Even the superboss can be defeated pretty straightforwardly by insulating yourself against its strongest moves and then letting its adds hang around and waste its Press Turns. I gather Press Turn is basically synonymous with the series at this point, and it's difficult to picture them not making any more games in this engine after they spent five-plus years working on it, but I'm hoping that the next Megaten game builds a battle system that is as much a series-defining revelation as Press Turn was the first time.
Honestly, I feel like part of the reason the battle system felt a little limp this time around was that some of the user-friendly conveniences served to defang it. I have extremely mixed feelings about the Spyglass item -- while feeling out enemy weaknesses at random was never more than an irritation in older Megaten games, making it easy to determine not only an enemy's elemental affinities but also its full array of attacks makes encounters extremely predictable. It's easier than ever to make a suicide run to determine what a boss can do and then return with a party you know it can't possibly defeat. And that feels good a few times... but every single time? It's great that the game has a lot of optional content, but doing all or even some of it rapidly breaks the level curve (in a game with unforgiving level-scaling) and turns a bunch of would-be difficult bosses into pussycats. Probably the worst aspect is that the endurance/resource-management is completely gone. As long as the Nahobino is standing, no random encounter is more than a Smoke Ball away from being over, and a full heal is never more than a press of L away. You're basically completely done with hoping you can stretch your SP long enough to reach the next save point the moment Goko hands you the Return Pillar, and it was an element I honestly missed even as I was fast-traveling willy-nilly all over the map. In isolation it's tough to argue that any of these additions were a bad inclusion, but in concert they tend to sand down the edge.
So I dunno. I devoured this game, did as much as is possible in a single playthrough, and while I was playing it I was thinking "easy GOTY, no problem, just don't go in expecting a great narrative" but after I finished it and let it digest I found more to be skeptical about, even on the gameplay side. Weirdly I think it's easier to recommend the fewer previous SMT games you've played, which is a strange place to be three decades into a franchise.
From what I've heard about Hard mode, it addresses a lot of these things and adds a lot more teeth to battling once you've gotten the hang of Normal.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
The Japanese voice pack improves the game a lot. I didn't realize you had to go into the eShop to get it (and Safety mode if anyone wants it) but am happy I did.
Dear videogames: Women do not actually communicate via high-pitched squeaks. Please update your approach accordingly.
Dear videogames: Women do not actually communicate via high-pitched squeaks. Please update your approach accordingly.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
Finished the second region of Da'at. As someone who has played all the mainline games, it has big Disappointed But Not Surprised energy.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
Third region of Da'at complete, and while I enjoyed the vibe of this section, it definitely feels like they skipped an act of the game.
Finished this today. Overall quite good, but man, I wish I felt like more parts of the game were memorable to me. It's really fun to play, and from a mechanical and design standpoint it might be the best the series has been, but otherwise there just isn't much there I found impressive. The story, beyond having the issues already discussed here, feels completely inert to me. Like, there are parts where you go so long without the plot moving forward that it feels like nothing is really happening.
Either way I'm glad I played it, but it's not one I feel inclined to play again.
Either way I'm glad I played it, but it's not one I feel inclined to play again.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I started liking the game once I got back to Tokyo and I thought the school section was wonderfully creepy. But now I'm in the region full of parking structures and dusty towers and am back to falling asleep in boredom and frustration from lack of landmarks or anything interesting to look at/navigate by. I was excited for the Fairy Village when it had the cool entrance by dropping off the cliff but even that just looked like an infinite copy/paste of the same few plants once I started walking around.
I dunno, when I'm enjoying the game I really enjoy it but then it swings hard to boring and repetitive and I debate quitting again. SMT IV was just infinitely more interesting and fun to play than this for me. I'm glad I got this on sale and will definitely keep trying to play for a bit more as there are a couple things in the game I'd heard of and want to see, but it's not long before I decide something in my backlog is more worth my time than this. And of course I hate Magical Girl Sacrifices Herself because we really should be moving past that by now but that's been discussed a lot already.
I dunno, when I'm enjoying the game I really enjoy it but then it swings hard to boring and repetitive and I debate quitting again. SMT IV was just infinitely more interesting and fun to play than this for me. I'm glad I got this on sale and will definitely keep trying to play for a bit more as there are a couple things in the game I'd heard of and want to see, but it's not long before I decide something in my backlog is more worth my time than this. And of course I hate Magical Girl Sacrifices Herself because we really should be moving past that by now but that's been discussed a lot already.
I finished the game over the weekend and went through all the ending routes. The story got more and more baffling as it went along, and the alignments in particular seem to be defined strangely and inconsistently.
The three factions you can side with at the end are the Bethel angels, led by Abdiel and Dazai, Koshimizu and Atsuta representing the Shinto gods, or Yakumo and Nuwa. They're ostensibly law, chaos and neutral respectively, but they don't really fit those alignments.
Abdiel and Dazai both have dramatic scenes where they turn into evil-looking forms even before they fuse to become a Nahobino, which is the one thing their god really hates. So aesthetically, they're chaos, and the world they want to create is basically a return to the previous one, which is neutral both in the sense that returning the world to its prior state is usually neutral in SMT and in that the defining feature of that world is that gods are split into demon and human halves that can't fuse to return to their original forms, a half measure compared to wiping them out entirely. Also, Abdiel's compendium description says she was the one angel under Lucifer's command who wouldn't join his rebellion, which is probably just a reference to Paradise Lost that was meant to justify the use of the name and nothing more, but in combination with her arc in this game, it characterizes her as someone who consistently rejects authority, refusing to become a fallen angel when Lucifer told her to and refusing not to become a Nahobino when God told her to. For his part, Dazai's conclusion that it's best to just leave everything to an infallible god is more consistent with law conceptually, but it makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game's plot; that god is already dead, which both proves he wasn't infallible and means relying on him isn't an option anyway.
I don't have much to say about Koshimizu and Atsuta as characters, but the world they want is also more neutral than chaos. Their stated goal is to protect Japan by filling it with gods, and their ending has humans struggling but managing to coexist with those gods. There's nothing about survival of the fittest or the strong ruling the weak, the usual hallmarks of SMT chaos. It seems like this game's writers just decided that angels are law and Japanese gods are chaos in SMT because they always have been, regardless of their actual goals. Or even more cynically, the message could be that putting your faith in the god of Abraham is being a sheep, but doing what the Prime Minister of Japan tells you is thinking for yourself. Also, Koshimizu sticks to his human form for the entire game until he and Atsuta fuse to become Nahobino Tsukuyomi, which they don't even do on their own route; even going with the "neutral means humanity first" angle, he seems like a better neutral rep than Nuwa.
Yakumo is supposed to be neutral, but he says stuff like "anyone who can't fend for themselves has no right to live", which is as chaos as it gets, and he seems more interested in fighting against Bethel than the demons. But he does talk a lot about how bad demons are in front of Nuwa, who just puts up with it because she's in love with him. Or because he's the one human with her knowledge, so she doesn't really have a choice. As a neutral alignment rep, Yakumo is just the worst, but if he were presented as chaos... well, he still wouldn't be as likable as Walter or Jimenez, but at least he would make more sense. Nuwa, on the other hand, is literally chaos, as you can see in her compendium description (although her Nahobino form is neutral, at least). That description also mentions her mythological connection to Fuxi, which made me think at first that Yakumo would turn out to be Fuxi, but no, he's just some guy with yellow demon eyes. Anyway, Yakumo says he wants to make a world for humans, but his method for doing so, destroying the throne of creation, won't accomplish his goal. Nuwa's alternate solution of using the throne to wipe gods and demons out of existence is effective, but it's like a more extreme version of what Abdiel wants to do, so by the standards of this game Nuwa's plan is more law than law, even though Nuwa herself is anything but law.
Also, not an alignment rep, but Goko being like "by the way, I'm Amitabha" had me laughing for a couple of minutes.
Abdiel and Dazai both have dramatic scenes where they turn into evil-looking forms even before they fuse to become a Nahobino, which is the one thing their god really hates. So aesthetically, they're chaos, and the world they want to create is basically a return to the previous one, which is neutral both in the sense that returning the world to its prior state is usually neutral in SMT and in that the defining feature of that world is that gods are split into demon and human halves that can't fuse to return to their original forms, a half measure compared to wiping them out entirely. Also, Abdiel's compendium description says she was the one angel under Lucifer's command who wouldn't join his rebellion, which is probably just a reference to Paradise Lost that was meant to justify the use of the name and nothing more, but in combination with her arc in this game, it characterizes her as someone who consistently rejects authority, refusing to become a fallen angel when Lucifer told her to and refusing not to become a Nahobino when God told her to. For his part, Dazai's conclusion that it's best to just leave everything to an infallible god is more consistent with law conceptually, but it makes no sense in the context of the rest of the game's plot; that god is already dead, which both proves he wasn't infallible and means relying on him isn't an option anyway.
I don't have much to say about Koshimizu and Atsuta as characters, but the world they want is also more neutral than chaos. Their stated goal is to protect Japan by filling it with gods, and their ending has humans struggling but managing to coexist with those gods. There's nothing about survival of the fittest or the strong ruling the weak, the usual hallmarks of SMT chaos. It seems like this game's writers just decided that angels are law and Japanese gods are chaos in SMT because they always have been, regardless of their actual goals. Or even more cynically, the message could be that putting your faith in the god of Abraham is being a sheep, but doing what the Prime Minister of Japan tells you is thinking for yourself. Also, Koshimizu sticks to his human form for the entire game until he and Atsuta fuse to become Nahobino Tsukuyomi, which they don't even do on their own route; even going with the "neutral means humanity first" angle, he seems like a better neutral rep than Nuwa.
Yakumo is supposed to be neutral, but he says stuff like "anyone who can't fend for themselves has no right to live", which is as chaos as it gets, and he seems more interested in fighting against Bethel than the demons. But he does talk a lot about how bad demons are in front of Nuwa, who just puts up with it because she's in love with him. Or because he's the one human with her knowledge, so she doesn't really have a choice. As a neutral alignment rep, Yakumo is just the worst, but if he were presented as chaos... well, he still wouldn't be as likable as Walter or Jimenez, but at least he would make more sense. Nuwa, on the other hand, is literally chaos, as you can see in her compendium description (although her Nahobino form is neutral, at least). That description also mentions her mythological connection to Fuxi, which made me think at first that Yakumo would turn out to be Fuxi, but no, he's just some guy with yellow demon eyes. Anyway, Yakumo says he wants to make a world for humans, but his method for doing so, destroying the throne of creation, won't accomplish his goal. Nuwa's alternate solution of using the throne to wipe gods and demons out of existence is effective, but it's like a more extreme version of what Abdiel wants to do, so by the standards of this game Nuwa's plan is more law than law, even though Nuwa herself is anything but law.
Also, not an alignment rep, but Goko being like "by the way, I'm Amitabha" had me laughing for a couple of minutes.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
The much-discussed Demon King's Palace doesn't work because it strips out everything that makes exploring worthwhile: No Miman to find, no Abscesses to clear for new Miracles, no Vending Machines for money, no Petrified Demons for Experience. All you see are an unfortunately small pool of encounters and a couple of treasure chests (which mostly contain Essences of those encounters). It's a slog that adds nothing to the game.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
I finished Shin Megami Tensei V, and I have plenty of Thoughts About It that I will try to articulate at a later date Below! I don't think I've played a game that has this much "Manga that the writer wanted to run for like a decade but got cancelled after three volumes" energy before though.
Knowing Things
A lot of what I liked about the game is in the concepts, not the executions. The idea that all Gods used to be Nahobino, but the Creator God stripped them of their Knowledge, which was later passed on to humanity by Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and so now Gods and Demons want the souls of humans to try and reclaim their lost Knowledge and return to their original divine state works well enough, and frankly I prefer it to the Old School "Humans Contain Magnetite, It's What Demons Crave" explanation. "Only a Nahobino can sit on the throne of the Creator" works better in the context of this story than SMT3's convoluted "Only a human can create a Reason but a Demi-fiend must realize it" system.
....buuuut then the execution becomes increasingly messy: "Humans have Knowledge" becomes "Specific humans have a specific being's Knowledge" and then confusingly "Specific humans can have the Knowledge of multiple beings depending on the evolution of mythology." I didn't quite follow the logic of why the Main Character would also be suitable as Zeus's Knowledge, but apparently that would mean the MC is also the Knowledge of Belfegor, Moloch, and Baal?
Some of the Nahobino pairs have romanticsubtext: Khonsu loves his Miyazu, Nuwa loves Yakumo (although a character straight up says that Yakumo could be considered a symbol for all of humanity, everything about how their scenes are framed feels deliberately romantic), and then we get to Amanozako, an entity created from the Proto-Fiend Aogami, who says that the MC is a her soulmate, which, setting aside all of the Icky Things About That, expands compatible Knowledge to include Specific Beings, Any Beings That Share Common Mythological Ancestry (something that SMT is already pretty liberal with), and Any Children Of Any Of Those Specific Beings That Were Created Asexually.
Emptiness
This feels like a game that had development issues. Earlier I said "Manga that was intended to run for decades but ended up cancelled after three volumes" energy, and what I meant by that is the first two arcs (Looking for Dazai in the intro and the Lahmu stuff) are both lengthy segments that take up two entire sections of Tokyo with relatively low stakes, then you're thrown in the third arc/area: The climatic final battle between the forces of Bethel and the Demon King, and following that you enter the forth arc/final open area that leads into the end game: The War of the Gods. I don't think the game would have been better served with more Persona-esque "Areas about one character and their minor problems" like the second arc, but man there needed to be something else here. Perhaps some mission where you work with Yuzuru to match the one where you work with Dazai (given a broad definition of "work with" I guess).
(I do like that this game decided to try and further expand on SMT4A's concepts, and while the other pantheons are a little more reasonable here, they still serve as little more than roadblocks for the main Law v Chaos story)
There's an odd conflict in the game, where it wants to have modern presentation but mostly stick with an old school amount of text and characterization, so like early on you get a scene where Tao tells you about how Tokyo was destroyed 18 years ago in Armageddon, and the Tokyo the characters know is a miracle of God, and the characters are basically "damn that's crazy" and just... don't really acknowledge it until the beginning of the fourth arc.
The environments themselves feel dull and repetitive, a few places seek to create specific Tokyo landmarks (The Diet, Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Station), but mostly you're running around similar bombed out buildings and highways, with very little of it leaving a lasting impression. Perhaps including more alien architecture throughout the game would have helped create more memorable locales. Odin's domain, for example, incorporates a Nocturne-style block architecture dungeon-y area into the main Taito map, giving it a stronger presence than, say, the empty lot Zeus is standing in (Everything about Odin's domain, including the cutscene where you confront him, feels like it had way more attention put into it compared to Zeus and Vasuki's events).
The Temple of Eternity is literally just an Etrian Odyssey dungeon, except instead of "using your eyes to draw a map and learning FOE patrol patterns to avoid dying horrible" as a combat mechanic, you just sort of... run by all the enemies while looking at the auto map to see which paths to take. It even introduces a gimmick that's barely used, to the point I was left wondering, "Why is any of this here? What does this add to the game?"
The level curve feels designed in such a way that it expects the player to do all side quests in a region before moving on, such is the curse of an open world design, and I don't think this is a good substitute for actual story events involving the actual story characters.
Moderate Alignments
A lot of folks seem to be kind of down on how alignments are depicted in this, but I think the more moderate approach works. The alignments do feel quite a bit different than in other games, to the point that it seems a non-insignificant portion of players were confused as to which alignment was Chaos and which was Neutral. the game is actually pretty clear on which is which IMO, but I can see why the Chaos faction, defined almost entirely as "Reasonable folks who are just generically Pro-Tokyo" instead of "The rivers will run red with the blood of the weak" might confuse some folks.
I wish the Law faction had decided they wanted to preserve the Shekinah Glory (which does end up happening in the Law ending), because I think that would have made it a more reasonable option. It might have also been nice to see the other pantheons actually fighting to drive home that the Chaos faction's plan would actually bring about conflict.
It was an extremely good choice to have the Neutral faction be a Sword and Gun using lunatic whose entire personality is "I hate all Gods, Angels, and Demons, and will kill literally any and all that cross my path" and his magic using Goddess/Girlfriend who exists only to stand by her man.
This is all a welcome change from previous games, especially 4, where your good natured friends Walter and Jonathan are suddenly, randomly, ok with doing mass murder for their alignment, with Neutral being depicted as the only reasonable choice. (I imagine also that just letting the player pick which ending they wanted was added in response to 4's alignment system).
(There's also a secret hidden Real True Ending, a lazy retread of SMT3's freedom ending where you create a world without Gods or Demons, but inexplicably requires you to do a number of side quest chains which culminate in various demon characters talking about how kind and compassionate you are to demonkind)
I Got Got!
Here are some things that surprised me:
Tao did not turn out to be Amaterasu, even though her first Goddess form has a giant red sun crown and Amaterasu is otherwise conspicuously absent from the game.
Yuzuru's whole character. His character blurb and introduction are about how he takes care of his younger sister, and you're like "Oh I see where this is going, she'll die and he'll go Alignment Crazy" but then the game subverts your expectations by him not only barely mentioning his sister after the into (and not interacting with her at all), but by also giving him no personality or storyline to speak of.
Goko, a character who was largely absent from pre-release media despite showing up pretty early and getting a name card in-game wasn't actually Lucifer. I figured the guy who gives you a mysterious artifact and keeps showing up randomly throughout both the Shekinah Glory and Da'at might by Lucifer, as is customary in this franchise, but instead reveals himself to be a different entity in the final minutes of the game. The "reveal" itself reminds me of a Jenny Nicholson bit where she's making fun of Star Wars fans who wanted Snoke to turn to the screen and say "My true name is Darth Plageius" and how that wouldn't actually mean anything to any of the characters in the actual movie. There's probably a way to make this reveal work, but it just happens so late in the game and involves such an inconsequential (and given the presence of Tao as a generic Goddess meant to facilitate creation, redundant) character. Maybe if he had had some kind of true form or associated boss fight (or there wasn't literally another character there to explain the concept of the Throne and Creation).
I'm not going to get into the Gender Politics and Depiction Of Women, I think other posters have covered it well enough that I'm comfortable leaving it simply as It's Bad, Actually.
A lot of what I liked about the game is in the concepts, not the executions. The idea that all Gods used to be Nahobino, but the Creator God stripped them of their Knowledge, which was later passed on to humanity by Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and so now Gods and Demons want the souls of humans to try and reclaim their lost Knowledge and return to their original divine state works well enough, and frankly I prefer it to the Old School "Humans Contain Magnetite, It's What Demons Crave" explanation. "Only a Nahobino can sit on the throne of the Creator" works better in the context of this story than SMT3's convoluted "Only a human can create a Reason but a Demi-fiend must realize it" system.
....buuuut then the execution becomes increasingly messy: "Humans have Knowledge" becomes "Specific humans have a specific being's Knowledge" and then confusingly "Specific humans can have the Knowledge of multiple beings depending on the evolution of mythology." I didn't quite follow the logic of why the Main Character would also be suitable as Zeus's Knowledge, but apparently that would mean the MC is also the Knowledge of Belfegor, Moloch, and Baal?
Some of the Nahobino pairs have romantic
Emptiness
This feels like a game that had development issues. Earlier I said "Manga that was intended to run for decades but ended up cancelled after three volumes" energy, and what I meant by that is the first two arcs (Looking for Dazai in the intro and the Lahmu stuff) are both lengthy segments that take up two entire sections of Tokyo with relatively low stakes, then you're thrown in the third arc/area: The climatic final battle between the forces of Bethel and the Demon King, and following that you enter the forth arc/final open area that leads into the end game: The War of the Gods. I don't think the game would have been better served with more Persona-esque "Areas about one character and their minor problems" like the second arc, but man there needed to be something else here. Perhaps some mission where you work with Yuzuru to match the one where you work with Dazai (given a broad definition of "work with" I guess).
(I do like that this game decided to try and further expand on SMT4A's concepts, and while the other pantheons are a little more reasonable here, they still serve as little more than roadblocks for the main Law v Chaos story)
There's an odd conflict in the game, where it wants to have modern presentation but mostly stick with an old school amount of text and characterization, so like early on you get a scene where Tao tells you about how Tokyo was destroyed 18 years ago in Armageddon, and the Tokyo the characters know is a miracle of God, and the characters are basically "damn that's crazy" and just... don't really acknowledge it until the beginning of the fourth arc.
The environments themselves feel dull and repetitive, a few places seek to create specific Tokyo landmarks (The Diet, Tokyo Tower, Tokyo Station), but mostly you're running around similar bombed out buildings and highways, with very little of it leaving a lasting impression. Perhaps including more alien architecture throughout the game would have helped create more memorable locales. Odin's domain, for example, incorporates a Nocturne-style block architecture dungeon-y area into the main Taito map, giving it a stronger presence than, say, the empty lot Zeus is standing in (Everything about Odin's domain, including the cutscene where you confront him, feels like it had way more attention put into it compared to Zeus and Vasuki's events).
The Temple of Eternity is literally just an Etrian Odyssey dungeon, except instead of "using your eyes to draw a map and learning FOE patrol patterns to avoid dying horrible" as a combat mechanic, you just sort of... run by all the enemies while looking at the auto map to see which paths to take. It even introduces a gimmick that's barely used, to the point I was left wondering, "Why is any of this here? What does this add to the game?"
The level curve feels designed in such a way that it expects the player to do all side quests in a region before moving on, such is the curse of an open world design, and I don't think this is a good substitute for actual story events involving the actual story characters.
Moderate Alignments
A lot of folks seem to be kind of down on how alignments are depicted in this, but I think the more moderate approach works. The alignments do feel quite a bit different than in other games, to the point that it seems a non-insignificant portion of players were confused as to which alignment was Chaos and which was Neutral. the game is actually pretty clear on which is which IMO, but I can see why the Chaos faction, defined almost entirely as "Reasonable folks who are just generically Pro-Tokyo" instead of "The rivers will run red with the blood of the weak" might confuse some folks.
I wish the Law faction had decided they wanted to preserve the Shekinah Glory (which does end up happening in the Law ending), because I think that would have made it a more reasonable option. It might have also been nice to see the other pantheons actually fighting to drive home that the Chaos faction's plan would actually bring about conflict.
It was an extremely good choice to have the Neutral faction be a Sword and Gun using lunatic whose entire personality is "I hate all Gods, Angels, and Demons, and will kill literally any and all that cross my path" and his magic using Goddess/Girlfriend who exists only to stand by her man.
This is all a welcome change from previous games, especially 4, where your good natured friends Walter and Jonathan are suddenly, randomly, ok with doing mass murder for their alignment, with Neutral being depicted as the only reasonable choice. (I imagine also that just letting the player pick which ending they wanted was added in response to 4's alignment system).
(There's also a secret hidden Real True Ending, a lazy retread of SMT3's freedom ending where you create a world without Gods or Demons, but inexplicably requires you to do a number of side quest chains which culminate in various demon characters talking about how kind and compassionate you are to demonkind)
I Got Got!
Here are some things that surprised me:
Tao did not turn out to be Amaterasu, even though her first Goddess form has a giant red sun crown and Amaterasu is otherwise conspicuously absent from the game.
Yuzuru's whole character. His character blurb and introduction are about how he takes care of his younger sister, and you're like "Oh I see where this is going, she'll die and he'll go Alignment Crazy" but then the game subverts your expectations by him not only barely mentioning his sister after the into (and not interacting with her at all), but by also giving him no personality or storyline to speak of.
Goko, a character who was largely absent from pre-release media despite showing up pretty early and getting a name card in-game wasn't actually Lucifer. I figured the guy who gives you a mysterious artifact and keeps showing up randomly throughout both the Shekinah Glory and Da'at might by Lucifer, as is customary in this franchise, but instead reveals himself to be a different entity in the final minutes of the game. The "reveal" itself reminds me of a Jenny Nicholson bit where she's making fun of Star Wars fans who wanted Snoke to turn to the screen and say "My true name is Darth Plageius" and how that wouldn't actually mean anything to any of the characters in the actual movie. There's probably a way to make this reveal work, but it just happens so late in the game and involves such an inconsequential (and given the presence of Tao as a generic Goddess meant to facilitate creation, redundant) character. Maybe if he had had some kind of true form or associated boss fight (or there wasn't literally another character there to explain the concept of the Throne and Creation).
I'm not going to get into the Gender Politics and Depiction Of Women, I think other posters have covered it well enough that I'm comfortable leaving it simply as It's Bad, Actually.
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Becksworth
Aging Hipster Dragon Dad
I beat this last night. Coming at this game from more a Xenoblade fan who heard this game had strange big open areas to explore perspective, this kind of felt like a half step between Xenoblade and traditional SMT games that won't fully please either camp. The first area was dope, but then subsequent regions were basically the same with different colored sand. At the same time it sounds like the narrative was lacking compared to previous SMT games.
Hmmm, well I'm not a big fan of Xenoblade open worlds but I liked this game's maps a lot. I also don't personally agree with the characterization of subsequent areas being different colored sand, but I suppose I can see why someone would feel that way.