Shin Megami Tensei 5 Review: ‘It’s the archetypical JRPG, but that’s not a bad thing’

Shin Megami Tensei 5 is finally here. Five years have passed since the last non-reboot entry in the series was released, and in that time, franchise spinoff Persona has gone from a cult hit to an international blockbuster. It was hard to figure out where Atlus would take SMT in a post-Persona 5 world. Would it take on its progeny’s slice of life and story-centric elements or attempt to reinvent itself some other way? The answer is neither. Shin Megami Tensei 5 sticks to the familiar formula of dungeon crawling and demon negotiating that the series has used for decades.

Angels and Demons

The biggest thing Persona fans will miss while playing Shin Megami Tensei 5 is the story. It’s not to say the narrative in SMT5 is bad, but it is far more sparse than the hours-long expositions we’ve seen in Persona games. Par course, you take the role of a high school student. On the way home from school, a murder closes the train station, and you follow after a friend searching for an alternate route home. Unfortunately, when you enter a tunnel after them, the ground quakes, and you fall unconscious.

When you awaken, demons attack you and leave you for dead. The only thing that saves you is a mysterious being named Aogami that fuses with you. Together you become a Nahobino. Now that you have the power to survive your unfamiliar environment, an alternate, post-apocalyptic Tokyo called Da’At that’s inhabited by warring angels and demons, it’s time to look for a way out.

Shin Megami Tensei 5’s story is engaging, but it’s mostly a vehicle for the gameplay. Battling and recruiting demons is the meat of this game, and it’s more of a dungeon crawler than Persona. The only other characters in the party, aside from the protagonist, are demons, so SMT5 has a much lonelier feel than Persona as well. Unfortunately, this also means the game lacks the deep connections between characters that make Persona so beloved. Your classmates will drift in and out of the story, and for the most part, your foes lack the hair-raising insidious nature of Suguru Kamoshida or Ichiryusai Madarame.

Deal with the Devil

The combat is the real meat of SMT5, and luckily the game gets you fighting and recruiting demons quickly. The active party consists of the protagonist and up to three demons. The upside to this is that your party composition is incredibly customizable since each demon has its own unique specialties, weaknesses, strengths, and growth. In a way, they’re more like creepy little Pokemon than a traditional RPG party member.

This time around, the negotiation system has been overhauled to make more sense. It works similarly to previous SMT games, but each demon has a personality type that makes the negotiation more sensible. They also seem to require less Meseta (money), HP, or MP when they ask for it as well, which makes negotiating less of a risk than it was in previous games.

The combat itself is turn-based and rather simplistic. Your party and the enemies take turns beating on each other until one side’s HP is depleted. However, you can interrupt the enemy’s turn by hitting it with the element it’s weak against. I never found myself getting too bored, but combat does sometimes drag, especially early in the game. There’s a lack of power moves to help quickly disperse low-level enemies, so even later in the game, you’ll spend more time taking on low-tier enemies than you really should have to.

Welcome to Hell

I did find the exploration in Shin Megami Tensei 5 to be excellent. The environments in this game are vast, and there’s plenty of opportunities to get off the beaten trail and find optional content. There are also side quests that you can take on to get extra snippets of story and rewards. While it’s not truly an open world, there is still a linear path through the game, but being able to fast travel between save points and take on side content at your leisure makes it a less claustrophobic experience.

One of the reasons the game lets you return to previous locations is because of difficulty spikes. Each new area gets a big bump in challenge, and you may find yourself needing to grind out some levels to take it on. This is the same with bosses. You could make it through an area reasonably easily and then get destroyed by a boss. Even on normal difficulty, the game can be quite a challenge, and it was the first time in a while I’ve had to retreat from a battle to grind. I never found the need to turn down the difficulty, but fortunately, that option is there for those who get really stuck.

Unfortunately, despite how much I enjoyed the game, it does suffer from being on the Nintendo Switch. It doesn’t have disastrously lousy performance, but the expansive environments can be a killer for the Switch’s weak hardware. The main issue was slowdown, which fortunately didn’t affect gameplay. However, with the game running on Unreal Engine 4, I would have liked to see what it would be like to play it on a platform with the horsepower to run it properly.

Shin Megami Tensei 5 Review: The final verdict

Shin Megami Tensei 5 brings back the things that fans love about the series. Its biggest sin is that it doesn’t do much to innovate. Fans that were expecting to see a brand new vision for SMT will be confused because this is essentially the same demon collecting dungeon crawler it has always been.

However, the quality of life improvements and the more expansive environments do add some new spice into the formula, and I had a blast fighting my heart out. It’s the archetypical JRPG, but that’s not a bad thing.