GOTY 2021 mini reviews: SMT V (Patreon)

Continuing the series of reviews I (brandon) had to do whilst judging awards shows, here's SMT V! A game I quite liked but stopped playing partially because of my bad controller, partially because... I dunno, the open world gave me more of a busywork feel than previous games did? Not sure why. I should get back to it. And remember, I'm mostly describing the game to people who might not play it at all. Anyway:

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Shin Megami Tensei V

I'm an SMT fan and I bought this when it came out, so keep that in mind. SMT IV is my favorite of the series so far, though I love III, and the persona spinoffs are excellent. Still like SMT IV the most.

If anyone here doesn't know the game, it's a lot like Pokemon with demons, but rather than throwing pokeballs, you negotiate with demons to get them onto your team, saying things you think they'll like, giving them things they request (health, money, items), etc. That in itself can be pretty enjoyable.

SMT V continues to streamline things in certain ways - combat is pretty clear, with a focus on elemental deficiencies and affinities. Hit an enemy's weak spot and get another turn. The enemy gets another turn if they hit one of your team's weak spots. You've got an autobattle option as well. Special attacks take magic, which can be refilled by finding little colored dust motes out in the world, or refilled at save zones. I prefer the UI of IV but it's still pretty clear here.

This game is very oldschool in that you have to save at specific areas. This is mostly to keep you from going into a dangerous area that you're not prepared for. At the same time, you can absolutely get wrecked by one team of demons and find yourself losing a couple hours of play, as happened to a lot of the younger press folks I saw looking at the game.

Rather than the more dungeon-oriented approach of prior games, V has something of an open world. This is good and bad really. Good in that there's a lot of freedom and ability to explore. Bad in that the areas get rather samey and drab in that post apocalyptic way. As always for the series, I appreciate that weaker enemies run away from you, so you don't have to waste your time with them.

So what do I like about this version? I think the "male pronouns but visually gender ambiguous" main character is intriguing. The demon negotiation is as amusing as ever, and there's plenty of extra writing in here, like when you try to recruit a demon but have too many in your party already. There are so many different ways for demons to react to this. Once I went back to a demon to recruit them again and they said "well look who we have here, it's the guy with too many friends."

I also like how sidequests are given textually. Quite often it just describes an area you'll need to look for, rather than plopping a dot on a map (though it also does that sometimes). Early on a mermaid asks you to follow the water to its source, and that's where you'll find her friends. You can't immediately get to that source, but you can generally see where it's going, and that feels nice, like you've got something to look forward to finding.

Finding the miiman, characters that give you some upgrade rewards, is the most fun part of the world exploration and platforming. You can guarantee that if you wind up getting somewhere that feels off, or like you "shouldn't be able to get there," there's gonna be a miiman to collect there.

Also the music is fantastic, and now I regret not buying a special edition to get the OST. oops.

What don't I like so much? The large maps get drab, there's no way around that. But the biggest pain point for me is the degree to which they've slowed the battles down. They still feel good, but it's like 60% of the speed it was in IV. IV was the fastest in the series, so maybe they felt like it was going in a direction they didn't like, but I loved it. It felt like a tactics game or a puzzle game almost, more than a JRPG. The speed with which you could make decisions really changed the game or me. This pace brings it back into JRPG territory which just doesn't work as well for me.

Also the story is kinda forgettable. You've got another conflict between angels and demons, and some humans caught in the middle, but it's kinda hard to care about. The story nodes are pretty few and far between anyway. But I don't mind that in this sort of game. There are "choices that matter" but these choices are just to pull you further toward the angels or the demons, but none of the choices are the ones I'd make personally.

Do I think it's GOTY material?

For my money, yes, 100%. For whatever faults I may find with it it's still in my top 5 games of the year bar none.

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I should get back into it - it just feels like a game you really need TIME to finish, or possibly a WORKING CONTROLLER and I don't have either of those, so...