Bringing the popular turn-based JPRG series Shin Megami Tensei to its fifth installment, Atlus has once again pulled off an amazing adventure! This time they partnered with Sega and Nintendo to get the game out on Nintendo Switch, but Shin Megami Tensei V is expected to release on more platforms in the future - likely within 2022. Being able to jump into this new title of the series on my Switch has brought a frustrating type of entertainment that a properly challenging turn-based game can provide. But is it worth playing through as a newcomer or is the series pushing forward for its already built community?

Story

After following a friend who ran off during a hectic moment, trying to take advantage of his friends being distracted, you find yourself entering a world like no other. Waking on the ground after losing consciousness, you find yourself in a post-apocalyptic world and soon find that it is the future of the city you were just in. To make matters worse, it is a hostile world full of demons!

Once you begin to explore, you will be approached by a peculiar demon that forms a bond with you. This bond connects his demon body with your human body to form a body built to fight against other demons in this new realm you are trapped within. But even with this new power, you won’t be able to handle the fights alone.

From here, you will need to make friends with demons and use teamwork to progress through the large, unforgiving world you are in. Finding answers to your new reality is a priority, but it is the goal of finding your missing friend that fuels your adventure! Do you have what it takes to survive in this unruly world of demons, daemons, monsters, and foes?

Gameplay

This game can be broken down into a few main aspects that put everything together. Knowing these aspects and utilizing them appropriately will be the difference from a winning strategy and death. There is the combat, choice-based dialogue, overworld exploration, team strategizing, and shops for purchasing items, abilities, and upgrades.

As you make your way through the game, you will earn Macca which is your in-game funding. While this is used for the obvious reasoning - shops - it can also be used to win demons over to your side. Starting off solo and building up your party is a big aspect to this game and the first steps intermingle with the same as combat. Once you get into an altercation with a demon, you can attempt to talk to it and convince it to join you. This can be difficult as you have to reason with each demon in a way that is fitting to that demon and you don’t know how the conversations are going to go, but be ready to make some dialogue-based decisions here. Once you get further in the game, you will be able to get some team members to join you by completing quests they give you as well.

Combat is pretty straightforward for anybody experienced with a turn-based combat system. You can choose between attacking with a standard attack, using a special skill that would match an element giving a chance to hit your enemy with a weakness they have, using an item on yourself or a fellow teammate, and attempting to escape. The only difference here is the option to talk to them, which only the main character has. Something to keep in mind while fighting is that your main character should be a focus for you at all times because when anybody goes down, they can be revived later or with an item and then put back in the party, but if your main character dies then it is game over.

If you get a game over, you will have to load up from your last save. This means you will need to save often so you do not lose progress. Doing anything risky or going into an area with enemies that are a higher level than you should always have a moment for saving completed before venturing forth into the high-risk areas. That said, as you progress through the game you will begin to learn your enemies better. And not just you, the player, but your character will remember each different demon’s specific weakness and strength elements, making it easier for you to know which attack to use when you can.

Using skills requires MP which has a bar right under your character’s HP. While this can be filled with the recovery section at a save point, with the required Macca charge, you can also find refill orbs in the overworld as you explore and progress through the map. While exploring you will find hidden items, which are marked on your minimap and when you get close your helping fairy will point it out to you, poppable balloon-like balls that hide an item, and, of course, enemies. Enemies range from small to large, zone fiends to bosses. While zone fiend isn’t the proper name for them, it is what I find to be a fitting term as you will see them on the minimap because they take up an entire red segment of the map and once defeated you will get plenty of experience points and the extra hostile red segment will disappear.

Utilizing the shops is a big aspect of this game. For instance, you can always be ahead of the game by having a Spyglass item on you for every encounter. As I mentioned before, you remember details of demons that you have fought previously and the Spyglass item will immediately reveal the enemy’s list of elements they are both weak and strong against. There are plenty of other items in the shops, ranging from healing items to attack boosters, so be sure to give them a good look-through.

All of the shops are found in the same place - save points. Of course, you have to progress far enough in the game to reach them, but once you find them they are added to every save point. Just expect to spend some time at save points to restock, restore, and make a new save state.

Visuals and Sounds

Graphically speaking, the game has an anime style to it while pulling away from being fully into that art style. Demons and characters all have a unique look to them and characteristics which show in both their animations and dialogue. It is a very appealing art style that is able to help show off how massive the world around you is while simultaneously making even the most vicious enemies look somewhat approachable.

As for the sounds used, the voice work is all pretty well done, but nothing outstanding. However, the music added to the game definitely stands out and is not only a good fit, but pleasant to listen to. Whether they are using it to hype up a battle or add atmosphere to your exploration, I never found a moment that I didn’t enjoy the music itself.

Replayability

While the main game itself is mainly the same, there are enough small differences in the game that could make a second playthrough worthwhile. You can adjust the game difficulty at any time and make battles harder, befriend various demons and try handling fights with different ones, and try different strategies from the ones that you used before.

What Could Be Better

I found that partnering with demons can be a rather frustrating aspect. Mainly when it comes to times where they say they are “too high of a level to join me” but there is no specification telling me what level to try again at. It just felt like a punishment for doing everything right, just too soon, especially since the demon would take the gift or Macca for joining and then just not join.

While I appreciate the difficulty of the game later in, it feels like they didn’t give enough of a gradual build-up in the difficulty at the start of the game. Even playing the game on the ‘Normal’ difficulty proved to bring more of a challenge than I would have initially expected. Still, once you learn the ropes, build up your team, and get some momentum going, the game becomes a lot of fun really fast!

Verdict

Shin Megami Tensei V is an awesome turn-based JRPG for those that can handle the frustrations that come with the challenging gameplay! I hope that more players climb that initial hurdle to get to the true value this game holds behind the upfront challenge. But once you get over that molehill, the entertainment mountain awaits you beyond it. I definitely recommend this game to anybody looking for a turn-based fantasy game that won’t hold your hand, regardless of whether you have played the Shin Megami Tensei game series before or not.