It’s been almost three years since the release of the original Shin Megami Tensei V, and as is tradition at Atlus, the obligatory enhanced re-release (complete with a new storyline centered around a new girl) has now arrived on everything modern platformers in the form of Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. Featuring a full-length, alternate storyline, and tons of gameplay and balance tweaks, SMTV: V is easily the definitive version of an already excellent entry in the long-running series. If you’re at all a fan of SMT, Persona, or JRPGs in general, you owe it to yourself to pick this up at your earliest opportunity.
For this review, we’ll be focusing more on the additions and tweaks made to the core SMT V experience with this release – if you’d like to get a more detailed assessment of the game’s core mechanics and such, we’d encourage you to read our release review from 2021, which still largely applies here.
Now let’s go over briefly exactly What this release is. Atlus usually makes an enhanced version of its most popular games a few years after their initial release, usually with fresh story content and balance tweaks that address complaints about the original version. Previous releases such as Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology, Devil Survivor 2 Record Breaker, or Persona 5 Royal usually tacked this extra story content onto the end or scattered it around the old storyline. What makes SMT V: V a little more special is that instead of just offering an “add-on” to the original storyline, this version brings a full-length storyline for you to choose from instead of the original.
SMT V: V starts off pretty much the same as the original release, but just minutes into the story, things veer off into new and interesting territory. In a strange dream sequence, you are presented with the ghostly form of a young woman, while a disembodied voice tells you that she “cannot be allowed to exist” and offers you a choice. If you leave it there, the fate of the world will continue as intended, but if you choose to take it by the hand, it will become real and the world will go down an unplanned and unknown path. Ultimately, this is where you choose whether you want to follow the storyline of the original SMT V release (here called “Canon of Creation”) or the new “Canon of Vengeance” story.
If you choose to save the girl, she will soon be introduced as Yoko Hiromine, a tough and mysterious Devil Summoner who agrees to accompany Nahobino on his mission to determine the future of the world amidst the eternal war between law and chaos. Yoko is a capable warrior with a quiet darkness about her, and her strength is a welcome asset as you face off against a charismatic new gang of antagonists who call themselves Kadistu. The Kadistu offer yet another interesting perspective on the nature of truth in the strange world of Daath, and become increasingly central to the story as events gradually diverge from the original plot in increasingly significant ways.
We were fans of SMT V’s jarring original storyline, but it’s hard to argue that Atlus’ second foray into a story isn’t an improvement here. In many ways, this seems to be the story of the developers wanted to say for the first time – Yoko was planned to be a part of the original release before she was cut during development, and her addition to the core cast here feels organic and fills a gap that wasn’t apparent before. Perhaps most importantly, it feels like this new storyline focuses a bit more on the interactions between the various human characters, making this narrative easier to relate to than the somewhat mundane plot of the first edition.
While we’d encourage all players who choose this to start with the Canon of Vengeance storyline, we’d still suggest playing through the Canon of Creation at some point as well – it might feel incomplete, but experiencing both gives you much more appreciation for what everyone brings to the table. Plus, if you factor in the 80-hour run time each time and multiple endings, that’s it a lot of SMT V content to burn through if you’re addicted to the challenging and addictive gameplay here. Suffice it to say, it will take you a long time to finally run out of things to do.
Aside from the story, various gameplay and quality of life improvements have also been made to further streamline the experience and make it more enjoyable overall. For example, you can now save anywhere with the press of a button instead of having to wait to find the next Leyline Fount. This helps cut down on some of the running for tough fights and makes it much easier to avoid losing a lot of progress if you happen to get jumped by an enemy that lands a critical that takes you out in one hit.
Da’at is still just as enjoyable to explore and platform as it ever was, and to aid traversal, there are now grind rails strategically placed throughout the wasteland to help speed up travel. Some of these are immediately obvious, and some have to be discovered first before appearing on your map, and we liked how they expand on the existing map, giving access to new areas while making backtracking generally faster. You’ll often unlock a new rail after taking the “long way” around a series of obstacles to make the journey to and from the top easier.
Demon Haunt is another big addition that gives you the pretty sweet opportunity to spend time talking and building relationships with your various recruits. After a demon has traveled with your party for a while, it will ask to speak with you, and you can then choose to confirm its request at a peaceful haunt accessible from any Leyline Fount. You can then exchange gifts or talk to them and after the talk the demon will usually get a stat boost. Sometimes even Nahobino will get some direct incentives as well. This isn’t a social connection system, but we still appreciate the effort to get you to see demons as more than marginally expendable assets. At the very least, Demon Haunt provides a nice breath of fresh air from the overarching stress of the rest of the adventure, while the gameplay benefits these exchanges offer can help you get that edge to get over a boss encounter you’ve been hanging on to.
Such additions aside, the gameplay is pretty much the same as the original, which was excellent. You explore the vast, terrifying wasteland as you perform your wacky Naruto run, Press Turn is still one of the best turn-based combat systems ever created through its strategic and engaging approach to buffs, weaknesses, and turn economy, while recruiting and sliva demons remains a compelling and addictive party building mechanic throughout the experience. Even if the harder difficulty may be off-putting to some, there’s rarely a dull moment in any story given the abundance of objectives and gameplay options. Everyone has their own tastes when it comes to JRPGs, but it’s hard to argue that SMT V:V offers anything less than a polished and thoughtful gameplay experience.
Like Atlus’ previous re-releases, a key thing to remember about SMT V:V is that it’s still very much the same game that came out a few years ago. Sure, it’s got an all-new storyline and a bunch of gameplay and balance tweaks that make it a superior experience overall, but those of you who weren’t enthused by the game loop and difficulty of the original release won’t find much here change your mind. On the other hand, if you I did like the original release – or even if you just had a few criticisms that kept you from picking it up – this game is made for you. Atlus is removing the original game from store shelves to replace it with SMT V:V, and it’s understandable why, as this new version almost completely cancels that first version through all the additions, fixes, and original content.
Something he particularly succeeded in doing no the improvement for this re-release is performance, which still isn’t fantastic. While everything runs at a fairly constant 30fps, asset popping and blurry resolution are par for the course here, whether you’re playing docked or handheld. SMT V: V is still a visual marvel on the Switch, and it certainly feels like a game that has no business running on such humble hardware, but it’s clear that Atlus had to push the Switch as far as possible to get performance up to par. although not impressive state it is in.
This is a little disappointing, as we were hoping that a few more years of experience in Switch development would see Atlus find ways to squeeze better performance out of this one. On the other hand, we seem to have reached the point where there simply isn’t much more that developers can reasonably do with limited hardware, especially considering that SMT V:V is built on an off-the-shelf engine with Unreal 4. If the lack of of visual effects or resolution are a big issue for your games, we’d suggest you skip the Switch and go for one of the versions available on other hardware platforms if you have access to one. SMT V: V is a good Switch experience performance-wise, but it hardly feels like the definitive version of this release.
