Atlus Shin Megami Tensei V - It's been hurting my OCD.

[oddech_wymarlych_swiatow]

I sometimes don't know if is satire or not, map markers fried the brain of the average person, he never wondered what the pillar of fire was or didn't feel the curiosity to explore.

Nevetheless, map in SMT5 is shitty, misguiding and those purple Abscess layers don't help either.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Don't quote me never again you shitter, hope you get lost on the way to the quote button.

 

[dacencora]

Yeah, yeah call me a filthy casual but holy shit DemiFiend and Shiva are hard. People say that they’re almost the same difficulty but no, DemiFiend is significantly harder. I almost beat Shiva on my 3rd attempt, I haven’t even come close with DemiFiend after like 10 attempts, and yes, all on normal.

The DemiFiend fight kind of confuses me because it shows that Atlus is still capable of making intelligent boss fights, yet almost none of the boss fights in V use the “Almighty if being reflected” tactic. Shiva using pierce abilities is nice too, but the other fights were mostly non-memorable IMO. Granted I have not done the final fights or anything yet, I was at 99 in Taito so I decided to try fighting DF and Shiva but have been unsuccessful lol.

EDIT: I liked all the Fiend fights and Khonsu-Ra, those were very memorable

 

[Tigranes]

So Demifiend. I did it on Casual as a test of the overall strategy and it worked well; I suspect I can also do it on Normal, but Hard would take a lot longer.

The issue is that the Demifiend is built to ensure no defensive strategy is foolproof: you can never stop their many Dekundas and Debilitates, they do seem to occasionally Freikugel you even if nobody has Null/Repel Phys, and you can't stop all the ailments or Chaotic Will even with Abyssal Masks for everyone. So on Hard you're always playing with, say, a 10% chance of a trainwreck every turn, and there's no way to kill him under, say, 20 turns (unless you do the Adversity trick). So that's what makes the fight interesting, of course, but I'm not sure I want to slog out the many reloads of a 30+min battle. Maybe in the future.

I definitely think they missed a huge trick on, well, none of the enemies having ANY AI except for Demifiend and a couple of other occasions. It's really weird that enemy boss Magatsuhi ends up becoming a free gift for the player because you can guarantee what they'll do on 90% of bosses and dampen it. Just changing that around - where all bosses "learn" a player's null/repels after one bounce, or even use Spyglasses on you - would completely change things.

Has anyone ever found all the Miman without walkthroughs? My best is 152 without looking anything up online.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Has anyone ever found all the Miman without walkthroughs? My best is 152 without looking anything up online.

Each area has a Chironnupu who will sell you the locations of all uncollected mimans for your map.

 

[Tigranes]

Has anyone ever found all the Miman without walkthroughs? My best is 152 without looking anything up online.

Each area has a Chironnupu who will sell you the locations of all uncollected mimans for your map.

Wait, all of them? What the fuck? I thought it was just ONE miman so I never paid up.

God damn pay for quest compass

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Has anyone ever found all the Miman without walkthroughs? My best is 152 without looking anything up online.

Each area has a Chironnupu who will sell you the locations of all uncollected mimans for your map.

Wait, all of them? What the fuck? I thought it was just ONE miman so I never paid up.

God damn pay for quest compass

Save, pay the fox, take a screenshot of the map with the mimans and reload the save.

 

[dacencora]

So Demifiend. I did it on Casual as a test of the overall strategy and it worked well; I suspect I can also do it on Normal, but Hard would take a lot longer.

The issue is that the Demifiend is built to ensure no defensive strategy is foolproof: you can never stop their many Dekundas and Debilitates, they do seem to occasionally Freikugel you even if nobody has Null/Repel Phys, and you can't stop all the ailments or Chaotic Will even with Abyssal Masks for everyone. So on Hard you're always playing with, say, a 10% chance of a trainwreck every turn, and there's no way to kill him under, say, 20 turns (unless you do the Adversity trick). So that's what makes the fight interesting, of course, but I'm not sure I want to slog out the many reloads of a 30+min battle. Maybe in the future.

I definitely think they missed a huge trick on, well, none of the enemies having ANY AI except for Demifiend and a couple of other occasions. It's really weird that enemy boss Magatsuhi ends up becoming a free gift for the player because you can guarantee what they'll do on 90% of bosses and dampen it. Just changing that around - where all bosses "learn" a player's null/repels after one bounce, or even use Spyglasses on you - would completely change things.

Has anyone ever found all the Miman without walkthroughs? My best is 152 without looking anything up online.

There are other strategies for the Demifiend, but yeah doing it fair would take quite a few tries, I think.

I beat Shiva on Normal, and it actually wasn't too bad. Good fight, good amount of challenge even at 99. True Neutral is a pretty sweet ending.

 

[Massl87]

For me SMT V was the best switch game in 2021. It was so cool getting a Level 99 Metatron due to a fusion error.

 

[karoliner]

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

The urge to replay it is coming back but i already finished the game in hard and got the true ending, kinda pointless.

 

[7h30n]

So what's the final verdict on this game when it comes to gameplay?

I've never played a SMT game before, and I'm thinking of picking up either SMT3 or SMT5 (or stick with proper dungeon crawling and pick up Stranger of Sword City). I'm only interested in the gameplay aspect. Good story is just a bonus for me.

 

[Thac0]

So what's the final verdict on this game when it comes to gameplay?

I've never played a SMT game before, and I'm thinking of picking up either SMT3 or SMT5 (or stick with proper dungeon crawling and pick up Stranger of Sword City). I'm only interested in the gameplay aspect. Good story is just a bonus for me.

It really comes down to the fact if you prefer classical dungeons or collect a thon esque semi open world hub sequences between your bossfights. Both are really good, SMT V sports some improvements to the combat formula, but also gives the player too much information during combat through the use of spying lenses (you get their full stat block including moveset and resistances) which takes some of the threat and surprise away from bossfights.

 

[dacencora]

I really enjoyed the gameplay, personally. Exploring the world and doing sidequests is much more fun than SMT IV, but not quite as fun as Nocturne. Boss fights are not as much fun as IV or Nocturne, but it’s still a great deal of fun, in my opinion.

 

[Tigranes]

I began with Nocturne and it hooked me on 6 months of playing almost every good Megaten, you just have to be in the mood for a game where both the atmosphere and the gameplay is a little bit hostile at the start. If you're in the mood to dip in lightly with a more modern sensibility I think there's nothing wrong with starting with SMT5, it's a good game.

 

[karoliner]

 

[d1r]

Much deserved. Now give us a fucking PC version.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I'd rather see Shin Megami Tensei vs Shin Ultraman

 

[perfectslumbers]

Wanted to get into mainline SMT after playing Persona 5, since an occultist setting is way more appealing than a high school setting, so I decided to try the newest game in the series. I'm about 15 hours in and I gotta say, this game is mediocre in every way. The checklist gameplay that makes up 80 or 90% of your gameplay is extremely boring and repetitive, I'm not sure why this type of design has become so common lately but I'm really sick of it. At least other collectathon games are open world so you can enjoy some freedom and sandboxing, this game is a collectathon without the strength collecathon games usually have. Maybe there are dungeons later on in the game but the game really needs them. The story is weird so far, side quests are cool, but all the cutscenes are extremely weird and stilted and pointless so far. The combat is unfortunately extremely easy and repetitive. Every boss can be defeated with the same strategy: 1. die once and use spyglass to figure out it's abilities 2. fuse demons that target it's weaknesses and a support demon that's resistant to it's attacks 3. spam the crit matsuhashi and your best damage skills 4. use the absorb item every time the boss uses it's matsuhashi. Apparently lategame bosses are extremely hard so I assume that changes later on but it's very disappointing that none of the bosses so far have unique strategies or gimmicks. Actually the game would be improved massively by removing the critical matsuhashi, or making it a lategame unlock.

Also fuck the level scaling (is that the correct term?) Having to grind to be within a few levels of every boss so that you won't get fucked by level based damage/defense modifiers is extremely annoying.

 

[Sentinel]

SMTV is a shit SMT game. The series was originally a dungeon crawler. If you want a proper (modern) SMT game play Strange Journey.

 

[Nathir]

Wanted to get into mainline SMT after playing Persona 5, since an occultist setting is way more appealing than a high school setting, so I decided to try the newest game in the series. I'm about 15 hours in and I gotta say, this game is mediocre in every way. The checklist gameplay that makes up 80 or 90% of your gameplay is extremely boring and repetitive, I'm not sure why this type of design has become so common lately but I'm really sick of it. At least other collectathon games are open world so you can enjoy some freedom and sandboxing, this game is a collectathon without the strength collecathon games usually have. Maybe there are dungeons later on in the game but the game really needs them. The story is weird so far, side quests are cool, but all the cutscenes are extremely weird and stilted and pointless so far. The combat is unfortunately extremely easy and repetitive. Every boss can be defeated with the same strategy: 1. die once and use spyglass to figure out it's abilities 2. fuse demons that target it's weaknesses and a support demon that's resistant to it's attacks 3. spam the crit matsuhashi and your best damage skills 4. use the absorb item every time the boss uses it's matsuhashi. Apparently lategame bosses are extremely hard so I assume that changes later on but it's very disappointing that none of the bosses so far have unique strategies or gimmicks. Actually the game would be improved massively by removing the critical matsuhashi, or making it a lategame unlock.

Also fuck the level scaling (is that the correct term?) Having to grind to be within a few levels of every boss so that you won't get fucked by level based damage/defense modifiers is extremely annoying.

> Playing a FATLUS game released in the past 5 years Ican't even...

If you want to play a good SMT game, the best ones BY FAR are SMT1, SMT: Nocturne and SMT: Strange journey. SMT1 is the one with a proper occult atmosphere, but is very very old. As for Strange journey be sure to play the original version, not the terrible remake.

 

[perfectslumbers]

If you want to play a good SMT game, the best ones BY FAR are SMT1, SMT: Nocturne and SMT: Strange journey. SMT1 is the one with a proper occult atmosphere, but is very very old. As for Strange journey be sure to play the original version, not the terrible remake.

Thanks, it was my fault really, for expecting a game with 30 fucking dollars of day 1 dlc to be good.

 

[GhostCow]

If you want to play a good SMT game, the best ones BY FAR are SMT1, SMT: Nocturne and SMT: Strange journey. SMT1 is the one with a proper occult atmosphere, but is very very old. As for Strange journey be sure to play the original version, not the terrible remake.

Thanks, it was my fault really, for expecting a game with 30 fucking dollars of day 1 dlc to be good.

Keep in mind most of those are wizlikes. If you want something more like a traditional jrpg play Nocturne. Personally V and Nocturne are the only two of the mainline games that I like because I'm not into wizlikes.

 

[Jermu]

SMT4+SMT4A have probably the best combat but other than that those games don't have much going for em

 

[TheSoul]

Wanted to get into mainline SMT after playing Persona 5, since an occultist setting is way more appealing than a high school setting, so I decided to try the newest game in the series. I'm about 15 hours in and I gotta say, this game is mediocre in every way. The checklist gameplay that makes up 80 or 90% of your gameplay is extremely boring and repetitive, I'm not sure why this type of design has become so common lately but I'm really sick of it. At least other collectathon games are open world so you can enjoy some freedom and sandboxing, this game is a collectathon without the strength collecathon games usually have. Maybe there are dungeons later on in the game but the game really needs them. The story is weird so far, side quests are cool, but all the cutscenes are extremely weird and stilted and pointless so far. The combat is unfortunately extremely easy and repetitive. Every boss can be defeated with the same strategy: 1. die once and use spyglass to figure out it's abilities 2. fuse demons that target it's weaknesses and a support demon that's resistant to it's attacks 3. spam the crit matsuhashi and your best damage skills 4. use the absorb item every time the boss uses it's matsuhashi. Apparently lategame bosses are extremely hard so I assume that changes later on but it's very disappointing that none of the bosses so far have unique strategies or gimmicks. Actually the game would be improved massively by removing the critical matsuhashi, or making it a lategame unlock.

Also fuck the level scaling (is that the correct term?) Having to grind to be within a few levels of every boss so that you won't get fucked by level based damage/defense modifiers is extremely annoying.

I'd recommend Devil survivor, smt 4 or digital devilsaga 1. SMT V isn't a good entry point, I still stand by my statement that it lacks mainline's strengths and that open world is 90% why.