You will die. Accept that. Save often, grind as much as you can, and butt your nose into everyone’s business to get all the good experiences. Be prepared, be prepared, and be careful. Boss fights may surprise you the first time, but you can always use your wits to start over. Even some random encounters have the potential to kill you in one shot if you’re not careful. This game takes no prisoners.
In the original Shin Megami Tensei 5, life was hard. In the remake, life is cruel. In a good way.
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Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance is a first-rate RPG – no entry-level Persona game, it’ll hold your hand and sing to you as you slog through the good old days of high school. Its parent MegaTen series has always been difficult, almost a meme now, and while Vengeance isn’t as tricky as SMT3 or 4, it’ll definitely still get your blood pumping. I say it’s less brutal than its predecessors, mostly because of the added quality of life changes – the ability to save anywhere, tweaks to UI readability, and clearer explanations of RPG systems.
But the core gameplay loop is brilliant. It’s addictive. It’s hard to crack, but once you do, you’ll be hungry for it—the kind of game that’ll keep you up at night because you want to defeat just one more optional boss or take down just one more arrogant god. The series’ signature Press Turn system forces you to think about combat in terms of brutal efficiency, making you eager to double your turns and groan loudly when your attacks fail and waste your ally’s next move.
The original version of the game was fine (the Press Turn mechanic isn’t broken, so don’t fix it), but in Vengeance, there are a few more tweaks and additions. Special skills can take entire icons off an enemy, or give you more icons on your next turn, increasing your potential streak from eight to ten. Sounds small, right? But in action, it can be a game changer. To keep up with that, though, there are now some boss fights that aren’t in the 2021 version – multi-enemy and multi-stage fights change dramatically when you get around 50% into the game.
The storyline is just as over-the-top, silly, and wicked as ever, and as someone who played through the base game twice, I definitely got more out of it than I expected. The opening minutes are almost a sham – the truly different content starts around the 40-hour mark and escalates from there. The old area bosses, enemies, and subplots remain in the new narrative path, just replaced, and hunting down all the collectibles can get a little tedious… but hey, it at least makes the grind more fun.
Super-powerful regular monster spawns, fun little side quests, tons of over-leveled overworld enemies, and optional story branches throughout that tie into the SMT multiverse all add to the brutal main story. Even in the sections where you’re picking up again, Atlus has injected new bosses and splits into the story. So even if you’ve already played the original SMT5 a few times on Switch, there’s enough here to keep you coming back (plus there are nearly 100 new music tracks).
If you want to see what I thought of the base game, you can check out my previous reviews over at iGamesNews. My opinions haven’t really changed since I wrote those reviews all those years ago, but there’s also a lot more content to enjoy now. The thing is, if you’re expecting this to be a top-notch, shiny RPG that looks like Final Fantasy 16, you’re going to be disappointed. SMT5 Vengeance was released on the Switch alongside all the other home consoles and PC. As such, it’s limited in how it looks, sounds, and feels.
But that’s not the point of this game. It’s not trying to be Final Fantasy. In fact, part of what I love about this game and series so much is that it marches to the beat of its own drum – eschewing the current RPG trend (which doesn’t include romance) and doubling down on what makes it great. A tight, infinitely satisfying combat system, fun and unpredictable demonic negotiations, and a world that feels like a metallic hell. Everything it does, it does well. Even if you do feel like you’re playing a gorgeously modernized PS2 game. That’s intentional, and it’s great.
If you like RPGs that want to bully you, humiliate you, and laugh at your self-proclaimed gaming masochism (we won’t judge), then SMT5 Vengeance is the game for you. I think Atlus is the most exciting RPG developer out there right now, and between this game, Metaphor Refantazio, and Persona 6, I bet you’ll prove me wrong.
Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance will be released on PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X, and Series S on June 14, 2024. The original version is now available on Switch. This review was conducted on an Xbox Series X/S using a code provided by the publisher.