Like most Atlus developed games, Shin Megami Tensei V was only a mere few years away from getting a complete re-release with extra content. They’re nothing if not consistent. And as a long-time fan of the series, I was pretty happy to see SMT V getting a multi-platform release considering how monolithic the series used to be. While SMT has usually found a home on Nintendo consoles, it was at least a little annoying that SMT V, a game that clearly takes inspiration from SMT III: Nocturne, was exclusive to the Switch. Everyone had their druthers with the original release so, how does Vengeance justify its existence? Is Shin Megami Tensei: Vengeance the ultimate edition of this critically acclaimed JRPG, or should you just go back to the Switch version you dropped halfway through?
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance
Developer: Atlus
Price: $60
Platforms: PlayStation 4/5(reviewed), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PC
JRPGs have this nasty habit of wanting you to replay them multiple times. Something that any normal adult would have trouble rationalizing in a shorter game, these behemoths tend to request 100+ hours of your time to see all that they have to offer. This is brilliant for the gamer with lots of time and no money. For the gamer with lots of money and no time, this is less appealing. Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne’s North American release included the True Demon Ending, and Persona 4 Golden included the Golden ending, Atlus likes to put spins on the actual story for their re-releases which, personally, I think is the best way to get my money. Just giving me more of a few resources, a new map, some new sidequests, etc… is a great way to sell a DLC, but a whole new copy of the game? I need something new and something juicy out of the story.
A quick rundown of the Shin Megami Tensei games. In SMT you play a character who can determine the outcome of our world that is now infested by demons. Typically given the option towards the end to remove all demons and live with angels, remove all angels and live with demons, or remove everyone and return to the status quo. That is a very broad and minimal look at the incredible worldbuilding and story these games have to offer. In them, you’re fairly weak on your own but through negotiations, can recruit the demons you fight into your party and have them fight alongside you. To get more powerful demons you can negotiate with them or fuse them using a shop in the game, allowing you to take two demons and turn them into a single, more powerful, demon. The game dates back considerably to the first iteration of Shin Megami Tensei (translated as “Reincarnation of the True Goddess”) originally released on the Super Famicom.
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance does you one better by giving you a completely new story in the style of the original and allowing you to choose it from the get-go. The two routes are referred to as Canon of Creation and Canon of Vengeance. Vengeance can also be accessed, for the very first time, on Canon of Creation clear save data. Both canons are very robust and considering the improvements made to the game overall, it’s worth reviewing the product as a whole over simply looking at the Vengeance route. So what changed?
Shin Megami Tensei V follows the style of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne in that you play as a high school student thrown into a battle between deities, fighting because the current world is ending, and looking to forge the world anew. In Nocturne, this is referred to as the Vortex World. In Shin Megami Tensei V, the demons refer to the world in which they live in Da’at, but it’s commonly referred to by humans as the Netherworld. However you refer to it, it symbolizes one thing, a world in flux. Demons run amok in what used to be the various prefectures of Tokyo with the sole purpose of pushing the deity they follow to take the throne and create a new world.
At the beginning of Shin Megami Tensei V, the player character is a simple high school student who lives in a world where the suicide rate has increased drastically and people are being assaulted in the streets regularly. Things take a sharp turn when Ichiro Dazai, an outcast and budding YouTuber, decides to go through the Takanawa Tunnel, and the player character decides to follow him. Ending up in the Netherworld, the player character merges with an artificial life form known as Aogami, created by Bethel, to form the Nahobino. Bethel is an organization of people in our world and angels fighting in the Netherworld to seize control of the throne and enact God’s plan. It’s your job to determine whether or not they’re able to follow through. The Nahobino is a being that can determine the fate of the world, something that the gods you fight along the way are striving to become.
You will run into familiar and unfamiliar faces, depending on your experience with the series. Whereas the series has primarily focused on a Law vs. Chaos style of viewing its demons, Shin Megami Tensei V has a little more fun with the demons and their backgrounds. Bethel is comprised of angels, Vasuki is in charge of the Hindu branch, Zeus is in charge of the Greek branch, Odin is in charge of the Norse branch, you get it. And surprisingly, it’s not relegated simply to which demons fight together and where you find them.
I was doing some clean-up on my Canon of Creation playthrough before I finished it and ran into Fenrir, the wolf who sets the world aflame, and tried to talk to him. In my stock of demons, I had Loki, who suddenly appeared and began talking in a familiar way with Fenrir. In the conversation, he spoke of a freedom for Fenrir to mess with the world and piss off Odin. I was overjoyed. The kismet of trying to talk to Fenrir this late into the game and just happening to still have Loki in my party only to be given this gift was shocking. While all of the big changes to the series have been wildly impressive, this one minor change made a considerable impact.
Perhaps the biggest change in coming to Shin Megami Tensei V is a fully realized world where demons congregate and chase after you. Instead of a first-person dungeon crawler or navigating a large empty 3D space, the Netherworld is a large desert that has taken over the remains of Tokyo and is just brimming with demons looking for a fight. Shin Megami Tensei does a pretty great job of world building which allows their relatively empty worlds to feel lived in. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a Shin Megami Tensei world look lived in. The world is full of sub-quests and collectibles to find. The first of which will be leylines, fonts found throughout the world that allow you to access shops, save your game, and fast travel around.
There’s only one shop in the game, Cadaver’s Hollow, and the proprietor, Gustave, asks you to find his Miman scattered throughout the world. These small creatures will sometimes offer advice to the Nahobino and occasionally lore bits. One Miman specifically mentions that Miman are remnants of Nahobinos that weren’t able to fully form. Another mentions that the conception took place 20 years prior near a hospital in Shinjuku, alluding to the events that took place in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. There are 200 Miman throughout the game and every 5 you find, Gustave will reward you with items and demon essences.
Demon essences are also new to the series, allowing the Nahobino to gain new spells and affinities by merging with them. Demons that level up in your party may give you their essence, you can also purchase essences from Cadaver’s Hollow.
The other place you can visit from fonts is the World of Shadows, where the proprietor, Sophia, helps you fuse demons to create even more powerful demons to have at your disposal. Another new feature is the compendium fusion and reverse fusion. Whereas before you’d have to just fuse blindly or use a fusion calculator to determine how to fuse up demons, reverse fusion allows you to see who you can fuse from the demons you have in your party. Likewise, the compendium and reverse compendium fusion takes into consideration all the demons you have at your disposal and their outcomes, allowing the player to more easily fine tune their party.
Sophia also allows for apotheosis, a store that improves your experience through the use of a currency known as glory. You’ll collect glory by finding amalgams on the map (white balls that float in the air) and collecting Miman. Glory could be most likened to app points in Shin Megami Tensei IV, a currency that allows you to do things like expand your stock of demons or allow them to wield more skills by purchasing miracles. Miracles can be unlocked by fighting Abscesses around the map, which are just more difficult fights against enemies you’ve most likely already fought. Glory is also used to fine tune your Nahobino’s abilities as we hit another new function for the series, skill potential. Skill potential determines how much damage you’ll do with a specific element as well as buff and debuff potential. With demons, you can use incense to improve stats and sutras to improve potential but the Nahobino must improve their potential through miracles. Magatsuhi plays an important role in SMT V, which was the primary focus of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, now a more tangible resource. Your party has a Magatsuhi gauge which can be charged up by dealing damage or taking damage and through miracles, just about anything else you can think to do. Once the gauge is full you’re able to unleash powerful skills that will do things like make all of your abilities critical, unleash powerful almighty attacks, or heal your entire party. Of course, much like how the press turn style of combat can benefit as much as it can spell your doom, your enemies have access to this plentiful resource and can use Magatsuhi to great effect as well.
Along with using Magatsuhi as a resource to change the way you do battle, it’s littered around the overworld as a healing mechanism. Navigating around you’ll find yellow, green, and red Magatsuhi crystals littered throughout the netherworld. Green provides health, yellow provides MP, and red will provide Magatsuhi for your Magatsuhi gauge. And just to drive home how important Magatsuhi is for this world, there are Magatsuhi rail points that your demon navigators can find that allow you to get around easier as well as access areas you wouldn’t normally be able to get to. Compared to Nocturne, SMT V has a vision for how Magatsuhi isn’t just a resource people want, it’s something they need.
Demon navigators is a little mechanic that has a demon following you and finding points of interest that are literally littered around the map. These can give you items, fights, or Magatsuhi rails to find. New in Vengeance is an area accessible from the leylines called Demon Haunts. Demon Haunts are an area that matches the aesthetic of the area you’re in and allows your demons a chance to rest. As your demons level up they’ll want to speak with you in the Demon Haunt and give you items or power up by increasing their stats and unlocking new abilities. If you want to speed up this process you’ll find, from your navigators, demon boxes throughout the game that the demons love and will increase their trust in you. Once a demon fully trusts you they get a big stat boost and discover a new ability. In my experience, the ability is usually useless but sometimes can be a big help.
Onto the stories and their differences:
Canon of Creation
Canon of Creation is the original Shin Megami Tensei V story with the small quality of life updates and the ability to be played on platforms that can actually handle the game. Yes, Shin Megami Tensei V plays very well on the PlayStation 5, with only a few hiccups here and there. The story revolves around you, a high school student, merging with an artificial lifeform and becoming the Nahobino. That part is the same in both canons. In the Canon of Creation, you’re merely fighting with the various demons, progressing the story, learning about Bethel, and making drastic choices to determine how the world turns out.
One major difference between Creation and Vengeance is that Creation feels very well fleshed out. While Vengeance is a fine story, Creation is clearly the original and has had the most attention given to it. The story takes its time and gives the player moments in which to reflect on the various outcomes that could potentially happen based on the characters they’ve met on the road. Like Nocturne, Creation gives you the option for four outcomes, three being obvious and one being a secret. Nocturne had a philosophical bend to its outcomes, favoring outcomes through obfuscation but they all fall back on the same basic SMT endings.
While Creation is SMT V proper, it’s considerably longer than Vengeance and I can imagine after playing through Shin Megami Tensei V even more than once would give you second thoughts about returning, very little has changed from a story perspective in the Vengeance release. Meaning, if you’ve already played through Shin Megami Tensei V on another platform, I would encourage you to just skip Creation and jump right into Vengeance.
Canon of Vengeance
Canon of Vengeance gets started immediately as you run into the Qadištu, better known as “The Goddesses of Vengeance.” Basically, Vengeance is the Canon of Creation but there’s another element thrown into the mix. As the Qadištu have their own plans for Creation, the Nahobino has to follow and monitor their movements instead of going the same route as the Canon of Creation. You’ll hear about the goings on that are happening in parallel to what you’re doing in Vengeance. This was very fun as I ran both Canons back to back and was very familiar with the goings on of Bethel in Creation.
The Vengeance route is a little more focused on the story, featuring a rotating cast of guest characters, including a brand new one, that are surprisingly powerful and a little more of a gruesome story. If you split SMT V up into chapters based on the areas of Da’at you’re visiting, the Vengeance route is more of a big change in chapters 2 and 3 with a return to the timeline in chapter 4 with some small changes. The events in Shinagawa are changed and result in you visiting Shinjuku instead of Chiyoda. Atlus manages to make significant changes to the story while still being able to reuse most of the original game’s assets.
I like the Vengeance story and despite the goddesses being maybe a little too sexy for goddesses of vengeance, it strikes a chord. The story is a little grittier and had me audibly gasping in front of the screen more than once. I really appreciate the narrative chance they took with Vengeance.
Crazily enough, Vengeance does NOT come with all of the DLC. The Mitama Dance DLCs that allow you easier access to farming macca, experience, and glory are still sold separately or with the digital deluxe edition. The side-quest DLCs that give you access to Dagda and Mephisto are also sold separately or with the digital deluxe edition. However, the DLC from the original version that allowed you to fight the fiends from Nocturne IS included for some reason. I’m not sure what the thought process was around which DLC to include and exclude but while I think the DLC is worth the money, I don’t think it should have been excluded from the base game.
With all the changes, the extra story, and the ability to play on a console that won’t melt in your hands while pushing its modest graphics, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance is a worthwhile endeavor. As a long time fan of the series, I’m glad I got to experience the story this way, likewise, I got to experience an alternative retelling of the same tale.
The Final Word
While not my favorite Shin Megami Tensei game, I cannot recommend Shin Megami Tensei V enough. And with the Canon of Vengeance included, it’s a must for any RPG fan.
MonsterVine Rating: 4.5 out of 5 – Great
