Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance Review

ign.com:

Demons and angels locked in a post-apocalyptic, generation-spanning blood feud to the backing of a hard synth-metal soundtrack… but make it a tough-as-nails RPG – that’s the Shin Megami Tensei experience. I sang the praises of Shin Megami Tensei V back in 2021 because of the way it embodied the series’ ethos in modern form, and as per usual with developer Atlus, we now have a more definitive version a few years later in Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. Although it doesn’t fundamentally change what already made the original great, its new separate storyline and quality of life improvements are reason enough to play (or revisit) this masterclass in turn-based combat and demonic atmosphere.

The very first thing you do is choose whether to play the original route or go down the Path of Vengeance, which is an alternate path that remixes events with new plot threads, new characters, and some wild new battles. There are no tricky decisions to make or specific choices required to see this content this time. Hell, you don’t even have to consider siding with competing ideologies at any point, as had been SMT tradition – you just pick the Vengeance route and follow it to the end. Since I already spent 80 hours getting 100% completion in the original game, I solely focused on the Vengeance-specific campaign. It took me about 60 hours to finish since I was already familiar with a majority of its challenges and mostly sought out the new sidequests, of which there are a lot. While I do like it more overall, it’s not exactly a significant leap over what was already there.

The story starts off the same in that you’re a high school kid in Tokyo who stumbles into being the chosen one, or a Nahobino – a human who can possess supernatural powers and transform into a demigod. Tokyo as you know it begins to fall apart as you travel to and from a post-apocalyptic future in a battle to determine the world’s fate. For roughly one-third of the runtime, events play out fairly similarly in