Topic: User Impressions/Reviews Thread

Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Review – An incredibly engaging and addicting Japanese tactical RPG

Fire Emblem is a Nintendo franchise that has been around since the early 1990s but it didn’t arrive here in the West until 2003 with the game “Fire Emblem” on GBA. That game is the seventh entry in this long-running series and it introduced a lot of people to this franchise. Before this game, people had only known about Fire Emblem through characters in Super Smash Bros. Melee such as Marth and Roy. Because the series was getting more traction in the West, Nintendo decided to keep releasing the games here and the next one to come out was Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones on GBA in 2004.

The Sacred Stones takes place on the fictional continent of Magvel, which consists of six nations. It tells the story of two siblings, Ephraim and Eirika, who are the prince and princess respectively of the country Renais. The nations have experienced peace for a long time until one day Renais’ neighbouring country Grado decided to invade Renais and murder its king. There was no explanation for why as both nations have had a good relationship. This event forced the siblings to set out on a journey and investigate the cause behind all of this in order to prevent the world from falling into chaos.

As a whole, I thought the story did a good job of motivating you to keep playing. I was always looking forward to the next chapter as you travel from place to place and eventually reach the other countries. Because you’re traveling across the entire continent, it always felt like you were making a lot of progress and that’s a great way of encouraging the player to keep pushing forward.

It also opens up to a wide array of different maps and environments. One map could have you battle on a mountain range where having flying units and climbers are useful. Another could have you battle in the fog and you wouldn’t be able to see where the enemies are in order to plan your attack, but you could always use your mage’s limited torch to light the way. Other map environments include castles, beaches, volcanic places, rivers, deserts and many more. The environments aren’t just for show, they will actually affect how you’ll tackle each fight. For example, most maps work great for cavaliers but once you get to the desert, you’ll realise that their movement is severely impeded by the sand and have to use flying units or foot soldiers instead.

During the way, you meet tons of characters that you’ll be able to recruit to your team. At the end of the game, you could end up having access to dozens of units to use in battle. The point of this is to constantly provide new units to you as the game has perma-death, so if one unit falls in battle it’s lost forever. As a result, you’ll develop deep attachments to a lot of these characters over the span of the game. This encourages you to always think things through before making a move as it can cost that character’s life. Oftentimes you just restart the game when that happens but that means having to start a map over from the beginning and these maps can be incredibly long, taking at least an hour each to finish. In other words, you will want to make your moves as carefully as you can.

While the story was decent enough, it is the gameplay that truly shines and is the primary reason for playing this game. Fire Emblem is a tactical RPG where you move units from an overhead view on a grid-based area. The battles are turn-based so when you have moved all your units, it is the enemy’s turn to move theirs. Think of it like chess; each unit can move a certain amount of spaces and is able to deal different amount of damage depending on its class and weapons. The main system in place is called “the weapon triangle” where swords beat axes, axes beat lances and lances beat swords. There are other systems as well, such as flying units being weak to arrows or armoured units being weak to magic.

As each map gets progressively more difficult, you will have to really think about where to send your units as one place on the map could have units with all the weapon types. One typical strategy could then be to send your most defensive unit in order to draw them to you on the next turn and then you rush them with the rest of your units. Another is to attack from a distance with archers, flying units and so on while the enemies can’t reach you. There’s just so much depth to this game that each and every battle feels unique and will require different strategies on top of the different environments affecting the flow of the battle.

In contrast to its predecessor, The Sacred Stones has a world map where you can save your game, manage the items of your team, buy more items and grind if you feel like the game is becoming a bit too challenging. The last part is a very welcoming addition but it has also been criticised by Fire Emblem fans for making the game too easy. My experience has been that you really need to grind every now and then as there just aren’t enough chapters in the story to help you level up a lot naturally and the maps will keep becoming more and more difficult. But you also can’t grind too much because you gain less EXP from the same enemies the higher your level is. In other words, once your unit reaches a certain point, it’s really not worth levelling it up anymore as it just takes way too long. Not to mention that you have dozens of units, you can’t level them up equally as much and you will constantly recruit new units. It really is necessary to have an area to grind and it honestly makes for a more satisfying experience as you train units, promote them into better classes and then watch as they wreak havoc in the story chapters.

The difficulty curve is quite manageable with the addition of a grinding area. You start the game with a unit called Seth who’s more powerful than everyone else in order to help ease you into the game’s mechanics. Then once you reach the halfway point in terms of chapters, you’ll unlock the grinding area. This makes it easier to promote units into stronger ones that you absolutely need in the latter half of the story. Some have said that you can get through the entire game with only Seth and that’s why it’s so easy. In my experience though, Seth actually becomes less useful the further you get into the game. He just doesn’t get a lot of stat boosts when leveling up after a certain point. This means that you really need to experiment and level up all kinds of units in order to discover which ones are really good.

I ended the game with a good amount of units who are much better than Seth. One unit called Ross is a Berserker who has a high critical hit rate and with the combination of a Killer Axe (Killer weapons increase critical hit rate), he became an absolutely unstoppable beast. He would constantly have over 50% chance of getting a critical hit. Another unit called Gerik is a Hero who specialises in swords and axes and had such great stats that he dealt a lot of damage and never taking any himself. Gilliam is a Great Knight with high defence, high mobility and access to the entire weapon triangle. One final mention is Cormag who rides a wyvern, has incredibly high strength and mobility, and because he’s a flying unit he’s useful in a lot of situations. I found all of these units more useful than Seth and that was only possible with the help of the grinding area. They were incredibly useful in the latter half of the game when the maps became very difficult.

Simply put, I think the gameplay is incredibly satisfying and it never felt too difficult or too easy. Even if you grind a lot, you will still need to think strategically as bosses can be quite difficult to defeat without the right units and reinforcements on the enemy side will appear midway through maps. This means that even if you have powerful units, if you can’t utilise them properly then you won’t stand a chance in the latter levels.

When it comes to the music, the soundtrack did the trick but I didn’t find any particular song that stood out to me. Here are some tracks that you hear quite often in the game that I enjoyed listening to:

In conclusion, I highly enjoyed my time with this game and I found it to be the best Fire Emblem game that I’ve played thus far (my previous experiences include Fire Emblem (2003) and Shadows of Valentia). It is a great starting point if you’re new to the franchise as it delivers the classic Fire Emblem experience while also having modern features like a world map, item management and an area to grind. It took me roughly 40 hours to finish it but it only took me around one week to get through it as it was such an addicting game to play. Even when I was done playing it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it afterwards. It truly is one of the best experiences I’ve had this year.

@LtSarge Wow, if you enjoyed Sacred Stones that much, you’ll love Awakening as it probably takes more inspiration from that game more than the others! Great review, it’s not one of my favourites in the series but it seems to be a pretty good entry level game to get you going for people who aren’t as familiar with the series. Now play more games in the series so that I can recommend you Genealogy of the Holy War without you hating it for the obtuse glorious mess it is 😂

@nessisonett Thanks man and yeah, I'm really looking forward to playing other FE titles now. I don't know why, but Sacred Stones just really clicked with me. Could be the fact that you have the option to grind and make your units more powerful, which was so satisfying. Or that I just stopped using save states since I was playing the game on the 3DS, which doesn't have an option for save states at all. Either way, I'm finally starting to love this series now compared to before thanks to Sacred Stones.

I think the next FE game I'll play will either be Shadow Dragon or Awakening. The reason for Shadow Dragon is because I want to play more of the older FE titles before moving on to the newer ones. I also really hope that they'll remake Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn on Switch as I'd love to play those games as well. I just want to see more classic FE titles being re-released in general as this is such a brilliant franchise.

@LtSarge Great review! I played through and enjoyed FE7 years ago, but, for whatever reason, I've just never gotten around to Sacred Stones. The way you describe it definitely highlights its role as a sort of predecessor to Fire Emblem Awakening, though, which definitely doubled down on the casual-friendly design choices (which subsequenly carried over into follow-up games like Fates and Three Houses).

In my experience, most of the FE games have an initially overly powerful character, although it ends up being a trap relying on them because, as you pointed out, their growth as a unit is subpar and they often end up underpowered by the end of the game. I imagine many people have made the mistake of allowing one of these overpowered units to soak up a lot of the critical early xp gains from enemy kills in the first few maps, although it sounds like Sacred Stones at least tempers this by allowing players to grind outside of story missions.

I think non-story maps are a good idea, personally, since it makes it where you can't trap yourself into not being able to beat the game by having suboptimal character builds going into the final levels of the game. I almost couldn't beat FE7 because of some choices I made, which led to me having to replay the final map in that game more times than I would have liked.

Did you happen to buy the localized Switch port of Fire Emblem on NES when it was available? I'll probably never play Shadow Dragon, but I almost can't resist trying out the original version of the game soon.

@Ralizah Thanks mate! Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I'm really looking forward to playing Awakening, Birthright and Three Houses. Although they will have to do a very good job of impressing me as Sacred Stones has simply set the bar very high and it's going to be interesting to see if any of those games will be able to top it. I've read for example that Birthright and Three Houses don't have good maps and that alone might make me dislike the games as the map design as well as variety in Sacred Stones were just incredible.

Exactly, although in the case of Sacred Stones I think it's okay to initially rely on the overly powerful character for the bosses. Some bosses just seemed very strong and I doubt my other units would've made a dent on them. I mentioned this in another thread, but I was playing the game by allocating EXP to all my units instead of focusing on the strongest ones. That led to the weaker ones dying and me resetting the game. You just have to incorporate a different mindset when playing the FE games compared to other RPGs.

I agree and the thing is that grinding is obviously completely optional. If you find the game too easy then you don't need to grind. You can make that argument for basically any RPG really; if you grind too much then the game will be too easy. So it's up to you to decide how much is enough and for me, I basically leveled up 2-3 units every couple of chapters during the second half of the game (there are only 20 chapters in the game). The reason being that I had acquired promotion items and wanted the units to reach level 20 before promoting them. I think it made for a good balance. But yeah, that's one of the reasons why I didn't like FE7 that much because you had less freedom in training your units and the last couple of levels were an absolute pain.

I actually did buy the first FE game on Switch and played it for a while. It was quite fun, but I don't know if I want to play through that version of the game because I recently realised that there's a remake of it on the DS, which is also available on the Wii U. So I might just play that one instead. If you do decide to play through the original version then I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!

@LtSarge Awakening's maps are probably worse than the ones in Birthright or Three Houses. They're not actually terrible or anything, there's just an excess of open maps and "rout the enemy" goals in place of more creative ones. Pretty standard SRPG design. It's less of a big deal as the series goes on, as tactical battles are becoming less and less the central focus of the series. The big shift, IMO, was in Three Houses, which is just as much a social simulation game as it was an SRPG. I'd be shocked if you didn't end up loving that game, knowing some of the other games you've taken to over the years, like Persona 4 and Trails of Cold Steel.

Conquest has really creative maps and a variety of unique mission goals throughout, but the writing is so bad that I'll never recommend it to anyone.

Yeah, you kinda have to balance having a core group of people you focus on in these games while also slowly developing your weaker characters, given the permadeath mechanics. You need heavy hitters.

The bosses are actually my biggest issue with these games. The games feel balanced around tactical battles with normal units. The bosses usually having insane range and high critical rates in the late game means constant re-setting in some of the older games if you don't want to lose people.

Yeah, I'll definitely post my thoughts when I get to it. Still bizarre that was a limited time thing. Hopefully this doesn't become a trend with Nintendo.

@Ralizah Yeah I'm really looking forward to Three Houses for that reason, but at the same time I'm kinda skeptical that I'll like it because I've noticed with Sacred Stones that I sometimes wanted to skip past the story and get to the gameplay as quickly as possible. I think this is one of the rare cases for me where gameplay triumphs over story and that might make me dislike Three Houses. That's also why I want to give Conquest a shot because I don't really factor in stuff like the writing in a FE game as long as the gameplay is solid. But who knows, maybe I'll find both the story and the gameplay in these games to be equally appealing!

@LtSarge It was mostly the story that put me off Three Houses to be fair. Bizarre tonal shifts. The gameplay’s decent though and being able to undo moves is a godsend.

@RogerRoger Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed reading it! Yeah, I feel like Sacred Stones does a great job of teaching the player to become better at the game compared to other entries I've played. Because in all honesty, after having played this game, I kinda want to experience even more tactical RPGs that have eluded me all these years because I wasn't confident enough to play them. There are so many I've been wanting to play, such as Final Fantasy Tactics, XCOM, Mario + Rabbids, Valkyria Chronicles, Wasteland 3 and so on. I also just remembered that Nintendo is releasing remakes of Advance Wars 1 and 2 on Switch next year, which is a franchise that's very similar to Fire Emblem, so I'm definitely getting those on day one now.

But yeah, the problem with tactical RPGs is that most of them are quite challenging so it's rather hard to find a game for beginners that will help ease you into the gameplay and make you become generally better at the genre. So I'm really glad that I've finally found a good entry point with Sacred Stones as I feel more confident now in playing all these aforementioned games.

And the thing is that I've been searching for a genre to delve into that I have very little prior experience with for a long time now. It's kinda like when I started to discover turn-based JRPGs all those years ago and fell in love with that genre. I want that to happen with tactical RPGs now as the gameplay is fairly new to me (i.e. I'm not good at it so I have something to strive towards getting better at) but it's still the same thing with JRPGs in that you interact with characters, form strong attachments to them, experience a world full of rich stories, lore and so on. In other words, the familiar stuff that I love is still there but now the gameplay is different and challenging, which makes for a more fresh experience. So while Sacred Stones wasn't the next Persona 4 Golden or Trails of Cold Steel for me, perhaps there are other tactical RPGs that could end up being just that. Just the potential alone is making me excited for what's to come!

Shin Megami Tensei V - One Week and Forty Hours In

This is going to be a little different than my norm in this thread, as it neither really counts as an 'early impression,' nor does it count for a full review. But people who know me will be unsurprised to learn I've been massively hyped about this release for years, coming as it does from one of my absolute favorite JRPG franchises. Developer Atlus is arguably at the height of its historical popularity at the moment after the surprising level of mainstream penetration that was achieved by Persona 5, one of the most iconic genre releases of the last console generation, and so expectations have been running high regarding the impending release of the long-awaited sequel to that other, far older and more hardcore MegaTen series, especially after early trailers and footage have showcased something that looks wholly more ambitious than anything the developer has attempted to date. So, nearly halfway through the game, has Atlus succeeded in taking Shin Megami Tensei to the next level?

Some establishing context would probably be helpful: in this game, you play as, is standard for the series (and Atlus games in general, really), an unnamed (and very androgynous) silent protagonist who is little more than an ordinary high school student. The tranquility of his existence is disrupted when the school informs its students about a series of brutal murders that have been happening in his section of Tokyo. Your character finds himself inadvertently drawn into investigating a tunnel with some classmates where demon sightings have been reported, only for the tunnel to collapse, plunging everyone into another dimension. Your protagonist awakens in a bizarre, dream-like desert landscape (which bears an eerie resemblance to Tokyo) where he is immediately assailed by demons, and one of his classmates is abducted by an angel. Before a pack of demons is able to rip him apart, a mysterious cybernetic hunk named Aogami appears from the sky in a flash of lightning, like anime Terminator, and offers to save your life if you'll agree to take his hand (as mysterious cybernetic hunks are wont to do). Touching his hand begins a process that fuses your character and the mysterious man together into an entity we later learn is known as a Nahobino, which appears to have deep connections to the underlying lore of the game. For our purposes, though, the pretty boy protagonist and metallic hunk meld into a fused form that's equal parts Power Ranger and drag queen. Your character gains a skin-tight armor suit, an absolutely luscious and free-flowing mane of long blue hair, and, for whatever reason, his right hand is now able to turn into a light saber. After dispatching the demons in a tutorial battle, your Nahobino (who shares a consciousness with Aogami and can communicate telepathically with him) sets off to rescue his friend who was abducted by the angel.

Less Breath of the Wild, More Xenoblade Chronicles

SMT V's early footage showed off the Nahobino sliding and naruto running across gigantic landscapes, prompting speculation about the nature of the game's structure. SMT games have, traditionally, featured abstract, pulled out world maps for players to wander around in, with the camera pulling back into a proper third-person (or first-person in the oldest games) viewpoint when players would visit towns and dungeons. SMT IV bucked this trend a bit by featuring desiccated urban environments for players to explore, but most exploration of Tokyo still saw the player become a cursor on a map. Had SMT V fully shrugged off the limitations of its predecessors and gone open world with its game design?

Well, kind of, but not really. Players actually will see the return of the dreaded 'cursor on a map' viewpoint at the very start of the game as they wander around Tokyo, but, even moreso than SMT III: Nocturne, the developers seem eager to get players into the action as quickly as possible, and it's scarcely more than twenty minutes before the unnamed protagonist finds himself in Da'at. And Da'at, players will quickly come to find, is a sort of gigantic open air dungeon that is split into multiple zones across the game, which replace wholesale the more traditional map and unique location/dungeon layout of previous games.

SMT V takes a sledgehammer to the design traits of previous games in the series, frankly, as even putting aside the very open nature of the maps now, Atlus has heavily integrated platforming and collect-a-thon elements into the game. Your character can jump! And learning to platform will be necessary, as the landscapes the Nahobino explores will often require physical problem solving to navigate through. If you need to get to something on a hill, for example, you might need to survey the landscape and deduce that you'll be able to reach it if you scale that abandoned office building in the distance and then circle back around to your goal. There was at least one locked building which required my character to climb some nearby crates and then jump onto the roof to squeeze in through an open skylight. SMT V possesses an impressive sense of 3D verticality to it. And, thankfully, given all of the falls you'll be taking when you get too close to the edges of cliffs or building rooftops, there's no fall damage to worry about.

And you'll be doing a lot of this, since there are so many things your character can collect. Atlus' goal with SMT V was to emphasize atmosphere and exploration, and it has pretty brilliantly accomplished this goal, as every aspect of the experience seems to designed to encourage the player to poke around their environments as much as possible. SMT V is a game driven by player curiosity, and, in pretty much every instance, that curiosity is rewarded in some small way; with loot, rare items, rare enemies, potential side-quests, and especially Miman, small, Korok-like demons who will reward you with Glory when found, a resource that is used to strengthen the innate capabilities of your Nahobino: allowing him to use more skills, carry more demons in his stock, improve his negotiation tactics, etc.

Despite this sometimes staggering sense of openness, though, it quickly becomes clear that, as wide as the landscapes are, they're still designed to funnel you down the landscape in a specific way, because this is, after all, a linear JRPG at heart. This combination of design linearity and huge, open-ended environments is more than a little reminiscent of Nintendo's first-party Xenoblade Chronicles franchise, and that similarity extends to the way demons are situated in your environments as well. Like in XC, SMT V likes to toss in vastly overleveled enemies into the mix that will chase you if you stray too close to them. Although, unlike in XC, the game is very fair about making sure the player is able to escape from these enemies (in XC, large enemies can and will attack and kill you from a distance, which is endlessly frustrating). The director of SMT V is also the director of Atlus' Etrian Odyssey series, which also incorporates large, dangerous enemies that will chase you on the map, so the game makes effective use of these enemies not just as dangers to be avoided but also as obstacles in the path of certain items and side-quests. In one side-quest, for example, I was tasked by a demon with stealing the egg of an enormous bird monster so that he could make an omelet. This involved a lot of running and hide to avoid detection by the bird monster as I snuck into its nest and snagged its egg, and ended with a high-octane escape after the bird returned and chased me down across the map.

Side-quests in this game are generally high-quality across the board. While a few are standard resource collections affairs, many more of them involve unique tasks that make them rather memorable, and this is generally because of both the QoL features found throughout this game as well as the superb writing of the demons in general. SMT V's UI is probably my favorite in the series: the battle UI featuring cards that sit on the right side of the screen is directly lifted from the controversial Atlus/Nintendo crossover title Tokyo Mirage Sessions, and however people feel about that game, little criticism has ever been levied at its clean interface, which is put to effective use here, telling the player everything they need to know (and highlighting what they don't know) with easy-to-see symbols and bright colors. Additionally, the game features a detailed in-game map that unlocks gradually as the player clears out obstacles across the map (yes, it's very Ubisoft-esque in that respect, but I liked that the game made these obstacles unique mini-bosses instead of towers, or some variant thereof) that also minimizes any frustration associated with navigation or quest location tracking. It's all very, very polished.

The real stars of the show, though, are the demons themselves, and the game feels like it was designed around showcasing these creatures in every way imaginable. The large environments allow for the demons to naturalistically prowl the map, and they often do in great number, which must be a lot for the Nintendo Switch's puny processor to handle. The 3D models used for these entities also appear to be hugely improved over the ones utilized for your Personas in Persona 5, as they're extremely detailed and well-animated, from just their idle animations to some of the impressively detailed attacks they can engage in. It's clear a ton of effort was poured into the presentation of this game, and especially of the demons in it.

"Hey, Listen!"

So, one of the more interesting additions to the game comes in the form of "navigator demons." These demons will follow you around outside of battle and helpfully locate hidden items (and, sometimes, enemies) as you wander the wastes of Da'at. A few of these are more generic demons, but one of them, Amanozako, is absolutely bursting with personality, although whether you find her charming or gratingly annoying will probably vary from person-to-person. Her general chattiness and high-pitched squeals of "Hey, hey, hey!" will probably evoke memories of The Legend of Zelda's sometimes abrasive companion fairies.

I mentioned before that the focus was on the demons, and this extends to narrative and character as well. While the human characters in this game are mostly forgettable non-entities (which isn't SMT V's only sin, but I'll get back to that), the demons are absolutely bursting with personality. Their sidequests do a great job of fleshing out lore and character relationships between different demons, and negotiations are the funnest (and funniest!) they've ever been in the series. Atlus' localization team did an amazing job of giving each of these characters a unique voice and sense of identity that makes them feel like so much more than the fusion fodder they're often accused of being.

A bit of a side-note, but part of what makes the negotiations so much fun in this entry is how they've been overhauled. While the mechanic is unique and arguably series-defining, many previous mainline SMT games have also made them somewhat difficult to engage in. The first three games are all pretty notorious for how difficult it often is to convince these damned things to join you, and, more often than not, players would have to endure many instances of a demon accepting their offerings of macca, items, HP, etc. before either attacking them or running away. This worked against their strength as monster-collecting games. SMT IV did a good job of removing the complete reliance on RNG by making answers at least partially contingent on the personality type of the demon, and SMT V goes further by making it where demons almost never run off with your stuff, and are, in general, much more forgiving about your answers to their queries. Don't get me wrong: relations can and will still break down from time to time, but it doesn't feel as expected anymore. Many demons I've been able to recruit on my first attempt at talking with them, which almost never happened in the first three games. And, while this is subjective, I also feel like conversations in this game are less random: the back-and-forth between demons and myself feel like actual communication and less like infuriating RNG checks.

Hardcore, but Balanced

Atlus hasn't, by any means, re-invented the wheel when it comes to the battle system in this game. It's still very much the iconic press-turn combat system that they first introduced to the world in SMT III: Nocturne back in 2003. Or, rather, based on the updated version of that system that featured in 2016's SMT IV: Apocalypse, which made demons more unique by giving them affinities toward certain types of skills based on their race. There have been some notable alterations to it that change how it plays, though. The MOST notable change in the game comes via the way they've changed support skills. In previous games, buffs and debuffs were party-wide spells that could be layered on up to three times. Once they were applied, the only they thing that could alter them were other support spells that weakened or negated the effects outright. In SMT V, however, they've been wildly nerfed to put them in line with how support skills work in Persona games: by default, the beginning support skills only target one party member, and last only three turns unless applied. I imagine the intention was to help balance out the dramatic impact these skills had on the gameplay, since, in games like SMT III, a large chunk of the challenge could be removed outright if the enemy didn't possess skills that removed the effects of these skills. I'm beginning to get to the portion of the game now where party-wide support skills are beginning to crop up, but I won't pretend I'm not a little disappointed by the way in which these skills have been nerfed, even if some balancing was needed.

In terms of changes to long-standing aspects of the series that I'm not quite on-board with, it's also worth mentioning that Atlus has, for some reason, nerfed the concentrate/charge skills in this particular entry. Previously, using charge before a physical attack, or concentrate before a magic attack, caused the subsequent skill to do 2.5x its normal damage. It was a risk/reward element, you didn't do damage for one turn and then committed to using an attack skill the next, but, for your patience, it did extra damage. Now, concentrate/charge only causes the skill following them to do 1.8x damage at full affinity, which is... worse than if you just used the same move twice. I suppose the intention is to use them in conjunction with MP-costly abilities, but reducing their strategic effectiveness is baffling to me, as they're hardly worth wasting one of your demons' precious skill slots on now.

On the plus side, an alteration I'm actually a huge fan of is giving several demons neat, race-specific skills that can't be inherited by other types of demons. These skills tend to be more powerful than generic equivalent skills that can be transmitted through the fusion process. They also have really neat unique animations. It's another way that Atlus has combated the image of demons as ultimately being disposable, as certain race-specific skills are good enough that you might want to hold onto certain demons for longer than you would otherwise.

Factoring into this are another set of race-specific skills that tie into the game's new gimmick, the Magatsuhi Gauge. A resource called Magatsuhi will accumulate as you battle demons (Magatsuhi orbs can also be found in the environments) and, when when the gauge containing it fills up, you'll be able to use special abilities for a single turn. The default one that Nahobino has access to is a skill that makes it where all of your attacks register as critical hits for one term, but as you play through the game and complete side-quests, you'll gain talismans for specific types of demons that unlock custom Magatsuhi skills for all demons contained within that category. They aren't necessarily needed to win the game or even do well in battle, but they have a variety of different effects and add that little bit of depth to combat in this game. Also, as usual with SMT, enemies will also have access to the Magatsuhi gauge, so you'll want to watch out for elemental super-moves when triggered by a boss.

And, speaking of which, the bosses in this game are great. This is pretty typical for SMT, which has become infamous for its brutal bosses, and this game is no exception. You know you're playing SMT when the very first boss you encounter within the first ten hours of the game is brutal, terrifying, and looks like he'd be a mid-to-late-game boss in any other JRPG property. Thankfully, the hard mode (which I started on and chickened out of after the second boss whipped me into humility) is rather fair in SMT V. Previous games sometimes introduced aggravating changes in hard mode that jacked up prices for items and re-summoning demons from the compendium, lowered xp gain from battles, etc., but this game doesn't bother with such cheap tricks. It simply makes an already challenging experience that little bit more dangerous, to the point where I even felt kind of apprehensive fighting normal scrub mobs in the wasteland. This omnipresent fear of death won't appeal to everyone (and, indeed, eventually wore me out), but it's a nice compliment to the atmosphere of this game, which sees you attempting to survive for hours on end in deadly, demon-filled hellscapes.

No discussion of the mechanics in this game would be complete without mentioning essences, though, which are the most convenient method yet for customizing your protagonist's skillset and now can even be used to customize your demons. A demon's essence is like an imprint of their essential abilities, and they can be used to allow demons to easily inherit powerful skills and even elemental resistances that, again, makes them more valuable for longer durations. Essences can also be used to customize what your Nahobino is resistant to, like the magatama in Nocturne. While I prefer SMT IV's method of demon skill transference thematically, it can't be denied that this is far more flexibility in terms of build variety than has ever been allowed in previous SMT titles.

What the Hell Is Even Going On?

There's no easy way to address this issue, so I'm just going to be blunt: the narrative elements in this game are disappointing. I believe I've already mentioned that the characters are completely forgettable, but, honestly, that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this game's failure as a story. The pacing is really the worst of it, I think: it feels like there's thirty minutes of actual story movement and development per ten hours or so of gameplay. Intriguing concepts and mysteries are alluded to and then dropped outright as the game goes back to its status quo of exploration and demon-collecting. Now, on some level, this isn't new for this particular series: after all, SMT III was particularly notorious for feeling almost plotless at times. I would argue that SMT III's setup, where the plot is happening in the background and you're just trying to survive and figure out what the hell is going on, is a far better match for this sort of story pacing, though. Narrative elements were scant throughout that game, but each story update felt significant and gave you the sense that you were consistently getting closer to understanding the mysteries at the core of that particular title. That... is just not true here. The plot in SMT V is fairly straightforward, but so underdeveloped that the player never really has much of an investment in what's going on around them. SMT III: Nocturne utilized the element of mystery effectively in this regard, because, in that game, you never really felt like you were fully supposed to understand what was happening. Here, it just feels like Atlus' writers got bored and never expanded the story beyond a very skeletal structure.

On some level, this doesn't matter. SMT games have always been gameplay-first experiences, games you play when you want to get away from the endless dialogue and plot development in other games. Perhaps, on some level, the connection some draw from this series to Pokemon is more meaningful, since, like in Pokemon, SMT games minimize narrative elements to fully bring the focus back to exploration and monster-collecting. And, if it wasn't clear from some of my glowing writing before, this game does an absolutely amazing job, in that regard. As a monster collector, SMT V is easily the best entry in the series to date, and perhaps the subgenre as a whole. But this can't fully excuse Atlus' narrative failings otherwise. It's especially disappointing given how good the characters and plot pacing were in SMT IV and SMT IV: Apocalypse. While neither game was filled with dialogue, they did a good job of connecting the monster-collecting and dungeon crawling bits with surprisingly engaging apocalyptic stories. Hell, even the original SNES SMT (which I reviewed the GBA port of recently) does a good job of balancing these elements. Maybe Atlus' is struggling to unify its new approach to exploration and level design with narrative development, but it's hard to escape the feeling that the narrative failure here keeps this game from achieving its true potential, as it's so good in almost every other respect.

And, look, I'm a little over halfway through the game, to my understanding, so maybe Atlus will somehow save this as the game goes on and end it with a really gripping, compelling narrative, or even give us a reason to care about the people who are supposedly allies with my protagonist. But if I feel this way after forty hours with the game, I get the feeling it's not going to improve substantially enough to significantly sway my opinion on the writing and pacing of the main plot.

Very Pretty, Except When It's Not

Shin Megami Tensei V is easily Atlus' most technically and visually demanding game to date. It's arguably the first game they've ever made that doesn't feel like it could have been made to run on a Playstation 2. That seems like damning praise, but its attention to detail, sometimes dense environments, particle effects, and the general scope of the whole affair makes it feel like a distinctly modern game in a way that Atlus games haven't really even attempted before now. And, as a Nintendo Switch exclusive, it's really pushing the little guy. On some level, that's readily apparent when you play the game, as it sometimes feels less like an experience optimized for the mobile chipset and more like one of those downgraded ports of demanding PS4 games. This is most noticeable in terms of the resolution and textures on the character models themselves, as, during the game's elaborate and beautiful demon fusion sequences, the framerate will briefly slow to a crawl and the models, while extremely detailed, will look slightly fuzzy. You'll also notice this distinct fuzziness on character models in the menu screen when it zooms in.

Having said this, to be absolutely clear, the game does not run poorly. I've heard that particular line bandied about by people who are sour that they can't play this at 4K/60 at high settings on their beefy rigs or next-gen consoles, but it really does run remarkably well on the hardware considering what it's doing. There are some frame drops here and there, to be sure, but most of the game runs fluidly enough, and it's only really noticeable in those forementioned fusion cutscenes. Likewise, while the resolution tends to be somewhat lower than ideal, it's also stable enough and doesn't bottom out like certain other demanding JRPGs do on the system. In terms of presentation, it's a pretty good match for something like Dragon Quest XI S: clearly visually compromised, but still very nice looking. Especially with the wonderful vivid and stylized use of color throughout.

I should also mention that the game has pretty impressive load times. The initial load into the game probably takes twenty seconds or so, but actually fast-traveling around the a given area of the game is, if not instantaneous, than close enough that it's functionally identical. And even on occasions where it spends more than a few seconds loading, one doesn't notice the time at all thanks to the lore entries on various demons it'll randomly load up. Generally, you have enough time to read one of these before the games gets you where you need to be.

On the topic of presentation, I also want to briefly call attention to the absolutely superb sound design and music in this game. SMT V is, simply put, a treat for the ears. Returning composer Ryota Kozuka, who also did the absolutely phenomenal OSTs for the SMT IV duology on the 3DS, turns in some of his best work here. The pieces hit a variety of moods, from creepy ambience to blood-boiling, hard-rocking battle themes, but it almost all has a very grungy, crunchy sound to it that I really love. I'll link a few pieces below. The wastes of Da'at achieve a large portion of their atmosphere not just from the music, but also from the distant growls, chirps, and unearthly squeals of demons around you. It can actually be quite unnerving with headphones on.

Oh, and the english dub cast does a pretty good job in their roles. It's just too bad they aren't given more of an opportunity to shine.

At the beginning of this write-up, I asked a question: has Atlus succeeded in taking Shin Megami Tensei to the next level? The answer: not fully, but it certainly excels in several respects. SMT V is a flawed product in some ways, but those flaws haven't really put a damper on my experience, as the basic gameplay loop, presentation, music, boss battles, etc. are all so fantastic. So far, it's definitely my favorite new game released in 2021, and I'm excited to keep playing it for another 30 - 40 hours and see everything it has to offer. I'll expand my review of its basic mechanics, themes, etc. when I finish the game, as well as offer a full evaluation of it as a finished product. So far, I'm impressed.

@Ralizah Great write-up! Even though you haven't finished the game, playing a JRPG for 40 hours should still be able to give you a decent picture of what the game is like as a whole and I feel like I got that from your impressions. I can't imagine the story suddenly getting better in the second half of the game and if it does, then that's poor pacing by the developer.

Speaking of the story, did you happen to watch IGN's review of SMT5? They criticised it for not having a good story just like you did, but they did so while comparing the game to Persona 5 and that ticked a lot of people off, lol. Just look at the like/dislike ratio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUj6nYJaZvM I feel like even if the Persona comparison was unwarranted, it does seem like the story in SMT5 could've been much better compared to previous SMT games like IV as you mentioned.

Anyway, after reading about the game's open world aspect and new emphasis on platforming as well as collecting stuff, I've now become even more interested in this game. Granted, it still seems like a difficult experience but I do think I want to play it as my second SMT game, perhaps after IV or something. It just seems like a very well-crafted game that I'd enjoy, especially on the Switch.

When it comes to performance, it does seem like a lot of Switch JRPGs are having graphical/performance issues or downgrades in general when compared to other systems. I've been buying so many games lately on Switch that are also available on PS4, such as Ys VIII, Persona 5 Strikers, Trials of Mana and NEO: The World Ends With You and all of them are downgraded on Switch in terms of visuals, loading times, and especially frame rate. However, despite all of this, I would still prefer to play games like these and SMT5 on Switch because of the portability. I just don't like spending dozens of hours on JRPGs in front of the TV. So in that regard, I'll be getting the Switch versions of these games anytime I can. I'm guessing that's your preference as well? Did you play much of SMT5 in handheld mode?

I also have some last points/questions that I want to bring up. I've always wondered about charge/concentrate in Persona, now that you mentioned that they used to do 2.5x damage in the next round but now they only do 1.8x. Did those attacks also do 2.5x damage in Persona 5? Because I've always thought: why not just do the same attack twice instead of wasting a round charging up? Lastly, how are deaths/game overs handled in SMT5 and across the difficulty settings? Do you get sent back to a previous save point and if so, how frequent are the save points in this game? Is there an instant retry on the easier difficulty settings?

@LtSarge Oh yes, I've kept myself apprised of the IGN review situation ("Persona without the heart" will forever be a meme in this community, lol). She really triggered a portion of the fandom with the Persona 5 references in her piece. I understand why she was doing it (this was probably her second Atlus JRPG after P5, and I imagine that'll be true for a lot of people), but I also understand the frustrations of the community when several critics have, in the past, attacked the SMT games for not being like their more popular spinoff series. To her credit, she has confronted this head-on, and actually went on an SMT-related podcast to discuss her review with the host.

Well, keep in mind this game has multiple difficulty settings, and so is one of the more accessible entries in the series as a result. You can start on casual difficulty in this, for example, whereas something like SMT IV forces you to die multiple times before it'll allow you to unlock an easier difficulty setting. This game also doesn't have an insane difficulty spike near the beginning like SMT IV did.

SMT IV was actually my introduction to the series, though, and I loved it, despite its flaws. Amazing atmosphere, some really cool, shocking story beats, and, of course, engaging gameplay, gorgeous music, etc.

But yeah, if the collect-a-thon/platforming/exploration aspects of SMT V sound appealing, you'll be well-served in that regard. It's really well done.

I also prefer playing JRPGs on Switch when the option is there, yes. Downgrades don't bother me if they're not too severe, given handheld mode is such a cool and useful trade-off, and since I tend to play across a multitude of platforms and so am used to variable performance in my games anyway. Almost all demanding games last gen were downgraded on PS4 compared to PC, for example, but PS4 didn't have anything comparable to handheld mode to make the sacrifices worth it, so I generally went with PC for the few AAA multiplats I purchased.

Yeah, handheld mode holds up fine in SMT V. I played on the TV when possible, but I've been glued to it throughout the week, so I've also spent a decent bit of time with it undocked. There's the usual small hit to the resolution/image quality compared to docked mode, of course, but it's nothing dramatic.

The multiplier for charge/concentrate in the most recent Persona games was 2.5x, yes. That's the reason it's worth using, because it causes more damage than just using the same move twice and also saves on MP costs for costly skills.

SMT V is very old school when it comes to saving, which might be another thing that attracts you more to the 3DS games. In the 3DS games, you could save almost anywhere, but here, you're reliant on saving at Leyline Founts, which also connect you to the World of Shadows (this game's equivalent of the Velvet Room), the primary vendor in this game, a healing station, and other Founts throughout the landscape. These Founts are also spaced out rather widely, and finding new ones will often be your priority as you explore the various zones in this game. Thankfully, this isn't really an issue since it's only a few hours in that the game gives you the ability to immediately warp to the last Leyline Fount you interacted with at any time. So there's never any real danger of losing progress if you need to save, because save points are just a button tap away.

Unfortunately, no instant retry. You get booted to the title screen upon death. Thankfully, the load times are quick enough that I never found this too painful, as it's easy to click back into your save file fairly quickly when you skip the game's (very cool) death animation.

@Kidfried I agree. There'll always be this back-and-forth between people who want better performance and people who want more versatility with their exclusives. P5 vs SMT V is a great example: many people, including me, wanted P5 on Switch so we could play it portably. And I imagine a lot of PS5 owners will want this game on home consoles so they can play it at a smoother framerate and higher resolution (which I understand; I only made the mistake of trying to play a Switch game on a 4K set once, lol).

Glad I was able to help! I'm guessing you're going to wait to see if the rumors about home console ports of this pan out?

@Kidfried @Ralizah Well, now I've learned something new about Persona 5 regarding charge/concentration! That's good to know for future playthroughs.

Yeah I mean, it was totally unnecessary to keep comparing SMT5 to Persona 5 but it still felt like the responses were way too harsh since she still gave the game an 8/10. It's weird because I remember watching the review first and thinking it was pretty good overall, but then I scrolled down to the YouTube comments and everybody was absolutely destroying her, lol.

@Ralizah I'm really glad to hear that both SMT IV and V are very accessible games, both in terms of difficulty settings but also saving. I think you've pretty much convinced me to play through these two games and I've added both of them to my watchlist now. After Persona 5, I've always felt like I wanted to get better at its gameplay loop and I hope that with SMT being more difficult than Persona in general that it will push me to become better. I'm really looking forward to playing them!

@Kidfried Nice write-up. This definitely seems like one of the oddest experiences on PSN: deconstructed versions of albums turned into a walking simulator where you examine concept art, listen to snippets of music, etc. And it's even free. I appreciate you making the effort to explain what exactly this is, since, honestly, I've been baffled since I first heard this mentioned. My first guess WOULD have been that it was an artful way of presenting the music from the forementioned albums in a more visual format, but it sounds much more like a compliment to the experience of listening to them than anything.

I've never listened to Radiohead before, but if I ever find myself taken with their music, I'll definitely check this out at some point.

@LtSarge The review score was never the issue. SMT V is high quality, and even her review mostly reflects that. She just unknowingly stumbled into a very sensitive issue for the SMT fanbase online, lol. I do think there is a larger discussion to be had here about the sort of expertise we should expect from video game reviewers, since her review would have been more useful had it instead drawn more parallels with other Shin Megami Tensei games instead of comparing it directly to a series that, in certain respects, is wildly different, but, as usual, I do agree the angry/toxic reactions were over-the-top. It's an earnest, if imperfect, review by a player new to the franchise, not some mean-spirited indictment by a vindictive Persona fan.

But people on the internet always need to be angry about something, and this is just an extension of that.

Anyway, SMT V is far more accessible than SMT IV, since, like I said, it doesn't have the massive difficulty spike near the start that SMT IV does. That's not meant to scare you off of it, though. It's a great game, and conquering it WILL make you a much better MegaTen/Persona player, since you pretty much have to understand and consistently exploit the battle mechanics in order to win. SMT IV also has an amazing aesthetic, although it only comes into its own after the first dungeon. You'll see what I mean if you play the game. It's a really awesome twist of perspective.

SMT IV: Apocalypse, a sidequel to SMT IV, is actually the most accessible entry in the series, and also the most story-heavy. If it didn't spoil certain aspects of SMT IV, I'd say it was the ideal branching off point for Persona fans. It also arguably has the most balanced difficulty level and battle mechanics in the entire series.

@RogerRoger You know I don't have that much self-control.

Yeah, SMT V isn't fully a slam dunk, which is unfortunate, but thankfully it's successful in the ways I really needed it to be successful.

The minimalistic story wouldn't be an issue if it was structured in a way that fed into that minimalism. SMT III was, so, for the most part, the story approach in that game worked. This game's structure is one that would work far better with more character development, a stronger emphasis on set-pieces, etc. It has some of those, and they're pretty cool when they crop up! But they're too far apart and not developed enough to be properly impactful, which is a shame.

I do think it's worth pointing out that, despite porting design elements from other series that have never been in the SMT games to date, it still feels like an SMT game and, by and large, the changes are mostly big improvements on what came before. It's a testament to how good the combat and balancing is that this is still so challenging on hard difficulty despite stripping out almost all of the elements of the series that made it artificially difficult.

Despite tearing hard into certain aspects of the game in my piece, the flaws are more a theoretical annoyance for me than anything. Ultimately, I probably don't play SMT games for their stories any more than Dark Souls players do, since they live or die on the combat, atmosphere, and monster-collecting gameplay loop. But it'd be nice, nonetheless, to be able to recommend it wholeheartedly to people without needing to put an asterisk next to it.

@mookysam Thanks mate! Yeah I actually played The Sacred Stones on 3DS as I also got it as part of the ambassador program. It felt perfect on there and I'm glad that I ended up choosing that version over the Wii U one (which I also have) since it was rather tempting to play it on Wii U due to save states. But yeah, it really isn't necessary to use save states in this game as it's not too difficult to get through.

I was the same actually. I'm an impulsive person in general so I tend to lose my patience when playing tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem. But once the gameplay clicks with you, you start to instinctively take your time as you really want to win the battle without losing any units. And yeah, it happened sometimes that I lost a unit and decided to start over, but it helped me learn an important lesson as a result. Which is that you shouldn't try to use all units you get access to. There will be some really good ones and some that just aren't that good, and you should mostly use units that are very strong. My issue was that I tried to level up everyone because I didn't know when I would need them. Most of the time though, you are going to use units that have horses because they have high movement which makes the game easier to play. So after a certain point in the game, it was fairly obvious to me that I just needed to bring with me all my cavaliers, my strongest foot soldiers and maybe some flying units or archers depending on the situation. So my best advice is to simply leave the weaker units behind and don't be afraid to only use the few strongest ones at first. Then when you get access to the grinding area, you can experiment with other units and find out which ones have great potential. For example, one of my strongest units (who actually ended up killing the final boss in one hit!) was in the beginning one of my weakest ones with low HP and he did barely any damage. Then I leveled him up, changed his class to a Pirate and he became an absolute beast with high speed, high attack and high defense. After some time I changed his class to a Berserker and he became absolutely unstoppable. I would've never realised his potential if it weren't for the grinding area. So it's important to use the strongest units but also experiment with the newer ones you get in order to find even more stronger ones to add to your team.

@mookysam Thanks!

MegaTen games can be difficult to describe to newbies without getting raised eyebrows.

"It's an RPG set in a fantasy post-apocalypse with heavy inspiration taken from Hinduism and classical Indian mythology. Oh, and also, you have to cannibalize your opponents to grow stronger."

"Well, you see, it's an RPG where you play as a teenager in modern Tokyo, and it has heavy life sim elements like dating, working jobs, hanging out with friends, etc. Also, it explores sociological/psychological themes within a Nietzschean paradigm, there's heavy use of Jungian symbolism, and you basically enter fantasy otherworlds, befriend entities within the collective unconscious, and masquerade as a sort of superhero while still trying to keep your grades up."

"OK, so, these games are like apocalyptic versions of Pokemon, except gods and mythological entities from world mythology are the monsters you collect. Typically you need to choose a side in a brutal ideological war between competing factions of religious fascists who worship God and social darwinists who serve Lucifer. Also, in the latest one, you look like a power ranger in drag."

I suppose the uniqueness of Atlus' games are part of their appeal, though.

The Miman are interesting. Very ugly-cute. I'm glad there's a reasonable number of them in the game and they're not just pouring out your ears like the koroks in BotW.

SMT V definitely feels like it would have been a much nicer fit on the PS4, technically. Whereas Persona 5 doesn't feel like it's taking advantage of the PS4's technology AT ALL in terms of character model detail, level design, etc. The only way I can explain it is that the team that makes Nintendo games wanted to go big on potato hardware, and the team that releases games on Playstation consoles is still married to the idea that game design peaked on the PS2.

I have a few issues with the gameplay. But, in general, SMT V is pretty much my ideal monster collector game, and the best entry in the series from that perspective. It feels like solidly 70% of the effort in this game was poured into the demons. It's everything I've ever wanted from a Pokemon game, tbh.

And, on that note, I'm starting to wish there was LESS plot than there was. Or, rather, that it wasn't structuring itself like a plot-driven JRPG when it CLEARLY has no interest in developing a proper narrative. You could remove pretty much everything related to Bethel and most of the characters in this game and it would, if anything, improve it.

@RogerRoger Rog, what a fantastic read and a fitting tribute to an outstanding trilogy. I really enjoyed your behind-the-scene nuggets which give nice context and paint an interesting backstory.

It brought back great memories of my own playthroughs of each of the games.

@RogerRoger Great piece, Rog! You're really good at crafting narratives that smoothly transition the reader from one game to another, and making it feel like one unified bit of writing instead of three reviews stapled together.

I enjoyed the brief detours into discussions of game performance, small nitpicks with how they're designed, DLC content, and the controversies and development changes that cropped up throughout the series. The extra modes and DLC content for Rise actually sound pretty unique and diverse.

Your discussion of how the trilogy was originally supposed to transition the character into a place where she resembled the Lara of old before Rise derailed the arc of her characterization kinda reminds me of how often I heard people argue that Casino Royale was going to be a 'character prequel' for James Bond, explain how trauma and betrayal would fashion him into the suave but cold-hearted customer that Sean Connery best exemplified in his performances as the character. But, as we both know, that never happened.

I have access to at least two of these games on PS4, and one on PC, so I really need to get around to starting them eventually. Frankly, they sound like the series I was hoping Uncharted would be.

So, I updated the directory to include the last few reviews in this thread. Apologies for the delay.

I also made a significant update to my Shantae and the Seven Sirens review and adjusted the score in light of the new update to the game, for anyone interested. The new text is all at edit at the end of the piece.

@RogerRoger IMO, most writers worth their salt never fully escape that insecurity. Thing is, we either submit to it and allow ourselves to be ruled by fear, or we overcome it and use it as fuel to improve our craft. I'm really proud of everyone who puts the time in to share their thoughts on here, or elsewhere, as most people just never take that step, even if they want to.

RE: Tomb Raider, I actually have TR2013 on PC AND PS4 (I don't usually repurchase games, but it was $3 in a sale, so I figured: what the hell), and access to Rise via PS+. So no SotTR yet, unfortunately. I'm hoping to get to TR2013 next year on PS4, since that version seems to feature some improvements over the original PC build, but might wait until I either get a new GPU or a PS5 before trying to play the others, as I'm not excited to go from 60fps in the first one to 30fps with drops in the sequels, but we'll see. I'm not a huge framerate snob (SMT V is pretty much permanently running below 30fps and I had few issues, for example), and I'm also not hankering to get new hardware atm, so I might just play them on the hardware I have.

Shantae games have never been massive sellers, but their history goes back to the early 00s and the series is basically WayForward's baby (whereas their work on licensed games seem to pay most of the bills). The games were Nintendo exclusives for the longest time but, as with most other third-party properties, WF eventually transitioned to multiplatform game development.

Anyway yeah, I'm happy they fixed the game's most egregious flaws. Especially since they really didn't need to exist. Although I'm also a little shocked this got such a notable update 1.5 years after its initial release. Guess it worked, though, as it got people like me playing it and talking about it again!