There is such a destabilizing push and pull with the release of Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance. On the one hand, I am saddened that this exclusive has gotten out of the Nintendo Switch ecosystem and now roams free in the world. It was a fantastic experience, and my smug little mind felt it was enhanced because others didn’t have the opportunity unless they came into the walled garden. It’s selfish and backwards, I know, but there’s some satisfaction in having a lovely game and thinking “you can only play this on the Switch.” On the other, far more important hand, the release of Vengeance marks the best, most polished, and explosively expansive version of Shin Megami Tensei V available, and, frankly, it’s so, so much better on other consoles.

For players coming in fresh, Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance is a great place to start the series, as every mainline entry is a standalone. The core concept remains the same: you are in a realm where demons are very real and very much want to destroy you and possibly everything else. Throughout your journey, you have the ability to converse with demons and negotiate with them, using various tactics (bribery, intimidation, charm) to convince them to join your team. Now you have a robust roster of scary monsters who fight alongside you, and can bring elemental or physical attacks that the main character might not be able to use. Let’s be clear that they are fighting alongside you: there’s no Ash Ketchum vicarious fighting here. You’re down in the suck with your onis and tengus and you’d best be ready to deal some damage. 

This time around, the player is a high schooler who accidentally ends up caught in a battle between Angels and Devils for the fate of all existence, and I guess you’re the only one who can help. You’re trapped in a Netherworld with a handful of your classmates (and, in Vengeance, a mysterious new woman), the way forward is unclear, and demons are everywhere. And since you start the game fusing with some proto-demon and becoming an entity known as the Nahobino, you’re more of the MewTwo in this ongoing analogy, complete with the twisted God complex.

Demons you collect can do a great number of things, but one of the best tropes of the series is the fusion. After you achieve a certain level, you can mash two demons together to get a brand new demon that may have very little connection to the original two. For example, it’s weird that you can blend a cat and a fairy to get a pretty demon lady, but that’s just how the Punnett Square works out in the world of Shin Megami Tensei.

Fusion is the only way to unlock certain demons, including wildly overpowered bosses and rare demons, so be sure to collect as many as you can, mixing and matching to find the combinations that suit your playstyle best. Plus, you have a demon bestiary that you’re trying to fill out, so the need to befriend everything and then blend them into a fine slurry to make something new is a driving force.

Vengeance is a massive package in terms of gaming, and it should come as no surprise that it exists as a brand-new installment instead of a DLC option. The most notable change is the new storyline that you can follow from the very beginning: The Canon of Vengeance. The original story is now dubbed The Canon of Creation and is different in its own right. Both paths clock in at about eighty hours of gameplay, so players who are determined to see and feel everything should probably give up on playing anything else for the time being. Both paths have unique demons, sidequests, and endings all their own, but, for the purpose of this review, I focused on The Canon of Vengeance for obvious reasons.

While WayTooManyGames has already had a wonderfully detailed review of the vanilla Shin Megami Tensei V journey, Vengeance is a whole new can of worms. Without being snarky, the plotline of The Canon of Vengeance just makes sense from the very beginning. After the expected “start as a high schooler but then get dragged into the demonic hellscape” startup, you play forward to witness the framework of angels versus demons, Lucifer is a bad guy, etc. THEN you suddenly get smacked by a brand new boss who appears at the worst possible time and is brilliantly overpowered. You need to scrap hard to survive, and now the curtain is drawn back to showcase a new antagonist group, the Qadistu. Instead of wondering “who is truly at fault” with the whole Heaven and Hell thing, you instead have this quartet of very literal femme fatales who want to resurrect Chaos and restart everything. 

Something about this vicious gang of four who are here to oppose you and try to rend reality worthless really spoke to me. Vengeance did an excellent job giving them form, personality, and purpose, not to mention injecting them as intimidating but not impossible bosses. Naamah lands in the game with the impact of a meteor to help correct any assumptions that this new game is going to be cake for veterans. Sure, you need to figure things out rather quickly if you don’t want to die forever, but each of the Qadistu has a pattern of attacks and weaknesses, and having a good variety of demons who are equally leveled can help pave your path to victory, albeit with some trial and error. Also, it’s pretty fun to watch the angels and devils vie for attention, only to realize there are, impossibly, much greater stakes.

Atlus has done an amazing job of making a game feel so big and so vast without completely bogging you down in total freedom and aimlessness. Though the maps of Wasteland Tokyo are massive, you still have directionality and purpose in everything you do. The constant refrain of being able to both look at the map and do an aerial view – almost literally providing a bird’s eye on where you’re going – are invaluable to make sure you’re never too lost. The maps are helpfully full of icons and indicators for where you can go and explore to see more enemies, find additional sidequests, and discover treasures, both simple and complex. The chance to stumble upon the new Aogami Essences – demon bonuses that exclusively apply to the protagonist – are reason enough to really trek along.

What’s fascinating is to have so much potential for distraction and yet be comfortable enough to simply walk by and keep on task for whatever your own goal is at the very moment. I normally abhor picking up sidequests because of how distracting it can be, but the non-invasive nature of the different demons sitting with clearly marked “potential quest” icons over their heads allow me to pick and choose as I wish. The rewards are always worthwhile, and the dialogue exchanges give you a bit of insight into the thinking and personalities of different demons, which only adds to the worldbuilding. For a game that is inherently a desolate world, it’s teaming with choices and things to do, and it amuses me to no end.

Combat in Shin Megami Tensei V is a delight, which can’t always be said for JRPGs as a whole. While turn-based combat is certainly nothing new, there’s strategy enough to be had for different battles when strategy matters, if that makes sense. Being able to nail an enemy’s weakness affords you one extra turn for fighting, whereas magging a gaff and having the enemy block (or worse, absorb) your strike means losing turns. The inclusion of two different auto-battle styles – auto attack or auto skill – allows you to quickly grind through even more complex enemies, albeit at the expense of your MP. Thankfully, I was gleefully able to brutalize through multiple encounters to more quickly level up (and dumping all my bonuses into strength for the most barbarian-style Nahobino you can imagine).

The laundry list of changes to Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance can be an article all its own, but some of the biggest have their place within and without the game. The map is expanded through both the inclusion of Magatsu Rails and the removal of abscesses, resulting in new places to discover treasures and easier accessibility to existing zones. The expansion of the demon roster allows the return of some fan favorites (Zhu Tun She and Peallaidh), some brand-new silliness (the Nahobeeho, a Fairy imitation of the Nahobino), and some wildly overpowered demons (the Demi-Fiend, former lead of Shin Megami Tensei III – Nocturne). There are more quests, better balancing of interactions, a whole freaking new city and dungeon…and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

One thing that was added in Vengeance that I’m a bit lukewarm on is the Demon Haunt. A new point accessible from the Leyline Fount, the purpose of the Demon Haunt is to allow you to interact with your demons and with the Aogami itself in a bizarre slice of Tokyo free of danger or strife. This area is mostly optional, though it will insist you go to visit it whenever a major game event happens, such as defeating the Hydra early on, so the Aogami can talk to you and compliment your skills and bemoan the fate you both hold. Demons in your party will talk to you and occasionally give you treasures they discover, and you, in turn, can give them gifts that now are hidden throughout the game and build up your relationship with them.

For the purposes of the whole demon interaction thing, I understand the inclusion, and I suppose it has a point for people who really like to go all in on the whole sim thing. But I’ve always hated sitting down and having meaningless chatter, and gifting presents in order to burgeon relationships, but I do it when unavoidable (visual novels, dating sims, etc). This felt like it was oddly shoehorned in for no other purpose than to have a more “light” element added to a game that is undeniably, relentlessly dark, and it doesn’t totally jive with me. If you like even more chances to hear the Aogami say YOUNG MAN, then good news, that’s happening a LOT in the Demon Haunt.

Another blessed addition to the game is the completely optional and very free DLC, Safety Difficulty. Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance already has three difficulty settings from the drop, and the special Godborn difficulty for people who just openly, earnestly hate themselves. But what if you want to have all of the story and as close to zero challenge as you can get without turning this into a cutscene? Enter Safety Difficulty, which makes even the most insidious foes benign. Being able to turn these difficulties up and down whenever you’d like is already a kind gesture to letting you scale as you see fit, and basically being able to turn a boss down to a light breeze is just so refreshing. Yes, sometimes I hate to be challenged, and sometimes I just want to move the hell along with the game. Thanks, Safety Difficulty!

But the biggest win for everyone is the move of Shin Megami Tensei V off of the Nintendo Switch and onto virtually every other console. Being portable was great and followed in the footsteps of my time with previous mainline titles, but seeing the full range of Vengeance on a more powerful machine was night and day. The framerate is top notch, the sprites are sharper, the draw distance longer, and the game just feels more complete and whole, which is an incredible thing to say about the End of the World. I was enveloped by the experience and found hours slipping away. With no distractions and no downtime other than the occasional load screen, I was here for this game. It grabbed me in a glorious way and made hours disappear, which is what a great game does.

I can safely say that, with or without the additional horsepower, the QoL updates, the very real and massive expansion, and the entire new game arc makes Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance the biggest package I’ve ever seen from an SMT title. It might not have the three hundred hour target of something like Persona 5 Royale, but it does have a sprawling, captivating, and positively enthralling appeal that gives you all the demons and none of the dating aspects. This is easily my favorite of the main Shin Megami Tensei games and it’s giving a real fight to be my favorite out of all the spinoffs as well. Altus has done players right with this package, and it’s time to form a pact and dedicate yourself fully to either Creation or Vengeance: the choice, as always, is yours.

 

Graphics: 9.0 Being able to take what was already a visual feast, clean it up, and sharpen everything thanks to more powerful processing available makes this Shin Megami Tensei easily the best looking in the series.	Gameplay: 9.5 So much to do all the time. Sidequests, monster fusion completion, level grinding, two different storylines, brand new dungeon, brand new demons, and even more sprawling land to explore. Balanced combat, more coherent storytelling, and just incredible depth to what was already a Mariana Trench of a title. But man, I really got tired of needing to go to Demon Haunt for heart to heart talks.
Sound: 9.0 Soundtrack remains as excellent as ever, with more tracks and a more robust orchestration to enjoy throughout the Canon of Vengeance. One point off because I am sick and tired of Aogami never even trying to learn my name.	Fun Factor: 10 I played it and lost track of time. I was so focused I missed dinner. The sun in the sky moved with deliberate precision and I noticed it not at all. I showed my kids, I showed my wife, I told my coworkers about it. It’s a firecracker, and my only regret is I couldn’t carry my Xbox with me to play it everywhere else.
Final Verdict: 9.5

Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance is available now on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X.

A copy of Shin Megami Tensei V – Vengeance was provided by the publisher.