Analysis Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, the definitive edition of one of the best role-playing games of recent years (PC, PS5, PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One) We return to explore the ruins of Tokyo in the ambitious and excellent review of an essential RPG that now also reaches new platforms.
Atlus is a company that has us accustomed to its great games ending up receiving some type of revision sooner or later. Titles like The Last Three Persona or Catherine are good examples of this and although this strategy may not be to everyone’s taste, it cannot be denied that new versions usually include such several improvements, new features, and content that they manage to justify a second purchase.
Now it’s the turn of Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, the definitive edition of one of the best role-playing games of recent years that, in addition, with this re-release finally breaks its exclusivity with Nintendo Switch to also reach PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series.
The eternal conflict between angels and demons
As we usually say in these cases, in this text, we are going to focus only on the new features that this new edition brings, so we recommend that you first take a look at the analysis we carried out on its original version to discover its main keys, pros, and cons.
As a summary, we are looking at a role-playing title with turn-based combat that takes us to a post-apocalyptic version of today’s Tokyo in which angels and demons are at war, with the former refusing to believe that the Creator has finally been killed. by Lucifer himself. And yes, humanity finds itself in the crossfire of this conflict.
In this interesting scenario, we play a young high school student who, for reasons that we will not reveal, obtains powers and the ability to recruit demons to fight alongside him, so we have to explore the ruins of Tokyo while platforming, We find countless secrets, avoid traps, fuse creatures to create more powerful ones and, of course, we face numerous enemies to strengthen ourselves.
It is a game that stands out for its fantastic combat system and “raising” and collecting demons, but, above all, for its level design, since it gets rid of the usual corridor dungeons of the saga to offer us gigantic settings, wide and very vertical, full of secrets through which it is a real pleasure to move thanks to the agility of our protagonist. At times they even remind us of what we would expect from a level in a 3D platform title, with a lot of hidden paths hidden in very ingenious ways that force us to pay close attention to our surroundings to discover how to get to them.
The Revenge Canon
Focusing now on the new features, the first and most important of all is the introduction of a completely new plot route called Canon of Revenge. When starting a new game, we are given the option to play the same story that we were able to enjoy originally in 2021 or take the new path that has been created for the occasion, which we found much more interesting in terms of its script. it means.
Yes, many of the regions we explore are the same in both routes, but from the very beginning, the changes begin to be perceived, such as the introduction of new characters, a new group of villains who are going to make things very difficult for us throughout the entire game. the adventure, events that unfold differently, fights against new and unexpected bosses, and a greater number of video sequences.
In narrative terms, we have been pleasantly surprised by the effort that has been made to give greater development to the group of protagonists, who were somewhat blurred in the original route due to the little presence they had. Now they have a much more active role, they frequently interact with each other and various scenes have even been added in which they react to our decisions, both during the main story and in the secondary missions.
Furthermore, depending on the moment in the story in which we find ourselves, we can directly control one or more of them, which is why a certain feeling of the group has been created since we are almost always accompanied by our friends, which is a considerable difference compared to the loneliness that prevails at all times on the original route. To top it all off, I would say that what they told us also seemed much more interesting, the new enemies have a lot of charisma and the mysteries that are introduced have encouraged us to continue playing to discover the truth about everything.
Here it is also worth noting that the differences between both routes become more and more accentuated as we progress, even reaching points where they separate. What’s more, in the Canon of Vengeance a completely new gigantic region has been introduced with its exclusive dungeon, and in terms of design we can confirm that it has nothing to envy of the rest, which is why we have enjoyed exploring it, facing its dangers unique items and completing side quests that can only be found there.
Another detail worth highlighting is that Shin Megami Tensei V is still a game with a difficulty level above the current average for the genre even on Normal, so don’t think that now it’s going to be easier because it has new characters with abilities. predefined or to show off a greater narrative load.
The new bosses of the Canon of Revenge have seemed more fearsome than those of the original route since they have very ingenious and unique mechanics and combinations of attacks that have made us rack our brains to find the appropriate strategy to do them. front, something that we have found very satisfying and has delighted us with some truly epic confrontations.
A huge number of improvements
Beyond the new route and the more than 70 hours of content that it adds compared to the original title (if you want to complete both with the corresponding alternative endings for each, you have a game for hundreds of hours), we have to admit that it has surprised us the huge amount of new features, improvements, and adjustments that have been made to the game as such.
On the one hand, we have more or less expected things, such as the addition of all the downloadable content that the base title received, new optional missions (including the occasional mini-game, time trials, and tasks in which we directly handle a creature) or the introduction of more than 40 unpublished demons, with all that this implies when it comes to increasing our strategic possibilities.
Of course, at Atlus, they have wanted to go one step further and have also taken the opportunity to rebalance how the level of difficulty of the enemies scales to offer us a more satisfactory progression, not to mention that lots of skills have been introduced. unique for each demon and for each demonic tribe (which helps to differentiate them better and give a more marked personality to the roles they play during combat). All this makes the combats much richer and deeper than before, which is not exactly saying something if we take into account the excellent foundation they already had.
Of course, a good number of quality-of-life improvements are also not missing from the event, such as the possibility of saving the game at any time, a function to see the scenarios from a bird’s eye view, the introduction of an item that allows us to reassign the attributes of our protagonist and many, many more that would take us many paragraphs to list and that help make the gaming experience much more pleasant, comfortable and satisfying.
For us, the most grateful of all is the introduction of an automatic combat function with accelerated animations (which we can also skip), which has turned our training sessions into a real pleasure. If you have a group capable of eliminating enemies with this function, the battles barely last between 5 and 10 seconds, and if we take into account that the rivals are usually very close to each other, it is possible to chain lots of fights to increase levels in a jiffy, speeding up this process a lot and reducing the number of hours we are going to invest to reach the end and the most advanced content.
Nor can we forget to mention that now new situations can arise when negotiating with demons, that there are new miracles that we can learn, and that a resting place has been introduced where we can talk to our demons, which also serves to give us gifts. items, improve your attributes, and learn new unexpected skills.
An improved audiovisual section
The arrival of the title to new platforms more powerful than Switch also allows us to enjoy an adventure with a much more attractive technical section.
Although the basis remains the same in terms of modeling and scenarios, the truth is that seeing the game at 4K and moving at 60 images per second is a pleasure.
We have played it like this on our PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti and thanks to the tweaks that have been made to the textures and other elements to adapt them to higher resolutions, the experience has even been transformative as we do not have to suffer the annoying performance problems that I had in the Nintendo hybrid and be able to enjoy its beautiful art direction in all its glory.
Add to that loading times that have been reduced to a minimum, and you will have a title that we believe is more enjoyable on the new platforms than on Switch, despite losing portability (if you do not have a Steam Deck or similar, clear).
And a lot of attention to the sound, since more than 70 new compositions have been added, which have nothing to envy of the originals and further enhance a soundtrack that was already practically perfect.
Conclusions
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance has surprised us with its ambition. It is a gigantic revision that practically duplicates the contents of the base game and improves it in many different ways to make this role-playing adventure a much more polished and rounded experience that will delight both those who already enjoyed it in its day and those who dare to discover it now for the first time.
If you like the genre and you want a challenging, deep work, with a unique level design, a fascinating art direction, a luxury soundtrack, and a combat system full of possibilities, don’t hesitate and give it a try. chance.
We have written this analysis thanks to a download code that Sega offered us. We played on a computer with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti graphics card.
