Gamespot: Shin Megami Tensei V Is Getting The Royal Treatment In Vengeance. SMT V: Vengeance is said to add around 75 extra hours of new content and tons of new music, and represent the full vision of the original RPG.
by Turbostrider27
Nintendo Switch
22 Comments
According to Gamespot and the interview
> Ahead of its launch on June 14, I spoke with key developers on the project: producer Shinjiro Takata who’s been with Atlus since its inception, director Shiego Komori who worked on SMT: Nocturne, and composer Ryota Kozuka who became main composer on SMT IV. With any definitive version, the main question is about how it warrants a whole new purchase. So we dug into the ways in which Vengeance makes its case, and judging from what I’ve seen thus far, it might be the biggest deviation from an original version that Atlus has done thus far.
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> It seems hindsight is often 20/20 with regards to creative works, as Takata said, “We focused on making this the best SMT V by carefully improving the system based on much of player feedback, while focusing on adding new elements.” That may sound par for the course for an Atlus re-release, but when I asked about exactly how the new content is being woven into Vengeance, Takata stated, “In the newly added Vengeance route, the story development gradually begins to change from the original route and will unfold completely differently starting from the middle of the story.”
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> Rather than being an additional set of quests, this new route is being pitched as a significant reframing of SMT V’s narrative themes “featuring a whole new story with 75 more hours of gameplay,” according to Takata. Whether or not a majority of those hours are variations on the existing sequence of events remains to be seen. However, as the new subtitle would indicate, Komori mentioned, “This work is a tale of revenge based on Atlus’ own interpretation of the relationship between the Bull God and the Snake God that exists in various parts of the world.” SMT has always been about a power struggle in a world where demons exist in a sort of theological multiverse, and in regards to Vengeance, Komori continued, “We believe that we were able to express a different kind of order and chaos in the relationship.”
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> Komori further explained, “The goal is to further the feeling of presence by cooperating with members on the journey, and to allow an easier understanding of their actions. She was conceived as a kind of heroine of chaos to be paired against Tao, and in this work, the setting from that time has been incorporated into the story as much as possible.”
Don’t tell me that, I haven’t even started the original yet! My backlog is only getting worse.
So a complete overhaul of the narrative for the new route. Good. The original plot was such a nothing-burger, and they totally wasted the interesting characters they had with non-existent screen time.
The game was solely carried by its amazing gameplay. So I won’t mind playing it again if the new story is at least as good as SMT IV.
I don’t really play any games for a story, and SMT is particularly thin there already. These are generic, macro-level ideas espoused through overwrought dialogue by one dimensional characters. SMT is a longtime favorite for its interesting and compelling gameplay. I dumped 80 hours into SMT V to beat the final boss and every side quest. Probably a dozen or more of those hours were just navigating the UI to fuse demons and watch every cutscene. No idea where they are pulling 75 fucking more hours out of that. I will probably double dip just for the QOL improvements and to support these kinds of games.
Gonna have to stop buying atlus games at launch. All these ultimate editions. Have smt v but hadn’t got around to it. Sigh. Perhaps will wait til vengeance goes on sale.
So …well. I have the original … Should I just skip it and wait for 2 months at this point? Lol.
I dont think i have it in me to play it all again 🤣
Is there any chance my current save will still work? I mean, for New Game+. I wouldn’t expect my actual run to continue.
SMT V had a story?
I wouldn’t be so salty if Atlus made the new content available for existing SMTV owners to as a DLC option.
I’m never buying an Atlus in-house game at launch ever again. I’ll just wait to the eventual definitive edition.
Lesson learnt.
Definitely grabbing this on Steam Deck, last I tried SMTV it ran like crap on Switch.
Gonna be so hard not to buy metaphor refantazio on launch but they are totally gonna do this shit again for that game 😔
In other ways scummy Atlus held back content from the launch of the original SMT v so they can sell the game again as s repackage so they can get more money. We all need to stop supporting this. Atlus you are a scummy company
They’re so annoying with this fuckin shit…. Unfortunately their games already give so much content and bang for your buck and are just…so well made. I bought P5 on sale for $10 off a whim, 97 hours later and I bought Royal the second the credits rolled because I just loved it so much and wanted more took another 124 hours if my life…same shit with SMTV 80 hours and I’m definitely gonna get vengeance cause FUCK does atlus make good games.
I played and enjoyed P5 on release, and it was excellent so felt I got more than my moneys worth. But after Royal came out (which I still haven’t bought/played) I was a little disappointed it couldn’t have been DLC. I wasn’t ripped off because I enjoyed vanilla, but just kind of feels bad paying for what is later an inferior product, and the full version being an additional full expense purchase.
This is even worse, although there are good aspects of SMT V, it honestly seems like an unfinished game. At least P5 vanilla felt completely cohesive and complete, extra content from Royal I’m assuming is the cherry on top.
But with SMT5, while it is functional with good combat, it’s very obvious big parts of it’s vision and story were dropped to ship the game early. Character arcs and motivations, and latter parts of it’s story are completely laughable – and this is not just a persona fans complaint on a less narrative driven series – even compared to SMTIV and SMT3 it doesn’t feel like a cohesive finished game, excepting it’s pretty stellar combat.
And here the game arrives, presumably what was intended in the first place, and I can’t help but be a bit annoyed that it’s another full purchase. And unlike vanilla P5, I don’t feel satisfied with the original version of SMTV or like I got my money’s worth – so it’s a bit more of a hard sell. Mixed feelings I guess – it just seems like buying an initial atlus release is like buying an early access product that you have to rebuy when they finally release it a few years later. Happy they fixed some problems from fan criticism, unsure if I want to financially support this kind of business practice though.
I tried SMT for the first time with V…and I’m a big ole pass for this. It’s not for me
As intrigued by this as I am, if they don’t add more variety to the areas, I can’t go through that again. I loved the game but was disappointed when every new area looked exactly like the last one. That soundtrack though, SO good.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about Atlus it’s that you cannot buy their games on launch. I absolutely love the Persona franchise and I’m starting to delve a little deeper into the mainline SMT games, but if there’s one thing I’m happy about it’s that I never bought P5 and SMTV on launch. SMTVV is looking to be the P5R of mainline SMT where it’s just a superior product overall that will most likely invalidate the existence of the vanilla game. People who have never played SMTV will probably have something nice to look forward to but I kinda feel bad for the people who bought vanilla SMTV thinking that they were getting a complete game (and from what I’ve heard about the SMTV story, apparently it felt very incomplete to a lot of players which doubles the feeling for those players feeling like they’ve wasted money on an incomplete and potentially inferior product). I’m looking forward to seeing what SMTVV has to offer, but let it be known that it’s never a good idea to buy an Atlus game on launch because they might just come out with an enhanced version a few years later.
I’m really glad I somehow had the sixth sense to not buy this on switch when it first released. I knew they would eventually do smth like this.
Good thing I held off. Good entry into the series? Or are ds/3ds better?
What kept them from realising their full original vision the first time around?
For you guys who are big SMT fans, will u tell me more? Its a series I want to get into but I really donno where to start. I own SMT 3 Nocturne but havent jumped in yet