Topic: Shin Megami Tensei V Thread

Dont you think guys that at the beginning of the game gathering Magatsushi in the field is a bit lame? I mean you can gather it as many as you want and then easily during boss fights just activate "CRITICAL".

Also I do not quite like that items in automats replenish themselves so theoretically you can spend some time in one place and reach the max macca. A bit strange.

@BlackenedHalo Not really. It's not like activating the critical hit magatsuhi skill trivializes the boss battles.

I mean, if you want to spend ten hours grinding basic materials to max out your money, go for it. In pretty much any RPG, as long as you have access to a healing station of some sort, you can make yourself miserable mindlessly grinding for hours and max out your level and money.

Seems like a terrible way to play the game, though.

@BlackenedHalo Realistically you'd likely always want your gauge full heading into a boss battle to get off to a good swing on your first turn and then start building it up during the fight to use it to finish them off. If they weren't lying around, you'd just fight a few mobs to build it up.

With regards to the Macca in the field, the vending machine drops seem to scale a bit depending on what area you are currently in. You'd be extremely hard pressed to save up much macca in the first area or so by spamming the machines over and over as you'd only get a few hundred or 1,000 macca or so per item.
Fusing demons or registering them to the compendium starts to get extremely pricy as you level up so your stockpile of money disappears quite sharpish at times

Oh no, did you buy all those shady ass MTXs? I can’t even imagine how heavily they must break the game, given the game seems to be tuned in such a way that it assumes you are playing without them, rather than with them. I assume all those boosters must then make the game significantly easier?

Do you have to fight Lahmu twice? I found it easy on Normal.

I think it is three times in total, maybe? Worst stage is the last one SPOILERS just because of him healing himself. Luckily he can’t regenerate as far as I can tell, so you just need to focus on one limb at a time and get it off before he repairs it and cycle to the next one.

@Pizzamorg
Yes. There was several cool DLC quests, plus I actually like having DLC for stuff like XP in RPGs, to save me time grom grinding if I need it. I appreciate that kind of stuff. I used the heck of out it in Fire Emblem Awakening.

I'm quite sure if abused indefinitely it would break the game. But that's not my intention with it.

I mean I guess fair enough. I honestly really wish these things wouldn’t exist. I get that people can use them in the “right way” (for the lack of a better expression) but they are so open to abuse by games companies. And as we’ve seen over the last decade or two, each time they make an inch they ask for a mile. I am thankfully glad SMT V doesn’t appear to be affected by the MTX, they just sort of exist in a bubble but if they sell well enough, it makes me worried for the next game.

I have a question regarding skill affinity/potential. Since some of you might have played IV and IVA, which is I believe when the mechanic was introduced, does it have any benefits to have a + value on a skill like Rakukaja aside from lower MP cost? So far I have not seen anything on forums or guides regarding this but the ones from SMT IV and IVA says that it only benefits from lower MP cost.

Died for the first time last night against a turtle that had a dragon for a tail (I think it was one of those special demons that's stronger than the others in the area). Tried it twice, then decided to put him off for the time being.

I am not a fan of the way in which the gate system has been implemented. In Nocturne, you organically gained things as you went through the story - most crucially, demon space, to sort of mechanically show your growth of power. Here, that is a skill you might get if you clear one of those gate things but you have no way to know which ones and what the right order is. So for example I think I have garrison 1 through 3, but then haven’t found four or five but I have found six and seven which I can’t use because I haven’t found the middle ones and so now I am just running out of room constantly. I get that it incentivises you to go out into the world, but again, it is just another thing that feels like a chore here. Having to go through and clear out each and every gate. This is the same with like the ability to use demons being able to be used in interactions, this was just a mechanic in Nocturne, here it is locked behind a gate. Like again, I know, explore the world etc etc but it just feels like they added an extra step, which actually makes me less excited to explore the world rather than more, because it is required rather than optional.

@Pizzamorg There's no reason to worry about the money/exp-boosting DLC selling well in this entry. Atlus games have been full of this sort of DLC since the 3DS era, and it never impacts how the core games are designed.

Anyway, all of my Divine Garrison upgrades (I - VI, having just reached the end of the second landmass/story arc) have been in order, which means they're laid out in such a way that they naturally follow the player's progression through the landscape.

Probably for the best if you revisit the second area and find the abscesses you're missing, IMO. They're not hard to find, since they block off entire portions of the map.

It isn’t a question of finding them, it just hasn’t been necessary to go out and clear every one. There are a fair amount that you’ll bump into on the path of the story, others are more off the beaten track. This is fine for completionists but I think it’s a shame I have to go out and clear every one of these.

This could have easily been solved, by having static rewards, like the Miman things - so rather than tying abilities to specific gates, you just get the rewards in a set order for the gates you clear. That way every gate reward is useful and those who go off the beaten path get an extra incentive for doing so, because they’ll unlock bonus things for clearing more gates.

New gripe: they ruined concentrate/charge by messing with the multiplier. People have been experimenting and damage seems to have dropped to around 1.8x at near full affinity from 2.5x in previous games. They can still be used in conjunction with magatsuhi criticals to score more damage than usual, but, in general, this makes the moves pointless. There's no reason to charge/concentrate and use an attack if the cumulative damage you get from it isn't better than if you just using the same move twice. Maybe it helps save some MP with costlier skills, but this is at the cost of a skill slot, which is far more valuable.

Really hope Atlus rebalances this in a patch or something.

I'm so happy I'm not alone any more 😭

This is such a minor little gripe but I audibly yelped when Miyazu mentioned being rescued by Fionn Mac Cumhaill and they said his forename like fee-on instead of f-yun how it should be.

As an Irishman, we're so primed to hear every word with a Celtic root get butchered because people constantly read it like it follows the rules of English 😂😂.

In Atlus' defense though, I adore the character models for the Celtic Characters and it's nice seeing them feature

I am once again at a point in an SMT where I am so infuriated I might just give up. While it isn’t Nocturne levels, the wind puzzles/convoluted navigation/platforming of the 3rd stratum of Satan’s castle or whatever it is meant to be and the fact a single wrong turn will force you to redo all of the wind puzzles/navigation/platforming all over again. I’m not sure I like this game enough to keep going, as I want to rip my hair out doing this.

EDIT: I made it through, OMG I made it through. Hopefully no more of that.

@JaxonH you appreciate that kind of stuff? are you out of your mind? so you rather paying for additional xps than playing much more balanced games that respect you and your money? in what world I live that players thanking greedy devs for allowing them to buy xps for real money

I heard that there are almost no dungeons in the games. Is it true? If correct, then it will be a big problem for me as I love dungeons in SMT games. SMT without dungeons is like Zelda without dungeons. Just not good enough.

@Snaplocket I like almost everything about the game, but the narrative aspects are a big downgrade from the IV duology so far. SMT IV/IV: Apocalypse were unusually good in that regard.