Topic: Shin Megami Tensei V Thread

Vaguely uninformed reviewers are a lesser evil than hardcore, gatekeeping, fans.

@Ralizah I get more concerned from a research and integrity perspective. It’s not like I use these reviews to inform my purchases (prefer my own research, demos and let’s plays) but word of mouth impacts sales. Nothing worse than seeing a good series mothballed because people were poorly informed. (Not that this should happen to SMT) Now diehards that have meltdowns should be ignored on either side but the purpose of a review is to provide the reader with a concise, informed analysis of the game in question. Otherwise just write an opinion piece stating why you like something else and keep it moving.

Reviews I've seen are certainly good, anyway, @Ryu_Niiyama .... There'll be plenty of people who might not have played any SMT before as well as some who got Nocturne HD as their 1st in the series, like myself
Which have you seen that seem less positive?

@BruceCM the thread is currently discussing the IGN review.

https://www.ign.com/articles/shin-megami-tensei-v-review ? @Ryu_Niiyama. It's natural to compare it to Persona, if only because more people now have heard of that! On it's own, that one would still reassure me about my pre-order, anyway, it's pretty positive & has enough info for anyone who bothers to read it all, which sadly too many won't

@BruceCM I'm not going to rehash what has already been said, merely let's agree to disagree. If you find the review and the approach useful then it has done it's job.

This piqued my interest so I read the review. It's fine but a bit generic. I don't mind the comparisons to Persona because its done (somewhat) constructively. It does seem a bit reductive when it doesn't take the series history into account though.

What are the chances that this eventually gets a playstation/xbox release?

@Losermagnet Almost none, I imagine. Atlus doesn't like to port their exclusives to begin with, and Nintendo has had a heavy hand in assisting with marketing and publishing for this title. And Atlus has been very particular about talking about how they made this game the way it is specifically because of the design of the Switch hardware.

Down the road? Who knows. Maybe in 10 - 15 years it'll get a PS6/PS7 remaster like Nocturne did on Switch.

Well, I was coming from the position of what I'd already heard about the series & I liked Nocturne, @Ryu_Niiyama .... While I'm not really a fan of Persona anyway! It'd take more to put me off at this stage than one still fairly positive review!

@Ralizah that sounds about right. It's more of a minor annoyance, but I find Atlus' scattershot console support frustrating.

Persona 5? PS exclusive
SMT V? Switch exclusive
Persona 5 Strikers? multiplatform

@Losermagnet It's best just to assume you'll need a Playstation console to play Persona and Nintendo console to play SMT. After the PS2 era Atlus pretty much permanently assigned their major development teams to work on different ecosystems. The Persona/Catherine/RE Fantasy team focuses on Playstation primarily. The SMT/Etrian side focuses on Nintendo.

I don't mind too much. Switch won't hold back future Playstation ecosystem projects, and Switch owners don't need to worry about their games running poorly because they were optimized with power consoles in mind.

And, tbh, I liked when each console had its own nest of exclusive games from third parties, and this taps into that.

@Ralizah fair points. Although after reading your reply it occurs to me how badly I want an Etrian Odyssey on the Switch, and now I've made myself sad.

I guess I find it surprising that a company doesn't want the giant stack of money that's just outside of reach. It's certainly a bold move, and one that I respect. It means at the very least a more diverse portfolio of games. But consequently you end up with a crowd of people who want a Persona 5 Switch port.

@Ryu_Niiyama Sadly not many reviews are going to compare V to it's predecessors, given that a lot of people reviewing it never played the other games in the series. They've only played Persona 5, and so that's the only basis they have going into the series.

@VoidofLight While true, that is my point of contention. Like for a streamer or a hobby I get it, but video game writers are supposed to be journalists (Not trying to have that argument so just take that as an assumption of fact). It's their job/field of expertise. Which means they can A) do research, b) should be able see to why comparing two dissimilar series is disingenuous unless you are trying to tell people what NOT to expect, and then proceed to actually review the game. I would say the same of any reviewer be it gaming, food, tech, etc. I don't like half way done research.

I don't think we would give a person leeway if they compared Metroid Prime 3 or even Other M (although this is less egregious since it was an attempt at upgrading the 2d metroid experience so comparisons could be made) to Metroid Dread rather than Samus Returns.

That being said: This is a minor annoyance for me. I just hopped into the convo. I don't really use reviews except to find out about performance issues. And even then my own research will suffice.

@Snaplocket Almost no chance of that happening. tbh I think a Switch port of Persona 5 is more likely, and I was telling people for years that P5 was unlikely to hit a non-Playstation console.

@Losermagnet I loved Etrian Odyssey to death years and years before I'd even heard of SMT, but I can't say I'm excited for a potential Switch entry. The series was designed around dual-screened hardware, and if Atlus (almost by necessity) removes the mapping element, it's going to sour me on a new game pretty quickly. The only way they win me over is if they dramatically overhaul the series to make it a better fit on a home console.

Also, they milked the ever-living &$#% out of that series on 3DS, so it's due a rest for a while.

I don't know how many sales they're realistically missing out on. Probably more with Persona than SMT, tbh. Persona is mainstream enough now that ports could probably clear 500,000 - 1m sales per platform, like P4G did when it was ported to Steam. But, with their other IPs, most sales come from fans, who generally already own the hardware needed to play these games.

@Ralizah yeah I would hate to lose the custom mapping and I can't come up with any way they could compensate for the lack of dual screens. In a parallel universe somewhere the Wii U was a massive success and Atlus never stopped pumping out Etrian Odyssey remakes and spin-offs (and the occassional mainline entry).

While I would really like for all of Atlus titles to be available everywhere, I highly doubt that Smt V will be ported soon (or ported at all): here in Europe it's published by Nintendo, their name is on the cover of the game and on the eshop page; they're probably the reason why we are getting a simultaneous worldwide release, especially if you consider the mess that happened with Smt 4 in Europe.
Speaking of persona they'll hopefully announce the ports during the 25 anniversary, otherwise they'll never come. I'm still wondering why they didn't put P4g everywhere, that looks like the most obvious and easiest thing to do.

Anyone scoping any of the leaked music on youtube? The battle themes in this game are BANGERS.

Easily soundtrack of the year, based on what I've heard so far.

Preloading is now available.

https://slate.com/culture/2021/11/shin-megami-tensei-v-review...

So, in addition to being like Persona without the heart, it's also like Dune.

Now I want a crossover game where you date waifus on Arrakis.