{"id":1459,"date":"2021-11-25T11:34:43","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T16:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1459"},"modified":"2021-11-25T11:34:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T16:34:44","slug":"shelved-it-13-shin-megami-tensei-v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1459","title":{"rendered":"Shelved It #13 &#8211; Shin Megami Tensei V"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/atlus.com\/smt5\/\">More Info from Atlus<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: JRPG<\/li><li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: Switch<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The praise that this one got when it came out really surprised me.  It&#8217;s not that I necessarily thought the praise was <em>wrong<\/em>, but <em>SMT<\/em> games are a very specific kind of niche that I didn&#8217;t think would translate well across the board.  I played a ton of <em>SMT4<\/em> on the 3DS, but even then the formula of the overall metagame felt dated.  8 years later, <em>SMT5<\/em> brings the same fantastic combat with the same outdated metagame, and it feels even worse to me now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle.jfif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Turtle.jfif 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If there&#8217;s anything I would point to about the game, it&#8217;s that it&#8217;s not &#8220;hard&#8221;, at least not in the traditional sense.  What it often is is difficult, but artificially so and I think that&#8217;s an important distinction.  The game isn&#8217;t hard in a skill-based sense.  Once you know the counters to a boss, the game is trivially easy since you can build your party as a hard counter to it.  What it then becomes instead is hard in a time commitment perspective.  You&#8217;re now just spending <em>time<\/em> making parties that are tailored towards fighting a specific boss, capturing and fusing demons that act as defensive counters to the boss&#8217; big attacks to allow you to fight your way through it.  Even by where my levels were in the mid 20s, this had just become a colossal slog.  A single level was ending up being 25-30 fights, which is far too slow a pace to be <em>interesting<\/em>.  Routinely getting into boss fights that then back you up to a ton of grinding is just no longer fun to me.  That brings me to my kind of three strikes of shelving this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko.jfif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1461\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Neko.jfif 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first strike was just a straight death to trash.  I get that there&#8217;s some amount of danger involved in any JRPG fight.  I was in the middle of a 30 minute walk between save points and came into a rare fight where the enemy went first.  It got off a crit, giving it an extra turn, then finished off the main character on the second attack.  There was nothing I could do because the main character dying is an instant game over.  I was never given a turn to heal up.  I was never given a turn to take out the enemy.  100-0 before I could do anything.  Against a boss where I&#8217;m prepared, this would just suck.  Against a trash mob where I&#8217;ve been walking for along time and lose a ton of progress because of the main character death rule it&#8217;s infuriating.  The main character death rule is one of those things that just has to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second strike was around a couple of side quests.  Some of them end with you going back to the quest giver and getting into fights.  These generally involve a bunch of wandering around to some random quest giver away from any save point and doing chores, so when you get to one that involves a sudden unplanned boss fight and you haven&#8217;t been conserving resources, it&#8217;s not exactly a fun time.  A couple of these I got through fine, a couple of these I was clearly underleveled or needed a different party for.  Losing progress to a <em>side quest<\/em> is not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The final strike was just hitting another boss where I was going to have to redo my entire party to act as a hard counter, and I don&#8217;t really need to cover it more than that.  I had gone through four rounds and only chipped the boss down by about 25% of its health.  It then got to the point where it gained its turn with guaranteed crits, did an AoE, and 100-0&#8217;d half my party in one turn.  It&#8217;s not great when you get to that point because it makes it clear that you need to both grind and rework the party to hard counter it.  Guaranteed time waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa.jfif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_Nuwa.jfif 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would almost sit here and wonder if JRPGs have left me behind.  At this point I lack both the time and patience to really sit around playing grindy games that force me to increase numbers instead of giving me skill-based ways out of problems.   Looking at some of my recent shelved games that certainly would seem to be the case &#8211; <em>Scarlet Nexus<\/em> and <em>Bravely Default 2<\/em> particularly come to mind.  On the other hand, I&#8217;m still finishing more JRPGs than not.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>FF7R<\/em>, <em>NEO: The World Ends With You<\/em>, <em>Xenoblade Chronicles<\/em> and <em>Tales of Arise<\/em> are more action focused, which gives players ways to simply skill through battle.  However, they are distinctly JRPGs in their meta games.  On the more traditional front <em>Yakuza 7<\/em> was incredibly grindy but had a lot of fun <em>stuff<\/em> to do around it that kept me playing for the hell of the character interactions.  <em>Fantasian<\/em> and <em>Atelier Ryza<\/em> both had pretty traditional JRPG meta games, but had much better overall flow and a far more compact leveling experience so you weren&#8217;t just fighting for the sake of padding out the game&#8217;s length.  In all of those cases they didn&#8217;t waste the player&#8217;s time through old mechanics.  They let individual fights speak for themselves, and if you died so be it, you didn&#8217;t lose progress and you picked up having learned some things to apply to it the second time.  Given those, I don&#8217;t think <em>SMT5<\/em> is that far away from actually being actually really fucking good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For one thing, just fucking add checkpoints and auto saves before fights.  Having to manually save at places far apart from each other is a bad mechanic.  Losing a ton of progress because you died to some rando is a bad mechanic.  It was bad in the 80s and it&#8217;s bad today.  If a player dies, return them immediately to just before the fight.  Secondly, get rid of the fucking grind.  Is there any point to me having to do 25-30 fights to level up?  Is it accomplishing anything?  Is it proving anything about me as a player?  If the grind is reduced, then making parties that are specific hard counters to bosses is less of a chore and actually becomes a fun part of the meta game.  If you wanna be really frisky, use the mechanic that <em>FF13\/13-2<\/em> do and just heal the player between fights.  Then your fights could all be hard <em>and<\/em> you could eliminate a ton of grind.  Also, get rid of the MC death = game over.  I don&#8217;t care if you have to story up some bullshit, but if I have a party of four things and one of them is an instant death, that feels dumb.  Let the rest of my party finish the fight.  Again, don&#8217;t waste my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower.jfif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower-1024x576.jfif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1463\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower-1024x576.jfif 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower-300x169.jfif 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower-768x432.jfif 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/SMT5_TokyoTower.jfif 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 767px) 89vw, (max-width: 1000px) 54vw, (max-width: 1071px) 543px, 580px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So I guess at this point I&#8217;m left here not so much wondering if JRPGs have left me behind, but if the older studios are sticking too much to tradition.  A lot of what I find boring about this game is just mechanics that have aged poorly that they&#8217;re sticking to for tradition.  Studios that have broke away from tradition have been the ones that have done far better.  <em>FF7R<\/em> completely turned that game on its head to great effect.  <em>Tales of Arise<\/em> added a much more dodge\/parry focused combat, reinvigorating what had largely become an attack spam battle system.  <em>Fantasian<\/em> took a turn-based system to mobile and made positioning fun while reducing grind to make a compact experience.  There&#8217;s a path here for traditional games like <em>SMT5<\/em>, but they need to look at what is causing their games to be 40+ hour slogs, because there isn&#8217;t 40 hours of content here.  Cleaning those things up gives them a path to be more streamlined, more fun, and importantly <em>actually<\/em> more difficult, rather than just sticking to being a grind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Atlus Genre: JRPG Platform: Switch The praise that this one got when it came out really surprised me. It&#8217;s not that I necessarily thought the praise was wrong, but SMT games are a very specific kind of niche that I didn&#8217;t think would translate well across the board. I played a ton &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=1459\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Shelved It #13 &#8211; Shin Megami Tensei V&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1464,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,83],"tags":[58,5,202,265,84],"class_list":["post-1459","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jrpg","category-switch","tag-atlus","tag-jrpg","tag-shelved","tag-shin-megami-tensei","tag-switch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1459"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1459\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}