Overall

I began my SMT V Vengeance playthrough on 28 April 2026. I finished my playthrough on 25 May 2026.

I like SMTV a lot. SMTVV was more than an improvement, which was awkward. SMTV now feels like an incomplete release.

Vengeance made me question why SMTV was released. When I first played SMTV, I really enjoyed it, and thought the general roughness was more stylistic. SMT3 had a sort of roughness to it as well, so I thought it was more of an aesthetic.

Atlus has a history of these sorts of releases (Persona 3 - Persona 3 FES; Persona 4 - Persona 4 Golden; Persona 5 - Persona 5 Royal), but Vengeance crossed the line that their previous work toed.

Story

I recall SMTV seeming a little bit disjointed. SMTVV is much more cohesive. This is thanks to the introduction of Yoko Hiromine, who pulls more personality out of the cast. This is especially true for Tao. This works against the game at times as the writing can be immature.

SMTVV does not overdo this change, though. Yuzuru and Dazai, while more fleshed out, don’t take up more space than they should. Miyazu missed this treatment, which was really disappointing.

Aogami’s relationship with the protagonist is fantastic. The demon haunt in general fleshes out the story more than I had anticipated. I wish the demons there had more story-related dialogue.

The Qadistu were cool. I liked all of their designs, Argat’s the most. At times, they seemed one-dimensional. This was a shame, as they had the most philosophical potential.

Despite the Atlus anime writing, I enjoyed the overall beats that the writers were going for. I think Yoko and Tao worked well together, and I appreciate how Yoko maintained emotional investment in Tao through to the end. Yoko’s character was well-written in general, and had some depth that I didn’t expect. That said, the origin and impetus of her character remains unclear.

My route was aligned with Yoko, so I assume chaotic good, though it would seem Vengeance only has two endings.

Gameplay

I play on hard difficulty. My final play time was 64:00. The protagonist finished at level 87. Some demons stayed in my garrison for a long time—Yoshitsune in particular. My main demons by the end were Agrat, Inanna, Cleopatra, and Nahobeeho (a particular fav).

While I certainly enjoyed Vengeance, I felt some fatigue by the end. Da’at: Ueno felt heavy due to the amount of self-directed exploration it required. I recall the verticality being problematic in SMTV, and my exhaustion exacerbated that feeling this time around.

Once I hit the Empyrean, my exhaustion really took over. In praise of Vengeance, some of the bosses were much harder, and a little more engaging. In criticism, some of this difficulty came from sources with little to no solution other than grinding—particularly, the over-reliance on status effects and almighty. Zeus-2, Tiamat, and Mastema all had the problem: workable strategic until around 30 percent HP, at which point they would begin to either heal (for absurd amounts) and either pierce any affinity or use almighty-and-status-effect moves. This was not very fun. I nearly switched to normal just to beat the game and move on.

Tiamat sucked. Her design was fine, I liked the concept of damaging the heads to pull from the main HP pool. Once she hit around 30%, she would spam mediarama, which restored around 1,600 HP (absurd amount; most of her heads’ HP), while her head set up an impaler—so pierce and increased damage. Given the amount of outgoing damage and the MP cost of buffing/restorative abilities, the solution to Tiamat was just brute force and luck. Thank god I could save after defeating her.

My protagonist had a magic build, with max skill potential in light, dark, ice, and +7 in almighty. By the end of the game, I primarily used omnipotent succession with moonlight frost, which carried me through quite a few of these end encounters. I didn’t have to grind at all, I just had to switch up my strategy, but at times this felt really janky. Probably not much of a criticism at all—if anything, it has me recalling my last playthrough of Digital Devil Saga (for better or for worse).

Finally, I almost put the game down in the advent of a grind because of how odd the subtly updated encounter system worked. For most of the game, I had been using Riberama to chain encounters. I had been at a higher level than most encounters for this reason, as I thoroughly explored each section of Da’at. Once I hit the Temple of Eternity, though, Riberama ceased to function as it had been before, meaning I could no longer grind effectively even if I wanted to.