Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance review: I say this in the nicest possible way – this game reminds me of a PS2 RPG

You’re going to die. Just accept it. Save often, grind where you can, and stick your nose into everyone’s business to get all that lovely experience. Batten down the hatches, gird your loins, watch out. Boss battles might absolutely batter you the first time around, but then you get to go back in with your wits about you. Even some random encounters have the chance to one-shot you if you’re not careful. This game doesn’t take any prisoners.

In the vanilla release of Shin Megami Tensei 5, life was hard. In the redux, it’s brutal. Good.

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Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance is class-A RPG – none of that gateway Persona nonsense that holds your hand and sings to you as you plod through your fancy little high school life. The parent MegaTen series has always been hard, it’s almost a meme at this point, and whilst Vengeance isn’t quite as tricky as SMT3 or 4, it’s definitely still out for your blood. I say it’s not as cruel as its forebears mostly because of the quality-of-life changes that have been added – being able to save anywhere, tweaks to UI readability, and clearer explanations of RPG systems see to that.

But the core gameplay loop is gritty. It’s compelling. It’s tough to crack, but when you do, it makes you ravenous – the kind of game you stay up into the little hours playing, because you want to beat one more optional boss or take down one more arrogant god. The series’ trademark Press Turn system forces you to think about battles in terms of brutal efficiency, making you itch to double up your turns and genuinely groan out loud when you whiff an attack and waste your allies’ upcoming moves.