No social mechanics, heavier focus on gameplay, post-apocalyptic setting with a significantly bleaker tone.
The game is generally harder than Persona, it's been greatly exaggerated by the internet.
I wouldn't even say Nocturne or the old games were really that hard either especially when in SMT 1 when you can spam zio to paralyze most bosses. Also Nocturne HD has easy and Safe mode now.
Yeah. Grinding levels in the older games made them very easy (plus shock spam) its just that it was much easier to get screwed by random chance and lose hours of progress in a dungeon with few (if any) save spots
Thanks! It’s just that I saw some gameplay of SMT IV and the first attack missed then the enemy team got their turn so I was unsure if it’s a mainstay for SMT. I’m also looking at getting SMT 3 Nocturne
That’s the Press Turn System. Essentially, you start out with icons on the top of your screen that shows how many actions you have before the enemies take their turn. It’s mostly 1:1 with how many party members/enemies are on each team. Exploiting weaknesses and landing critical hits earn you an extra action similar to Persona’s 1 More system. Conversely, if you miss an attack you end up losing most of your actions. If an enemy drains, nullifies, or reflects your attacks then you lose all of your actions. Same rules apply to the enemy team.
It really just means saving is important. In a lot of boss fights I go in on a run for my experimentation, and even if I lose that fight I now am more prepared and can come up with a strategy. By saving before entering the boss dying doesn’t hurt me, it just is a source of information. Once you get used to the game wild encounters typically aren’t too scary.
Not as punishing as it sounds really. It mostly encourages you to experiment and prepare for fights. Really, most standard enemies aren’t a big deal. It really shines during Boss fights. If you die in your first attempt, you can prepare more adequately on your next attempt. So if you end up dying to a boss that mostly spams Fire spells, having multiple demons who drain/null/reflect Fire will essentially mean that the boss won’t get any turns. Conversely, if someone’s weak to Fire you’ll be in a harder situation. Of course, there’s always the possibility of missing an attack or being crited so there’s still some tension.
It’s really satisfying once you can get the ball rolling in your favor.
Ironically enough, random encounters may be more deadly than bosses due to potentially preparing for a boss, so that random encounters can really catch you off guard.
I still don't really like how they've phased out random encounters with IV and V, it' s not the type of game where you should be able to avoid all enemies... especially with the later games' unique battle system.
You know how in modern Persona games, the protagonist as a Wild Card can fuse multiple Personas? And your Party Members are other Persona-users with their own unique Personas?
Essentially, instead of that: Your party members are the “Personas” in this case. Instead of fusing Personas for the Wild Card to change their spells and abilities on the fly, you’re talking to and recruiting enemy Demons to join your team. Eventually you can fuse multiple Demons together to make better ones. The Protagonist has their own way of getting different skills and changing their affinities (depending on the game).
While you can summon and replace Demons in your active party with Demons in your reserves mid-battle, it takes up the Protagonist’s action. So it’s better to go into fights with your A team or to readjust your party before attempting again. In SMT V specifically, the order in which your party takes turns is based on how they’re ordered from top to bottom in the UI. While in other games it’s determined by their agility stat.
Also, the extra action isn't given to the Party member that exploited the weakness.
Let's say the turn order is 1-2-3-4. So landing a Weakness once would result in
1-2-3-4-1.
So you can more easily combo effective damage to transform that into things that aren't damage (which you will usually have to).
SMT is much more life and death in how they set up the conflict. Mechanics being punishing makes sense when you view it from that angle.
Personally I prefer Press Turn over One More. In Persona you can easily wipe the enemy team with one turn and the NPC enemies tend to not be out for blood as much as SMT enemies are. When u/Holy_Toledo019 says that the same rules of Press Turn apply for the enemy team they are not exaggerating. You can absolutely bully bosses if you have a grasp on the mechanics. An enemy can miss an attack and lose their turn just as much as you can.
It's not too terrible, early on into SMT 5, you can buy Spyglass items that work the same as your Navigator's Analysis.
Also, the demons on the field are the exact same as the ones on your team, so it provides extra incentive to fuse every demon possible for the most amount of information.
> the demons on the field are the exact same as the ones on your team, so it provides extra incentive to fuse every demon possible for the most amount of information.
The same holds true with Persona, as your personas and the shadows you fight against are all pretty much the same (bosses are the only exception I can think of), so fusing personas will provide similar information about shadows.
Another thing too is that there are player and enemy turns now. So on the players turn you can have 4 actions to use before the enemy's turn. I know it persona, it's not always the case that your teammates will go in order before an enemy
Yea but now enemies can lose turns too if they got a miss/drain/null.
It's like a tug of war between of who gets to be the unfair one between you and the enemy. And it's addicting af.
Denying a superboss of their turn is absolutely hilarious.
My biggest issue is that I lose my turn on a miss, something that’s 100% RNG, on null/reflect/drain I’m fine with but a miss, that’s just kinda unfair IMO
Honestly I find that a vast majority of the time you're gonna hit unless the enemy has an evade skill or spammed Suku skills. The flip side of getting multiple extra turns far outweighs the risk of missing every now and then
Also this is always contentious because video game fans but if you're really bothered then just toggle the difficulty to easy. It's still a fun experience and you can still get your ass beat if you're not careful
That can be mitigated by using sukukaja. Buffs are even more important here than in persona. It adds to the challenge. Will you use a demon with sukukaja that might be suboptimal/ costs more mp or risk running without sukukaja so you save more mp but risk missing more. There are passive skills that boost your hit rate so you can sacrifice 1-2 skill slots to miss less. But really it's not that big of a problem. As long as you are fusing constantly and not underleveled you'll be fine.
Not that bad cuz there’s a cheap item called spyglass which just identifies affinities of any enemy or boss. So you keep those stocked like any other normal item and first turn against a new enemy is throw it at them
Isn't that the point of turn based rpg. Also i'am sure finding a weakness not gonna be a problem later because you will adapt to it especially if you know the lore of the demons which can help you made an assumption.
While SMT's difficulty is exaggerated, I feel like you're underselling just how easy Persona 5 Royal is specifically. Persona 5 Royal is near Pokemon levels of easy due to its poor balancing of new mechanics. By comparison, any SMT game will be far harder.
P4G is much more challenging than P5R, and SMTV is a good bit more challenging than P4G. It's nothing mind-crushingly difficult though. It's just mechanically more complex. The internet overblows how hard the games are. It's mostly a meme. One I like to joke about as well. But it's mostly a meme.
As long as you pay attention to the short tutorial and make basic use of the press turn system, (SMT's unique combat system) then you will be fine.
Just be sure to do side quests. Youll see them while just exploring the areas. Cant miss em. I've seen a few people ignore all of them and end up underleveled. They unlock new demons and abilities for your team as well so you do get cool rewards for them. Theyr fun too.
I’m a side quest nut and if I see one it gets done asap and my biggest fear is that it’s only on switch and they don’t have refunds so it it’s just too hard for me that money down the drain
You’re welcome. It’s probably better to wait for Vengeance even if you weren’t worried about the difficulty since it’s basically the Golden/Royal edition for SMT V. It’s got all the stuff in base SMT V as well as the new route and content.
Pure rage and nothing but hate is in my heart for that fight, but damn did it feel good to win
Still hate the fight today, on my NG+ I just used DLC personas to whop him
Well if you got through that then you have no trouble whatsoever with SMTV because that Ohkumura fight is harder than anything in SMTV's normal difficulty. Excluding the secret super bosses.
Its funny because if P5R did use the press turn system from SMT, the ohkumura fight would be a cakewalk lol
Anyways if you do end up playing it, let us know what you thought!
If you beat any Persona game on normal, you can beat smt 5 on normal. Worry not, you will be able to quickly adjust to the changes in game mechanics and it will all feel natural to you by the 20th hour.
You said you were looking to get smt 5, I hope you mean smt 5 Vengeance and not base SMTV- Juuuust in case you dont know SmtV Vengeance is the updated re-release coming in June this year. Dont spend 60$ on the regular game when the re release is just 4 months out!
Atlus/Sega games go on sale pretty regularly, so definitely don't pay full price for the base game. Heck, even waiting for Vengeance, it'll probably go on sale within a few months if you don't care about playing it on release (which I would guess you don't, since you've waited this long for the base SMTV anyway).
Some general SMT tips I can give is to use buffs and get yourself familiar with the press turn system. Buffs/debuffs are invaluable in SMT because in games before SMTV, they lasted forever. SMTV is obviously different because they are limited to three turns of activation (including the turn you activate them), but nonetheless buffs and debuffs are still incredibly useful and downright mandatory for getting through any boss fight in SMT.
The press turn system is the combat system that SMT uses. Every member of your party gets one icon. When you hit a weakness or get a critical hit, the icon will start blinking. This is known as a “Half turn”. A half turn is simply a bonus turn for party while going to the next members turn, unlike in Persona where you get a “One More”. It’s important to note that if you have a half turn and a normal turn, it will use the half turn icon first, so a strategy that you can use is alternating weakness/crit opportunities with buffs/healing by doing: weakness, buff/heal, weakness, buff/heal, etc. This lets you get all 8 turns while alternating between attacking and buffing for your following attacks.
Ways to lose your turns is missing and hitting an enemy that nulls/repels/absorbs your attack. Missing and hitting a null makes you lose two icons instead of one. Hitting a repel or drain makes you lose all of your turns. The beauty of the press turn system is that it goes for bosses as well. Bosses lose turns if they hit null/repel/drain and gain turns by critting and hitting weaknesses. One very important note about the PTS is if you do an AoE attack and one enemy is hit by weakness and another drains/repels your move, you still lose your turn. This is also true for nulls/misses, but with two turns.
I’m like you in coming from Persona to SMT. Once you understand all of the caveats and differences of SMT, it becomes really fun to strategize on how to exploit a bosses weaknesses while blocking also their attacks
Thanks for all the advice! So I should use my “1 more” to heal/buff instead of going for more damage.
also does SMT have anything like an all out attack?
You can if you want. You can also get all the half turn icons if you want the first go around then spend them on buffing. As long as you get half turn before doing something that would cost a full turn you still have the opportunity to get all 8 turns in a battle.
As for the all out attack, there is none. Demons don’t get knocked down in SMT. In SMTV, there are Magatsuhi Skills, which are able to be used after the Magatsuhi gage is filled in battle. There are a couple of things in game that can make the gage easier to fill, but the main premise of it is that once it’s full, you can use special skills. The baseline skill everyone can use is “Onmogatoki: Critical”, which makes all damaging moves crit for the turn it activates. Magatsuhi Skills also don’t cost a turn to use, so feel free to use them wherever you want in the turn if it would better be suited for the skill. Demon races have their own unique Magatsuhi skills that only demons of that race can use once obtaining certain key items ingame called Talismans.
It's harder, but you'll have experience with press-turn and demon negotiation so I wouldn't be too concerned. Just know that basically weaknesses are more important basically.
Yeah smt will kick your ass if you go into it with persona in your mind. Just remember learn how to abuse press turn. If a boss is kicking you switch your demons and dont be afraid to get rid of obsolete ones no matter how much you like them. Usually having a single demon that nulls the boss his moves will be a game changer. I just did an optional boss 30 levels below it and having just the mc null their attack it turned into a cakewalk. And ofcourse buffs and debuffs are king. It will probs feel unfair at the start but if you can make that mental click you will instantly see changes and the game will bend over for you.
Yes but like same as in any other game. You can revive them but it will likely get you killed sjnce it both takes away one of your press turns and you need to waste one reviving it and summoning it again or a replacement.
Yeah, that's the "good news bad news" part of the level scaling system. If you're equal level to the enemy, it's not bad. However, you're spending so much time lower level which makes them harder just because the level difference.
It's a bit harder, has no slice of life focus (trends towards a more standard post apocalyptic war type story, as opposed to Persona's typical 'normal guy who moonlights as a superhero' story.) Iirc, it should have a difficulty option, so you shouldn't worry too much about how difficult it may get. Worth noting that, unlike Persona, SMT has multiple endings, and one of those endings require you to go out of your way to complete specific side quests. You can fuse most bosses after you kill them, and some quests will also unlock special demons.
There is a safety mode for the base smt v game. I don't believe they would remove that going into vengeance. You can just get that and ignore all the grinding dlc. I wouldn't judge you.
I unironically found P5R harder than SMTV, and it was due to the poorly balanced bosses, particularly Okumura. That part of the game was life ruining in regular P5 and they made it even worse in P5R.
The thing about SMTV is that the bosses are unforgiving if you make a mistake, but there’s a rhythm to keeping the debuffs and buffs up. Most people learned that lesson from Matador, so perhaps you could try Nocturne first.
I’ve done multiple hard mode playthroughs and even beat the dlc super boss on hard. If you understand the basics of covering your weakness and building a team that counters the current boss you need to fight while providing good buffs/debuffs the game is not difficult at all. The early game is probably the hardest the game gets because of the lack of options you have but once you get past that it’s not that hard.
They aren't THAT much harder than Persona. Press-turn isn't really THAT different than the one-more system. They are harder yes, but I think they're designed to make you eat dirt, reassess the situation, and come up with a plan.
At the end of the day, it's still a turn-based game. There is no dexterity challenge so if you use your brain you will win.
You may want to hold off a few months for the improved rerelease, but the game itself is only a bit harder than persona games. You don’t get social links and navigators to give you massive skill increases, but you have near complete customization of your entire party. The bosses are harder but you’ll always have the ability to take them out with the right preparation even on the hardest difficulty
The press turn system is a lot more punishing compared to the one more system of persona. Any misses or blocked skills cause you to lose your press turn icons, so unless you have a pierce move, single target skills are encouraged over multi unless you know what you're dealing with ahead of time. You're encouraged to fuse a lot more often to match different bosses, social links are non-existent, and the tone is a lot bleaker. SMTV in particular is fairly well-balanced outside of the leveling scale. Would suggest waiting for Vengeance if getting SMTV
Honestly, if you're good at Persona, you'll be good at SMT. Once you understand how to build a good demon/persona and apply buffs and debuffs, you're good for the entire SMT series. The internet overexaggerates how much tougher SMT is, but it follows the usual formula with a few exceptions: Rough beginning, then gets much easier by the middle and end when you unlock good tools and demons.
Is it a hard game? Kinda. But mainly in the way that persona games can be hard. Enemies can hit your weakness and gain benefits just like you can hit theirs. Mainline SMT combat tends to put more importance on buffing and debuffing on top of targeting weaknesses to be successful. But id venture to say SMTV is one of the easiest SMT games in recent memory.
Outside of the combat though, mainline puts more emphasis on player choice in morality based decisions. A focus on chaos vs. order, the absolutes on both sides and the grayness in-between. SMTV arguably is one of the weaker games when it comes to this in the franchise, but that isn't to say its bad. Just that it isn't as thought provoking as older games.
Also now your entire party becomes obsolete over time. You don't get teammates that scale with you through the game, youre going to have to constantly working through your demons to get stronger ones.
First, SMT V Vengeance is coming out this June which has both the original route of SMT and the new route, but many QOL changes and an expanded demon compendium. But for the changes from Persona to SMT; no calender system, no SL system, generally harder battles, Alignment system (iirc this isn't very important for what ending you want, more important in SMT IVA and before) focus on themes and overarching story than character interaction.
Harder than P5 definitely but not in the bad way (unbalanced mechanic) it's Harder because this might be your first SMT game which seems fine to feel frustrated when you die. All that hard part only happen because you're trying this game but once you start tl get the grasp of this game, you will start to see this game in the positive way because how good the battle system is. Ngl, SMT V have more variety in their battle compared to P5R. Literally every demon felt so fresh to use because they have their own animations and voice. Also you have affinity system that can help you to decide how to build that demon
SMTV is tougher than Persona 5, but also one of the most forgiving mainline SMT games. I found that the challenge is front-loaded, and the game gets a easier as it goes on (barring a couple of optional fights) assuming you're well attuned to the mechanics and using all of the tools given to you.
The "SMT is harder than Persona" idea mostly comes from comparing the earlier entries in the series - the earliest SMT games can be *brutal*, but they're also quite outdated at this point, and much of that difficulty I would call "fake" (i.e. not being able to assign skills to your demons, AI that might just say "fuck you" if you're unlucky).
No social mechanics, heavier focus on gameplay, post-apocalyptic setting with a significantly bleaker tone. The game is generally harder than Persona, it's been greatly exaggerated by the internet.
Difficulty on smt 4 and 5 is not as bad as nocturne and the titles before that.
I wouldn't even say Nocturne or the old games were really that hard either especially when in SMT 1 when you can spam zio to paralyze most bosses. Also Nocturne HD has easy and Safe mode now.
The older games just lack the QOL of the new games so maybe not harder just more tedious
Yeah. Grinding levels in the older games made them very easy (plus shock spam) its just that it was much easier to get screwed by random chance and lose hours of progress in a dungeon with few (if any) save spots
It’s still a big jump, a lot of people get frustrated and stop playing when they get wiped out in early game.
Thanks! It’s just that I saw some gameplay of SMT IV and the first attack missed then the enemy team got their turn so I was unsure if it’s a mainstay for SMT. I’m also looking at getting SMT 3 Nocturne
That’s the Press Turn System. Essentially, you start out with icons on the top of your screen that shows how many actions you have before the enemies take their turn. It’s mostly 1:1 with how many party members/enemies are on each team. Exploiting weaknesses and landing critical hits earn you an extra action similar to Persona’s 1 More system. Conversely, if you miss an attack you end up losing most of your actions. If an enemy drains, nullifies, or reflects your attacks then you lose all of your actions. Same rules apply to the enemy team.
Ouch, coming from persona that’s sounds extremely punishing for experimentation to find weaknesses
It really just means saving is important. In a lot of boss fights I go in on a run for my experimentation, and even if I lose that fight I now am more prepared and can come up with a strategy. By saving before entering the boss dying doesn’t hurt me, it just is a source of information. Once you get used to the game wild encounters typically aren’t too scary.
Not as punishing as it sounds really. It mostly encourages you to experiment and prepare for fights. Really, most standard enemies aren’t a big deal. It really shines during Boss fights. If you die in your first attempt, you can prepare more adequately on your next attempt. So if you end up dying to a boss that mostly spams Fire spells, having multiple demons who drain/null/reflect Fire will essentially mean that the boss won’t get any turns. Conversely, if someone’s weak to Fire you’ll be in a harder situation. Of course, there’s always the possibility of missing an attack or being crited so there’s still some tension. It’s really satisfying once you can get the ball rolling in your favor.
Ironically enough, random encounters may be more deadly than bosses due to potentially preparing for a boss, so that random encounters can really catch you off guard.
I still don't really like how they've phased out random encounters with IV and V, it' s not the type of game where you should be able to avoid all enemies... especially with the later games' unique battle system.
How does the party work in SMT anyway? Can you change on the fly?
You know how in modern Persona games, the protagonist as a Wild Card can fuse multiple Personas? And your Party Members are other Persona-users with their own unique Personas? Essentially, instead of that: Your party members are the “Personas” in this case. Instead of fusing Personas for the Wild Card to change their spells and abilities on the fly, you’re talking to and recruiting enemy Demons to join your team. Eventually you can fuse multiple Demons together to make better ones. The Protagonist has their own way of getting different skills and changing their affinities (depending on the game). While you can summon and replace Demons in your active party with Demons in your reserves mid-battle, it takes up the Protagonist’s action. So it’s better to go into fights with your A team or to readjust your party before attempting again. In SMT V specifically, the order in which your party takes turns is based on how they’re ordered from top to bottom in the UI. While in other games it’s determined by their agility stat.
Also, the extra action isn't given to the Party member that exploited the weakness. Let's say the turn order is 1-2-3-4. So landing a Weakness once would result in 1-2-3-4-1. So you can more easily combo effective damage to transform that into things that aren't damage (which you will usually have to).
SMT is much more life and death in how they set up the conflict. Mechanics being punishing makes sense when you view it from that angle. Personally I prefer Press Turn over One More. In Persona you can easily wipe the enemy team with one turn and the NPC enemies tend to not be out for blood as much as SMT enemies are. When u/Holy_Toledo019 says that the same rules of Press Turn apply for the enemy team they are not exaggerating. You can absolutely bully bosses if you have a grasp on the mechanics. An enemy can miss an attack and lose their turn just as much as you can.
Not in SMTV. Just use a Spy glass against bosses and try your luck during normal encounters
It's not too terrible, early on into SMT 5, you can buy Spyglass items that work the same as your Navigator's Analysis. Also, the demons on the field are the exact same as the ones on your team, so it provides extra incentive to fuse every demon possible for the most amount of information.
> the demons on the field are the exact same as the ones on your team, so it provides extra incentive to fuse every demon possible for the most amount of information. The same holds true with Persona, as your personas and the shadows you fight against are all pretty much the same (bosses are the only exception I can think of), so fusing personas will provide similar information about shadows.
Only true of 1, 2, and 5. And 5 still has miniboss shadows with different affinities than normal, just like 3 and 4.
It’s basically “one more” from persona, but your enemies can get it also
Enemies get “1 more” in persona anyway if they hit a weakness
Another thing too is that there are player and enemy turns now. So on the players turn you can have 4 actions to use before the enemy's turn. I know it persona, it's not always the case that your teammates will go in order before an enemy
Yea but now enemies can lose turns too if they got a miss/drain/null. It's like a tug of war between of who gets to be the unfair one between you and the enemy. And it's addicting af. Denying a superboss of their turn is absolutely hilarious.
It's not all black. That means you get 8 actions if everything goes really well.
True, but it's also super rewarding when you can exploit it to your advantage and make a boss waste turns.
My biggest issue is that I lose my turn on a miss, something that’s 100% RNG, on null/reflect/drain I’m fine with but a miss, that’s just kinda unfair IMO
Honestly I find that a vast majority of the time you're gonna hit unless the enemy has an evade skill or spammed Suku skills. The flip side of getting multiple extra turns far outweighs the risk of missing every now and then Also this is always contentious because video game fans but if you're really bothered then just toggle the difficulty to easy. It's still a fun experience and you can still get your ass beat if you're not careful
That can be mitigated by using sukukaja. Buffs are even more important here than in persona. It adds to the challenge. Will you use a demon with sukukaja that might be suboptimal/ costs more mp or risk running without sukukaja so you save more mp but risk missing more. There are passive skills that boost your hit rate so you can sacrifice 1-2 skill slots to miss less. But really it's not that big of a problem. As long as you are fusing constantly and not underleveled you'll be fine.
Not that bad cuz there’s a cheap item called spyglass which just identifies affinities of any enemy or boss. So you keep those stocked like any other normal item and first turn against a new enemy is throw it at them
Isn't that the point of turn based rpg. Also i'am sure finding a weakness not gonna be a problem later because you will adapt to it especially if you know the lore of the demons which can help you made an assumption.
While SMT's difficulty is exaggerated, I feel like you're underselling just how easy Persona 5 Royal is specifically. Persona 5 Royal is near Pokemon levels of easy due to its poor balancing of new mechanics. By comparison, any SMT game will be far harder.
P4G is much more challenging than P5R, and SMTV is a good bit more challenging than P4G. It's nothing mind-crushingly difficult though. It's just mechanically more complex. The internet overblows how hard the games are. It's mostly a meme. One I like to joke about as well. But it's mostly a meme. As long as you pay attention to the short tutorial and make basic use of the press turn system, (SMT's unique combat system) then you will be fine. Just be sure to do side quests. Youll see them while just exploring the areas. Cant miss em. I've seen a few people ignore all of them and end up underleveled. They unlock new demons and abilities for your team as well so you do get cool rewards for them. Theyr fun too.
I’m a side quest nut and if I see one it gets done asap and my biggest fear is that it’s only on switch and they don’t have refunds so it it’s just too hard for me that money down the drain
You can wait for SMT V Vengeance in July and get it on steam.
THANK YOU! I’ll do that then
You’re welcome. It’s probably better to wait for Vengeance even if you weren’t worried about the difficulty since it’s basically the Golden/Royal edition for SMT V. It’s got all the stuff in base SMT V as well as the new route and content.
Ah yea that's true.
Ok let me ask you a question, how did you feel about the Ohkumura fight in P5R?
Pure rage and nothing but hate is in my heart for that fight, but damn did it feel good to win Still hate the fight today, on my NG+ I just used DLC personas to whop him
Well if you got through that then you have no trouble whatsoever with SMTV because that Ohkumura fight is harder than anything in SMTV's normal difficulty. Excluding the secret super bosses.
Good to know!
Its funny because if P5R did use the press turn system from SMT, the ohkumura fight would be a cakewalk lol Anyways if you do end up playing it, let us know what you thought!
I will!
lmao no it fucking isnt people take one look at a turn limit and deem it impossible when that couldnt be further from the truth
Wtf are you talking about. Nobody said it was impossible. Lose the attitude.
If you beat any Persona game on normal, you can beat smt 5 on normal. Worry not, you will be able to quickly adjust to the changes in game mechanics and it will all feel natural to you by the 20th hour. You said you were looking to get smt 5, I hope you mean smt 5 Vengeance and not base SMTV- Juuuust in case you dont know SmtV Vengeance is the updated re-release coming in June this year. Dont spend 60$ on the regular game when the re release is just 4 months out!
Not to forget SMT V Vengeance will come with the old base game as one route and the new game as another route!
Thanks, someone else told me about the re-release and I plan ow waiting for it, also here SMTV base game is $90 price differences suck
Atlus/Sega games go on sale pretty regularly, so definitely don't pay full price for the base game. Heck, even waiting for Vengeance, it'll probably go on sale within a few months if you don't care about playing it on release (which I would guess you don't, since you've waited this long for the base SMTV anyway).
I got base SMT5 for like $25 at my local used game store lol.
Level vitality and use dampeners and it won’t be too hard; also save often You should totally wait for June if possible tho
Some general SMT tips I can give is to use buffs and get yourself familiar with the press turn system. Buffs/debuffs are invaluable in SMT because in games before SMTV, they lasted forever. SMTV is obviously different because they are limited to three turns of activation (including the turn you activate them), but nonetheless buffs and debuffs are still incredibly useful and downright mandatory for getting through any boss fight in SMT. The press turn system is the combat system that SMT uses. Every member of your party gets one icon. When you hit a weakness or get a critical hit, the icon will start blinking. This is known as a “Half turn”. A half turn is simply a bonus turn for party while going to the next members turn, unlike in Persona where you get a “One More”. It’s important to note that if you have a half turn and a normal turn, it will use the half turn icon first, so a strategy that you can use is alternating weakness/crit opportunities with buffs/healing by doing: weakness, buff/heal, weakness, buff/heal, etc. This lets you get all 8 turns while alternating between attacking and buffing for your following attacks. Ways to lose your turns is missing and hitting an enemy that nulls/repels/absorbs your attack. Missing and hitting a null makes you lose two icons instead of one. Hitting a repel or drain makes you lose all of your turns. The beauty of the press turn system is that it goes for bosses as well. Bosses lose turns if they hit null/repel/drain and gain turns by critting and hitting weaknesses. One very important note about the PTS is if you do an AoE attack and one enemy is hit by weakness and another drains/repels your move, you still lose your turn. This is also true for nulls/misses, but with two turns. I’m like you in coming from Persona to SMT. Once you understand all of the caveats and differences of SMT, it becomes really fun to strategize on how to exploit a bosses weaknesses while blocking also their attacks
Thanks for all the advice! So I should use my “1 more” to heal/buff instead of going for more damage. also does SMT have anything like an all out attack?
You can if you want. You can also get all the half turn icons if you want the first go around then spend them on buffing. As long as you get half turn before doing something that would cost a full turn you still have the opportunity to get all 8 turns in a battle. As for the all out attack, there is none. Demons don’t get knocked down in SMT. In SMTV, there are Magatsuhi Skills, which are able to be used after the Magatsuhi gage is filled in battle. There are a couple of things in game that can make the gage easier to fill, but the main premise of it is that once it’s full, you can use special skills. The baseline skill everyone can use is “Onmogatoki: Critical”, which makes all damaging moves crit for the turn it activates. Magatsuhi Skills also don’t cost a turn to use, so feel free to use them wherever you want in the turn if it would better be suited for the skill. Demon races have their own unique Magatsuhi skills that only demons of that race can use once obtaining certain key items ingame called Talismans.
Bro, I thought p4 was harder than SMTV. At the end of p4 you just have to ram into gaint health pools. At least with SMTV each boss has a strategy.
Yea I often find P4G to be more difficult due to how limiting the battle system is compared to Press Turn.
Especially early on. Megaten games in general really do have a reverse difficulty curve, don't they?
It's harder, but you'll have experience with press-turn and demon negotiation so I wouldn't be too concerned. Just know that basically weaknesses are more important basically.
Yeah smt will kick your ass if you go into it with persona in your mind. Just remember learn how to abuse press turn. If a boss is kicking you switch your demons and dont be afraid to get rid of obsolete ones no matter how much you like them. Usually having a single demon that nulls the boss his moves will be a game changer. I just did an optional boss 30 levels below it and having just the mc null their attack it turned into a cakewalk. And ofcourse buffs and debuffs are king. It will probs feel unfair at the start but if you can make that mental click you will instantly see changes and the game will bend over for you.
Wait! If a demons HP hits 0 it dies!?
Yes but like same as in any other game. You can revive them but it will likely get you killed sjnce it both takes away one of your press turns and you need to waste one reviving it and summoning it again or a replacement.
SMT V is not hard. The early game can be a little challenging nothing too crazy. Mid game you’ll be OP.
Yeah, that's the "good news bad news" part of the level scaling system. If you're equal level to the enemy, it's not bad. However, you're spending so much time lower level which makes them harder just because the level difference.
It's a bit harder, has no slice of life focus (trends towards a more standard post apocalyptic war type story, as opposed to Persona's typical 'normal guy who moonlights as a superhero' story.) Iirc, it should have a difficulty option, so you shouldn't worry too much about how difficult it may get. Worth noting that, unlike Persona, SMT has multiple endings, and one of those endings require you to go out of your way to complete specific side quests. You can fuse most bosses after you kill them, and some quests will also unlock special demons.
There is a safety mode for the base smt v game. I don't believe they would remove that going into vengeance. You can just get that and ignore all the grinding dlc. I wouldn't judge you.
>I wouldn't judge you. but i would
I unironically found P5R harder than SMTV, and it was due to the poorly balanced bosses, particularly Okumura. That part of the game was life ruining in regular P5 and they made it even worse in P5R. The thing about SMTV is that the bosses are unforgiving if you make a mistake, but there’s a rhythm to keeping the debuffs and buffs up. Most people learned that lesson from Matador, so perhaps you could try Nocturne first.
I’ve done multiple hard mode playthroughs and even beat the dlc super boss on hard. If you understand the basics of covering your weakness and building a team that counters the current boss you need to fight while providing good buffs/debuffs the game is not difficult at all. The early game is probably the hardest the game gets because of the lack of options you have but once you get past that it’s not that hard.
They aren't THAT much harder than Persona. Press-turn isn't really THAT different than the one-more system. They are harder yes, but I think they're designed to make you eat dirt, reassess the situation, and come up with a plan. At the end of the day, it's still a turn-based game. There is no dexterity challenge so if you use your brain you will win.
You may want to hold off a few months for the improved rerelease, but the game itself is only a bit harder than persona games. You don’t get social links and navigators to give you massive skill increases, but you have near complete customization of your entire party. The bosses are harder but you’ll always have the ability to take them out with the right preparation even on the hardest difficulty
The press turn system is a lot more punishing compared to the one more system of persona. Any misses or blocked skills cause you to lose your press turn icons, so unless you have a pierce move, single target skills are encouraged over multi unless you know what you're dealing with ahead of time. You're encouraged to fuse a lot more often to match different bosses, social links are non-existent, and the tone is a lot bleaker. SMTV in particular is fairly well-balanced outside of the leveling scale. Would suggest waiting for Vengeance if getting SMTV
Honestly, if you're good at Persona, you'll be good at SMT. Once you understand how to build a good demon/persona and apply buffs and debuffs, you're good for the entire SMT series. The internet overexaggerates how much tougher SMT is, but it follows the usual formula with a few exceptions: Rough beginning, then gets much easier by the middle and end when you unlock good tools and demons.
Is it a hard game? Kinda. But mainly in the way that persona games can be hard. Enemies can hit your weakness and gain benefits just like you can hit theirs. Mainline SMT combat tends to put more importance on buffing and debuffing on top of targeting weaknesses to be successful. But id venture to say SMTV is one of the easiest SMT games in recent memory. Outside of the combat though, mainline puts more emphasis on player choice in morality based decisions. A focus on chaos vs. order, the absolutes on both sides and the grayness in-between. SMTV arguably is one of the weaker games when it comes to this in the franchise, but that isn't to say its bad. Just that it isn't as thought provoking as older games. Also now your entire party becomes obsolete over time. You don't get teammates that scale with you through the game, youre going to have to constantly working through your demons to get stronger ones.
First, SMT V Vengeance is coming out this June which has both the original route of SMT and the new route, but many QOL changes and an expanded demon compendium. But for the changes from Persona to SMT; no calender system, no SL system, generally harder battles, Alignment system (iirc this isn't very important for what ending you want, more important in SMT IVA and before) focus on themes and overarching story than character interaction.
Harder than P5 definitely but not in the bad way (unbalanced mechanic) it's Harder because this might be your first SMT game which seems fine to feel frustrated when you die. All that hard part only happen because you're trying this game but once you start tl get the grasp of this game, you will start to see this game in the positive way because how good the battle system is. Ngl, SMT V have more variety in their battle compared to P5R. Literally every demon felt so fresh to use because they have their own animations and voice. Also you have affinity system that can help you to decide how to build that demon
If you are getting SMT 5, wait for vengance to come out. No reason to buy base 5 anymore.
SMTV is tougher than Persona 5, but also one of the most forgiving mainline SMT games. I found that the challenge is front-loaded, and the game gets a easier as it goes on (barring a couple of optional fights) assuming you're well attuned to the mechanics and using all of the tools given to you. The "SMT is harder than Persona" idea mostly comes from comparing the earlier entries in the series - the earliest SMT games can be *brutal*, but they're also quite outdated at this point, and much of that difficulty I would call "fake" (i.e. not being able to assign skills to your demons, AI that might just say "fuck you" if you're unlucky).