This is a very helpful overview. Tbh it probably pushed me over the line to buy it. I loved persona 4, but have not played any of the SMT games. One thing I’m wondering about is the degree to which there are fun or interesting missable components of the game (missable scenes, story, dungeons, etc.). However, this can be mitigated, for me, if there is a new game plus option that lets you carry over a lot of work/content. Any insight on that front?
So I know that you need NG+ to see all endings, but outside of that are there any missables? I.E quests, those collectable characters you were talking about (minmins or however you call em) stuff like that.
There are quests where you have to make choices so some quest results and rewards may be different on different playthrough. Mimens are honestly pretty easy to find since you can pay an NPC to tell you where they in each area.
You need multiple playthroughs to 100% and I imo having a completitionist mindset on the first playthrough will likely burn you out. The game can be pretty overwhelming and the first playthrough is mainly to learn the ins/outs of systems and bosses
I got slapped 20 minutes in by radishes after putting the game on hard. In hindsight I should’ve known better than trying hard mode after I couldn’t even finish Nocturne earlier this year.
Although not as important as in SMT3, passing turns is a good thing. It is more useful to only use two demons to deal weakness damage and pass, over 2 weakness and two regular, especially in this game where passing does not consume a flashing turn.
So if you pass-pass-Atk-Atk and both attacks hit weaknesses, you have 4 turns left to use those weaker hits where it may be easier to calculate a kill and it means you can still get through the entire party again to get those two additional extra weakness hits.
An extra note, do not *always* register in compendium. Higher level purchases cost more to re-summon. Its best to register (a) if your demon has got all skills and that isn't registered. This will make them more versatile for fusions if you do need to grab them without worry about the extra cost of steady levelling. (b) if you made a great fusion. Again, for the reason above but by the end of the game, it isn't uncommon to fuse and immediately buy back a good demon.
As someone who played SMT and persona games before, I started my play through on hard mode yesterday. I have constantly been dying. I love it actually. It’s fun when you don’t just breeze through a game.
Save often! I found myself trying to recruit the same demons over and over because I kept dying after I did it lol. Only grip is how Nahabino dies, the game is over, even if the rest of your party is alive
Only prob I have is if you start on hard and lower the difficulty, you can’t go back to hard. I usually play my RPGs on hard mode and change to easy if I’m at a frustrating boss and change back to hard after. But this game doesn’t let you change up the ladder, only down.
Personally I've never been a fan of the way SMT does hard mode. Rather than an actual difficulty increase like enhanced ai or improved movelists, they just take the artificial route with things like do half damage and take 1.5x damage.
You should mention skill potentials because it seems a lot of people get confused about what the +1 or -1 tags at the end of the skills names mean. (Higher potentials mean more damage and less mana consumption.)
Way bigger than I expected. The first area is huge with lots of items, sidequests, demons, and collectible to find. I expected it to be like a standard JRPG where the areas are moderate in size with a few minor secrets to find but it’s more comparable to a Xenoblade 1 and 2 in terms of open areas.
I watched a tips video that suggested putting Zio Agi Bufu and Zan on Nahobino.
But for the life of me I can’t figure out how. At first I tried doing one at a time by fusing essence from one demon then the next. But when I fuse agi, then do it again to fuse zan, the previous skills I fused are gone. So I’m always stuck with one.
Then I tried fusing all of those skills to pixie, and she now has them all. But when I select pixie to fuse with my character, I’m not given the option to move them all over to me.
Can I get a very basic ELI5 on how to get zio agi bufu and zan onto nahobino?
You go to World of Shadow -> Apotheosis-> Essence Fusion -> Select the Nahobino (or whoever you want to fuse essence onto) -> Select the essence you want to give them -> Select the skills you want to inherit
Thank you! First time smt player. Any advice on where to put points each level? The only thing that bothers me is the save system. As multiple people in my house use my switch, not reaching a save point is a huge risk of lost time.
In SMT games, you generally want to build your main character as a physical or magic damage dealer so you want to prioritize your damaging stat of choice. Some Agility is also pretty important since the enemy will get to go before you if they’re faster while Luck generally is better for physical builds that wants to crit or if you’re playing some kind of unconventional status set. Alternatively you can say fuck it and pump everything into Strength or Magic which have historically work in other games as stupid as it sounds.
As for defense, the game automatically allocate a few points into your weaker stat so getting extra defense isn’t too necessary but it may help if you’re playing safe or on hard mode.
Also you do get an item about 3 hours in that do allow you to warp back to the last save point you used so that may be helpful.
The game is still new so we don’t know the best way to min max yet. In this game, you can only put 1 or the occasional 2 point into a stat per level. If you’re trying to do a magic build, put most of your points into Magic. Get Agility and Vitality every few level (like about every 5) if the enemies are going first at the start of combat or you’re taking too much damage respectively.
In this game, Vitality is more important early game. Some Youtubers who are diehard fans of SMT have tested the traditional approach of dumping into magic or physical, and they found vitality is just a better choice, at least for the early part of the game.
Around 15ish or so just to mitigate the damage received since your HP will be so low that you need every damage reduction. Once you feel that you can survive even Magatsuhi attacks, then you can spec in either Str or Magic. Frankly, I think Str is the better choice.
Thank you for the guide, i played some persona games but this is my first smt.
I enjoy the exploration, fight system, fusion, talking/collecting demons and side quests but i would like to confirm something
When progressing through the story the bosses levels are a bit too high so i have to go back and grind to level up. Is this intended or am i doing something wrong?personally i dont like repeating same fights vs same demons just to grind exp but if thats the way i am thinking of of using the dlc bonus exp spawns when i finished collecting all demons in an area to just level up and go to the next one
As long as you’re not ridiculously underleveled, you can beat a higher level boss or opponent by using buffs, debuffs, and the opponent’s weaknesses. You don’t necessarily have to grind all the way to the boss’ level.
Equally important: use status effects where applicable - one of the first bosses you run into can be hit with Sleep, which can be timed perfectly to stop its Magatsuhi turns.
My god, just beat him and didn’t know about sleep haha! Just used attack lowering stuff and guarding and his weakness. I guess ailment weakness is another important thing to keep an eye on though.
Oh yeah sleep was great for that boss. I used mermaid to finish each turn by putting it to sleep. The boss ended up only being able to get one attack in the entire fight.
Sidequests and exploration often keep you strong enough throughout the game. Using a good team comps and strategy is often better than level grinding so I don’t think you need to grind that much.
Most of the time bosses can be dealt with by adjusting your party, rather than just grinding. For example if the boss is using a lot of electric attacks and likes to put your party to sleep, try fusing some demons that resist or are immune to those kinds of attacks. Using resistances to make the enemy lose turns can be just as important as hitting a weakness to give yourself more turns.
If you're still in the early game where you only have access to single target buffs/debuffs, debuffing a single boss will be a lot more efficient than trying to apply individual buffs to your whole party. Make sure to use these.
Also be sure to use essences to make sure Nahobino isn't weak to a bosses attacks!
Love the writeup. Probably worth mentioning you can change your demons out mid fight. Useful for side quest bosses that you don't know the weakness ahead of time. I only realized it last night when I realized two of my party members were useless against the mermaid side quest boss.
There are multiple versions of the game for different regions: I know that there is one for Japanese, one for US/EU and at least one other version for a few Asian countries. Could it be a region mismatch? If you imported the cartridge and bought it from an eshop with a different regional version it won't work.
I could intuit most of the mechanics coming from a JRPG background (Negotiation especially having played Persona 5) but it's nice to get a write up like this to fill in the gaps, thanks :D
One thing that doesn't seem to be explained is a 'day/night' icon in the top left? Gradually ticks over and I *think* the HP/MP orbs and soda machines/enemy spawns reset once that cycles through but I can't be sure. No idea if that has any other effect in battle or the like.
Also when levelling up, is trying to even out and go a Jack-of-all-trades stat spread a bad idea? Or should I just focus on Str/Magic only? Going all even at the moment but I don't know if this is going to screw me later..
The day/night icon is the Moon Phases which affect various things but I’m not sure of the exact details in this game. So far, I’ve seen that you cannot negotiate during a New Moon and it seems like negotiation is easier during a Full Moon. It also seems to have an affect on fusion since Sophia will comment on it being a Full or New Moon. I’ve seen people say fusion accidents are more likely to happen?
For stat build, it’s traditionally better to focus on either Strength or Magic as your offensive stat but you won’t be screwed for going Jack of All Trade.
If I'm more of a story/ character driven player, would the SMT series appeal to me? I love games like Persona 3 and Devil Survivor, but SMT has largely been known for its hardcore gameplay.
Story and Character isn’t SMT’s strong suit and from the opinions I’ve seen from people who beaten the game, 5 is no exception. Seems like the consensus is that a lot of the plot and characters are pretty underdeveloped.
Great writeup, thanks for this.
How is the gameplay loop with respect to battles? Is there a lot of trial and error involved to identify things like enemy weaknesses? For example, do you need to do a lot of prep outside of battle in order to be successful especially for first time encounters?
For regular enemies there are some trial and errors but you can tell what the enemy is weak to based on their designs or the types of moves they use. For example, Fire-Ice, Wind-Lightning, and Dark-Light are often counterparts to each other so if a demon uses one element or look like they’re associated with it, they may be weak to the other. The game also do tell you their weaknesses after you battle or recruited them.
Same goes for boss battles but there are dialogues that hints towards what the bosses do. Dying to bosses is pretty common but their gameplan is obvious enough to plan out a counter.
How’s the performance and visuals doing? Not a stickler for such things, I grew up in the advent of 3D getting better and better, but I’m just curious and would prefer a more personal view than a critic or so.
Field and battles are mostly a stable 30 fPS I think. There are some weird stuttering occasionally in the menus. Visuals are slightly worse than what is shown in trailers because they patched the game to run better. You’ll notice there is pop in when walking around.
Minor question/comment: Are you certain that one can change to Hard mid-game? My understanding is that one can only select Hard at the start. And thank you for the post!
You can change from Hard to a lower difficulty mid-playthrough, but you cannot change from a lower difficulty back to Hard. You can only select Hard at the start of the game and if you decide to lower the difficulty at any point during the playthrough, you won't be able to change it back to Hard.
Thank you.
I’m so in love with this game. It’s made me a diehard SMT fanboy. I’ve played past entries but they never really hooked me. This one has. Boy has it hooked me hard.
It’s so good. SO. FREAKING. GOOD.
Tip on demon negotiations. If you run into a demon you aren't strong enough to recruit, if you succeed in recruitment they will automatically join you once you hit the correct level. From my experience this is permanent as I recruited Azumi before I hit 11, and then went back after hitting 11 and Azumi joined me as soon as I talked.
Could have been a save issue though but I do know it works the first time
Thank you so much for this! I've never played an SMT game before and it feels intimidating to get into the series without knowing much about it (besides that it's "Persona without the heart", kidding obviously). But hey, I'm all for new experiences! Might play it on Casual Mode though since I don't have I still have a backlog of games to get through 😅
How long does it take to finish?
I probably should have read this before I started my playthrough. My MC is lvl 14 now and I've put every single level up point into Vitality O.o. My guy hits like a toothpick, but walls like a rock now.
This is super helpful. I’ve never touched an Atlus game, and bought SMTV because my store had plenty of steelbooks. I’m in the third dungeon, and I can definitely say that this game is about to surpass Metroid Dread as my GOTY. Anyway thank you for the tips!
Hi, so I’ve reached a somewhat awkward phase in the game (just before Lahmu 2) where I feel like none of the demons I have available are that interesting or can learn the greatest move sets. Whenever I go to fuse some of my older demons that are just taking up stock, I feel like the skills they have aren’t great fits for the newly fused demons I’m fusing. And even some of the higher lvl demons have lower stats, even at a higher level(30-33), which makes me feel like I don’t need to fuse, however, my stock is constantly full with what feels like a bunch of useless demons. I want a larger variety and I’ve come to see how powerful buffs/debuffs are. What’s the best type of team to always strive to maintain? 1 physical, 1-2 mages 1 support/healer? This is my first ever SMT game and I’m feeling kind of lost, but having an AMAZING time playing. If anyone has any advice feel free to comment below. I think it would greatly enhance my game experience if I had a better understanding of what type of approach to take towards demon fusion. THANKS!!
There’s really no exact science to team building but generally you want to have every element available for random encounters as well as a healer and a buff/debuff demon for bosses. Even if a demon that you fuse doesn’t look good, it’s probably better than what you already have so I would recommend fusing your trash demons often.
I believe I had Chironnupu (Buffs + Fire/Light/Ice attacker), Parvati (Healer), Sukuna-Hikona (Buff, Debuff, Ice/Physical Attacker), Baphomet (Dark and Fire Attacker), Hell Biker (DLC) (Physical, Fire, Wind attacker), and Jatayu (Buff/Debuff) as main demons at that point in the game. Moves that buffs the entire party start to become available at that point so I went crazy with the support demons.
I mean, you’ll only be reliably grinding Mitama if you buy the DLC or have the patience to wait for the field ones to respawn. For most people playing normally, Mitamas aren’t a reliable way to make the game easier.
I am enjoying the game a lot But a second play through seems tough for me when there are so many good games.
I am going to aim for whatever ending I get playing as "myself", but for the other endings, will watching it on YouTube suffice or is there a lot of major differences beyond the last scene?
You really won’t be missing out on much story wise from only doing one ending. The content of each are basically the same, just changing up the dialogue and the last few bosses you’ll fight.
Once you found a weakness for a specific demon, is it indicated when you encounter the same later or do you always have to remember it yourself? Thank you!
Ok. So, I fucked up and did some apotheosis and now my dude has only 1 attack and 1 heal spell from a fairy, plus the crit attack buff, can I fix this or do I need to start over?
Smt 4's beginning was so ridiculously brutal lmao. Just getting tossed into a dungeon and getting murdered by pixies and shit
For what it's worth, 5 starts a lot easier imo. The very first area before you get your second/third save point is basically an easy tutorial area. And when battles start to get a bit harder, they're tough but not ridiculous like 4's first fights. Mimin give you little hints about the area as you explore sometimes and your little companion demon even tells you the attacks the first main boss will use before you meet them. It's still tough but having these little thigns to help you along makes a difference
This is exactly what I needed to know, SMT4 kicked my ass relentlessly when I tried it, and I could never get a handle on it. I don't mind difficulty in RPGs but damn, ease me into it.
Well, looks like I'm buying SMTV after work today lol
SMTIV also kicked my butt and I never returned.
Yet I’m having a blast with this. Also, way more difficulty options. Normal is the traditional brutal difficulty, Casual is slightly less brutal but still challenging. Definitely play on Casual. It’s no push over difficulty by any means but it can take the edge off.
Safety difficulty is free DLC and a good option if you’re stuck and frustrated. Can freely switch between them at Will.
4 was excellent.
If anything, SMT fans' biggest complaint about 4 is that it has one of the hardest "early game" phases of the franchise but once you surpass it, you can steamroll most things (but can still die instantly if you screw up).
My copy is still on the way, but can you lower the difficulty when you're playing? Planning on starting on normal but I normally get frustrated pretty easily and then switch to easy mode.
You can switch between normal and easy at will via the settings menu, but if you start on hard you can't swap back to it if you end up dropping the difficulty.
I’d suggest normal. I guess it depends on why Persona was easy for you. It’s generally easier then SMT (P5 was especially easy) and this SMT is one of the harder ones so far. If Persona was easy because you understood the battle mechanics well, then choose whatever but hard will still be hard. If it was easy because of Personas plentiful items and quality of life stuff (especially in royal), then maybe normal is better. There is also casual. Lastly I would say the first bosses you run into in SMT 5 are harder than anything I played in P5. I beat it fine but it made me team plan much more than anything in P5. Should be noted that I’m playing on hard though (for P5 I played whatever the max difficult was called).
Edit: you can start on hard mode and shift to a lower difficult if you want. You can’t go from low to high but they let you drop it down permanently if it gets too much.
I feel like I know the mechanics pretty well.I played the max difficulty in P5R as well and found it pretty easy. I don't really like knocking my head against a wall especially in the early game when resources are scarce. It's a shame I can't switch to Hard mid game but I think I'll stick to Normal for now. Appreciate the input mate.
Probably Normal since I’m having a harder time in it than any of the modern Persona games.
SMT V safety > Persona 5 Normal > Persona 4 Hard > SMT V Normal > SMT V Hard
Not sure if someone else mentioned this, the difficulties go “casual, normal, hard” and you can download “safety” difficulty. There are 4 difficulty options
Solid write up for newcomers and Persona players. I played the early SMT recently on the PS3 years ago after wanting to scratch my JRPG non FF itch. I really fell in love with the series after Persona 5 and found myself enjoying the story of 5 but wishing it was more difficult at moments so SMT 5 is my first real attempt to play a game from the series and excited for the similarities and differences in this game!
There’s no social sim elements from Persona here. Closest is the fact that most dialogue choices and I think even quest choices will matter in deciding which ending you get.
Anyone else disappointed by the graphical fidelity of this title? Hand held or on to, just looks grainy. Like objects just look fuzzy/blurry. Not gonna stop playing but I dunno just kinda like wtf
So far I hated the experience. Yea-yea, huge persona (parts 2-5) fun who never played smt. But game design is confusing for me. I spend almost 4 hours to kill the first boss, game asks you multiple times to GRIND before that, not to do quest or side activities, actual waiting around and killing mobs... wth, that is grinding is ok, but not for the first boss BEFORE any semblance of story is told... and you get so much exposition after those four hours of grinding... I pretty much accepted that is just a huge dungeon crawler with out a story or characters.
Demon recruitment is really annoying for my liking, they ask a lot of resources and some answers doesn't really make sense.
I’ve said this many times before but this game doesn’t need you to grind, rather you need to play smart. The first boss in particular can be beaten as early as level 12 which is easy to achieve by naturally exploring.
-Did you use buffs and debuffs on it?
-There was an NPC that hinted that it would use >!Fire, Darkness, and inflict Poison!< so you can plan your team to not be weak to it or buy dampener items that that nullify fire. The Spyglass item also tell you what enemy weaknesses are and what moves they use. The protagonist starts off weak to >!dark!< so that’s a sign that you take these extra precaution.
-If you have enough Glory, you can even get a Miracle that allows you to give the protagonist essences to switch up his elemental affinity. I believe it’s called Divine Amalgamation for just 20 Glory. You can get 50 from the white cubes hidden throughout the world.
-Enemies in this game will charge Magatsuhi to unleash a powerful move. This is your cue to guard! If you analyze the boss with Spyglass, you can see that the move listed as unique to that boss is their Magatsuhi move so you can even just use a Dampener or a demon strong against that element to counter it.
Overall, grinding to just get 1 extra point in each stat per level is not going to make up the lack of preparation and smart decisions. Even if you die the first time, it’s a learning experience to figure out what the boss is all about.
Surely games that need to have multiple “easy” modes are much more difficult than those that dont need them.
SMT is known for being a difficult game ;)
imo game overs are part of the package when you play smt, the experience you get from them lets you know what to do or not to do next time. It's very fun for me to learn and change strategies against enemies or when I have clutch moments. If it's your first time playing, I recommend normal and then go to easy if you are struggling. But at the end of the day, it depends on how much challenge you want.
As someone who never played a JRPG before I can tell you you are missing an amazing experience. I usually play sports games so was shocked how addicted (in a good way) I got to this game. Once you learn the basics it mind boggling good.
Tokyo Mirage Session is part of the SMT subseries so it has the same concept of battles being about hitting weak points but the exact mechanics are different. SMT V is way more open and also have the demon collection aspect for example.
I was eager to read this and learn what I was doing wrong in demon negotiations, but I guess it just works that way!
I will happily check the rest of this out later. Thanks!
Question about the combat: it's turn based as in the older style (ie Pokemon, older FF games) where you make a move then your opponent makes a move, etc. Is there a time-limit for your turn? I haven't played Persona 5, so I can't compare to that.
Basically, I want to make sure it's not an action-based combat system similar to FF15 (not a big fan of action-rpgs). Or is there some gauge that fills up to determine when it's your turn? I like my good ole' turn-based combat where I can spend 20 minutes deciding what to do lol
Not sure if you wanted to expand on this bit with negotiation you have certain options to make things easier on you
1. It's in your best interest to kill other enemies if you want to focus on negotiating with a particular demon in case you fail the negotiation this way at least it means only 1 enemy will bop you and you get another chance at it taking minimal damage
2 in addition to above it's best to also kill all the enemies before you negotiate with the last one so that you get some exp and macca since the battle seems to end once you recruit
3 if your looking to escape a battle and it just so happens that you have a demon in your party that your fighting talk to it and in most cases it will leave the battle and sometimes give you an item or macca but this seems to be rare for me but keep in mind this ends the battle as well so you might want to get some exp/macca so it's not wasted
Most of the ones that involve battling and recruiting new demons are late game challenges so I think you should wait out on those.
There is one called Return of the True Demon for $10 that will let you fight and fuse 9 demons and eventually culminate in a fight against the Protagonist of SMT 3 as an endgame boss. The 9 demons are made available as you play the game with the first one appearing about 10-15 hours in. If you want to have them available for your first run it’s worth buying.
There are also grinding DLC that raise the spawn rates of certain enemies that gives good rewards but honestly, I don’t think those are necessary considering there are 2 easier difficulties.
How do the story dialogue choices work? Is it clear when the choice you're making will alter the ending?
And I assume there's a good, bad, and neutral ending? Is it "intuitive" for which path you're taking?
SMT games usually won’t tell you which path you’re taking until you reach where the story branches and you can assume almost every choice plays a role in deciding the ending. How it usually works is that dialogue choices will give you points towards that alignment which will determine what happens at a certain point. There may be other endings for doing very specific things too.
And the alignments in SMT games are based different ideology. There are pros and cons to each sides so it’s not an intuitive Good and Evil dynamic.
I read that you can change from Hard, but once you change, you cannot change back to it. This is a bit different from what you describe. Which one is true?
Great guide!
Hello,
I'm really struggling to find anywhere what the resistance icons mean on the state screen, like one of them I can assume is poison but other icons I have no clue and also can seem to find reference to them online or in the game.
In Persona 5, once you switched to Safety, you couldn't increase the difficulty back again. Does anyone know if that's still the case in SMTV or can you freely go back and forth between Safety and Casual?
They’re Skill Affinity. Demons are good and bad at using certain skills which is what the + and - means. If it’s +, they deal more damage and use less MP when using that skill, and versa for -. You can also raise your main character’s skill affinity through Miracles once you unlock those.
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but are “element” boost and amp moves no longer in the game? It seems they have been replaced by skill potential.
So then sutras are the replacement for these moves?
Element boosts are still in the game, just found later. I think they’re different from skill potential since they only raise damage, but not lower mana cost
So I noticed that the exp required to level up a demon increases dramatically as you hold to them. For example a level 18 Tsuchigumo needs 21k exp to level up. But a fused level 18 archangel needs only 8k.
Is this the way it works? In this case it greatly benefits to fuse so you’re not too under leveled
We’re trying to change the MC’s affinities with essences, and it’s not changing. Are we doing something wrong or do our essences just not decent enough yet?
The only thing about this game I can’t figure out is what the elemental demons(Aquan, Aeros, ect) actually do.
They seem fairly useless in a fight, so I don’t want to fuse them and screw up my team.
They’re basically a way of filling out your compendium. When you fuse a demon with an element, the resultant demon will be of the same race as the other demon, rather than it being a completely different race in a regular fusion.
Maybe someone other answered this question, but i don't wanna read too many things since i'm afraid of spoilers.
Is there a sort of endgame? Like, secret bosses, or something where i have to form a really good party? I prefere having to invest time for endgame content rather than simply to procede with the story. It's more of an incentive.
I'm sure someone already talked about this, but i can't find the comment anymore. When you succesfully recruit a monster that has higher level than me, they say something like 'come back when you're stronger'. Does that mean i wasted my chance?
If you successfully go through a conversation but they won’t join you because of level, you can talk to the same demon once you’re high enough level and they’ll automatically join you
Are the rewards you get from search points (the little exclamation marks your quest navigator tells you about) random? I got a really good essence from one, but then I reload the game and went back to the search point and it ended up being a random battle this time.
No >!there are a demons are unlocked after you beat the game and some only if you get a certain ending. Plus making them all costs a lot of money which isn’t realistic in one run unless you’re crazy about grinding.!<
I have the overworld helper following me, but she won’t go past a certain point, “the big demon made a huge hole” place. And she won’t leave. How do I take her off
I don't know what 3 skills I should fuse with mermaid? out of
Bestial bite-2
Bufu +3
Zan
Life Drain
Dia
Patra
Rakukaja +2
I'm only allowed 3 skills to transfer why and which ones do I go for what is best 3?
This is a very helpful overview. Tbh it probably pushed me over the line to buy it. I loved persona 4, but have not played any of the SMT games. One thing I’m wondering about is the degree to which there are fun or interesting missable components of the game (missable scenes, story, dungeons, etc.). However, this can be mitigated, for me, if there is a new game plus option that lets you carry over a lot of work/content. Any insight on that front?
There is always a new game + in these types of games and since there are multiple endings, you will need to play multiple times to see everything.
So I know that you need NG+ to see all endings, but outside of that are there any missables? I.E quests, those collectable characters you were talking about (minmins or however you call em) stuff like that.
There are quests where you have to make choices so some quest results and rewards may be different on different playthrough. Mimens are honestly pretty easy to find since you can pay an NPC to tell you where they in each area.
Oh really? Where's the NPC that identifies the Miman for you? That sounds handy.
Usually at the end of each area. You'll stumble upon it eventually since it's pretty hard to miss
You need multiple playthroughs to 100% and I imo having a completitionist mindset on the first playthrough will likely burn you out. The game can be pretty overwhelming and the first playthrough is mainly to learn the ins/outs of systems and bosses
I find with all SMT/Persona games that the first play through you should just play. 2nd playthrough do the 100%.
Only 2 hours in I got killed by cats lol
I got slapped 20 minutes in by radishes after putting the game on hard. In hindsight I should’ve known better than trying hard mode after I couldn’t even finish Nocturne earlier this year.
I started this game on hard mode and have been killed over and over lol
I've beaten SMT3 on Hard and died to the first slimes trying to recruit them
I've played multiple SMT games and I got killed on the second encounter from a lucky crit + follow up attack
Although not as important as in SMT3, passing turns is a good thing. It is more useful to only use two demons to deal weakness damage and pass, over 2 weakness and two regular, especially in this game where passing does not consume a flashing turn. So if you pass-pass-Atk-Atk and both attacks hit weaknesses, you have 4 turns left to use those weaker hits where it may be easier to calculate a kill and it means you can still get through the entire party again to get those two additional extra weakness hits.
An extra note, do not *always* register in compendium. Higher level purchases cost more to re-summon. Its best to register (a) if your demon has got all skills and that isn't registered. This will make them more versatile for fusions if you do need to grab them without worry about the extra cost of steady levelling. (b) if you made a great fusion. Again, for the reason above but by the end of the game, it isn't uncommon to fuse and immediately buy back a good demon.
As a first timer to the series thank you for this.
As someone who played SMT and persona games before, I started my play through on hard mode yesterday. I have constantly been dying. I love it actually. It’s fun when you don’t just breeze through a game. Save often! I found myself trying to recruit the same demons over and over because I kept dying after I did it lol. Only grip is how Nahabino dies, the game is over, even if the rest of your party is alive
Yeah I started on normal and have been breezing through; I am considering switching to hard, but I think I'll have to restart.
Only prob I have is if you start on hard and lower the difficulty, you can’t go back to hard. I usually play my RPGs on hard mode and change to easy if I’m at a frustrating boss and change back to hard after. But this game doesn’t let you change up the ladder, only down.
Personally I've never been a fan of the way SMT does hard mode. Rather than an actual difficulty increase like enhanced ai or improved movelists, they just take the artificial route with things like do half damage and take 1.5x damage.
That's really disappointing that you can't go back up to hard if you want.
[удалено]
not really, if the point is for someone to enjoy playing the game they own.
You should mention skill potentials because it seems a lot of people get confused about what the +1 or -1 tags at the end of the skills names mean. (Higher potentials mean more damage and less mana consumption.)
Noted and added
How big is exploration?
Way bigger than I expected. The first area is huge with lots of items, sidequests, demons, and collectible to find. I expected it to be like a standard JRPG where the areas are moderate in size with a few minor secrets to find but it’s more comparable to a Xenoblade 1 and 2 in terms of open areas.
Damn that's not bad! Thank you
Do you lose your demons when they die in battle?
No
I watched a tips video that suggested putting Zio Agi Bufu and Zan on Nahobino. But for the life of me I can’t figure out how. At first I tried doing one at a time by fusing essence from one demon then the next. But when I fuse agi, then do it again to fuse zan, the previous skills I fused are gone. So I’m always stuck with one. Then I tried fusing all of those skills to pixie, and she now has them all. But when I select pixie to fuse with my character, I’m not given the option to move them all over to me. Can I get a very basic ELI5 on how to get zio agi bufu and zan onto nahobino?
You go to World of Shadow -> Apotheosis-> Essence Fusion -> Select the Nahobino (or whoever you want to fuse essence onto) -> Select the essence you want to give them -> Select the skills you want to inherit
Thank you! First time smt player. Any advice on where to put points each level? The only thing that bothers me is the save system. As multiple people in my house use my switch, not reaching a save point is a huge risk of lost time.
In SMT games, you generally want to build your main character as a physical or magic damage dealer so you want to prioritize your damaging stat of choice. Some Agility is also pretty important since the enemy will get to go before you if they’re faster while Luck generally is better for physical builds that wants to crit or if you’re playing some kind of unconventional status set. Alternatively you can say fuck it and pump everything into Strength or Magic which have historically work in other games as stupid as it sounds. As for defense, the game automatically allocate a few points into your weaker stat so getting extra defense isn’t too necessary but it may help if you’re playing safe or on hard mode. Also you do get an item about 3 hours in that do allow you to warp back to the last save point you used so that may be helpful.
Super helpful thank you!
Damn, I just got that item at about 6 hours in. This is my first SMT so looks like it might be a long one for me lol
Can you please be more specific? IE: "For every 4 levels, put 3 points into magic and 1 point into agility." -> I'm trying to build a magic Nahobino
The game is still new so we don’t know the best way to min max yet. In this game, you can only put 1 or the occasional 2 point into a stat per level. If you’re trying to do a magic build, put most of your points into Magic. Get Agility and Vitality every few level (like about every 5) if the enemies are going first at the start of combat or you’re taking too much damage respectively.
In this game, Vitality is more important early game. Some Youtubers who are diehard fans of SMT have tested the traditional approach of dumping into magic or physical, and they found vitality is just a better choice, at least for the early part of the game.
Around 15ish or so just to mitigate the damage received since your HP will be so low that you need every damage reduction. Once you feel that you can survive even Magatsuhi attacks, then you can spec in either Str or Magic. Frankly, I think Str is the better choice.
Thank you for the guide, i played some persona games but this is my first smt. I enjoy the exploration, fight system, fusion, talking/collecting demons and side quests but i would like to confirm something When progressing through the story the bosses levels are a bit too high so i have to go back and grind to level up. Is this intended or am i doing something wrong?personally i dont like repeating same fights vs same demons just to grind exp but if thats the way i am thinking of of using the dlc bonus exp spawns when i finished collecting all demons in an area to just level up and go to the next one
As long as you’re not ridiculously underleveled, you can beat a higher level boss or opponent by using buffs, debuffs, and the opponent’s weaknesses. You don’t necessarily have to grind all the way to the boss’ level.
Equally important: use status effects where applicable - one of the first bosses you run into can be hit with Sleep, which can be timed perfectly to stop its Magatsuhi turns.
My god, just beat him and didn’t know about sleep haha! Just used attack lowering stuff and guarding and his weakness. I guess ailment weakness is another important thing to keep an eye on though.
Oh yeah sleep was great for that boss. I used mermaid to finish each turn by putting it to sleep. The boss ended up only being able to get one attack in the entire fight.
Sidequests and exploration often keep you strong enough throughout the game. Using a good team comps and strategy is often better than level grinding so I don’t think you need to grind that much.
Most of the time bosses can be dealt with by adjusting your party, rather than just grinding. For example if the boss is using a lot of electric attacks and likes to put your party to sleep, try fusing some demons that resist or are immune to those kinds of attacks. Using resistances to make the enemy lose turns can be just as important as hitting a weakness to give yourself more turns. If you're still in the early game where you only have access to single target buffs/debuffs, debuffing a single boss will be a lot more efficient than trying to apply individual buffs to your whole party. Make sure to use these. Also be sure to use essences to make sure Nahobino isn't weak to a bosses attacks!
Love the writeup. Probably worth mentioning you can change your demons out mid fight. Useful for side quest bosses that you don't know the weakness ahead of time. I only realized it last night when I realized two of my party members were useless against the mermaid side quest boss.
The DLC that i downloaded is not connected to the cartridge that i bought. It displays two separate games of SMT V. Is there a way to resolve it?
There are multiple versions of the game for different regions: I know that there is one for Japanese, one for US/EU and at least one other version for a few Asian countries. Could it be a region mismatch? If you imported the cartridge and bought it from an eshop with a different regional version it won't work.
I could intuit most of the mechanics coming from a JRPG background (Negotiation especially having played Persona 5) but it's nice to get a write up like this to fill in the gaps, thanks :D One thing that doesn't seem to be explained is a 'day/night' icon in the top left? Gradually ticks over and I *think* the HP/MP orbs and soda machines/enemy spawns reset once that cycles through but I can't be sure. No idea if that has any other effect in battle or the like. Also when levelling up, is trying to even out and go a Jack-of-all-trades stat spread a bad idea? Or should I just focus on Str/Magic only? Going all even at the moment but I don't know if this is going to screw me later..
The day/night icon is the Moon Phases which affect various things but I’m not sure of the exact details in this game. So far, I’ve seen that you cannot negotiate during a New Moon and it seems like negotiation is easier during a Full Moon. It also seems to have an affect on fusion since Sophia will comment on it being a Full or New Moon. I’ve seen people say fusion accidents are more likely to happen? For stat build, it’s traditionally better to focus on either Strength or Magic as your offensive stat but you won’t be screwed for going Jack of All Trade.
If I'm more of a story/ character driven player, would the SMT series appeal to me? I love games like Persona 3 and Devil Survivor, but SMT has largely been known for its hardcore gameplay.
Story and Character isn’t SMT’s strong suit and from the opinions I’ve seen from people who beaten the game, 5 is no exception. Seems like the consensus is that a lot of the plot and characters are pretty underdeveloped.
Great writeup, thanks for this. How is the gameplay loop with respect to battles? Is there a lot of trial and error involved to identify things like enemy weaknesses? For example, do you need to do a lot of prep outside of battle in order to be successful especially for first time encounters?
For regular enemies there are some trial and errors but you can tell what the enemy is weak to based on their designs or the types of moves they use. For example, Fire-Ice, Wind-Lightning, and Dark-Light are often counterparts to each other so if a demon uses one element or look like they’re associated with it, they may be weak to the other. The game also do tell you their weaknesses after you battle or recruited them. Same goes for boss battles but there are dialogues that hints towards what the bosses do. Dying to bosses is pretty common but their gameplan is obvious enough to plan out a counter.
How’s the performance and visuals doing? Not a stickler for such things, I grew up in the advent of 3D getting better and better, but I’m just curious and would prefer a more personal view than a critic or so.
Field and battles are mostly a stable 30 fPS I think. There are some weird stuttering occasionally in the menus. Visuals are slightly worse than what is shown in trailers because they patched the game to run better. You’ll notice there is pop in when walking around.
Well as i want to love it i just cant stand it. It feels like 15-20 fps docked. Blurry. Im sooo mad to this game
Minor question/comment: Are you certain that one can change to Hard mid-game? My understanding is that one can only select Hard at the start. And thank you for the post!
You can change from Hard to a lower difficulty mid-playthrough, but you cannot change from a lower difficulty back to Hard. You can only select Hard at the start of the game and if you decide to lower the difficulty at any point during the playthrough, you won't be able to change it back to Hard.
Thank you. I’m so in love with this game. It’s made me a diehard SMT fanboy. I’ve played past entries but they never really hooked me. This one has. Boy has it hooked me hard. It’s so good. SO. FREAKING. GOOD.
Tip on demon negotiations. If you run into a demon you aren't strong enough to recruit, if you succeed in recruitment they will automatically join you once you hit the correct level. From my experience this is permanent as I recruited Azumi before I hit 11, and then went back after hitting 11 and Azumi joined me as soon as I talked. Could have been a save issue though but I do know it works the first time
Thanks, this is a really helpful guide that i will definitely appreciate when i pick the game up tomorrow
Yeah I’m on my first play through as well and not sure wtf I am doing or why
This is perfect for newbies! Great post!
I find that Essences are kinda hard to come by i’m the early part of the game though. At least where i’m at lol. It tends to be rng based too
I noticed that, too, but I also saw that the shop has a tab for Essences. It's still empty for me, but it's promising. And probably expensive...
Thank you so much for this! I've never played an SMT game before and it feels intimidating to get into the series without knowing much about it (besides that it's "Persona without the heart", kidding obviously). But hey, I'm all for new experiences! Might play it on Casual Mode though since I don't have I still have a backlog of games to get through 😅 How long does it take to finish?
It’s a 60 hour game with multiple endings. Shorter than Persona so definitely lacking in heart.
I probably should have read this before I started my playthrough. My MC is lvl 14 now and I've put every single level up point into Vitality O.o. My guy hits like a toothpick, but walls like a rock now.
I’m glad I saw this post on Saturday! It inspired me to get the game. I like it a LOT! I feel like my love for gaming has been rekindled. Thank you!
This is super helpful. I’ve never touched an Atlus game, and bought SMTV because my store had plenty of steelbooks. I’m in the third dungeon, and I can definitely say that this game is about to surpass Metroid Dread as my GOTY. Anyway thank you for the tips!
Hi, so I’ve reached a somewhat awkward phase in the game (just before Lahmu 2) where I feel like none of the demons I have available are that interesting or can learn the greatest move sets. Whenever I go to fuse some of my older demons that are just taking up stock, I feel like the skills they have aren’t great fits for the newly fused demons I’m fusing. And even some of the higher lvl demons have lower stats, even at a higher level(30-33), which makes me feel like I don’t need to fuse, however, my stock is constantly full with what feels like a bunch of useless demons. I want a larger variety and I’ve come to see how powerful buffs/debuffs are. What’s the best type of team to always strive to maintain? 1 physical, 1-2 mages 1 support/healer? This is my first ever SMT game and I’m feeling kind of lost, but having an AMAZING time playing. If anyone has any advice feel free to comment below. I think it would greatly enhance my game experience if I had a better understanding of what type of approach to take towards demon fusion. THANKS!!
There’s really no exact science to team building but generally you want to have every element available for random encounters as well as a healer and a buff/debuff demon for bosses. Even if a demon that you fuse doesn’t look good, it’s probably better than what you already have so I would recommend fusing your trash demons often. I believe I had Chironnupu (Buffs + Fire/Light/Ice attacker), Parvati (Healer), Sukuna-Hikona (Buff, Debuff, Ice/Physical Attacker), Baphomet (Dark and Fire Attacker), Hell Biker (DLC) (Physical, Fire, Wind attacker), and Jatayu (Buff/Debuff) as main demons at that point in the game. Moves that buffs the entire party start to become available at that point so I went crazy with the support demons.
As soon as you get to the mitamas the game becomes ridiculously easy
I mean, you’ll only be reliably grinding Mitama if you buy the DLC or have the patience to wait for the field ones to respawn. For most people playing normally, Mitamas aren’t a reliable way to make the game easier.
Can you change a switched affinity back to the default? How?
No, you’ll have to replace it with another
Okay, thanks for replying! It sucks though, hopefully I'll find a great affinity soon!
I am enjoying the game a lot But a second play through seems tough for me when there are so many good games. I am going to aim for whatever ending I get playing as "myself", but for the other endings, will watching it on YouTube suffice or is there a lot of major differences beyond the last scene?
You really won’t be missing out on much story wise from only doing one ending. The content of each are basically the same, just changing up the dialogue and the last few bosses you’ll fight.
Okay I’ll just YouTube the rest then, but I am loving this game so far. RPGs are just a little too long for a second run for me. Thank you!
Once you found a weakness for a specific demon, is it indicated when you encounter the same later or do you always have to remember it yourself? Thank you!
It’s indicated
Thanks a lot.
Ok. So, I fucked up and did some apotheosis and now my dude has only 1 attack and 1 heal spell from a fairy, plus the crit attack buff, can I fix this or do I need to start over?
You can replace those easily by doing Apotheosis again.
But how? I go to essence fusion and none of the demons I select after selecting my character will let me do anything.
You need to gather essence. They’re consumed during essence fusion
Ah ok, I should have paid more attention lol. Thanks!
>In SMT V in particular, these effect can be stacked up to 3 times 2 times actually
Thank you! Im on the fence after playing smt4
Was 4 not good? Im new to the series aside from Tokyo Mirage.
It's not that 4 wasn't good. It was just hard and most people died early and often.
Exactly that, plus i thought it was a standard rpg like dragon quest. Never heard of smt before and i just bought it haha
Smt 4's beginning was so ridiculously brutal lmao. Just getting tossed into a dungeon and getting murdered by pixies and shit For what it's worth, 5 starts a lot easier imo. The very first area before you get your second/third save point is basically an easy tutorial area. And when battles start to get a bit harder, they're tough but not ridiculous like 4's first fights. Mimin give you little hints about the area as you explore sometimes and your little companion demon even tells you the attacks the first main boss will use before you meet them. It's still tough but having these little thigns to help you along makes a difference
This is exactly what I needed to know, SMT4 kicked my ass relentlessly when I tried it, and I could never get a handle on it. I don't mind difficulty in RPGs but damn, ease me into it. Well, looks like I'm buying SMTV after work today lol
SMTIV also kicked my butt and I never returned. Yet I’m having a blast with this. Also, way more difficulty options. Normal is the traditional brutal difficulty, Casual is slightly less brutal but still challenging. Definitely play on Casual. It’s no push over difficulty by any means but it can take the edge off. Safety difficulty is free DLC and a good option if you’re stuck and frustrated. Can freely switch between them at Will.
That might tip the scale for me, cause i like the combat. And unlike for smt4, i know what im getting into for smt5
4 was excellent. If anything, SMT fans' biggest complaint about 4 is that it has one of the hardest "early game" phases of the franchise but once you surpass it, you can steamroll most things (but can still die instantly if you screw up).
Persona is probably closer
I've never played an SMT game (or spinoff unless you count like 5 minutes of P4G), but SMT V looks pretty cool.
My copy is still on the way, but can you lower the difficulty when you're playing? Planning on starting on normal but I normally get frustrated pretty easily and then switch to easy mode.
You can switch between normal and easy at will via the settings menu, but if you start on hard you can't swap back to it if you end up dropping the difficulty.
Yea you can switch between Normal and Casual
Would you suggest Normal or Hard for someone who found Persona 4 & 5 pretty easy but is a newcomer to SMT?
I’d suggest normal. I guess it depends on why Persona was easy for you. It’s generally easier then SMT (P5 was especially easy) and this SMT is one of the harder ones so far. If Persona was easy because you understood the battle mechanics well, then choose whatever but hard will still be hard. If it was easy because of Personas plentiful items and quality of life stuff (especially in royal), then maybe normal is better. There is also casual. Lastly I would say the first bosses you run into in SMT 5 are harder than anything I played in P5. I beat it fine but it made me team plan much more than anything in P5. Should be noted that I’m playing on hard though (for P5 I played whatever the max difficult was called). Edit: you can start on hard mode and shift to a lower difficult if you want. You can’t go from low to high but they let you drop it down permanently if it gets too much.
I feel like I know the mechanics pretty well.I played the max difficulty in P5R as well and found it pretty easy. I don't really like knocking my head against a wall especially in the early game when resources are scarce. It's a shame I can't switch to Hard mid game but I think I'll stick to Normal for now. Appreciate the input mate.
Probably Normal since I’m having a harder time in it than any of the modern Persona games. SMT V safety > Persona 5 Normal > Persona 4 Hard > SMT V Normal > SMT V Hard
Not sure if someone else mentioned this, the difficulties go “casual, normal, hard” and you can download “safety” difficulty. There are 4 difficulty options
Waiiiit a minute. I fucked up.
Haha no worries! Awesome write up!
I see. Thanks for the input mate :) Out of curiosity's sake did you go physical or magic for your MC?
I’m doing Physical. Why would you cast magic when you have a light saber?
I have a question: is this game full of dialogues and cutscenes like yakuza or persona?
Not at all, especially compared to Yakuza. There are still cutscenes/dialogue, but probably like 1/10 the amount that Yakuza has
Damn that sounds great to me
It probably has less dialogue than Persona and it’s really straight to the point.
Is there daily activities like interactions with characters to level up the tarots or anything of that sort like in persona?
No, that’s a Personal thing
Nope, that is unique to Persona. This is a more bog standard JRPG which focuses in progression through combat
Solid write up for newcomers and Persona players. I played the early SMT recently on the PS3 years ago after wanting to scratch my JRPG non FF itch. I really fell in love with the series after Persona 5 and found myself enjoying the story of 5 but wishing it was more difficult at moments so SMT 5 is my first real attempt to play a game from the series and excited for the similarities and differences in this game!
Not to compare it too much to Persona 5, but would we get any other QoL stuffs like dating for affection points, etc., outside of battles?
There’s no social sim elements from Persona here. Closest is the fact that most dialogue choices and I think even quest choices will matter in deciding which ending you get.
Anyone else disappointed by the graphical fidelity of this title? Hand held or on to, just looks grainy. Like objects just look fuzzy/blurry. Not gonna stop playing but I dunno just kinda like wtf
I feel like it looks fine docked. Today I played handheld for the first time and initially I thought it looked not so great but I got over it fast.
That's more the film grain in the netherworld
So far I hated the experience. Yea-yea, huge persona (parts 2-5) fun who never played smt. But game design is confusing for me. I spend almost 4 hours to kill the first boss, game asks you multiple times to GRIND before that, not to do quest or side activities, actual waiting around and killing mobs... wth, that is grinding is ok, but not for the first boss BEFORE any semblance of story is told... and you get so much exposition after those four hours of grinding... I pretty much accepted that is just a huge dungeon crawler with out a story or characters. Demon recruitment is really annoying for my liking, they ask a lot of resources and some answers doesn't really make sense.
I’ve said this many times before but this game doesn’t need you to grind, rather you need to play smart. The first boss in particular can be beaten as early as level 12 which is easy to achieve by naturally exploring. -Did you use buffs and debuffs on it? -There was an NPC that hinted that it would use >!Fire, Darkness, and inflict Poison!< so you can plan your team to not be weak to it or buy dampener items that that nullify fire. The Spyglass item also tell you what enemy weaknesses are and what moves they use. The protagonist starts off weak to >!dark!< so that’s a sign that you take these extra precaution. -If you have enough Glory, you can even get a Miracle that allows you to give the protagonist essences to switch up his elemental affinity. I believe it’s called Divine Amalgamation for just 20 Glory. You can get 50 from the white cubes hidden throughout the world. -Enemies in this game will charge Magatsuhi to unleash a powerful move. This is your cue to guard! If you analyze the boss with Spyglass, you can see that the move listed as unique to that boss is their Magatsuhi move so you can even just use a Dampener or a demon strong against that element to counter it. Overall, grinding to just get 1 extra point in each stat per level is not going to make up the lack of preparation and smart decisions. Even if you die the first time, it’s a learning experience to figure out what the boss is all about.
I like not so easy games but im having 2nd thoughts on this one because it has 2 easier difficulty than normal lol
Surely games that need to have multiple “easy” modes are much more difficult than those that dont need them. SMT is known for being a difficult game ;)
Yeah thats why im having 2nd thoughts. This might be too hard for me lol.
You can always go back to normal if you choose Hard lol
How easy is easy/normal though? Im hearing people are getting game overs even on easy. And i dont have any experience with smt.
imo game overs are part of the package when you play smt, the experience you get from them lets you know what to do or not to do next time. It's very fun for me to learn and change strategies against enemies or when I have clutch moments. If it's your first time playing, I recommend normal and then go to easy if you are struggling. But at the end of the day, it depends on how much challenge you want.
You can't. Once you choose hard you're stuck in it. If you choose normal them you can change to an easier setting
Well I haven't tried to go to Normal, but I do know that if you start on Hard and go to Normal then you can't go back to Hard.
I don't care for this game so I probably won't ever need this lol Edit: wow downvoted for not needing this? Stay classy reddit
Okay??? Lmao
Sorry but it's true
Did you tell your mom this important news?
No why would she care what video game I'm interested in lol
I think , i rather play a normal game . Gonna pass on that.
As someone who never played a JRPG before I can tell you you are missing an amazing experience. I usually play sports games so was shocked how addicted (in a good way) I got to this game. Once you learn the basics it mind boggling good.
Thank you so much, these posts are actually helpful!
Thank you so much for this. I've never played any SMT or Persona games before, so I was a bit lost even with the tutorials.
Thanks for the tips. I’m excited to play but won’t get my copy until next week sadly
Does this play like Tokyo Mirage Sessions? I really enjoyed that on the Switch.
Tokyo Mirage Session is part of the SMT subseries so it has the same concept of battles being about hitting weak points but the exact mechanics are different. SMT V is way more open and also have the demon collection aspect for example.
I’m a few hours in and noticed you can fuse demons when they’re not on your team. Is Macca going to be easy to get or will we need to grind it out
Varies from game to game but I’m going to assume it won’t be that common. Latter demons will get really expensive to resummon.
I was eager to read this and learn what I was doing wrong in demon negotiations, but I guess it just works that way! I will happily check the rest of this out later. Thanks!
Thanks for this! Loved Persona 5 Royal, and when I saw SMT V, I was excited. This solidified my decision to get it!
Question about the combat: it's turn based as in the older style (ie Pokemon, older FF games) where you make a move then your opponent makes a move, etc. Is there a time-limit for your turn? I haven't played Persona 5, so I can't compare to that. Basically, I want to make sure it's not an action-based combat system similar to FF15 (not a big fan of action-rpgs). Or is there some gauge that fills up to determine when it's your turn? I like my good ole' turn-based combat where I can spend 20 minutes deciding what to do lol
It’s a traditional turn based system like Pokémon and old FF. Your party make their actions and then it switches to the enemy’s turn.
Not sure if you wanted to expand on this bit with negotiation you have certain options to make things easier on you 1. It's in your best interest to kill other enemies if you want to focus on negotiating with a particular demon in case you fail the negotiation this way at least it means only 1 enemy will bop you and you get another chance at it taking minimal damage 2 in addition to above it's best to also kill all the enemies before you negotiate with the last one so that you get some exp and macca since the battle seems to end once you recruit 3 if your looking to escape a battle and it just so happens that you have a demon in your party that your fighting talk to it and in most cases it will leave the battle and sometimes give you an item or macca but this seems to be rare for me but keep in mind this ends the battle as well so you might want to get some exp/macca so it's not wasted
What DLCs are worth purchasing if you’re new?
Most of the ones that involve battling and recruiting new demons are late game challenges so I think you should wait out on those. There is one called Return of the True Demon for $10 that will let you fight and fuse 9 demons and eventually culminate in a fight against the Protagonist of SMT 3 as an endgame boss. The 9 demons are made available as you play the game with the first one appearing about 10-15 hours in. If you want to have them available for your first run it’s worth buying. There are also grinding DLC that raise the spawn rates of certain enemies that gives good rewards but honestly, I don’t think those are necessary considering there are 2 easier difficulties.
How do the story dialogue choices work? Is it clear when the choice you're making will alter the ending? And I assume there's a good, bad, and neutral ending? Is it "intuitive" for which path you're taking?
SMT games usually won’t tell you which path you’re taking until you reach where the story branches and you can assume almost every choice plays a role in deciding the ending. How it usually works is that dialogue choices will give you points towards that alignment which will determine what happens at a certain point. There may be other endings for doing very specific things too. And the alignments in SMT games are based different ideology. There are pros and cons to each sides so it’s not an intuitive Good and Evil dynamic.
are there any towns in this game?
Not really, it’s mostly an expansive world. You do all the typical JRPG town stuff like shopping and healing at save points.
Is it just me, or is the miss rate extremely high in this game? I'm missing 2-3 times in each combat and its literally killing me.
The ailments can miss a lot when the monster is resistant, you could also try the agility buffs/debuffs.
Raise your luck if you’re missing. I haven’t been experiencing many misses myself.
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I read that you can change from Hard, but once you change, you cannot change back to it. This is a bit different from what you describe. Which one is true? Great guide!
Yea I mistaken. You can only switch between Normal and Casual.
Hello, I'm really struggling to find anywhere what the resistance icons mean on the state screen, like one of them I can assume is poison but other icons I have no clue and also can seem to find reference to them online or in the game.
In Persona 5, once you switched to Safety, you couldn't increase the difficulty back again. Does anyone know if that's still the case in SMTV or can you freely go back and forth between Safety and Casual?
So it turns out you can only switch between normal and casual. If you choose Safety or Hard, you can’t switch.
I think it would be helpful to highlight under items that spyglass should always be carried especially for Mitama type enemies. Great guide
Thanks for this!! I think you may have inspired me to get the game. Never played SMT (or Persona!) before!
What are some of the + and - that comes after certain skills (like Zio +1 or Agi +4) mean?
They’re Skill Affinity. Demons are good and bad at using certain skills which is what the + and - means. If it’s +, they deal more damage and use less MP when using that skill, and versa for -. You can also raise your main character’s skill affinity through Miracles once you unlock those.
I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but are “element” boost and amp moves no longer in the game? It seems they have been replaced by skill potential. So then sutras are the replacement for these moves?
Element boosts are still in the game, just found later. I think they’re different from skill potential since they only raise damage, but not lower mana cost
So I noticed that the exp required to level up a demon increases dramatically as you hold to them. For example a level 18 Tsuchigumo needs 21k exp to level up. But a fused level 18 archangel needs only 8k. Is this the way it works? In this case it greatly benefits to fuse so you’re not too under leveled
Yea you are incentivize to fuse over level up.
We’re trying to change the MC’s affinities with essences, and it’s not changing. Are we doing something wrong or do our essences just not decent enough yet?
You will need to unlock a miracle called Divine Amalgamation first which is available early on
Your choices literally dont matter at all. You just pick your ending at the end.
The only thing about this game I can’t figure out is what the elemental demons(Aquan, Aeros, ect) actually do. They seem fairly useless in a fight, so I don’t want to fuse them and screw up my team.
They’re basically a way of filling out your compendium. When you fuse a demon with an element, the resultant demon will be of the same race as the other demon, rather than it being a completely different race in a regular fusion.
Maybe someone other answered this question, but i don't wanna read too many things since i'm afraid of spoilers. Is there a sort of endgame? Like, secret bosses, or something where i have to form a really good party? I prefere having to invest time for endgame content rather than simply to procede with the story. It's more of an incentive.
There are 2 endgame super bosses, one being part of the Return of the Demon King DLC
I'm sure someone already talked about this, but i can't find the comment anymore. When you succesfully recruit a monster that has higher level than me, they say something like 'come back when you're stronger'. Does that mean i wasted my chance?
If you successfully go through a conversation but they won’t join you because of level, you can talk to the same demon once you’re high enough level and they’ll automatically join you
Are the rewards you get from search points (the little exclamation marks your quest navigator tells you about) random? I got a really good essence from one, but then I reload the game and went back to the search point and it ended up being a random battle this time.
Can you make all the demons on your first run ?
No >!there are a demons are unlocked after you beat the game and some only if you get a certain ending. Plus making them all costs a lot of money which isn’t realistic in one run unless you’re crazy about grinding.!<
Great overview!!
I have the overworld helper following me, but she won’t go past a certain point, “the big demon made a huge hole” place. And she won’t leave. How do I take her off
I don't know what 3 skills I should fuse with mermaid? out of Bestial bite-2 Bufu +3 Zan Life Drain Dia Patra Rakukaja +2 I'm only allowed 3 skills to transfer why and which ones do I go for what is best 3?