Shin Megami Tensei V (henceforth SMT5) is a really fun game, which iterates and improves on a lot of the series's elements. It provides a strong core game loop, being quite challeging but not unfair¹, backed by great music, and with its open levels being perhaps the best instances of level design in the whole franchise². But I'd like to set most of that aside to focus on what I found to be the worst aspect of the game: the storytelling.

I'm writing quite a while after finishing the game, and that playthrough itself was in a couple of different bursts separated by a few months, so I won't go too deep into specifics which aren't fresh in my mind. I'm mostly trying to rant as a way to jot down my frustration before it leaves my mind completely. I guarantee there will be spoilers, though I'm not looking to recount and analyze everything that happens in the game.

The themes your worshipped are dead.🔗

The story in SMT5 feels a lot like what I would churn out if told to make a Shin Megami Tensei game when I was 15. That's not a compliment, of course. It has a lot of aesthetic elements that hint at meaning, that look like they are going for something but are ultimately shallow, simple imitations of things I liked with more artistic value.

Despite having very low expectations of the story due to my experience with recent Atlus titles, I became intrigued by the set-up³. Having your first glimpse of the backstory be Lucifer coming down and declaring himself victorious is a very interesting way to start. The game then goes on to produce more interesting questions in a "mystery box" sense. The answers to questions about the world, the connection between the demon-infested desert and your regular life, about what a Nahobino is and why are you one, etc., are things that leave a player curious to know more.

Then it eventually starts to seem like it might actually be trying to say something. So many elements can be taken and described in interesting ways that you would expect would relate to the core themes of a work. Sadly, things don't really go anywhere.

Nahobino are a primordial, truly powerful, form of god; and humans souls carry their knowledge and wisdom, forcibly separated from them by YHVH⁴, who cast down other gods, now wisdomless, as demonic. Reattaining this form is the ultimate sin, the ultimate act of defiance, and a necessary aspect of taking over YHVH's empty throne and giving direction to a new world. This draws on ideas of being forced into a system, and of liberation from that system being the ultimate goal.

Against the positive impression of what a Nahobino is that the previous description might bring up, Lahmu, one such demon, finds his corresponding human, Sahori, and communicates with her (from her perspective seeming as hallucinations), enticing her to get revenge and murder her bullies, all as part of a ploy to reunite with her and reattain his Nahobino form.

This plotline ends up not really being relevant to the rest of the game in any way. Her acts of revenge are, in context, simply due to the demon's influence, and when she comes to her senses and tries to resist, the demon forces their union onesidedly. After they die, there is not really any more time dedicated to the matter of what it means to be the wisdom of a demon, of human feelings that lead to evil acts, or even of agency after the fusion.

What substitutes this more character-based plotline is major gods essentially starting a race for the throne of supreme god. Previously attaining the Nahobino form was thought impossible by the very nature of the world YHVH set up. Even with him gone, the world itself would have made it impossible. But now with two instances (the player and Lahmu/Sahori) of Nahobino, it is clear the influence of YHVH is fading, and gods can once again attain that power.

This would be the moment where it would make sense to establish an ideological struggle surrounding what the new world should be like. Tying this to previous developments in the game would allow for very thematically resonant factions to arise. Sadly the main question on the table really is just who gets to rule.

Odin, Vasuki, Zeus, and Khonsu essentially have no philosophical position other than that they each believe they (or their master in Vasuki's case) should be on the throne. Perhaps this is why they are not the main factions which divide the game's endings; you are made to take down all of them regardless. But that still leaves us with basically nothing.

The game does try with the rest of the conteders, to an extent. It tries to set up this matter of whether a single god should be supreme, with one faction proposing to make the world be ruled by many gods⁵. We are told the previous rule was bad, but it does not connect with anything and is underdeveloped as a story element. It's as if the game is trying to ask, in the most abstract and disconnected way possible "do you think there should be one ruler or many?" without really painting a proper picture of what each thing entails. The faction who supposedly supports dividing power spends most of their remaining screen time saying Tokyo was treated unfairly and needs to be protected.

The opposing side is supposedly for the status quo, reaffirming all of the principles of the previous god (whatever they were). This side is also not supported by much. Narratively, there is nothing to point us to why we should want this. Their position isn't even just that one god should rule, but all the rules established by the previous ruler were correct and proper. Sadly we don't know what the rules are. We're just supposed to fill in the blanks with "whatever lead to our world I guess". In a story where demons have active agency and literally oppose and kill this ruler, this is very weak.

The whole package ends up as a game that is essentially about nothing. Any attempt at meaning is dilluted through several different plot points left unconnected. Many aspects could be imbued with meaning, and if a player wishes to, they can do so. But I don't mean that it's a complex work you must struggle with to understand; nor that it's an incredibly deep experience and the more you think about it the deeper it seems. I mean it in the sense that you can always buy a shovel and try to dig anywhere if you really want to. And in a game so heavily coated with the aesthetics of more meaningful works, there are plenty of places to dig.

Dazai and Abdiel's Transformation🔗

I don't have much else to say about Dazai and Abdiel's positions as it's simply not really developed enough to really discuss. Instead I want to talk how they undergo their "transformations" to demonstrate taking a proactive position to reach for the throne.

I'm all for representing character changes and developments through physical transformation. Showing the narrative weight of events and decisions with a radical shift in appearance is something the series has done a lot, and been very effective at in the past. But these are just ridiculous.

Dazai gives a monologue at a seemingly random point in the story, called on by nothing in particular other than the game realizing it's getting close to the end, then goes through a cartoony faux-transformation by losing his cap, flipping his hair back and spending the rest of the game with shining eyes and a stupid grin in his face.

Then he goes and convinces Abdiel to go through a similarly ridiculous transformation.

This game has a character basically saying what is, from their perspective, "if I have to be evil to do good, then time to become evil" and immediately -- with explicit, stated intention -- undergoing a cartoony transformation to become evil, as if they just had to press a button to do that all along. This transformation doesn't even happen at the moment the character actually decided to go down this path, but only when they show up later to tell everyone about it.

Sure, these are transformations that represent the characters' resolve, but are so over-the-top and unnecessary in their execution. Not even supported by the plot progression, as they happen way too late in the game to properly represent the characters' shifting paths. Abdiel didn't even change paths. They feel bolted on, making me wonder if this is just because someone thought it would be cool to show "the moment an angel becomes a fallen angel" as if that makes any sense.

If an angel falls to follow God's will, have they fallen at all? Regardless, is "falling" really something that ought to be reduced to an atomic decision an angel makes? Is a change in color scheme and splitting the angel's head to show a weird demonic head underneath even a good way to represent the idea of an angel falling from the light of god?

This isn't Chaos Hero from Shin Megami Tensei (SMT1) suddenly fusing himself with a demon in your stock, hunting for a way to overcome his own weakness. This isn't Chiaki from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocture (SMT3), having lost an arm from a previous defeat, pleading her sponsor for power to attain her goals and gaining a suitably demonic form. This is mere fluff.

Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo🔗

It's natural that media over-focuses on where its creators come from, to an extent. Shin Megami Tensei games take place in Tokyo not just because it's an iconic metropolis, but in large part because its developers live in Tokyo. But at what point is that just weird bias, an assumption that the place is as important as everything? Or in SMT's case, perhaps the assumption that players care because some of the previous game held Tokyo's protection as an important aspect of the story.

In the story, Tokyo had already been destroyed some 20+ years ago, as the battleground for YHVH and Lucifer's final battle, forming the place we know as Da'at. The Tokyo we see at the start, and that the main character and his friends come from, is a final miracle from YHVH to sort of rebuild Tokyo and revive its inhabitants⁶. This miracle is slowly fading along with YHVH's influence, meaning Tokyo will once again be destroyed⁷. The other remaining gods don't really care about this, but Tsukuyomi will stand for Japan and Tokyo and wishes to put it back in its rightful place.

For some reason, the protection of Tokyo becomes the Tsukuyomi faction's focal point. Tsukuyomi speaks as if Tokyo has been injusticed by the other gods. In the scene surrounding the route split, their stated goal is to end the one god rule and bring back Tokyo, with the latter being given just as much weight than the latter -- if not more. Why is Tokyo so relevant? The matter at hand here is literally the configuration of the laws of the universe.

Tokyo is not given the narrative presence in this game needed for it to have any sort of emotional weight. This isn't like in Shin Megami Tensei IV (SMT4), where the setting of the city is a major aspect; where you are constantly talking or helping people who suffer from demon attacks and are forced to live underground in the subway infrastructure; where the backstory makes the defense of Tokyo from atomic bombs one of the main reasons things are the way they are.

In SMT5, Tokyo is merely a backdrop. The scenes we do have within the Tokyo our characters know are grey, eerie, and almost lifeless. The player is not given any reason to feel emotionally attached to it⁸. Most of the time in the game is spent in Da'at, a wasteland sprinkled with Tokyo landmarks and location names, devoid of meaningful life beyond demons running around doing who-knows-what. The emphasis Tsukuyomi puts on Tokyo feels so arbitrary, as if they just really wanted some extra emotional reason for more nationalistic Japanese players to pick this path but couldn't work out a way to actually execute on this idea.

The position of "one vs. many" gods is also ridiculous as a rallying cry for the player. I may be opposed to mornachies but the game does not give us any idea of what it is the supreme god is normally supposed to do, there is no framing that makes this a matter of monarchy vs. an oligarchy. From humanity's perspective multiple gods is still being ruled by a class of being beyond their normal life, so it's definitely not a democracy. Or is it? Who knows. If our regular world is what was the result of one supreme god, well, how would have multiple gods be different? One can imagine answers to the question but the characters don't really try to convince you of any of them, never argue about it, never define what it is they want beyond the most basic categoric statements needed to draw lines between factions.

If we're supposed to see this as a metaphor for something, what? In SMT1 you can draw parallels between the Law side and American imperialism; and between Chaos and a form of Japanese nationalism. But those are readings supported by multiple things within the text of the whole game. I can project many real world things to the positions brought forth in SMT5, but that would be falling for a trap. The game simply wants me to think it has meaning, while not doing any of the actual work of making a coherent statement, be it political, theological or philosophical.

Normally this would be a faction who is entirely opposed to the status quo, who wishes to change things. But the focus on Tokyo makes it the opposite. It's opposed to the "status quo" of a single ruler, but the way it manifests this opposition is by... promising that Tokyo stays around basically exactly as it is from the main cast's perspective, with no concrete argument for how things would materially change in the world. The matter of how many "gods" are in charge is entirely immaterial to the player because the game fails to make concrete what this actually means.

A third, somehow more pointless, way🔗

Our third path in this game at points argues it is about humanity, that it seeks to build a world for humans. But when the time for the route split comes, they don't propose any way to reshape the world, but rather seek to destroy the throne of the supreme god, essentially breaking from the cycle imposed by "the great will of the universe".

This might initially sound appealing, if the previous two routes are just all the same, this is a route that proposes change, correct? But it's not a route of purposeful change. It doesn't involve creating a world without a throne, but literally taking the world as it stands and destroying the throne, shutting down the possibility of recreation.

What this ending leaves you with, is the idea that the Da'at you saw throughout the game remains. As I aluded to before, Da'at is vacuous. It's essentially a collection of videogame levels made to be cool post-apocalyptic landscapes to explore, filled with demons to fight. They're good at being that, but they are nothing beyond that. The demons are not even close to organizing themselves in their own simulacra of society as they were in the Vortex World of SMT3.

Despite Yakumo and Nuwa talking about making a world for humans⁹, there are no humans in Da'at, and all the humans we did see in Tokyo will be gone when the power of the miracle disappears. There may be forms of human society out there somewhere, but they are essentially inexistent to the narrative. Likewise, it's unclear if this would change anything for them; once again, the game is not clear about the state of the world outside of Tokyo. Presumably if there was anything stopping the demons from wandering beyond Tokyo it would stop after the miracle maintaining Tokyo fades away.

Ironically, this is also a route that maintains the status quo. Not the status quo of the single supreme god, nor the status quo of Tokyo, but the status quo of Da'at. Your choice changes nothing about the exact current state of the world we experience in the game, it only really goes against people who were trying to bring things back to normalcy -- doing so by leaving the world desolate, dominated by demons, but not demons who are organizing into their own forms of societies that one may wish to defend and champion as in SMT3. Simply demons, running around to serve as videogame enemies. It's framed as a middle finger to the idea of needing a god to sit on the throne, but really it's a middle finger to the player who wanted something worth fighting for.

The shadow of SMT3🔗

Before talking about the final route I want to take a break to talk about SMT3. I'll start saying that I don't think SMT3 is a perfect game in any way, but SMT5 is basically begging you to talk about it in the same sentence as SMT3. From its first trailer¹⁰, this game signaled to everyone who had played SMT3 that it really wanted to do SMT3 again. So let's talk more about how it fails to do a lot of what SMT3 achieved.

SMT3 is a game that broke from its predecessors in many ways, both mechanical and thematic. It essentially set the course for the series since its release, as every new game Megaten game released since has either had its battle system or something with similar concepts.

The game sees the player accidentally being one of the few to survive the end of the world, intentially brought about by a cult whose leader seeks to create a new world following his ideals. The area surrounding the hospital in which the game beings, essentially Tokyo proper, wraps in on itself to become a Vortex World, forming an otherworldly landscape peppered with the remains of the former city.

One of the game's most striking aspects is its visuals and eerie atmosphere. A great deal of care was given to the visual presentation of the game, both in the technical sense in an attempt to properly deliver on series character and demon designer Kazuma Kaneko's style in 3D, and the creative sense, where the game shows the player not just broken bits of Tokyo, but many otherworldly constructions original to the Vortex World that are visually impactful and memorable.

Talking more about the story, the player is turned into a half-demon by a whim from the part of Lucifer, and then thrown out into this world without much sense of what is happening. As the player explores this place, infested with demons living and congregating in the remains of human buildings and infrastructire, they learn that the purpose of the Vortex World is to give rise to the next world, to determine its creational principles, and to do so there must be a human with both will and enough power to form a Reason. Throughout the game the other humans who were at the hospital form, or fail to form, their Reasons, leading up to the final segment of the game in which they must race to face Kagutsuchi, a being charged with overseeing the birth of the new world.

The player, having attained a great deal of power by the end of the game, is naturally a major aspect of the final result, essentially tipping the scale towards their chosen path by defeating the proponents of other Reasons and then Kagutsuchi itself. The player can also choose to reject all the three Reasons available, with an ending where they choose to leave the Vortex World as is (not creating any world) and another ending essentially being a rollback, creating a world which is essentially the one the main character comes from. These both have Kagutsuchi cursing the player for going against the cycle of creation itself as imposed by the greater will of the universe.

The "Maniax" version of the game (the only one released in western countries) adds an additional ending and many other extra bits of lore¹¹. The important thing here is that the added ending is another route where the player rejects all the Reasons, and leads to an additional final boss after Kagutsuchi, the game's regular final boss.

In this route the player has essentially been groomed by Lucifer to be his general in a war against the great will, and he challenges you as a final test, with an introductiory cutscene that is very impactful leading to a greatly memorable fight¹². The figure of Lucifer in the fight is imposing, and gigantic, beating out the previous boss in size; the music is not exactly fast-paced, but menacing and imposing; even the UI becomes part of the moment, as the ever-present indicator of the "phase" of Kagutsuchi (serving as the moon phase) now simply reads "DEAD". Afterwards we are simply given the idea that the player character is ready to lead the rebellion against this multi-dimensional entity which imposes this endless cycle of death and rebirth onto many universes.

The description above should already hint at many parallels between it and SMT5 such as the game takes place in a desertified Tokyo, and while the premise is not technically about creating a new world, attaining the throne is the analogous objective which asks the question of what to do with the world, the matters of creation. But it goes much further, as SMT5 has many other elements (both in terms of aesthetic and plot) and even specific scenes which pay tribute to SMT3, while not actually managing to do them that well.

By paying so much homage to SMT3, it tries to give the same sense of breaking with the mold that SMT3 had in relation to its antecessors, but without actually changing anything or even understanding the concept of change. The story has to be about the creation of a world; because that's what SMT3 was about. They had to provide alternatives that are on the surface similar to SMT3's Demon and Neutral endings; because that's what SMT3 did.

But it misses so much in the translation process. When trying to do an impression of what SMT3 had on a surface level it doesn't do a particularly good job. And it can't possibly achieve the meta-level role of SMT3, which was breaking away from series traditions. Mechanically SMT5 is an iteration on recent series titles, whose mechanical roots lie with SMT3. Aesthetically, it can't break with anything by executing a poor version of SMT3; and the parts which are not SMT3 don't feel as bold or as memorable.

The Morning Star brings meaninglessness anew🔗

This game has a hidden, fourth ending which I naturally sought after being incredibly frustrated with the regular "neutral" ending. It required (among some other quests which are insignificant by comparison) defeating Shiva, the most difficult optional boss in the main game before the route split¹³, which essentially trivializes what are the regular last bosses of the game.

So what happens here? In this route, things develop mostly the same, but Nuwa appears one last time after the fight with Abdiel, to say, hey, maybe you know, actually do something with the throne. Wow, I could never have thought of it. Nuwa suggests essentially "erasing" the existence of gods and demons, all of the supernatural, and just leaving a world for humans.

From a character perspective it's interesting and makes sense that Nuwa and Yakumo would hesitate to do this. It would erase Nuwa's existence, and despite Yakumo seeming incredibly set on his path to make the world he wants, he couldn't bear to do that. That's good characterization.

However, it doesn't make sense that the player requires this to be brought up in such a silly "by the way" manner, like you just needed someone to mention "hey maybe don't destroy the throne". The way Nuwa brought it up made it seem as if it would also be a difficult decision for the player character. For a while I thought it was trying to imply that the player character would also be erased in an act of self-sacrifice for what they believed would be a better world. But then it turns out it's about Aogami, the artificial demon the player has fused with to become a Nahobino. Only he would cease to exist. Unfortunately, the game did not really succeed in making me as attached to him as Yakumo was to Nuwa. Other than that there's not really any connection established with demons throughout the game, and the validity of demons' existence is not really a theme.

Given that the requirements for this route trivialized the final boss I suspected another one would show up at the end. And who else but Lucifer calls to you when you're about to attain the throne and basically invites you to... fight? I guess? SMT3 Maniax's hidden ending had an extra final boss battle against Lucifer so I guess this game needs one too. That's why I talked a bit about that in the last section; so we can do a quick comparison¹⁴. I know I said I'd be talking about the storytelling but I really want to comment on this more as it illustrates how this game tries but fails to do what previous games did.

Lucifer is not really a character throughout the game beyond being in the initial flashback where he says he has defeated YHVH. He is the mysterious voice you sometimes hear, but these moments are so short, infrequent, and spread out that they are barely relevant and mostly there to make things seem more ominous. And so his appearance here is much less interesting than the ending in SMT3, as it can only really be meaningful due to name recognition outside the work itself, eg. because Lucifer was a big deal in other titles. In the context of this story he is not a well established figure and his disapparance was not really a matter that came up that thoughout the game in a way that would make this a cool reveal.

I don't have much to say about the design of Lucifer's "true form" itself; I think it's mostly fine, but it does combine with all the other aspects of the fight to make for a much weaker moment than the SMT3 equivalent. Here Lucifer is not gigantic and imposing, but smaller than many bosses in the game. The setting of the battle initially feels in no way special. The stars he summons help make the fight more aesthetically unique but it takes a while for them to come in, delaying any impact. The music doesn't properly kick in until the second phase of the fight. While it's a good song, through the whole first phase, when you're probably being most careful and taking time to learn what the boss does, the soundtrack is mostly ambient noises with one of the game's common motifs showing up a little bit; making for a very boring experience overall¹⁵.

Throughout the fight Lucifer tells you what can be summed up as: by consuming YHVH's knowledge and attaining the throne Lucifer has achieved a new level of enlightenment about how the world works, and that demons come where humanity exists, and thus attempting to create a world without them would eventually result in the birth of a new Da'at and a new throne and so on. But by defeating him, he promises the player will be able to create a world free from this restriction.

This fight and the subsequent ending, which I'll discuss later, left me honestly dumbfounded. Just about every single aspect of it is trying to do something that either doesn't work on its own or doesn't fit with the game it's in. First set aside the fact that this fight implies Lucifer didn't know before defeating YHVH about the cycle of creation and destruction, which is odd in the context of "series lore," as all that stuff doesn't really matter.

Lucifer's discussion of the cycle is reminiscent of similar points in SMT3. Lucifer as an agent of chaos opposes this order being forced onto different worlds by the larger multiverse. In that game, that aspect is very well established. The cycle of creation is the whole premise of the game, and it's discussed more explicitly within the scenes required to get the ending which leads to the Lucifer fight. SMT3 ends with you going on to join the larger fight against the cycle as whole, not with the idea that you might have managed to detach your own personal world from it for no particular purpose or gain. It doesn't try to show us what freedom from that cycle actually is, which is actually a point in its favor, as it's an idea too abstract to be represented directly.

Here, Lucifer asks if we want to be freed from the cycle, but this is such an odd thing to put at the end of this game. This game is not about cycles in general or creation specifically. Much like Lucifer's presence here, this only makes sense as something for a player with preconceived ideas; be it due to experience of previous SMT games or one's Buddhist leanings. The game has barely brought up the cyclical nature of creation at the scale Lucifer is referring to. Very little of the narrative is dedicated to expressing cycles, it's only really a theme in the way it's a theme of literally everything if you squint hard enough. The closest thing to this discussion is Shiva's boss fight, which explains why it's required to unlock this, but that is so little.

The game does not establish this as a cycle of suffering, or of inherit triviality and meaningless that you would want to be freed from. The other interpretation is that Lucifer's suggestion here is closer to advice of a practical and entirely mechanical nature: "yo, what you're trying to do won't work because of the cyclical nature of existence forced on us by the great will, my dude", says Lucifer. "The demons will just show up again eventually. But chill, I'll help you out."

Nothing materially changes by defeating Lucifer. Which begs the question: why was Lucifer necessary for this ending exactly? We can only assume it was because Lucifer had the knowledge of the previous supreme god, but then, why did Lucifer need us to show up and defeat him? What was he doing in the other endings; did he just give up on trying to free this world and chilled in his alternate dimension?

This sort of triviality is not something I would care about if this fight was just a symbolic aspect of the larger story, but it isn't. If it's supposed to be symbolic, what does it stand for? Lucifer is not established as a stand-in for anything, he doesn't represent anything to the main character or the plot, he wants this break from the cycle. So what is he, that needs to be overcome for this ending to be achieved?

The real explanation for everything here seems to be just that they wanted a secret ending with Lucifer as an extra final boss, just like SMT3. So they concocted a haphazard mixture of keywords and concepts seen often in the series and in mythologies SMT bases itself on, and thought it was enough.

But why are demons?🔗

After what can only be deemed "the Lucifer intermission", we get back to what we were doing with the throne, say a final goodbye to Aogami and... the end. After the credits, we see the exact same world from the start of the game, with the characters who died revived and presumably leading normal lives. This isn't some worldwide moksha or nirvana, this isn't some form of liberation from recurring suffering, this isn't anything but the exact same world without demons.

Ultimately, it's also just the status quo. Nothing has materially changed, nothing with any meaning to anyone was achieved. We didn't create an entirely new world that could grow without demonic influences, but just got what we had again without even the implication that something is different or will change in the future; no sense that humans are better or worse off.

I was honestly surprised that even the fourth, secret ending turned out to go nowhere in the basically same way. Looking back, I think I shouldn't have been so surprised. This game lacks the sort of conceptual framework needed to represent something with its endings.

Megaten games tend to hold (in different ways and to different extents) the position that demons (and gods) are essentially an aspect of humanity, a reflection given form and power beyond that what humans generally have. This is most explicit in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse (SMT4A), where it's a major plot point, but also a foundational part of the Persona series, where mythological figures are depicted emanations of the human psyche¹⁶.

I was initially going to argue that SMT5 sees demons and gods existing a priori, and with that in mind I would argue it could have chosen to tell, for example, a story about how humans can be manipulated in ways they don't understand by the system they live in; but attempts to do what other SMT games did just left the work a mess.

But the more I think about it, the less that seems right to me. SMT5 doesn't see the demons as beings that exist in and of themselves, nor as existing to influence humanity, and not even as aspects of humanity. They don't cause humanity's problems in part or in general, they don't even represent evil per se. Despite references to demons being around essentially always, we have no picture of how they relate to the world in general in a "normal" state. Yet somehow the matter of how gods/demons organize is a major part of the route split, and their erasure is the secret ending.

That's because SMT5 simply sees demons as things that exist within its fiction. They have to exist, because it's an SMT game and they have demons. And thus an ending that removes demons is significant enough within the fiction. I guess if demons did exist that sort of ending might be significant enough to me, but I already come from a world made entirely by and for humans, so for someone like me first I need context: what do the demons mean? Sadly, to SMT5, the demons mean nothing.

Rebuttal to a potential rebuttal🔗

An apologist could read my comments and easily say that I'm missing the point, that inconsistencies I'm pointing out are intentional and or misinterpreted, that the positions in SMT games always have flaws and are contradictory, etc. etc.. But I would find that a disingenous position.

Narratively, all of the characters' positions are presented as real and valid. The positions are not framed as being really just the same, the characters act as if things are important, the endings. This is something the series is often praised for, putting different ideological positions on the same footing despite their inconsistencies. But this makes it untenable to say that the point is that all positions are bad. The framing is not that they are all bad, or that they each have their problems.

This isn't some work of irony, this isn't the game trying to push you towards questioning the structure and seeking the true neutral ending -- because that ending is just as bad and meaningless, though the game doesn't seem to think that is a problem. The aesthetics all tell you that this matters, that what happens matters the most in the whole world, but in the end no one has a real position, none of the decisions achieve anything for anyone (not that they really wanted to achieve anything), and even at a personal, character level nothing really happens.

Long-winded Conclusion🔗

SMT5 is a game that seems like it would be about change. About a stale world, with its foundational pillar removed, slowly crumbling, and the need to rebuild or to build anew. About people disagreeing about the way the world should be.

But in the end, it's a game about changing nothing. You can choose the way in which you prefer to change nothing, but changing something is not within the conceptual framework of the game, though in a way that's very different from how a similar description could be applied to other games in the series.

SMT1 is a game that achieves a lot with its simplicity and amount of dialogue. It suggests much through atmosphere and context, leaving the imagination to fill in the blanks. It's a game that you can dismiss for these reasons, that there simply is not enough meat there to really talk about unless you start adding things yourself. But SMT5 has somehow less to its core while having all the presentation of a modern large-scale RPG. It doesn't also get to have all the same free "fill in the blank" passes as a game properly made with that in mind in the early 90s.

As someone whose preferred Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey ending is Neutral, where nothing much really changes (there being only hope for change in the future) it's not as if I believe good stories require evident and impactful change. You can easily argue that said ending is simply maintaining a status quo that doesn't deal with underlying problems, but it's an ending framed against two options I considered inferior to maintaining things as they are, even if imperfect; and the route within the narrative was not framed as "changing nothing" but as "these other options are not good for humanity, let's work together and try harder with what we have". In SMT5, there is no single option that is like that, because none of them seek a different shape for the world, none of them even properly say what the shape of the world is.

SMT5 has no philosophies like the Reasons in SMT3, which while entirely abstract and condensed beyond the point of real-world usefulness as ideologies, are at least definable. They are something you can argue for and about in their own terms, and likewise can argue for their rejection. I cannot say Tsukuyomi's position that the world should be ruled by multiple gods is good or bad; because that's not something with any meaning for people in the real world, nor is it given any contextual meaning within the narrative.

SMT5 has the structure and aesthetics of games that are about change. But the writers don't seem to realize that on a meta level they are just fitting random blocks into a mold, a mold of what they think SMT games have, and what they need to have to seem cool. A hollow, putrid mold built entirely of their aesthetic preconceptions, without a shred of intentionality.

Going forward I'll probably continue to enjoy Atlus games. As I said at the very start, it was a very fun game. I've just been getting more and more cynical towards stories in Atlus games over the years, and it seems likely that I will eventually start giving the story in SMT games the same amount of thought and consideration I give to just any other generic RPG, which is a real shame.

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