4 Things You Need to Know Before Starting Shin Megami Tensei V

Shin Megami Tensei V is the latest entry in Atlus’s popular turn-based JRPG series, and it’s also a pretty good entry point for newcomers. It’s definitely the best-looking game in the series, it runs great on the Switch, and the story is pretty easy to follow. Here are a few things you should know before starting your strange journey in Shin Megami Tensei V.

Temper Your Expectations

Things You Need to Know Before Starting Shin Megami Tensei V

If you’re coming from the Persona games and want to check out the SMT series to see where it all began, it’s best to keep your expectations in check and know what you’re getting yourself into. Persona may be an off-shoot of Shin Megami Tensei, but the two series are nothing alike at this point.

Whereas Persona is all about building bonds and friendships with characters and party members, SMT is more interested in world ideologies and philosophy. The characters you encounter in Shin Megami Tensei V are nothing more than driving forces and representations of the various ideologies the game wants to explore, so don’t go in expecting deep character development or social links and confidant ranks.

What you can expect, however, is a punishing combat system that turns things up to 11 right from the very start.

Get Used to Your Demon Party

Things You Need to Know Before Starting Shin Megami Tensei V

Unlike most other JRPGs where you’d usually form a party with other NPCs that you get to know over the course of the game, Shin Megami Tensei V groups you up with three other demons that you can swap in and out at any time.

Demons come with plenty of strengths and weaknesses, and you can get new ones by either recruiting them in battle, or by fusing them. One thing you’ll need to learn is that it’s not wise to get attached to any of your demons, especially in the early hours of the game.

Get used to swapping them out constantly; you’ll always find better demons that will serve you well in later fights and challenges.

Don’t Let the Nahobino Die

Things You Need to Know Before Starting Shin Megami Tensei V

One big thing you need to know is that if the Nahobino falls in battle, it’s game over. And in addition to that, if you get a game over, you’re sent back to your last save file. There are no checkpoints in this game, so you need to save often.

While it’s pretty rare for enemies to just target the Nahobino, it does happen. There will be instances where you find yourself unprepared for a fight against a new foe and they just so happen to hit the Nahobino’s weakness, giving them more turns and opportunities to fling more attacks at you.

Before you know it, things have completely spiraled out of control and the main character gets wiped out.

To get around this, make sure you save your game whenever you can, and make use of the Essence Fusion feature to cover the Nahobino’s weaknesses.

Your Choices Do Matter

Things You Need to Know Before Starting Shin Megami Tensei V

Every so often, you’ll be prompted to choose a response in a conversation with other NPCs. These usually seem pretty trivial and inconsequential, but almost every decision you make in this game will affect the ending that you get.

If you’re planning on going for a specific ending (Law, Chaos, Neutral), we definitely recommend choosing your answers wisely instead of just going with whatever you feel is right in that moment. No single path is meant to be the ‘right’ or canon path, and you’ll be presented with moral quandaries whichever way you decide, so just choose a path and commit to it.

Be sure to search for Twinfinite for more tips and information on Shin Megami Tensei V.