I put upwards of 80 hours into Shin Megami Tensei V to 100% it when it came out back in 2021, and you know what? I’m going to do it again. That’s because its re-release, Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, is adding a whole lot more than just quality-of-life improvements and a few gameplay additions. It’s one thing to hear Atlus boast about how much it has changed SMT V for the new Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC re-release, which key developers detailed in an interview I did a while back. But having now played about two hours of a preview demo that focused on the new content, I’ve seen for myself how Vengeance is building towards something much larger than the original game.
Atlus has established a fairly consistent pattern of putting out definitive versions of previously released games with notable tweaks and extra content, sometimes changing the course of their main stories as well. While this year’s Persona 3 Reload was more of a remake, games like Persona 5 Royal, Catherine: Full Body, and SMT: Strange Journey Redux are a few examples of that particular strategy. I get that this can rub folks the wrong way, but I find it exciting to see a game I enjoyed go in new directions to expand on a creative vision. It seems Vengeance is affording SMT V that opportunity, and in some respects, this might be more significant than Atlus’ other “director’s cuts” of its games.
As the game’s subtitle would indicate, the main narrative theme behind the new storyline is about revenge. It flips an existing plot thread from SMT V, weaving it into the story to be much more prominent, and introduces new characters–allies and villains alike–to be the anchors for that theme. Vengeance sows the seeds early on in the game–though much of the game’s first half will be quite similar to the original, it incorporates a few twists to fit the extra characters and new story events to set up its branching path.
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Source: Gamespot