Will Shin Megami Tensei V Make Up For Persona 5’s Absence On Switch?
Fans hoping for a Persona 5 Switch release are getting Shin Megami Tensei V instead. The game’s history shows it could be an equal counterpart.
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Fans have long hoped Atlus would release Persona 5 on Nintendo Switch. Even though the company tends to launch certain game series only on specific consoles, fans thought the hype around Persona 5 would make for an exception. More than four years after its initial worldwide release, Persona 5 still has not been announced for Switch, but Atlus’ Shin Megami Tensei V has – perhaps in part to make up for the Switch’s lack of P5. If true, can SMT 5 live up to Persona 5’s quality and hype?
The announcement of Joker as one of the first DLC fighters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate in 2019 fed suspicions that Persona 5 was on the way to Switch, especially with the launch of the updated Persona 5 Royale coming to PS4 worldwide in March 2020. Instead, Joker’s Smash debut was followed up with an announcement for a completely different game: Persona 5 Strikers, a musou spin-off with a separate story. Persona 5 Strikers earned positive reviews upon its February 2020 release, but it’s not a substitute for Persona 5 Royal.
Atlus has now released two games, Persona 5 Strikers and Catherine: Full Body, on both Switch and PS4, which has sparked hope it could be changing its usual pattern. Then again, neither P5S nor Catherine: Full Body is a mainline entry in Atlus’ flagship series. Many think of Persona as Atlus’ primary RPG franchise, but it has one other, which gets more attention outside the U.S.: Shin Megami Tensei. To some fans hoping for a Persona 5 release on Switch, Shin Megami Tensei V may feel like a consolation prize. But it appears all the detail and care of a mainline Atlus game are being put into SMT 5, so it could be just as good.
How Shin Megami Tensei’s History Connects to Persona’s
As Persona is a spin-off series of the SMT franchise, there are deep gameplay and thematic ties between the two. Shin Megami Tensei V gameplay footage so far has already shown many of these similarities; both games star a misfit high school student in Tokyo who accesses an alternative version of the city, in which he gains powers. Both are turn-based JPRGs. The “demons” of Shin Megami Tensei V are the same as the “personas” of Persona 5. P5’s Jack Frost, for example, is seen in an SMT 5 trailer as “Fairy Jack Frost.” In both games, demons and personas begin as foes but can be recruited as allies through negotiation.
That said, the tone and subject matter of the two series are quite different. Shin Megami Tensei deals with protagonists fighting to survive epic conflicts between gods and demons. Persona is much more about people’s inner selves, focusing on psychological themes like perception, relationships, and trauma. In Shin Megami Tensei V, the world is changed for good, and the protagonist is made permanently godlike to cope. Because Persona is about psychology, its characters are only transformed when they enter spaces warped by someone’s perceptions. They are then free to return to their normal lives.
Shin Megami Tensei V will share major elements with Persona 5, but it will have its own distinct flavor. In general, Shin Megami Tensei is a more serious series, whereas Persona is peppered with comedy and has a “pop” aesthetic. It is perhaps best not to think of Shin Megami Tensei V as a consolation prize for the Switch, but rather the Switch’s complete counterpart to Persona 5.
Link Source : https://screenrant.com/shin-megami-tensei-v-persona-5-nintendo-switch/