Summary

• Playing SMT 5 in punishing weather at Download Festival felt fitting, reflecting the series' reputation for difficulty.
• Vengeance adds depth to the storyline and improves graphics and gameplay, revitalizing SMT 5 and making it worth playing again.
• I left Download Festival very wet and muddy.

Download Festival took place this past weekend at Donnington Park. While much of it was as you’d expect: amazing music, great vibes, plenty of rain and mud, and the realisation you’re not as cut out for camping as you first thought, there was also something new to look forward to. Sega and Atlus collaborated with the event to invite festival goers to play 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance at launch.

Playing SMT 5 while completely soaked through from rain and covered in mud while lightning hit the sky and thunder rumbled above felt entirely fitting. The series has long been thought of as punishing, especially when compared to the likes of Persona,ܫ so playing it in equally punishing weather was rather appropriate. My first party wipe was because I was obliterated by the large penis demon in a chariot, Mara. After I wiped the rain from my face, I loaded up my save again and thought ‘Yeah, this is definitely right for SMT’.

The Vengeance booths were tucked away in styled-out shipping containers, so we were covered from most of the weathe൲r. Sega wasn’t mean enough to make us play out in the deluge. However, I was so soaked that my hair was just dripping wet all over my face the entire time I played.

I felt particularly nostalgic at Download since most of the bands playing were ones I listened to during my teenage years (and still do to this day, to be fair), such as Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy, The Offspring, and Sum 41. This was the music I listened to as I found confidence in my own sense of self and personality. Considering these were also the days of my PS2 fangirl era, it was doubly fitting that Shin Megami Tense𒀰i joined this lineup as I still have my well-worn copy of Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga from this time.

The above photos are courtesy of Sega/Atlus.

It wasn't just festival guests checking out Vengeance either, some bands turned up too! While I was there, Wheatus came to have a crack at it!

Having played SMT 5 in its original Nintendo Switch form, it was all too💮 easy to see the improvements made in Vengeance. At Download, I played on PlayStation 5, so the difference in graphical fidelity and how gorgeous everything looked was immediately noticeable, and gameplay as a whole felt more fluid and sleek.

Quality of life improvements, especially being able to save wherever you want, was a godsend to help take some of the edge off the difficulty, and it was much appreciated as I certainly still died a fair few times. It feels like Sega and Atlus worked to improve on nearly every aspect of the original SMT 5, something that Deputy ꧂Executive Editor Ryan Bamsey explains in more detail in his review, which gave Vengea𒐪nce 4.5/5 stars.

At Download, we were thrown into a part of the new Vengeance storyline, chasing down the Qadistu and trying to discover why people were being turned into salt. Seeing the side characters take on larger, more developed roles and actively chatting more made the whole experience feel 🐼fuller. The original version made me feel isolated, and when you spend much of your time running around in a post-apocalyptic ruined world, the loneliness and emptiness caღn feel overbearing. While graphics aren’t always important, I felt less compelled to explore the largely muddy brown world of Da’at on the grainier Switch resolution, especially with the clunkier gameplay.

Much like Ryan, I never completed SMT 5. While I always anticipate this series to be harder to play through from a difficulty perspective, the storyline and environment just didn’t capture my attention well enough to overcome the rinse and repeat of the ‘Oh, I’ve died again&r🧔squo; feeling and my enthusiasm fizzled out long be﷽fore I finished it.

If, for whatever reason, you missed out on SMT 5 or didn’t gel with it much, Vengeance is the𒀰 perfect time to give it a chance. It goes beyond just giving the game a new lease of life, it feels like Vengeance adds that spark of life that SMT 5 was missing. Even if you already played the original, Vengeance not only improves upon it technically with cleaner graphics and smoother gameplay, but the added story and companion content make it worth playing all over again. It’s time to head back to Da’at, and at least you can do it while not being completely damp and cold.