
This will not be a full review as I got the game on launch date so I have only really played it over a little bit of time. I will talk about what I have noticed in the game; basically what I have liked and disliked about it thus far, but it won’t be as extensive as a full review is. I don’t personally like to do a full review until I beat the game for a few different reasons. This game is developed by Atlus and is exclusive to the Nintendo Switch. The game was originally announced alongside the showcase of the Nintendo Switch back in 2017 and now has finally came out after so many years. This game has been in development for a long time and a lot of people have been anticipating it. I have always had a strong respect for Atlus and their level of quality that they put into their games, and this one is pretty much no different.

The Good: There is a huge amount of greatness throughout.
The game starts you off at the end of a class in high school and you need to walk back to the dorm rooms. However, there are mysterious things happening that make it so you need to pair up with others. After about 20 minutes of talking and cutscenes you are transported to the area of Da’at which is basically the area where most of the game, from what I have played so far is located. There are many different demons that you can gather and join up with you and also fuse together to create better ones. There are main missions that help progress the story which is absolutely great so far. I think that the story for the first 10 hours is strong but I need to see more to really see how good the story is. The main characters are voice actors and all of the voice actors are really strong so I think that is all fantastic.
The story is very good so far, but the visuals and the battles in the game is absolutely stunning and addictive. I do have issues with something about the battles, but I will talk about that in the next section of the impressions article. Besides the battles, the scenery and visuals of the game inside the battles and also in the main world(s) are absolutely stunning and I personally love it. The battles are very fun and you want to keep going into them and doing more to level up your character. This game is an absolutely good adventure title, that has a lot of different side stories and collectables that can be found within the semi open world, but the main nuts and bolts is, it is a rock solid RPG with so many different elements that make the package really work well together. The way in which you have to build your party based on how you see fit, and also build your character based on how you want to play the game, is recipe for success through and through.

The Bad: There really is only 3 main issues I have had so far.
Honestly, there isn’t very much that I have seen to complain about with this game. The game overall is extremely hard even on the casual mode which is what I am playing on. I mean, I tried playing on Normal difficulty and I was dying very quickly in basic battles against normal demons. So I will say that you need to save very frequently in order to not lose a huge amount of progress, which gets annoying a little bit after a little bit of time. So that is one of the small downsides of the game for me personally, and I do like a challenge, but I do not like a challenge where one simple mistake will mean 20 minutes of collectable hunting and side missions are down the drain because of a regular battle. The only other thing that I will hurt the game of is a couple of times when in the overworld when I noticed small frame dips that only really lasted for a little bit when there was a lot of enemies around but most of the time the performance is very good but there are times that it gets hit a little bit.
The other small thing so far that I have noticed is the soundtrack. It definitely is still a good soundtrack, don’t get me wrong; however, this game doesn’t have an as memorable as some of the Atlus games that I have played including the Vanillaware titles 13 Sentinels, Odin Sphere, and also the Persona franchise including P4G, P5, P5R, and also P5S games. The soundtrack is fine so far, but honestly it doesn’t have the pop punk and soul feel of these games, probably because a lot of the time these SMT games have a different vibe and have different moods as a whole. Again, not saying that it’s a horrible soundtrack, but just nothing absolutely memorable right at this point.

Overall First Impressions: Rock solid with only a couple of faults.
Honestly, I love a lot of different Atlus developed and published games, including games in the Persona franchise and most of the titles from Vanillaware. This game is very dark, similar to Persona 4/5 but this game is not something that you should compare to it since SMT is more so about choosing a path that you want to. I am basically a newby to the SMT franchise, for the most part, as I only really played a very small part of SMT3. This game is an absolute fun time as an RPG that is a challenging experience, but at the same time as a rewarding one. I personally am really liking this game so far, and even though I only played 10 hours, it may be one of my top games of the year. There is multiple endings for the game, so I may do more than one playthrough; however, that will take a while since I believe this game is fairly long. For fans of RPGs and games that have a dark story, this game is an absolute blast so far and I think it will continue to be an amazing experience.
