SMTV Beginner’s Guide – Polygon

Shin Megami Tensei 5 returns us to the world of the Megami Tensei series (including Persona spin-offs). SMTV combines elements of previous games in the series along with the introduction of completely new concepts.

In this Shin Megami Tensei 5 beginner’s guide, we’ll help you through your first few hours with the things we wish we understood earlier. We’ll help you understand the fast travel, savings, and various game provider mechanics you’ll find in Leyline Founts, explain how combat works, and talk a bit about Essences and Demon Fusion.

A lot is happening at Leyline Founts

No, seriously: there is a lot going on at Leyline Founts. It’s where you fast travel, go shopping, deliver Miman and Relics, heal your party, learn new miracles, perform Demon Fusions, etc. As we said, there is much going.

The available options expand quickly during the first few visits. They include:

• Chronicle facts. This is how you save.
• Ley line crossing. This allows you to quickly travel between Ley line sources that you have previously visited.
• Corpse hollow. Gustave’s shop, where you can buy and sell consumable items. Here you will also sell relics and receive rewards for finding Miman.
• Shadow world. Sophia’s Kingdom, where you learn miracles (permanent and passive enhancements), administer essences (a way to learn new abilities and resistances), and perform Demon fusions. More on this below.
• Recovery. Pay money (Macca) to restore the HP and MP of your group.

Don’t forget to save at Leyline Founts

Ley line fonts are your only save points. With everything you do there, it’s easy to forget to save: “Chronicles of events” as the game calls it. If your protagonist falls in battle, you will fall back to your last save, so you can lose a lot of progress. With save points so few and far between, it’s important to save whenever you can.

Don’t get distracted by everything else. We get very distracted so we make a habit of saving first and then saving again once we’re done at the Source of the Ley line, just to be safe.

Save some money (Macca) for the healing

the Recovery The option in a Ley Line Source completely heals the health and magic reserves (HP and MP) of a party member, but costs them cash. For characters below level 10, you are looking at around 75 Macca or less each.

As tempting as it is to spend the money on consumables and healing potions (Medicine), the Recovery option at a Ley Line Source also fully restores a character’s magic, something that no early game item does.

Save more Macca for hiring

Your protagonist is not alone in his fight against demons. You will complete your group with up to three other demons by recruiting them.

Recruiting can be as easy as speaking to them kindly or as difficult as spending large amounts of Macca, HP, and items. It’s almost always worth it though, because more allies make fighting easier. And those new allies will have new Attacks and Skills, which is important because …

Combat consists of exploiting weaknesses and obtaining free turns.

For each round of combat, each side in a fight has a number of Press turn icons – Basically, the number of actions that group can perform per round.

Image: Atlus / Sega via Polygon

Each enemy demon has a number of weaknesses and resistances to types (Affinities) of attacks and abilities. These are shown as icons below the damage types. Each enemy has a line (No change), exclamation point (Weak), armor (Immune), or half shield (Resistant to confused fight, Fire, Ice, Electric, Strength, Light, and Dark Damage affinities.

When you perform an attack for which the target is weak, such as the Agi (Fire) Skill in the image above, the attack does not consume a press turn icon.

This means that you can get a free action once per party member per combat round. Ideally, you will chain a series of attacks from each party member that exploits weaknesses so that everyone in your party goes at least twice per combat round.

Importantly, the same mechanic applies to enemy demons, so if they exploit your party’s weaknesses, they will also receive additional attacks. If you are fighting a weakness to a specific attack or enemy, you will need to use Essence.

Essences are essential

Along the Shin Megami Tensei 5, you will be collecting Essences. (In fact, you’ll probably pick up one or two before you can do anything with them.) Essences are like a distilled version of a demon’s attacks, abilities, weaknesses, and resistances.

Image: Atlus / Sega via Polygon

Within the Shadow World on a found Ley Line, you can make use of these Essences through Essence fusion. With this, you will be able to teach yourself and the demons in your group new Skills and Attacks with new Affinities.

You can also use Essence Fusion to transfer Weaknesses and Resistances from the Essence demon to your protagonist. This is a great help when you are facing enemies with strong elemental attacks (Affinity) that you are weak to.

Don’t get too attached to your demons

All that said, your demons are disposable. They will fall in battle, or maybe you will find better ones as you go. These are not members of your party, but tools that provide additional attacks.

Feel free to change them.

More importantly, the Shadow World also allows you to perform Demonic fusion. This takes two of your recruited demons (or a demon from your Demon Compendium) and combines them into a new type of demon, usually of a (much) higher level.

This is a great way to win powerful allies. It’s even worth constantly recruiting low-level demons just to use as Fusion fodder.