SMTV Vengeance director says battles are meant to be “engaging,” not just “difficult for difficulty’s sake”

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengance is a massively expanded version of the original SMTV with a brand-new storyline featuring new locations, demons, and choices to make that will dictate the fate of all existence. It also packs the same challenge that the original outing did, which means players shouldn’t expect a walk through the park.

While the SMT games aren’t the most difficult out there, they certainly ask a decent amount from the player. That’s because the dev team wanted players to get something out of the experience, rather than breeze through. That doesn’t mean serious thought didn’t go into the game’s challenge, though.

In an interview with GamesRadar, SMTV director Shigeo Komori spoke up on the team’s goals of creating an adventure that gives players a run for their money, but also does so with a very measured approach.

“Based on all of our experience developing RPGs, we believe that battles are supposed to be an obstacle that players need to figure out the solution to. They shouldn’t be designed in such a way that it’s possible to win by simply pushing buttons without thinking much. That might be why the series ended up being associated so strongly with high difficulty.

Even for Vengeance, we wanted battles to have depth and to require players to think in order to prevail. Our intent was never to make things difficult for difficulty’s sake, but to design combat to be engaging, so we hope we’ve properly adjusted the balance to achieve that.

[Shin Megami Tensei V director Shigeo Komori]