This is a series that has been overshadowed in recent times by a good-but-not-as-good spin-off that has way too much watching cutscenes and nowhere near enough actual “playing the game”. I will review this without comparing it to that other series, because it’s not needed. This is the main series. The existence of an inferior spin-off isn’t particularly important in this case.

SMT is one of those series that is consistently great, and I was hyped as hell when this was announced for Switch… in 2017. Yeah it took a while from announcement to release. Not quite the fifth installment in the series (since Strange Journey is also a mainline SMT game, and SMT4: Apocalypse is a sequel to 4 of course, and also there’s if… and NINE), it’s a series that has always had more of a focus on gameplay and team construction than the story, which is always a little bit barebones on the surface.

Let’s see if the wait for this game was worth it!