Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance | Yoko Hiromine

While we here at Operation Rainfall love covering the latest in gaming news and sharing our reviews of titles new and classic, we also just enjoy playing games in our downtime. So with that, sit back, relax, and check out what the oprainfall gaming crew have been up to this week!


This week in gaming I’ve spread myself a little thin, but I made a ton of progress. First up I finished up my review of Genso Wanderer -FORESIGHT-. I love this franchise, and I was very happy got this review done. I should go live on the site in the next few days.


Sisters: Last Day of Summer from JAST is the second title I’m working on. I’m just about finished with this very interesting mystery title, and I’m very curious to see how all this turns out. This is a unique visual novel in that it is fully animated, and honestly it looks great. I’m hoping to have this review out by the end of this week or the first of next.

Finally I got started on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance. The new story is very interesting so far and I’m glad they let me carry over some of the demons from my run in the vanilla game. I had to get my Alice out of the compendium first thing of course. I will be doing a review for this as well, but it will probably take a me bit to get this one ready to go. – Steve


Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance | Yoko Hiromine

I also got started on Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance this past weekend. Now, I wasn’t sure I was going to start it at launch. I pre-ordered the game for Switch but I figured I’d either get further and try to finish Persona 3 Reload first, or I’d go back to the vanilla SMT V and work on my existing path which I never finished. Ultimately, I ran a poll on my Twitter (X) account and no one voted that I go back to my vanilla path and the majority of people who voted, said I should just enjoy Vengeance at launch. Thus, despite my plans to backlog it, I ended up starting Vengeance after all.

I’m finding lately I have this weird need for significantly challenging RPGs. Ever since I played Xenoblade Chronicles 3 a couple years ago, which was way too easy in comparison to prior entries, I worry about my RPGs being too easy to breeze through. I mean they’re already super long games, but I find I’m pretty worried about the experience ending too quickly and not having time to truly be absorbed in the game and enjoy my time with it. It’s a bit of an irrational complex lately. I bring this up because both Persona 3 Reload and SMT V: Vengeance so far, seem way too easy in comparison to their prior releases. I decided to play P3R on hard because I heard it was much easier than before and I always played Persona 3 on normal. I’m playing Vengeance on normal because I didn’t actually expect Vengeance would be so much easier than the original. I just feel like I’m breezing through this first Da’at area too easily and the demons haven’t been that much of a challenge at all. I know they rebalanced the game, but it’s still Shin Megami Tensei. It’s not like I want my games to be impossible either, I’m quite lazy when it comes to grinding. Still, I’ve got this weird complex recently and I feel like I should’ve played P3R on merciless and gone with hard for Vengeance.

Shin Megami Tensei V: Vegeance | New Gameplay Feature

So far in SMT5V I’ve gotten up to the save right before Tokyo Tower, but I haven’t yet grinded enough for the boss. I’m now doing quests in the area and trying to level up a bit more on the latest demons by the Tokyo Tower save point. I’m mostly enjoying the changes to the game. I really like the little area to converse with your demons, mainly because you get to talk to Aogami more. It’s no longer just him advising you on what to do while you’re out in the field. I think my only big complaints are the seemingly significant difficulty drop, like I said before and also I feel like this is yet another re-released game that has had the sound levels thrown out of whack. I got it on Switch because I wanted a physical copy, which the PS4 version lacks, so I’m stuck playing without earbuds to enjoy it docked. I don’t yet own a wireless pair of earbuds, though I’m now considering buying a budget pair soon since I do so much docked Switch gaming now days. My biggest gaming pet peeve is wonky sound levels and it feels majorly out of whack in Vengeance. My old TV equalizer settings I used for the vanilla version didn’t work and I’ve had to do things a bit differently with the in game sliders. Plus, I’ve had to turn my TV up even louder than last time as well. I really wish these devs and/or publishers would stop messing up the sound levels when they re-release games. It drives me up a wall fiddling with equalizers and sliders and whatnot, plus having to constantly change my TV volume at different parts of the game. – Jenae

What games have you been playing this week? Let us know in the comments!

You can read previous Week in Gaming entries here!

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