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Changes to Shin Megami Tensei 5’s battle gameplay based on the trailers

SMT V has many trailers in Japanese, but we know how to translate them into English.

Based on what we’ve seen in the battles, there are many changes to the battle system compared to older SMT titles!

• There are no more Gun type attacks.
  
  
• The game uses the affinity system found in Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse.
  • Basically, each demon in the game has innate affinities to all elements, which will reduce or increase the amount of MP it costs depending on if the demon has a positive or negative affinity to the element, respectively.
    
    
• Medium damage spells, such as Agilao, Bufula, Zionga, and Zanma cost 20 MP. From the trailers, if a demon has an affinity of: +1 then they cost 18 MP (-10% cost), +4 costs 16 MP (-20% cost), and +5 costs 15 MP (-25% cost). There may be more in-between values but they have not been revealed yet.
  • There are also elemental Breath attacks, which are multi-target spells, +2 costing 21 MP and +4 costing 20 MP. 
• The opposite affinity increases the cost. Jack Frost using Maragi -5 costs 20 MP instead of 15 MP that it normally costs.
  
  
• Buffs and debuffs are now timed to last only a certain amount of turns. It may be possible that higher tiered buffs/debuffs could last for more turns, but that is unknown right now, and it is most likely that they only last 3 turns.
• Although buffs and debuffs are now timed, they still exist as “stages” from the description of the skills (meaning you’ll be able to buff or debuff multiple times). But how would buffing/debuffing multiple times work when they are also timed as well? It’s most likely that applying the buff/debuff a second time resets the timer, otherwise having a timer on each individual buff/debuff stage would be awkward, but it’s currently unknown right now. 
• Buffs and debuffs only target one enemy now. You will need “Ma-” type buffs to target multiple allies/enemies.
  • For example, Tarukaja presumably only targets on of your party members and only lasts a certain amount of turns, likely 3 turns.
    
    
• There are multi-target tier buff and debuff spells such as Matarukaja, which would buff all of your party members for a certain duration.
  • You can see from this example that the buff/debuff system is already very similar to that seen in the Persona franchise.
    
    
• There is a higher-tiered Charge spell, which would likely be translated into the name “Piercing Spirit”.
  • The regular Charge skill would make your next physical attack deal 2.5x damage and we’ve seen it in older SMT games.
  • The new Piercing Spirit move would now do the same effect and also apply a Pierce effect to the next attack.
  • Now be careful, Pierce in this context is not “stabbing” attacks found in Persona, Pierce in this context means to remove any resistance/absorb/repel to the physical element that the enemy has.

  • It For example, Futsunushi used this new Piercing Spirit spell to use a physical attack on Fafnir who normally reflects physical attacks, and since the move pierces it goes right through Fafnir’s physical reflect ability.

  • In very old SMT games (Nocturne and older), Piercing skills would not Pierce through reflect but would Pierce anything else. However, since SMT4A onwards, Pierce can bypass reflect as well, and it’s confirmed that in SMT5 Pierce bypasses reflect since it bypasses Fafnir’s reflect physical.

  • Piercing Spirit also is not a unique skill for Futsunushi.

• Futsunushi used Catastrophe, a severe physical element attack on a single target.
  
  
• There are more severe-level skills in the game, which use the –barion suffix.
  • For example, the multi-target severe Expel skill is Mahamabarion, and it instant kill effect depends on if the enemy is weak to it.
  • Fionn Maccool had Bufubarion and Agibarion, which are new names for Trisagion and Ice Age and are confirmed to be non-unique skills that can be transferred to different demons.
    
    
• In general, MP costs are significantly increased for skills compared to SMT4A, which already had increased skill MP cost.
  • Sraosha used Mediarahan +3 and it had cost 112 MP. Megidolaon +2 had cost 104 MP.
    
    
• Physical skills cost MP, not HP, though this has been the case in a few games in the series for a while.
  
  
• There are collectible orbs on the map that allow you to restore small portions of MP for you and your team.
  
  
• With Horus’s trailer, we found out there are now Strength-based attacks that are also elemental.
  • For example, Horus’s White Dragon Strike does Medium Strength-based Light elemental damage with a chance to instantly kill the enemy if Light is their weakness. It’s speculated these will scale with your Strength stat.
    
    

• There are also skills that let you cast concentrate on allies, not just for yourself. Horus’s Magic Donam Skill lets you concentrate an ally, which increases their magical damage.

• Reflection spells, such as Tetrakarn or Makarakarn, now only apply for 1 of your characters for each cast of the spell, rather than protecting your entire party at once.
  
  
• Leveling up the main character will let you increase his stats; however, a portion of which stats increase are randomly chosen.
  • From one of the trailers, 3 of the 4 stat increases are already randomly chosen, and you are only able to choose 1 of your stats to increase. Seems depressing because you can’t make physical or magic-based builds anymore…