I love Atlus’ JRPGs but most of the time, faced with the prospect of actually playing them, I flake out. I loved Persona 3 Reload and Metaphor ReFantazio, and Persona 5 is a modern classic for good reason, but in my opinion none can hold a candle to Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance. Why? Because the latter is a no-bullshit turn-based creature-collecting JRPG with absolutely unrivalled vibes and the bare minimum of character dialogue. You don’t watch it and occasionally press X—you play it.
I recommend SMT 5 to everyone, even if they don’t care about Atlus games or JRPGs. It was my favourite game of 2024. I played it on desktop but I can imagine it being an absolutely sublime Steam Deck game. There are two campaigns, and while they’re admittedly not hugely different, each offers dozens of hours of the best strategic turn-based combat this side of Persona, only you don’t need to sit through 100 hours of cutscene and dialogue every game session.
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- Diablo 4
- Shim Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance
- Crysis 3 Remastered
- Heroes of Hammerwatch 2
- Nordhold
- Rogue Waters
- Cubic Odyssey
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I haven’t played all of those but Crysis 3 and Heroes of Hammerwatch 2 are meant to be really good. Honestly though, the price is worth it for SMT 5 alone.
If you don’t trust me for some reason, Kerry Brunskill’s 91 / 100 review may be convincing: “This is an essential RPG,” they wrote.
