I found the time limit for buffs and debuffs a bit annoying, but it's nice that you only need to cast them twice to get the full effect. It also helps that fewer enemies can use Dekunda and/or Dekaja than in III, where it was harder to find demons with that skill. On the other hand, I didn't like the nerf to Charge and Concentrate, since they should do at least double damage in order to be worthwhile.
I also liked the fifth game's outdoor areas more than the third game's dungeons, since there's more of a chance to explore.
I mostly agree about the story. That said, while it's fairly jarring to have Dazai suddenly reach an epiphany and change his appearance in a single monologue, he got a bit of relatively subtle Character Development over the course of the game, showing him gradually getting closer with Abdiel and struggling with his self-confidence. He's not necessarily a great character, but it's interesting to see what he represents- a Law type character who puts his faith in authority figures and chooses a world without free will because he has so little faith in himself. Of course, I liked the alignment reps from III more, especially how each one ends up betraying their own Reason in some way, although they could have been fleshed out more.
Overall, your review is fairly good, but it would probably have been better with a stronger introduction and conclusion. I realize that you're close to the character limit, but maybe you could trim it down a little.
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Top tier gameplay, trash story
I think the quote of Fither regarding SMT IV Apocalypse sums up V even better than it did IVA. "This isn't MY Shin Megami Tensei, but I wish my Shin Megami Tensei played like this".
The gameplay in this series is the best it's ever been in mainline SMT, and I don't think saying it's the best gameplay in any Megaten game period is that outlandish a claim. By far the most impactful change is Essence Fusion. No longer is near-infinite customizability purely the domain of the MC. Now you can slap whatever skills you please on any demon at any time. Also worthy of note is the fact that buffs have been heavily nerfed in this game. Buffs disappear after 3 turns and need to be continuously reapplied, as well as primarily single target buffs being available in the early game. Additionally, charge/concentrate now only increases the damage of your next attack by 1.5x instead of 2.5x. So for the first time, it's not the case that the best strategy in every boss fight is "Bottom out the boss's stats. Max out your stats. And go to town on it with your strongest power charge-amped attacks." I also appreciate the increased focus on exploration. Exploration in this game provides two extremely important modes of progression. The first is Glory which are similar to app points in SMT IV but unlike in IV where your app points become less and less useful as the game goes on, you need all the glory you can get in SMT V right up until the end of the game. The second is finding the aforementioned essences scattered around the map. You can get them from Demons but it's extremely unreliable. You're mostly going to be finding them in various gold crystals found throughout the Netherworld.
Now onto the story, which I have significantly less praise for. Let me be clear though: though I HATE this game's plot, I've still replayed SMT V more than SMT IV. The gameplay is THAT good. Probably the best place to start would be the characters. Tao is serviceable enough for what she is if a bit bland. Miyazu is a complete non-entity even though the trailers made her seem like she would be important. She's literally in the game for all of 20 minutes outside of side quests. Yuzuru, the game's chaos rep, isn't much better. I literally couldn't have told you what his motivation was for becoming the chaos rep until I looked it up on the wiki. Probably the most fleshed out characters are Dazai and Yakumo, the game's law and neutral reps respectively. Both of their modus operandi in seeking the throne are completely understandable unlike Yuzuru, though Dazai undergoes some extremely rapid "character development" in the final area that comes off as jarring, and is actually my entry for this game on the Dethroning Moment of Suck page. However, one thing I have to give this game credit for: while its characters are bland at least it didn't recycle the same tired archetypes for the law, chaos, and neutral reps from SMT I the way IV and Strange Journey did.