Shin Megami Tensei V was developed using Unreal Engine 4 after Atlus accepted an offer to do so from Epic Games' Japanese division, marking the first time Atlus developed a game using an outsourced third-party engine. According to series planner Kazuyuki Yamai, the engine's processing speed expedited longer asset conversions into the game overworld that were a burden with in-house development tools and sometimes forced long work nights. This allowed more time for "trial-and-error" game design, as well as more time to become familiar with the engine and the Nintendo Switch hardware.