Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army - Review
Go forth Raidou Kuzunoha XIV! It is up to you to use your devil summoning powers to protect the capital. Something is amiss and the Yatagarasu needs you to stop what is coming. Can you control these devils?
RAIDOU Remastered is a return to the Devil Summoner series from the JRPG masterminds at Atlus. A spin-off of the Shin Megami Tensei series, Devil Summoner seeks to take a more active approach to combat in a far more approachable and bite-sized adventure. As someone who didn’t truly engage with the SMT extended universe until around the release of Persona 4, I was not familiar with the original release of Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs the Soulless Army. The original releasing the same year as the PS3. So I can’t speak of the specific changes and improvements, but what I can speak to is the fresh experience I had with the entry and whether or not it merits a look.
Simply put, RAIDOU Remastered is a fully fleshed out JRPG that takes a more episodic approach to its storytelling. It uses the established Shin Megami universe of demons and abilities which feels welcomingly familiar, but instead of the tried-and-true turn-based style that people will be familiar with from Persona and SMT; RAIDOU uses a more action-based combat system. Reminiscent of the Tales Of series. As much as I love the turn-based combat of other Atlus titles it was wonderfully refreshing to use the demons in a way that feels fundamentally different to other titles from Atlus.
The basic premise of the combat comes down to fighting solo, with one demon, or as most people are likely to do, two demons at once. You have a MAG builder sword attack, and a strong attack that deals more damage but doesn’t build MAG. Rather than individually choosing your demons abilities, they’ll automatically use whatever spells they have (and typically will use their element advantages if possible) which uses your MAG bar up. Combat works in building your MAG up, stunning enemies and then whaling on them with heavy attacks in order to burst down their health. The combat is fairly simple, but that’s not a bad thing. There’s a strategy to what you are needing to do, and the more familiar you become with the game the more fluid combat ends up feeling. There is additional nuance here with Cooldown based skills, which you can bind 3 of at a time (and easily switch them up during combat) as well as the ability to confine an increasing number of demons at a time to give you more options in battle.
Confinement is similar to recruiting or capturing demons as would be familiar for fans of Persona or SMT. The major upside here is there is no talking minigame in which you have to convince demons to join you. There is a button mash bar to fill up when confining and occasionally the demons will have a question for you. A successful answer rewards you with healing, maxing out your MAG or Spirit bars, or stat increases for them. A failed answer just results in them ‘begrudgingly’ entering your demon tube. This makes recruiting far less stressful and engaging and gives you the ability to recruit liberally without fear of being hurt or having items taken from you in failed scenarios.
Demon fusion exists here too but isn’t quite as fleshed out as it is these days. You’ll fuse your demons and make stronger ones, but the game demands you to be using the most relevant demons to your level to continue to make the next tier of them. As a result, you’ll likely end up releasing a lot of demons who you don’t end up fusing, or reconfined in hopes of using them for fusion. The easiest way to look at it is the most recent 5 or 6 demons will be used to make up the next tier of 3 to 4, with lower-level demons becoming useless for fusion as you progress through the game. The major benefit in continuing to fuse your main demons is what they inherit upon successful fusion.
Each demon will build up loyalty as you participate in fights or through the world. When maxed out, they’ll gain a passive skill which can range from element resists, money or item find skills, stat boosts and even experience and loyalty boosts. When you fuse these max loyalty demons, you’ll be able to put their passive skills on the new demon, with each fusion adding more and more passives to the list when you max loyalty with them. The more loyalty you build too will increase your summoner rank, which in turn rewards you with more demon tubes, so you can have even more demons at your beck and call and to use in battle strategically. Lower-level demons loyalty builds quicker, becoming slower and slower to max as you get higher and higher.
The boss fights are both some of the strongest and weakest points in RAIDOU. Some of the bosses are really well designed, particularly the earlier ones which serve as light tutorials helping you understand the full mechanics of the combat system. There are however some bosses that are obnoxious damage sponges with unfun mechanics and lacklustre designs. When the boss fights are good, they feel great. When they’re middling, they feel starkly in contrast to the rest of the game and are a painful blemish on the rest of the solid gameplay. This poor design unfortunately becomes more apparent as you progress the game, the final stretch being somewhat bland in comparison to the earlier episodes. The majority of bosses are also just demons you’ll end up confining or fusing later in the game, which kind of diminishes their unique nature just a bit. It feels lazy in a game where everything else feels finely tuned.
RAIDOU’s story is told in a far less traditional JRPG style. Rather than the monthly cycles as seen in Persona, or the open world sections of SMT, RAIDOU uses an episodic formula. Each episode will have you working towards a particular goal, with the different episodes varying from being several hours’ worth of content, to being a quick jaunt through a mini dungeon of sorts a major boss fight and then onto the next. As you progress, you’ll find more ways to traverse around the growing map and side content areas you can visit and engage in. I found that this made RAIDOU feel pretty bite sized, and easy to pick up and put down for quick and snappy play sessions. There is an over-arching storyline that persists between chapters building to a major ending, but each chapter also exists independently with its own story beat the lends itself to the major one.
RAIDOU does a good job of blending your role as a protector of the Capital as well as being a Junior Detective tasked with working out what is going on for the people who request the help of the detective agency. For some reason some NPCs comment on you being a school aged person, which makes little sense, nor does it really have any relevance to the actual game, but it’s bizarre that there was a need to make another protagonist a student in some way. Atlus seems very reluctant to have a protagonist that isn’t a high school student in some way which is kind of odd. Just a small note, considering Raidou himself looks like an adult man.
Lastly the game itself looks and sounds great. The designs for the demons are familiar but feel different as well. Returning demons are iconic but feel like they are designed with the specific nature and location of the game in mind, and don’t have bizarre choices like Belphegor sitting on a giant toilet. There is a fair few demons here too that seem to have fallen out of favour, so its likely you’ll experience some that players of the newer Persona and SMT games may never have seen before, and it makes RAIDOU feel fresh as a result. While there isn’t any particular music tracks that really stand out, nothing feels like it doesn’t fit either. The sound design and music choices match the game well, without ever taking away from the true focus of the game. That being the story and the gameplay itself.
RAIDOU Remastered feels like a game that perfectly fits in the current landscape of JRPGs. A really strong combat system enhanced with familiar parts of the SMT and Persona-verses while doing enough to have its own identity. The boss fights themselves are a little disappointing but never problematic enough that it makes you want to stop playing. The story is strong and flows incredibly well. The episodic formula allows for multiple storybeats to be told while not taking away from the major overarching one. A bite-sized twentyish hour experience, RAIDOU Remastered won’t have you feeling exhausted by the end of it.
The Score
9.0
Review code provided by Atlus
The Pros
Great combat mechanics and approachable system
Plenty of demons to use and develop
Loyalty system encourages you to keep using demons instead of just using them as fusion bait
The Cons
No stand-out music tracks
Boss fights are kind of lacklustre
Late Game Demons take too long to max loyalty
