RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Review

RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, f.k.a. Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, a sub-series of the long running Shin Megami Tensei franchise, stars Raidou Kuzunoha, a master detective of the supernatural working for Shohei Narumi at the Narumi Detective Agency. One day, a mysterious client, Kaya Daidōji, arrives at the agency with a special case to solve: to kill her. After she leaves the agency, she’s kidnapped by soldiers wearing red capes. Narumi, Raidou and his faithful companion Gouto make it their mission to find and rescue Kaya.

RAIDOU Remastered is a a JRPG with a twist. Unlike most games in the SMT franchise, The Mystery of the Soulless Army is an action RPG instead of a traditional turn based RPG. Raidou can use regular and strong attacks, fire his gun, jump, double jump, dodge and block during battles. One familiar trait that is a staple of the franchise is demon summoning. Demons act as your party members; you can summon up to two at once to aid you in battle. Demons can be acquired by capturing them during battle or by fusioning owned demons at the Goumaden. If you do a fusion during a Full Moon, you risk the chance of a fusion accident; and it’s a toss up. It can end up being a weaker demon than your current roster or be lucky and earn a high level demon; you can’t capture or normally fusion a demon that’s higher level than Raidou except via accident. As you earn demons’ loyalty, you’ll earn more slots to more demons.

One of the changes surrounds Raidou. In the original version, he could use elemental bullets with his gun, but this time around ATLUS gave our protagonist his own magic/physical skills. They can be used by holding RT and pressing A, X or Y (as B is to dodge). You can assign Elec, Wind, Ice, Fire or a physical skill to one of the buttons. Each skill need a cooldown period before re-using them.

They also added two new special skills in his skillset. If you dodge with perfect timing, X+A will appear on screen; pressing it at the right time will have Raidou perform Devil’s Bane. A special skill that will hit the targeted enemy (and barely tickle the enemy unless they have a sliver of health left). There’s also Spirit Slash. The meter can be charged up in various different ways such as commanding a demon or landing a Devil’s Bane. Once the meter is full, you’ll be able to trigger it by pressing Y+B. This will launch a screen wide attack that will damage every enemy and negate any elemental resistances.

During battles, Raidou can summon two demons to fight alongside him to provide additional attacks, healing and buffs/debuffs. The biggest way this RPG differs from others is how the magic meter, referred to MAG, is handled. Both demons feed off the MAG meter in order to use their magical skills. In order to keep things afloat, Raidou needs to constantly use weak attacks on enemies to constantly refill the MAG meter so the demons can continously use their magic skills. Strong attacks do not refill the meter.

During battle your demons are quite competent. They can target the enemy’s weakness (if they have the necessary skill) and heal you (again, if they have a healing skill) quite efficiently. You can also bring up a quick menu and manually command your demon to do things. Demons can be captured in battle and also fused; as common with the Shin Megami Tensei franchise. Known demons can be summoned at the Goumaden for a price; and you can register them to make sure you keep the latest “version” available.

While Raidou can rely on his own limited skills and his demons, he also has a trusty sword. The base sword can be level up by acquiring materials and having enough money in your pocket. You can choose to upgrade the sword or convert into to an axe or spear and upgrade them. You’ll find a bevy of base sword, Renki, throughout the game, so you can try other weapon types. But know that it doesn’t change anything in terms of damage output. The weapon will do more damage the more you upgrade it, but it tops pretty quickly.

Aside from the main story, Raidou has a bevy of side-quests, or Case files, to tackle. As you progress through the story and come across new characters, you’ll unlock new case files. They can be as simple as giving an item to an NPC or having to do math after finding six series of numbers. There’s also Aril Rifts peppered across various regions where you’ll need to purge them by defeating the demons inside it. Lots of them just regenerate so it feels a bit pointless.

Devil Summoner looked great back in the day and thanks to modern technology and Unity, RAIDOU Remastered looks even better. While it won’t compete with Clair Obscur or Call of Duty, Atlus managed to do a great job upscaling the visuals for a more modern aesthetic and also adding new animations. On the audio side of things, this soundtrack is one of the best ever conceived and some tunes will linger in your head after turning off the console. With its jazz-y style, this is definitely one of Shoji Meguro’s best work. For this version, they decided to add voiceover work. And it’s fine; albeit I still prefer the mute version (like the original). The only exemption being Nakisawame, a character that heals your party; let’s just say she sounds like she did voiceover work against her will.

While you’d expect quality of life improvements to improve things, it’s not always the case. The now forced auto-targeting is incredibly counter-intuitive and makes boss battles harder than they should be. In the original, all you had to do is move next to your target and hit them. Now, when jumping in a boss battle, you auto-aim at boss despite his cronies being in front him. So having to constantly flipping the RB button to switch is annoying. It can also make the player use a specific spell against the wrong enemy losing a chance to capitalize on an enemy’s weakness.

Additionally, the new changes to Raidou’s skillset renders his gun completely useless; except where forced to destroy NetherGates that only take damage from your gun. In the 2006 original, Raidou could purchase and swap out bullets to elemental ones to use against enemies; stunning them. But now, while some demons are weak to bullets, they barely do any damage aside from stunning enemies. Gouto will sometimes recommend you to use your gun to stun a non-stop moving enemy, but using your magic skills will be more efficient; it will stun them and attacking them will cause more damage. Also the fact that now the camera moves to over the shoulder opens the door for Raidou to get otherwise avoidable damage.

Also, which I guess was to make the game more newcomer friendly, the game holds the player’s hand throughout the whole game; contrary to how the original was played. Once you’ve had conversations that will enhanced the story, you’re told exactly where to go most of the time and the fast travel (only to known areas obviously), makes the progress too easy.

RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army is definitely one of the better RPGs to (re)release this year. Easy to pick up and play, but still challenging, demon fusioning is a fun and addictive mechanic; trying to make your perfect crew. But some quality of life improvement do make the experience a bit irritating. The forced auto-targeting causing headaches during boss battles, the constant hand holding can feel like a detriment. On the good/bad side of things, it’s shorter than most RPGs, clocking in at around 20-ish hours, story only. If you don’t explore and rely on the handholding, it can be ever lower. As a die-hard fan of the original, and the SMT universe as a whole, I still enjoyed my time with RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army despite its shortcomings and I strongly recommend it,