Original Release: PS2, 2006. Version Reviewed: PS2, 2006. Platform Used: PS3.
THE PLOT:
After completing his training, devil summoner Raidou Kuzunoha XIV is sent to the Capital to join the Narumi Detective Agency. Not long after he arrives, Narumi receives a call from Kaya DaidÅji, the teenage daughter of a wealthy family. Kaya makes a bizarre and desperate plea: She asks Raidou and Narumi to kill her.
Before they can fully process that, mysterious soldiers appear to kidnap her. As the detectives attempt to track down the missing girl, they find themselves drawn into a conspiracy involving the Japanese military, Russian devil summoner Grigori Rasputin, and a horde of demons who all seem focused on the same goal. Unless Raidou can unravel the mystery, not only will Kaya be doomed - so will the Capital itself!
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| Dogged reporter Tae Asakura's introduction. Unfortunately, there's not much more to her character. |
CHARACTERS:
One of the game's weaknesses is that the characters are shallow. They fall into base types: the cynical detective (who doesn't pay his bills, naturally), the dogged female reporter, and so on. They all have a degree of personality, and the character art invests style and attitude, but there's nothing beyond the surface. The recent remaster's voice acting likely offsets some of this - from what I've seen, the remaster's voice acting is quite good - but these are thin characters on the page, and I found it impossible to get particularly invested in any of them.
I did enjoy the supporting character of Rasputin, however. He doesn't have any more depth than the others, but he is over-the-top in a way that's a lot of fun. When you battle him, his "fighting move" involves doing a Russian dance, while he summons Russian dolls to help him - both things that I found utterly hilarious. It helps that his appearances tend be both brief and limited, so there's no chance to get tired of him.
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| Normal combat encounters mostly involve clunky button-mashing. |
COMBAT:
Given the frequency of random encounters, you'll be spending a lot of time in combat. This is a problem, because in the original version, Raidou's combat is... well, bad.
Atlus attempted to perform fusion between hack-and-slash games and their usual turn-based combat, and it just didn't come out well. The combat largely consists of hacking away at enemies with a three-attack combo. You can summon exactly one demon to assist; if you need a different demon's skills, you have to return that demon and summon the next in mid-battle. In theory, this can be strategic, with a mix of blocks, attacks, and using specialized bullets and/or your demon's magic to hit weak points. In practice, the control and timing aren't there. In random encounters, particularly with multiple opponents, I quickly realized that I was better off ignoring strategy and just hacking away.
You can still exploit enemy weaknesses to capture demons - but instead of negotiation, you first hit its weakness, then hit the "O" button to capture, which brings up the capture mini-game... which consists of still mashing the "O" button as fast as you can.
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| The boss fight against Rasputin. In contrast to normal combat, the boss fights are actually fun. |
I will say that the combat plays much better in the boss fights. Boss battles usually don't involve large numbers of enemies, making it possible to properly focus on the attacks and movements. Normal encounters in this game aren't difficult once you comprehend the battle system, but they are tedious. Bosses, however, are fun, particularly as the game goes along, because there's usually one specific strategy you have to find to avoid massive damage and deal proper damage on your own part.
The remaster completely overhauls the combat. I know from glancing at online videos that the new version allows players the use of two demons, while also allowing a greater range of movements to block and evade attacks. It looks as if the energy Atlus tried to capture in 2006 actually is present, and I've heard from others that the new version's battles are enjoyable.
In the PS2 version, however, Raidou's combat is mostly a chore.
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| Non-combat gameplay involves exploring settings around The Capital to advance the story. |
GAMEPLAY:
Non-combat gameplay is familiar, not just from other Megaten games but from RPGs in general. Your hub is Tsukodo-Cho, which is home to: Narumi's detective agency, where you can check in for reminders of plot details and to save your game; Konnou-Ya, the antiques shop where you can purchase healing items and different types of ammunition to hit weak points; and Goumma Den, where mad scientist Victor performs demon fusion.
When you leave Tsukodo-Cho, you enter an overworld map. Explorable areas unlock as the story progresses, and you will return to most or all of them in later chapters either for story reasons or just to hear the various characters comment on new plot developments. Random encounters will trigger as you explore these areas, with lower-level demons in Tsukodo-Cho and higher-level demons in areas from later chapters.
You can also travel to the Shinoda Shrine, where Raidou can enter the "Dark Realm," which offers demon-controlled variants of the regular area maps. I gather that in the remaster, random encounters are limited to the Dark Realm. In the PS2 original, random encounters happen everywhere and with great frequency... which, in fairness, can be good for grinding.
Most chapters involve traveling among different areas to advance the story. Usually, you will have to go to the Dark Realm near the end of the chapter to defeat a powerful demon. This triggers a cutscene that ends the chapter, with an automatic save point at the end of each chapter.
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| Raidou watches as a witness transforms into a demon. |
OTHER MUSINGS:
The first thing I noticed about Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army is that it has a wonderful sense of visual style. Characters' costumes and art deliberately evoke 1940s film noir, and Raidou himself may be the most distinctively designed SMT hero I've yet encountered.
Playstation 2 games often had a "washout" effect, the limitations of the hardware resulting in muted colors and a general preference for blues and greens over brighter hues. Well-designed games often made use of this to enhance atmosphere. This is very much the case here. The muted palette evokes a sense of watching a faded film reel. The reliance on darker colors also helps lend an ominous atmosphere to the Dark Realm. The visuals are matched by composer Shoji Meguro's score; as of this writing, the game's main theme has been firmly stuck in my head for the better part of a week.
The story is structured into twelve chapters, each of which is described as an "episode," each with its own title. They're even structured like episodes of a series, with each having a beginning, middle, and end, and with early chapters seeming related but still narratively distinct.
This is both a benefit and a drawback. Since each episode only takes a few hours to beat, it gives the player a sense of regularly making progress. However, the separation in the early episodes saps the urgency, at least until the chapters become more connected later. I started playing this game before the remaster was announced, going a chapter at a time with breaks in between. I was enjoying it well enough... but the natural break built in by "End of Episode" made it easy for me to set it aside to play something else for a bit.
This changes in the second half, around Chapters 7 and 8. At this point, it clearly becomes a single story, gaining first focus and then momentum. It took me months to play through the first six chapters, but less than a single month to play through the last six. The final dungeon is lengthy and annoyingly maze-like, but I plowed through it quickly because by that point, I wanted to see how the story turned out (for the record, I was satisfied with the ending)..
I suspect I won't be alone in finding the game's first half to be a bit slow and disconnected. My advice to anyone struggling with the early chapters is to stick with it, because the improvement in the second half is worth the slow start.
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| Raidou attempts to protect both Kaya and The Capital. |
OVERALL:
From what I've read and videos I've seen, the recent remaster (really more of a faithful remake) fixes or at least offsets the worst issues. From side-by-side comparison videos, I actually prefer the visual look of the PS2 version... but in other respects, based on what I've seen, the remaster appears to be the better version of the game.
That said, I didn't play the remaster, I played the original. I enjoyed it. It's wonderfully stylish, the plot is bizarre but intriguing, and the atmosphere is aided by a terrific music score that switches from upbeat and jazzy to ominous to match each dramatic cue.
If you have a PS3, as of this writing the original versions of both Raidou games are available for about $10 each on the PS3 store, and I definitely feel that I got my money's worth. But it's a flawed game, with weak characters and horribly clunky combat - and since that's the version I played and that's the version I'm reviewing, my score has to take those issues into account.
Overall Rating: 6/10. I suspect you can bump that up to a "7" for the remaster.
Sequel: Digital Devil Summoner - Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (not yet reviewed)
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