Review #149: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha VS The Soulless Army

 Name's quite a mouthful, eh!

 Shin Megami Tensei is a series that has a ton of spin-offs, from the massively popular, and sadly over exploited, Persona series, to the more unknown Demi Kids. Regardless, I'm not here to write about either, instead this is about one of the offshoots from the Devil Summoner spin off(Yes, a spin off with its own spin offs!), featuring Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th first adventure. Full disclosure, I had played the sequel before playing this one, and consider the sequel polishes everything about this game, I probably didn't enjoy it as much as I would've had I not played the sequel first.

 The game takes place in the 20th year(1930) of the Taisho Era in Japan, when Japan was in the first stages of westernizing itself. It makes for a very unique setting, both in locales, and the NPCs that populate the area. Raidou in particular is one of my favorite characters in the Shin Megami Tensei Universe, even though he is almost a carbon copy of a famous Japanese villain.... Regardless, you play as the aforementioned Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th, a devil summoner and a trainee detective working for the Detective Narumi, who specializes in unconventional cases. Raidou's adventure begins after meeting a girl asking Raidou to kill her, and then she gets kidnapped by soldiers in red. As much as I loved the locales and the characters, the story isn't paced very tightly. Y'see, the game is divided in 12 chapters, and the early chapters are, usually, about slightly connected cases, they all tie up in the end, and the story does move more smoothly in the latter chapters, but it gets a while to get going.

 Unlike most Shin Megami Tensei games, this is not a turn-based RPG, while it does have Random Encounters(With a, sadly, rather high encounter rate) battles take place in a small arena where Raidou and his demon can move about as they engage the enemies. Raidou himself only has access to a three hit Katana combo, a thrust and a spin slash, or he can use a gun, that while weak, can be used to shoot elemental bullets and stun opposing demons. Hitting an enemy with its weakness will stun then, making any further attacks deal critical damage, or, if Raidou's level is high enough, you can press circle to engage in a mashing mini-game to confine the Demon in a tube and add him to your ranks. Demons level up very slowly, so your best bet is to confine as many new demons as you can and keep fusing them to get better, stronger demons.

 Demons are Raidou's strongest tool, as he himself can't use magic, they are the ones that can heal him with magic or attack enemies with their weaknesses. One annoying thing to keep in mind, is that you have to reissue commands before every fight. Don't want your demon to waste its MP? gonna have to select "Don't waste MP" from the order menu before each and every fight. Demons don't just serve as weapons, there's about 10 different "orders" a demon can belong to, and each order has a special ability that Raidou may need to use in order to advance, or sometimes just to get fun dialogues. One thing to keep in mind is that if you don't have the type of demon that you need for a dungeon, you are out of luck, you are gonna have to go back to town and fuse/hire a new demon. Most of the time, there's a demon of the order that you need in whichever dungeon that needs one, but it is not always the case.

 The game isn't very hard if you exploit enemy weaknesses and keep an updated roster of Demons. While you'll be amassing a small fortune as you play through the game, costs for hiring demons is rather high, so think carefully before fusing a demon or releasing it. It's also recommended to take at least one demon with healing skills, as healing services are very expensive. It's also disappointingly short, with very few, and short, sidequests and only a single optional dungeon(Technically five, but four of them are so short and meaningless...). All in all, I clocked about 20 hours in it.

 The game has a rather subdued color palette, but it fits the game very well. All the different demons look very good, as does Raidou himself, perfectly capturing the artwork's style. The game uses pre-rendered backgrounds coupled with fixed camera angles(Duh), but it's easy to forgive them as the environments are so appealing and different from most other RPGs. As for the music, in typical SMT fare, it's all very good, with some very memorable tunes(Tsukudo-Cho's!, or the Boss Battle theme!), and it manages to be somber when it needs to, for some very fitting music to whatever is happening on-screen. There's no voice acting, sadly, but when important dialogue takes place, 3D animated cut-outs of the characters will jump to the forefront of the screen, and given that there's no voice acting, it looks kinda funny how they gesticulate and move their lips as the text appears.

 Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha VS The Soulless Army is a very fun game, with some rather obvious, but minor, issues. And, guess what, the sequel polishes or fixes most, if not all of them, which makes this first game pale in comparison. Regardless, it was a good start for Raidou's adventures.
 7.0 out of 10.