Whenever I play a spinoff, I approach it with the mindset of not expecting a game as ambitious as the one it originated from while hoping to see references or similarities to it. It’s not a hard rule, but usually, a spinoff doesn’t end up being as compelling as a mainline title, either due to budget constraints, a new development team behind it, or other factors.
But as we know, there’s always an exception to a rule. When it comes to JRPG spinoffs, the biggest example is right here within theShin Megami Tenseifranchise. After all, thePersonaseries is a derivative ofSMTand ended up becoming bigger than the series that birthed it.
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So even if I tried to keep my expectations in check, there was still that lingering hope of “What ifRAIDOU Remasteredturns out to be an excellent title, just like Atlus’s school-life JRPGs did?”
Well, after wrapping up a 35-hour playthrough, I can say with a heavy heart that, unfortunately, the action-basedDevil Summonergame doesn’t quite carry enough to become a phenomenon like its peers.
However, that doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. It’s an honest one, and it will likely please hardcoreSMTfans. But for those who just want to know if there’s a good new action RPG around, this might not be the best pick. Walk with me; I’ll explain it better alongside the inverted pentagram.
A Different Kind of Japan
The mouthfulRAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Armytakes place in a fictional Japan that still respects the country’s history. The major difference is that demons influence society, while ordinary citizens are oblivious to this. Quite similar to our reality, but in ours, the devils are quite visible.
The game starts by introducing us to the silent protagonist, a 16-year-old student in the final stage of Devil Summoner training. If he passes this last test, which doubles as the battle and demon-capturing systems tutorial, he earns the title of Raidou Kuzunoha. A Devil Summoner is essentially a shadow agent that (should) prevent demons' interference in society.
Once this prologue is over, there’s a fast-forward of events summed up in a paragraph on a black screen, and we head to Tokyo, referred to as the Capital in the game. We become apprentices at Narumi’s detective agency, whose job is to solve supernatural cases.
When a high school student calls the agency for help but is then kidnapped right in front of us by demons, the game’s plot kicks off: time to find the missing girl.
Right away,there are two things I really liked aboutRAIDOU Remastered, but I know they can be a turnoff for many players. Everything that happens in the game gets recorded in the Detective Journal by Gouto, our talking cat companion, who serves both as a mentor and the spokesperson for our silent protagonist.
The journal not only summarizes past events but also provides descriptions of every important character we encounter. It explains terms from both the game and Japanese history to keep the player informed. It’s not a perfect feature because many elements from Japanese folklore were still unfamiliar to me, and I had to consult Google to fully understand them. Nothing too critical that could harm my understanding of the story though.
Another brilliant feature was how the detective narrative and theme seamlessly blended with our protagonist’s Devil Summoner powers to advance the plot. While investigating cases, neither the family nor the police are willing to share their findings with just any random detective agency.
However, out in the field,it’s possible to use demonic powers to read the minds of certain NPCs or manipulate their emotions, which encourages them to spill clues they wouldn’t otherwise share.
I found this mechanic wonderfully clever. No story beat felt far-fetched at first. I was uncovering the truth behind cases because I was getting inside people’s minds, not because they willingly shared anything with a green-behind-the-ears detective. Since demons are invisible to regular humans, I could even send them on solo investigations to snoop around in off-limits rooms, once again reinforcing this mix of detective work with infernal help.
However, the game didn’t quite tap into the full potential of this demon sleuthing, and the execution fell short just a few hours in. Soon, everything boiled down to either messing with a person’s emotions until they loosened their tongue or reading their mind. The thing is, you may’t even do that withallNPCs, only with a handful of them or those tied to the main story.
Worse yet, there were moments when the game stopped caring about this mechanic altogether, like when a military officer casually spills all the army’s secret plans to a random student because they thought I was just on a “road trip.”
And this issue dragged on until the very end of the story. What could’ve been an intriguing detective plot, weirdly mysterious and backed by supernatural forces, got tossed aside in favor of a story that was way too over-the-top for no good reason.
Seeing how demons impacted Japanese society was incredibly gripping.
Some story beats started getting shoehorned in just to move the needle.RAIDOUis divided into 12 episodes, and up until about halfway through, I was genuinely curious about what was going on, enchanted, even. But from that point forward, the JRPG started blending elements that completely suspended my disbelief. I would love to tell you what they were, but the spoilers would either kill your entire vibe or, if you’re spoiler-phobic like me, you’d off me.
And that was a pity. Seeing how demons impacted Japanese society was incredibly gripping. The influence, although invisible, was so massive that it even extended the Taisho era until 1932, whereas in our real-world timeline, it ended in 1926. I could see both micro and macro changes driven by demons.
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Sometimes, the envy and outburst of a worker who lost their job due to technological advances was just a demon feeding on their lingering anxiety. Once I took care of that demon, the same worker would regain their drive to upskill and adapt to modern times.
As weird as it may sound,whileRAIDOUkept its narrative grounded, it held my interest and motivated me to push forward. But when it got way too ambitious, exploring themes far beyond its own scope, it completely lost its grip, and nothing made sense anymore.
The sheer magnitude of its late events was all show, no substance, just for the sake of it. Kinda typical of JRPGs, let’s be honest. I’m vaccinated against the plot where a bunch of fifteen-year-olds defeats God, but at least some of those games have a somewhat plausible reason for the stakes to escalate that much.
The First SMT Action RPG
Still, not only of story is a JRPG made. One of the key differences inRAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Armycompared toShin Megami Tenseiis that it’s an action RPG, while all other games are turn-based. To honor its forefather, the JRPG drew many mechanics and elements fromSMT, such as demon capturing and fusion and exploiting enemies' elemental weaknesses.
I wasn’t expecting a combat rhythm as polished or frantic as an action RPG-dedicated series. But since I was playing it anyway, I wanted a game that would keep me entertained for its 30-hour runtime.
On the one hand,RAIDOU’scombat is competent, delivers on what it promises, and doesn’t fall short when compared to a fewrookie action RPGs. On the other hand, it does so by playing it safe and sticking to the basics, making it frustratingly repetitive after a while.
In battle, we control only the titular protagonist, Raidou. One button performs fast attacks with low damage, and the other performs slow, heavy-hitting attacks. You can assign three skills or spells to hotkeys, usable without any resource cost but with a cooldown. There’s a dedicated button for dodging, guarding, jumping, and shooting, which hinders flying demons' movements briefly.
The combos for fast and heavy attacks are the same from start to finish, with minimal variation if you craft a different weapon. There are three types: sword, spear, and axe, which alter the heavy attack combos. The sword is balanced, the spear is faster, and the axe is slower, with their respective damage scaling inversely proportional to their attack speed.
And that’s it. Those are your battle commands. Some skills are a tad different from usual, such as buffs or area-of-effect attacks, but all in all, it’s a straightforward gameplay loop. Quite boring when looked at in a vacuum or compared to more robust action RPGs, right?That’s where the two core SMT mechanics come in: demons and elemental weaknesses.
Raidou can bring up to two demons into battle, and they act automatically. you’re able to open a menu and pick which spell they’ll cast, but it’s best to let them act freely because the AI is surprisingly sharp, always healing at the right time or hammering away at an enemy’s weakness. When demons use magic, they consume MAG, a resource equivalent to Raidou’s MP. To recover MAG, you need to land light sword attacks. Heavy attacks deal more damage but don’t restore MAG.
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That created a very dynamic battle balance, constantly forcing me to use my whole arsenal. If I focused on heavy attacks, my demons turned into wandering punching bags, and if I only used light attacks, they had MAG for spells, but my damage was pathetic. However, sinceSMTlies heavily on its elemental weakness system, this opened the door for most of my battles to become a walk in the park — and somewhat boring at times.
Press Turn Adapted To Action
InSMT, the battle system is called Press Turn. When you hit an enemy with its weakness, you gain an extra turn. SinceRAIDOU Remasteredis an action game, they adapted the system so that hitting a weakness would stun the enemy, giving me a window to wail on them for the full stun duration. Against fodder enemies, this was a constant way-too-broken strategy.
Did a fire-weak enemy show up? I’d equip a fire spell on Raidou and summon two demons with the same element in their skillsets (the game lets you swap demons on the fly during battles), and that was it. The enemy would be stunlocked for the whole fight. I’d keep spamming the fast sword attacks to keep my MAG reserves up, and there was nothing they could do.
Most regular battles play out this way: I’dspot an enemy on the field, strike first for a preemptive battle, and rain holy justice on its demonic face, stunlocking it until it repented from its errors.
The JRPG tried to balance this out in the boss fights, which are the combat’s highlight. Many bosses had a shield gauge, reduced every time they were hit by a weakness. When the shield broke, the next spell would stun them, and when they recovered, the shield would regenerate. Rinse and repeat. At least I could actually dodge and fight the boss properly instead of it being only a one-sided beatdown.
Finding Fun In Fusion
All of this, though, is for players already familiar with JRPGs. I can see some beginners trying to strongarm their way to victory using only sword attacks or skills that don’t hit a weakness. The game does offer extensive tutorials showing the ideal approach, but come on, we all know the average player couldn’t care less about them.
Mixing a fairy and a wooden doll to create a hydra was one of my biggest joys inRAIDOU.
There are three ways to progress in the game: leveling up, confining new demons, or fusing two of them into a brand-new one. Fusion is my favorite method because the offspring can inherit the parents' spells as well as passive skills, get a bonus to their overall attributes, and, most importantly, it’s just plain fun.
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One of the biggest reasons I loveJRPGs is their unusual progression systemsand the dopamine rush I get every time I see numbers increase. Mixing a fairy and a wooden doll to create a hydra was one of my biggest joys inRAIDOU. Not so much when the demon beget was the Mara. Don’t look it up on Google.I warned you.
I didn’t play the game fully conscious of long-term strategies or constantly striving to inherit the best passives and skills that synergized well. What I really wanted were demons with slick designs and higher HP than their predecessors. That was already good enough for me.
Truthfully, every demon I had carried a spell of each element, which naturally became a failproof strategy in any battle. But once I maxed out their loyalty, it was back to the lab table — congratulations, you’ve just been promoted to crafting materials for my next ubber demon.
RAIDOU’sprogression system, especially fusion, is what kept me glued to the JRPG for hours. I felt like I was moving forward in the story and through the stages — which, by the way, are reused a lot because I suspect the game had a limited budget — simply because I wanted to level up, find new demons, and fuse more of them.
Watching the Devil Chart fill up like a World Cup sticker album is one of my biggest and unapologetic gaming vices and something that keeps me entertained for a long time, regardless of whether the overall scope of the game is actually good or not.
The Remaster Makeover
AlthoughRAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Armyisa remaster, I better explain how it compares to other JRPG releases nowadays, as it was initially launched in 2006.
Its visuals, while polished, don’t hold a candle to modern releases.It’s a major glow-up compared to the PS2 version, but its graphics are as standard as a game from a renowned developer can get.The cutscenes have a weird, smudged look, as if an AI attempted to improve them, and the English dub sync is egregious and wildly distracting. In-game, however, the sync is flawless.
The soundtrack is solid, mixing rock, jazz, and supernatural vibes — something Atlus knows how to pull off. There aren’t that many variations, though. I spent most of my time exposed to the battle theme, which is solid despite the endless combat commentary from my ever-helpful feline companion, Gouto.
In the end, this spinoff is pretty forgettable and clearly aimed at the more hardenedShin Megami Tenseifans.
I can’t say exactly what all the quality-of-life additions are inRAIDOU Remasteredcompared to the PS2 version, but the game hints at them in its tutorial. There are modern features like autosave and fast travel, which are always welcome, as well as the automatic cycling of demons to perform field actions.
Before, you had to summon them one by one to figure out if their effects, like reading minds or rekindling an NPC’s spirit, would actually work. Thankfully, that’s gone because managing all sorts of demons with different field abilities is already tedious enough. If I had to guess blindly without an interface which ones had the right detective perks, I’d lose my mind.
Overall,RAIDOUis a remaster in the truest sense of the word. Reworked visuals, quality-of-life updates to bring it closer to modern standards, and probably some tweaks based on feedback from the original release. However, not even all these additions are enough to hide the fact that, in the end, this spinoff is pretty forgettable and clearly aimed at the more hardenedShin Megami Tenseifans.
Closing Comments
RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army is the definition of a solid 7 out of 10 game. Everything it sets out to do, it delivers, but in the modest way possible. It’s a humble action RPG with Shin Megami Tensei elements, such as demons and an adapted Press Turn mechanics, and it doesn’t dare go beyond that. However, the blend of sleuthing elements with supernatural powers could have pushed its story and turned an otherwise unremarkable game into a stellar spinoff, but it ultimately fell short. I only recommend RAIDOU Remastered to the most die-hard SMT fans, while other JRPG players might want to postpone their initiation into a demonic cult when the admission ticket is cheaper.
