Raidou Remastered: The Thriller of the Soulless Military Overview – Overview

Of all of the subseries within the larger Megami Tensei franchise, Raidou Kuzunoha is one which I’ve had a selected curiosity about. Rising up, my sister was an enormous fan of each Satan Summoner video games and would usually pester everybody she knew to offer them a strive. Naturally I did what any older sibling would do: I ignored her requests utterly. Now with the unique Satan Summoner returning to fashionable platforms with a shiny new remaster, I can lastly inform my sister the phrases she’s been ready to listen to for greater than half our lives: It’s high-quality.

Raidou Remastered: The Thriller of the Soulless Military stars Raidou Kuzunoha XIV, the most recent in an extended line of Satan Summoners within the Kuzunoha clan. By day Raidou serves as a member of the Narumi Detective Company, odd jobs and mysteries for the individuals of Tokyo. By night time, he wields the ability of demons to silently shield the capital from supernatural threats as a member of the shadowy Yatagarasu. Finally the worlds he operates in intersect because the heiress of the celebrated Daidouji household is kidnapped by mysterious pink troopers who vanish into skinny air. Believing the troopers to be demons from the supernatural Darkish World, Raidou takes on the case to search out the Daidouji woman and uncover the character of the military who took her.

Gameplay sees the participant roaming Tokyo to seek for clues and unravel mysteries within the hopes of fixing the Daidouji case. Raidou’s largest software as a detective comes within the type of demons that he’s captured and might summon to benefit from their abilities. Demons have a wide range of talents corresponding to spying on oblivious people, studying the minds of uncooperative witnesses, and inciting the feelings of a goal that you simply need to be a bit extra talkative. That is an space of the sport the place Raidou Remastered introduces a considerable quality-of-life enchancment over the unique PS2 launch. The place the participant beforehand needed to manually summon completely different demons with a purpose to trial-and-error which talents can be useful in a given scenario, a context-sensitive menu will now pop as much as mechanically swap out your demon and use the flexibility you’ll want for any given scenario.

Whereas I actually suppose the tedious demon swapping of the unique recreation wanted a rework, the answer supplied by the remaster feels prefer it goes just a little far. It hardly ever feels such as you’re really doing any detective work in Raidou Remastered, so it might probably really feel typically that you simply’re simply doing busy work between cutscenes till it’s time to start out combating demons. My sister would inform me about how within the authentic recreation she needed to familiarize herself along with her demon’s talents and suppose by which of them can be helpful at any given time. In contrast I by no means dedicated any of my demon’s talents to reminiscence, and development by the story tended to be fairly senseless until I used to be outright lacking the flexibility I wanted.

You’ll usually discover that the following step to resolve the case is hidden within the Darkish World, which is the place you’ll have to get your palms soiled by combating demons your self. Not like nearly all of video games within the Megami Tensei franchise, Raidou Remastered’s fight happens in actual time with motion parts. Your demon companions will convey spells to take advantage of the basic weaknesses that Megami Tensei video games are identified for, however Raidou himself serves an essential position of meting out harm and producing magic energy to gasoline your demon’s spells. Gentle assaults do little or no harm however restore your magic energy in alternate, whereas heavy assaults forgo magic technology completely to hit enemy demons exhausting. Whilst you can in all probability get by relying in your demons and mashing gentle assaults by the entire recreation, you’ll discover success extra simply by fastidiously juggling between gentle and heavy assaults to optimize your DPS whereas retaining your magic energy excessive.

For present Raidou followers, the remaster has overhauled fight to be a extra refined model of the sequel recreation, Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon. Since I by no means performed the unique PS2 recreation I don’t know all of the nuances of what’s modified, however whereas my sister was watching me play she mentioned it felt like she was watching me play a hypothetical Raidou 3 somewhat than a port of the unique recreation. Two main additions I do know are model new are the flexibility to have a second demon ally on the sphere, and Raidou gaining his personal elemental assaults to strike enemy weaknesses without having to depend on his demons as a lot. These modifications are actually handy, nevertheless it doesn’t at all times really feel like the sport is balanced round their presence. Since I might have two demons on my facet I’d at all times have one healer that by no means left the sphere, and that gave me the liberty to let my different demon hit enemy weaknesses with out having to fret about my very own well being.

We solely obtained the Swap 1 model of Raidou Remastered, and general it’s a fairly stable model of the sport. The Swap 1 model targets 60fps, and whereas it doesn’t at all times handle to hit that concentrate on throughout fight it tends to get fairly shut. I solely observed slowdown throughout the flashiest assaults that put lots of visible results on display, and the framerate would at all times decide again up fairly rapidly. As with most Swap 1 video games, Raidou Remastered receives a considerable efficiency enhance on Swap 2, so when you personal a Swap 2 and for some motive you’re nonetheless buying the Swap 1 model (which affords no low cost for upgrading to the next-generation model), then you definitely’ll be getting an ideal 60fps your entire time.

Raidou Kuzunoha carves out a enjoyable area of interest within the Megami Tensei franchise by selecting to concentrate on actual time motion as an alternative of turn-based fight, however I feel the remastered model may need been too overzealous within the very vital modifications it made. Overworld exploration and fight have each had their edges sanded right down to the purpose that they’re just a little too frictionless, and I feel a number of the magic has been misplaced because of this. It’s a detective recreation the place I by no means felt like a detective, and an motion recreation the place the motion felt easy on all however the hardest difficulties. It’s actually a enjoyable recreation, the interval piece vibes are immaculate, and I hope it’s profitable sufficient to result in a remaster of the sequel that my sister tells me was even higher (or possibly even a 3rd entry within the sequence), however sadly I wasn’t fairly as wowed by the remaster as I hoped after twenty years of placing the sport off.