Extended Thoughts on RAIDOU Remastered
Published: 2025年4月15日
Word Count: 2,803
Long time no see! (On this part of my website, at least...) As you may already know, at the Nintendo Direct on March 27th, a remake of Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army was announced!! This was, of course, both the greatest and worst news of my life. If it wasn't obvious already, I love DSRK a lot, with Soulless Army being one of my favorite games of all time, so the wait for RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army (as it's being called) has been equally exciting and anxiety-inducing so far. I've been wanting to write about my impressions of the remake pretty much since it was first announced, but school and life have been keeping me busy for a good few weeks.
But finally, my schedule has freed up just enough for me to sit down and organize my thoughts. It's probably for the best that it took so long, if only because it gave me more time to digest information and better flesh out my opinions. I ended up writing way more than I thought I would, some of it positive, some of it negative, and a lot of it very conflicted. But I've never been very good at introductions, so let's just cut right to the chase, shall we?
The Good
Let's get the elephant in the room out of the way first: The combat in RAIDOU Remastered is obviously a massive improvement over Soulless Army's, just from looks alone. Gone are the days of mashing the same button over and over while you awkwardly fight with the fixed camera to properly position yourself within the range of your opponent's hitbox, all while your demon keeps fucking around in ways that don't seem to help you at all. While I'm willing to defend the original Soulless Army combat system and say that it's not nearly the devil incarnate that some people make it out to be, there's no way in hell it could've ever flown in the current gaming zeitgeist. This combat overhaul was much, much needed, and I'm incredibly excited to try it for myself (PLEASE Atlus give us a playable demo I'm begging you). "Soulless Army but with King Abaddon-style combat" feels like something out of my wildest dreams for a remake, and yet it's completely real.
Also related to combat, I think that the inclusion of new demons will prove to be an objectively good decision in the long run. The original Soulless Army had a rather paltry roster of only 70 demons, so diversifying combat possibilities with over 50 new demons is probably a smart idea, especially now that Double Summon is being introduced from King Abaddon. I'm still a bit apprehensive, though, if only because while Soulless Army's Demon Compendium may have been limited, the selection of demons itself was incredibly tight, and, in my opinion, fit the creative vision of Soulless Army very well. I'm sure that while it may be jarring for a time, though, I'll eventually adjust to the expanded roster.
Something I'm glad that they didn't change, on the other hand, is the tank controls (at least that's how it seems from the trailer footage). A lot of modern remakes tend to forego fixed cameras since they're considered "outdated," but I firmly believe that they still have merit today. I'm glad that Atlus is willing to blend the old and the new like that, and I'm honestly not sure how I'd feel if they completely changed the game to feel as modern as possible.
Which reminds me that I'm also happy to see the return of character models in dialogue segments. Before RAIDOU Remastered was announced, I always worried that a hypothetical remake of Soulless Army would replace the use of 3D models with hand-drawn dialogue portraits, similar to the Persona series. To me, the use of actual models added to the game's "detective story" atmosphere, as if the characters were being pulled into an interrogation session during dialogue. Or something.
One last small thing, I'm a huge fan of the cosmetic glasses preorder bonus for Raidou. I think they're very cute.
The Bad
I am taking Unreal Engine away from Atlus and putting it on the top shelf until they learn how to make a game with a visually appealing color palette again. Continuing the trend from Shin Megami Tensei V and Persona 3 (and Nocturne HD Remaster, to an extent), the lighting and colors in RAIDOU Remastered are some of the ugliest, most garish shit I've seen in my life. Seriously, just look at this comparison of Harumi-Chō in Soulless Army vs. the remaster:
This is a problem for me personally not just because of how hideous it looks, but every single modern Atlus game I've played gives me raging migraines after just a few hours of play time, and already I can tell that RAIDOU Remastered will have the same effect. Light sensitivity aside, it also completely ruins the atmosphere of the game. Compared to Soulless Army's muted tones, RAIDOU Remastered fails to portray the same sense of "urban fantasy detective story" through its use of color.
In a similar vein, I have several gripes with the new UI (if you couldn't tell, art direction is very important to me). While I commend RAIDOU Remastered for drawing upon a lot of Soulless Army's design choices, it's still tainted with a lot of "modern UI-isms" that irk me. For one, the icons used to indicate a demon's Order and elemental types for combat moves clash horribly with the rest of the UI. I get why they exist, but couldn't the developers have adjusted the colors a little so they weren't so offensively vibrant?
This is 100% a me problem, but I also hate the "profile card" method of listing demons that RAIDOU Remastered borrowed from Shin Megami Tensei V. I much prefer the classic lists of older games.
This next take is going to be a bit controversial, but I have to get it off my chest: I think adding voice acting to RAIDOU Remastered was a terrible mistake. If I'm going to be completely honest, I don't like the way Atlus handles voice acting in their games at all, entirely from a technical perspective. It pisses me off to no end that not only does the on-screen text always scroll when a character is talking, but it does so at a faster pace than the words are being spoken. This always, always results in me reading the text long before the characters finish speaking. To give some practical advice to any game developers who may be reading this: PLEASE have all of your on-screen text pop up immediately when a character speaks so readers can actually follow along at the same pace as the dialogue.
To go even further, I think that Soulless Army works perfectly fine without voice acting. I've seen people complain about how "awkward" or "boring" the cutscenes are without dialogue, but to me it's always been very charming. It reminds me of a silent movie, which works given the fact that, y'know, the game takes place in the 1930s (yes I know that "talkies" got popular in the 1920s, but Japan didn't follow suit for several years, long after the events of DSRK). Also, none of the people hired to voice Raidou over the years have ever actually encapsulated his personality properly, to the point where I have to wonder if the developers at Atlus even understand the kind of character they created with him. I would honestly prefer Raidou to not be voiced at all if the best they have to offer is Tomokazu Sugita or, God forbid, Matt Mercer.
The Concerning
There are some things shown off in the trailers for RAIDOU Remastered that, depending on how they're actually handled in-game, could end up being an absolute nightmare scenario for me, or they could very well amount to nothing. First and foremost is the fact that there have been undeniable changes made from Soulless Army that recontextualize the preexisting worldbuilding.
Yeah, this is the part where I admit to being one of those people who cares a lot about the "lore" of a game. What can I say? I'm just that kind of autist. But to get to the point, one thing that immediately stood out to me when watching the announcement trailer for RAIDOU Remastered is that in the footage shown of the game's tutorial, the character from Soulless Army simply known as the "Elderly Voice" has been changed to explicitly be the Village Head, presumably of Kuzunoha Village. This makes me... nervous, to say the least. The way that the Yatagarasu and the Kuzunoha Clan have been narratively portrayed by games like DSRK and Soul Hackers 2 has always been, shall I say, a bit indecisive. Sometimes it feels like Atlus simultaneously wants the Yatagarasu especially to be this morally grey organization who's willing to groom1 and dehumanize2 the Summoners under their care in order to achieve their goals no matter the cost, and an objective force for good that none of the protagonist-allied characters will ever criticize or call into question. Which is why I worry that drawing more focus to Kuzunoha Village, and therefore the Kuzunoha Clan themselves, who are tightly interwoven with the Yatagarasu at this point in the overarching Devil Summoner story, will potentially muddy the waters even further. Especially given what little we know of Raidou's backstory from sources like the official Soulless Army fanbook, I fear that there may be attempts to retcon previously established pseudo-canon material that a lot of older fans of the series (myself included) have adopted into their personal interpretations of his character.
Speaking of moral dubiousness, I also take issue with the fact that Atlus seems to have scrubbed RAIDOU Remastered of any overt references to Japanese imperialism, seeing as the Rising Sun flags found in Ginza have been removed:
And listen, I get why they did it. Atlus has been trying to be more sensitive about Raidou's character for years now, given that any DLC that features his costume (or in the case of Nocturne HD, Raidou himself) is often made unavailable in countries like Korea and Taiwan out of respect for the damage done by Japanese colonialism. But at the same time, I feel like censoring references to imperialism in a game where one of the major antagonists is the fucking Imperial Japanese Army is almost more insensitive. I'll refrain from speaking too much on the politics of Soulless Army since I feel like I'm not well-informed enough to discuss the full historical context of imperialist sentiment in Japan, especially in the modern day, but there's just something about how this is all being handled that rubs me the wrong way.
Is "Devil Summoner" Dead?
What worries me most about RAIDOU Remastered, though, is that it seems to be following in Soul Hackers 2's footsteps by removing "Devil Summoner" from its title, for the same reason of "wanting to reach a wider audience." Not just because of SH2's incredibly lukewarm reception from Megami Tensei fans, but because of the future it spells out for the Devil Summoner series and Megami Tensei spinoffs as a whole. In the 90s and 00s especially, there was a healthy environment of sub-series in the Megami Tensei franchise; Digital Devil Saga, Devil Survivor, Last Bible, Persona, and of course Devil Summoner, just to name a few. Coming into the 2010s, though, those sub-series began fizzling out at a rapid pace. The last true original Megami Tensei spinoff to release that decade was Devil Survivor 2, which came out in 2011 (and yes while Persona was alive and well at the time, it's become so divorced from the Megami Tensei franchise that fans and developers alike hardly consider it a spinoff anymore).
At this point, I could get into Soul Hackers 2's release in 2022 and the additional history surrounding that, but that would spiral into its own tangent that would detract from the point I'm trying to make. What's important is that, despite being a sequel to a Devil Summoner game, it did not call itself Devil Summoner, nor did it play like a Devil Summoner game, and long-time Devil Summoner and general Megami Tensei fans were upset. To be more specific, a lot of people felt like it existed more for the sake of drawing Persona fans into the greater Megami Tensei series, rather than paying any mind to the Devil Summoner fans who had been hoping for a new installment for almost fifteen years at that point. And while RAIDOU Remastered is unlikely to be a disservice to the series on the same level, to me it still speaks to the ongoing phenomenon of Atlus homogenizing the Megami Tensei franchise down to just "Shin Megami Tensei" and "Persona" (and given what I've seen and heard about Metaphor: ReFantazio's gameplay, I wouldn't be surprised if all of Atlus's RPGs coagulate into the same formula in the next 10 years). This is, in my opinion, made worse by the fact that on the official English webpage for RAIDOU Remastered, the Devil Summoner series name is also omitted from the title of the manga spinoff Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Lone Marebito, despite it being part of the original Japanese title. It's really starting to feel like Atlus is trying to act like Devil Summoner (and likely their other spinoffs as well) never existed in the first place.
If I may be selfish and put on my gatekeeper hat for a moment, the fact that this is all being done in the name of "reaching a wider audience" also rubs me the wrong way. And while yes, this is partly because I can't stand 95% of the current-day Megami Tensei fandom and don't want them touching Raidou with a ten-foot pole, I also have to wonder why something like Soul Hackers 2 or a Soulless Army remaster couldn't be made for the primary sake of Devil Summoner fans. While I don't have much place to speak on this since I was only introduced to the Devil Summoner series last year, it feels a bit unfair to the people who have been waiting for a true-to-form return of the series for almost seventeen years at this point to continually get sidelined for the sake of series newcomers. In his interview for the RAIDOU Remastered World Spotlight, director Kazuyuki Yamai said that he wanted to create a remaster that fans of the original Soulless Army could enjoy, and encouraged incoming fans to be mindful and listen to long-standing fans of Devil Summoner. Part of me feels relieved by Yamai's answers from that interview, but the fact of the matter is that actions speak louder than words, and Atlus's refusal to acknowledge the Devil Summoner series in any meaningful way is deafening. How can RAIDOU Remastered be touted as a "faithful remake" despite ignoring the legacy that it stands upon? While I still hope that RAIDOU Remastered is successful, and that it might even lead to a potential DSRK3, I can't help but worry about the future of the Megami Tensei franchise.
It is, by all means, an incredible time to be a Raidou fan and a terrible time to be a Devil Summoner fan. I've been pretty negative about RAIDOU Remastered so far, but that's really only because I want it to be good, and there's a lot of potential things that could go wrong that I'm anxious about. Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army is, at this point in time, the single most important piece of media in my life. There is nothing I want more than a remake that does justice to the original game, one that I could eagerly recommend to others. At the same time, there is nothing I want less than for RAIDOU Remastered to fall short of paying respect to its legacy while still becoming wildly successful amongst those who have never given a rat's ass about Devil Summoner. I've been stung in this way before (thanks, Netflix Castlevania), so this is very much a point of concern for me.
At this point, I just want June 19th to arrive so that I can finally be put out of my misery.
Footnotes
1 In Soul Hackers 2, the Yatagarasu runs an orphanage for the explicit purpose of eventually training the children under their care to become Devil Summoners.
2 Raidou explicitly refers to himself as a living weapon in Lone Marebito ("I am but a sword that cuts through evil"), and furthermore the Yatagarasu has displayed little care for his wellbeing beyond his capability to serve their cause, such as when he is coerced into taking on a deadly curse in Episode 7 of Soulless Army.
