Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raido Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army, is Atlus' newest rendition in the Shin Megami Franchise. Unfortunately, with a name more complex and intriguing than the overall quality of the game, it’s a bit disappointing that more wasn’t done with a generally entertaining concept. The hot topic of this game was the new real-time battle feature, along with having a selected demon fight by the Summoner’s side. I’ll get to the combat system in a minute, but first I should mention what this game is all about.
The story starts as the [player-named] hero is selected to endure the trials of the Kuzunoha halls. He commences through the training in order to claim the title as the 14th generation Demon Summoner, known as Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th. That seems all fine and dandy, as players will undertake the task of learning the basic combat and play function schemes. It’s all really simple; during battle players have one attack button and one instant projectile button. Using the square button in alternate combination with the ‘X’ and/or triangle button will commence various combo attacks. The triangle button by itself is used to fire Raidou’s pistol and the ‘X’ button is used to block. The R1 button brings down a menu, in which the battle pauses and players can switch bullets, summon demons, or use items. After learning how to play, Raidou is commissioned into the Narumi Detective Agency—working oddball cases with his talking cat Gouto—as they protect Capital City Japan from demons.
The meat of the story centers around a girl named Kaya from the Daidouji household, who contacts Narumi asking him to “kill her”. When Narumi and Raidou try and help her, she’s whisked away by some cool looking armored soldiers in red (although you won’t fight them much in this game). From there, players must use “detective” skills to track her down, and uncover the mystery behind the Soulless Red Army. Now, I must admit that the story is fairly good after the first two-thirds of the game, which is mostly about walking around and talking to people in a very trite fashion. There are a couple of twists in the story, most of which aren’t surprising, but assuredly press players to want to uncover certain truths and find out more. It is safe to say that most of everything ties together well at the end. Save, there is some nihilistic mumbo-jumbo from the final boss that every RPG fan has encountered, dating back to the days of the SNES. But then again, aside from being cheap, it’s the job of a final boss to prattle incessantly.
The biggest problem I found with the general play-concept, though, is that there was a lot of searching around and talking to people. But it was setup in such a way that players must wander a lot, and if you’re not good with long names, this game might take twice the amount of time to beat. This is due to some instructions being based simply on a name for players to go by, and if your memory isn’t too good with names, you might have a tough break...or find yourself using scratch paper. Added to that, the story is just terribly slow at the beginning. Characters aren’t frightfully interesting or perceived with much depth, either. So when you couple these problems with nominal dialogue—with the exception of Gouto, the cat—the characters and depth are nothing short of mediocre. This is all tied into the facet of a linear plot and no alternative methods of advancing the story. There are even several instances where players have the “option” to choose vital outcomes of the story. However, unlike other recent RPGs that actually allow players to mold the outcome of the world they’re playing in; Megami Tensei stifles these options with forced decisions. I didn’t understand what the point was of even adding the option to choose in the first place. Maybe I’ll just pass on saying that Knights of the Old Republic at least let players make some hearty choices with varying consequences.
Still, I must admit that the outcome does outweigh the early short-comings of the story. I also can’t help but forgive the slow start due to the steady and unwavering plot. Some RPGs tend to veer into territory left field from where it began, but Megami Tensei (for the sake of those worried about consistency) never fluttered outside of its prime story concepts. I actually have to applaud the writing staff for Megami Tensei, as they gave gamers some hefty storytelling that won’t disappoint in the end. Added to that, Gouto the cat was keen enough about events in the game that he actually made things seem more enjoyable and profound, despite seeming a bit cheesy.
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