Soulless

I really don’t think anyone out there does it like Atlus. For better or for worse, really. The studio marches to the beat of its own drum without a hint of self-consciousness, spinning weird tales about Satanic rites, the power of friendship, and the end of the world (localised to the city of Tokyo). Whether you’re looking at the parent Shin Megami Tensei series, the spin-off Persona games, or the Metaphor-shaped wunderkind that landed last year, Atlus always lands on its feet.

The developer is no stranger to remasters and remakes. Persona 3, weirdly, has had both within the last two years. MegaTen V got the standard ‘definitive’ edition re-release with the sublime Vengeance last year, and we all know about the likes of Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal. It’s a quirk of Atlus’ – to address the flaws, round out the edges, and give you a little more bang for your buck on the second bite of the apple. Consumer friendliness quibbles aside, it does at least mean we get improved versions of solid games with cast iron regularity.

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With Atlus’ latest joint, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, the developer has muddied the waters a little between what a remaster and a remake is. That’s nothing new, of course; Square Enix remade Final Fantasy VIII without the original source code and dubbed it a remaster, and we’re getting the same with Final Fantasy Tactics later this year. But I have found the route Atlus has taken here quite fascinating.

The curious PS2 game (which originally enjoyed a 2006 release in Japan and North America, and 2007 in PAL regions) carries on Atlus’ fascination with the occult and the Satanic, but with one major variation from all the developer’s other titles (up to and including Metaphor): this one is an action-RPG. And ‘Raidou Remastered’ is a bit of a misnomer. What we’re getting here is more of an enhanced version, with a lot of significant changes to the PS2 original.

There are remake-level changes in this remaster: for a start, Atlus has remade the game’s pre-rendered backgrounds into actual 3D. It has added voice acting. It has lifted the improved combat system right from the second Raidou game and transplanted it into the first. It has tinkered with the menus, adding modern MegaTen/Persona systems into the demon fusion process. You can even dash on the overworld, for Christ’s sake. These things might sound small, but it makes a fundamental difference to the overall flow of the game.

A streetcar named ‘conspire’. | Image credit: Sega

It’s odd, because I remember the game looking and playing exactly like this. So out of curiosity, I booted up an old (and now quite expensive) version of the game on my PS2, and it’s fascinating what nostalgia does. The original Raidou game is a right pig to play. Atlus has worked some developmental magic in this re-release, and put a lot of effort into it, too. But maybe that’s to be expected when many of the same developers that worked on Raidou and its sequel during the PS2 era are still, inexplicably, working at the studio.

In my head, what’s happened is that Atlus has been able to say to its staff: “hey, remember that game you very nearly got right at launch in 2006? Have another swing at it”. The interceding nineteen years have clearly emboldened the developers, and the result is this remake/remaster crossbreed that sets out a template for how developers should be treating rereleases of the sixth (and maybe even seventh) generation of video games.

This curious halfway between full remake and barebones remaster is a beautiful chimera that has paid homage to the weird, slightly off-beat original game, whilst making it more accessible and easier to play. There is even brand new content (mostly revolving around demon’s pilfered from the ranks of SMT V, like Hayataro), which helps pad out the skinnier experience you’ll find thanks to the decreased encounter rate. This is a good thing, trust me.

The cutscenes have also been remade to reflect the new style. | Image credit: Sega

Raidou Remastered still has its flaws, don’t get me wrong: the 1930’s Japanese setting is wonderful, and plays host to a truly you’ve-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it plotline, but the storytelling has aged. The combat, whilst much better this time around, is still fairly limited, and if you’re not in it for quite simple ‘Simon Says’ action, you will probably get bored of it all quite quickly. It’s still a PS2 game, and one you can wrap in about 20 hours, at that. Which, hey, as a busy person, I’m actually pretty OK with.

But it’s what this game represents that enthuses me the most. It’s an efficient, smart way of reusing old code to make something worthwhile and new, a peculiar halfway between remake and remaster that I think respects the developer and the consumer in equal measure. Trust Atlus to happen upon this Frankenstein’s monster of a solution to rereleases. It’s all very on-brand.

My deep, aching hope is that Sega and Atlus will use this unexpectedly strong foundation to work through more of its classic PS2 catalogue. If we get a Digital Devil Saga 1 + 2 rerelease on modern platforms because of the success of Raidou Remastered, you’ll never hear me shut up about it.

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Need to know

What is it? PS2-era Megami Tensei JRPG starring a kid detective in early 20th century Tokyo
Release date June 19, 2025
Expect to pay $50
Developer Atlus
Publisher Sega
Reviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAM
Steam Deck Playable, with some small in-game text
Link Steam

When Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army released for PlayStation 2 in March 2006, Persona 3 was only four months away from making its debut in Japan. The latter, inarguably a classic, introduced Atlus’ now-iconic social link system, thus sealing the studio’s fate as one of the most beloved 21st century RPG creators. Raidou, though? Most people have forgotten about it, if they’ve heard of it at all.

And yet here we are with a remaster, and a high-effort one at that: the combat has been revamped, and every line of dialogue voiced. It belongs to the Devil Summoner strain of Shin Megami Tensei games, which are distinguished by their detective fiction leanings (the most recent was Soul Hackers 2). It didn’t receive particularly glowing reviews at launch: it was fine. But with the benefit of hindsight it’s kinda interesting. Not only is its early 20th century Tokyo setting unique for a series that loves to hang around in the present and near-future, but it also features one of Atlus’ only dalliances with real-time combat.

Raidou Kuzunoha is a teen detective working for the Narumi Detective Agency, which has a special interest in the supernatural and occult. He’s well-suited to the job because he’s also secretly a Devil Summoner, working for an organisation dedicated to the protection of Tokyo against the wrath of supernatural forces. A seemingly routine quest to save the daughter of a local magnate eventually blossoms into the usual absurdly meandering anime fare, touching on superweapons, time manipulation and, of course, Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin.

Raidou is another voiceless and expressionless teenage protagonist, though given his situation—Raidou is an investigator, and not a hapless student—some of the weirdness of other SMT games has been sanded away. The sense of young people being thrown into a malignant alternative world only just hidden beneath their own doesn’t hit quite as hard when the hero is reporting for duty as a ghost detective every morning.

The devils Raidou can summon will be familiar to anyone who has played a Shin Megami Tensei game, and they’re utilised in fun ways here. Each has a couple of different uses outside of combat, which bleeds into some of Raidou Remastered’s curious point ‘n’ click trappings. For example, Jack Frost can freeze water to create new paths, while Azumi can fly. Neko Shogun can use force to move large objects around, and Lilim can read people’s minds. These powers can only be used in the right context, and whenever they’re called for in puzzle scenarios it’s usually extremely obvious, even when Raidou’s cat companion Gouto doesn’t blurt out the solution.

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(Image credit: Atlus)(Image credit: Atlus)(Image credit: Atlus)

On the flipside, some late game “puzzles” are surprisingly obtuse, so much so that I had a form of gamer whiplash: Am I just meant to sit here and wait for Gouto to explain what I’m meant to do? Or am I meant to, uh, think about it?

These elements exist because Raidou is ostensibly a detective, but they feel less like puzzles and more like a series of chores doled out by an especially patronising boss. The story has Raidou investigate, but I don’t investigate: I just move our hero around and click on things. It’s a missed opportunity, both in 2006 and now, to feel out a more investigative style of play in a game about being an investigator. This sense of wasted potential extends to mission design, which generally involves going back and forth between characters for information, while occasionally dipping into the Dark Realm—a bleak and mysterious parallel world full of demons—to nip the present episode’s big baddie in the bud.

Thankfully the combat and demon hunting keep things interesting, and the former has been completely reworked. The original’s static camera angle is now free roaming in combat, and Raidou is much more nimble on his feet, with a long dodge and double jump at his disposal. He can now summon two demons rather than one, to help alongside his own melee weapon and gunfire.

(Image credit: Atlus)

Compared to the syrupy combat of the original, it’s very fast and fluid, mixing light tactical complexity with dexterity-focused hack ‘n’ slash. Raidou can specialise along magic or raw damage paths (I built a mix between both) while also following upgrade trees for swords, spears and axes.

The combat is as close to the SMT Press Turn system as it can be in a real time format: using the right elemental attack against an enemy will weaken or stun it, all the better to bolster your sword attacks, while using the wrong elemental attack will usually buff an enemy. Familiar SMT conundrums inevitably arise: what if one enemy needs a fire attack, but you’ve only got an AOE fire attack and another enemy on the field is buffed by fire? Then it’s time to dive into menus, fine-tune your demon loadout, and carry on. What if a volt-weak enemy keeps charming my healers into healing them? And what if my healer is the only demon I have with a volt attack? Damn: it’s time to go find another volt demon.

Collecting demons and trying them out in battle is as fun as ever, even if they all feel more flexible and thus less special than in other contemporary SMT games. Jack Frost is an ice creature, but if I have him inherit a volt or fire attack it’ll still serve to weaken an enemy if they’re susceptible to those elements.

(Image credit: Atlus)

I found myself using early game demons well into the 30-hour story, mostly because the strength of their elemental attacks didn’t really matter so long as Raidou himself was capable of doling out high damage (and also, because Neko Shogun is my favorite). Similarly, I was about three-quarters into the game before I really had to think about what demons I wanted to keep and which I wanted to sacrifice via demon fusion: in other SMT games, including Persona, demons that can buff and debuff feel essential, leading to frequent stops to fuse together demons towards stronger and better-equipped ones. That isn’t so much the case here, though I did play on normal; things may become trickier at higher difficulties.

This may all sound unpromising but the truth is I enjoyed Raidou Remastered, and I think anyone into monster collecting, action-focused SMT games will too. By all reports Raidou was a 7 out of 10 JRPG in 2006, and with a complete renovation of its combat system—and the merciful removal of random encounters—Atlus has ensured it remains a 7 out of 10 JRPG now. I’m not sure why they decided to remaster this instead of any of the other SMT games stuck on the PS2, but it’s definitely worth playing, especially if you’re curious to see what might happen if (gulp) Persona 6 goes the way of Final Fantasy 16 and ditches turn-based combat.

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With Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, Atlus proves that the muddy ground between remaster and remake can be a good thing, actually

Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army review