RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army

Absolutely insane remaster. At this point I would probably call it a whole ass remake. Great combat, great puzzle, engaging story, wonderful world to explore, and all around just a fun time, despite being a Megaten game.

My main exposure to Shin Megami Tensei come only from Persona series, I've played most of them including Persona 1 and Persona 2 Duology. For someone who used to the Turn Based Combat, it feels quite janky at first, but once you got the hang of it, you'll love it. The Story is really good too, a lot of unexpected twist and turn of events, I'm glad to play this without any prior knowledge of the story and characters. Give it a try, this is a game where you can run around as one of the coolest Atlus Protagonist, Raidou Kuzunoha XIV. Hopefully the second game also remastered in the future, please Atlus!

Megami Tensei game with real time combat and using demons to solve problems in the open world. Quite a charming game, fun music, neat character designs, decent writing, though some of the characters are a bit flat. The word remastered here really undermining how much work went into this game, the combat looks nothing like the original, and instead of using pre-rendered areas everything is in engine here. You could also argue that some of the original aesthetic is gone with how much more vibrant this game looks compared to the original, but it still looks appropriately drab to still match the vibe imo. Fighting alonside your demons in real time is quite a treat to be honest, though it can be a little annoying when you have to micromanage them during certain boss fights. There are even a few sequences where you have to play as a demon to solve puzzles and defeat special encounters, this means that every demon in the game is technically playable even though its quite basic. The story is quite what you'd expect out of a Megami Tensei game, demons are causing trouble with students and the military and you have to travel to the dark world to defeat the ones causing these problems. The first few "episodes" are pretty formulaic where you explore a new part of town and then revisit it in the dark world, but the 2nd half of the game just starts hitting you with a lot of very short story focused episodes until the spongefest that is the final episode. Easily the longest of the game (like 3h long) and its an SMT style dungeon and a boss rush where every boss has an insaaaaaane amount of health for no reason. It's the only chapter I kinda hated, but the ending was interesting, but I doubt they'll remaster the sequel with how little people bought this game.