Shin Megami Tensei series is big! There are more spin-off series than main series entries. Enough that the sub-series Persona formed its own identity. Many people don't realize its SMT spin-off roots.
One of the sub-series that intrigued me is the Devil Summoner! A series in which humans called Summoners, scout and control Demons to fight for them. While I haven't played any game from this series, I'm familiar with many of its concepts due to watching a video about the first Devil Summoner entry last year.
Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers is the updated 3DS Remake of the Japan-only Saturn/PS1 title. The story follows a group of Hackers who hacked their way into a virtual world. They get involved in a conspiracy involving demons and demon Summoners.
Story: A Cyberpunk Fantasy
Amami City is a technologically advanced place. The latest tech being the upcoming Beta release of Paradigm X: a virtual world that will eventually include every Amami City resident. The protagonist and his friend Hitomi hack the registration data to give themselves a free Beta invitation.
In the virtual world, they meet Kinap, a Demon who saves them and introduces the protagonist to the conspiracy via a Vision Quest. The protagonist accidentally activates a COMP (a Demon Summoning device,) which puts a Demon inside of Hitomi.
Together with the other members of the hacker group. They try to solve the mysteries around them: The COMP, the conspiracy of the Demon Summoners. As well as Kinap & Nemissa's involvement. Things only get nastier from there...
I played the first three/four main dungeons before deciding to watch the rest of the story on youtube Marshel's "The Soul Hackers Experience" is part of his amazing series about Shin Megami Tensei. Watching his videos is almost a replacement for playing the games.
The characters of Soul Hackers are intriguing from the start. The main characters look like ordinary people except they're a hacker group. Nemissa is fun and kind of nice despite being a demon, (she feels more like the main heroine than Hitomi who shares her body.) Villains are full of personalities like Carol J, or intimidating like Finnegan. I can feel that every member had distinct reasons to join the bad side.
Vision Quests
Occasionally, Kinap will ask the protagonist to go on a vision quest. "A journey to the past." In it, you play as other characters & see their final moments. They offer essential backstory. The information you get links directly to the current situation of the game. Such as Judah Vision Quest that lets you play as Judah to witness his proud personality. Then he dies and you meet his ghost in the main story.
The characters have their own party & stats but the battle experience transfers to the protagonist after the end of the quest. Out of the chapters I played, Vision Quests are my favorite both in the story and gameplay.
Gameplay: A Classic SMT
Soul Hackers is a Dungeon Crawler, like many games of the genre, the gameplay is divided into two parts: Exploration & Battle.
The Maps in Soul Hackers are big and might feel like a maze but they're pretty tame compared to many games by ATLUS. (ever played Etrian Odyssey?) Exploring dungeons feel natural, though the virtual world of Paradigm X feels unnecessarily eerie...
The Battle system is a traditional turn-based like the one in Dragon Quest games. Like early Shin Megami Tensei titles, it doesn't have the Press Turn system as hitting the enemy weakness doesn't give you an extra turn. Soul Hackers has a loyalty system in which Demons have personality and it affects whether they follow certain orders in battle. For example, dumb demons prefer physical attacking and might ignore you if you asked them to heal.
There are two forms of currency in Soul Hackers, Mecca** is used to deal with demons but it also decreases every time you move while exploring dungeons. Once it hits zero, your party health decreases instead. Random battles give me enough Mecca to not run out of it. (As long as I finish most of them & didn't scout demons or ran away.)
A Soul Hacking Classic
The 3DS version doesn't feel like a remake of a PS1-era game. It fits right there with other 3DS games if not better than most of them. I'm playing Shin Megami Tensei IV as I'm writing this and it only feels slightly better!
One of the reasons is the voice acting. Soul Hackers story is fully voiced, it's very good. It adds another layer of immersion, especially in the main character's voices. Some NPCs are unvoiced but that's okay. There are voiced parts I wish were unvoiced: When the game asks you "What will you do?" every time you get into a new area, it feels unnatural.
Soul Hackers is definitely hard, (it's by ATLUS after all.) The difficulty feels justified considering the story. It's one of the games I would like to play again if I got the chance. I don't know if I'm ever going to do that as I only care about the story and I'm already spoiling the rest of it on myself.
What do you think?
The game gave me a good time while I played it. The protagonist gives me Persona 5 Joker's vibes. Especially when negotiating with Demons, the options feel as confident and sly as the P5 protagonist. Not only the main character is memorable though, but Nemissa also is very interesting and I get why she is the face of the Devil Summoner series.
For now, I want to catch up with Shin Megami Tensei series before SMTV gets released so I'm going after SMT IV and maybe Nocturne next. So, what do you think? Are you interested in SMT franchise? Have you played this game? Have any tips for someone new to the series?
I look forward to your comments!
- This first image is taken from the game's page on Nintendo's Website. All screenshots are taken from here. Screenshots upscaled with Waifu2x.
- This article is crossposted here on HIVE and on Read.cash.