I thought it was about time I got into another big RPG and fancied something a bit Persona-y. Kendrick (off off the ugvm Podcast) suggested Raidou, which is a remake of a lesser known Playstation 2 game in the Devil Summoner series. Which itself is, of course, Persona-adjacent.
Set in 1910s Japan (…mostly), you’re Raidou Kuzunoha – a teenage detective who also happens to be the latest in the long line of trained devil summoners. You use both your detective skills, and your ability to catch (Pokémon-style) demons, to try and figure out why a girl who calls your detective agency wants to die, why they are kidnapped by mysterious guys in red, and why there’s been an increase in demon activity. Surprise! It’s all a bad guy using the power of demons to try and destroy the world or something.
I say you use your detective skills, but actually, you do almost no detectiving at all. Don’t be expecting anything Sherlock Holmes or Phoenix Wright here. Most of the time it’s a case of just standing near a Yakuza-lost-locker-key style shiny point, although sometimes you need to make use of your Pokém–uh demons and their special skills to “search more” or “fly up about 30cm” or “convince the pretty lady to part with information”.
Instead, you explore some small town areas and the odd building (and a huge underground submarine base) and talk to people, persuade them to talk more than they might want to, and fight demons in not not exactly time based combat. There’s a word for that sort of combat which I forget, but it’s a bit like Xenoblade or Eternal Sonata where you have skills that have cooldowns and/or power bars that need to be filled rather than have actual turns. You can pull out up to two demons from their Pokéba–Demon Tubes to assist (and swap them out as much as you want), and each demon acts mostly independently, attacking foes, triggering area buffs and traps and healing you as it sees fit. You can issue orders but I did this literally zero times in the entire game so it’s clearly completely unnecessary.
Befriending demons, using them, and levelling them up increases their loyalty with you. Levelling up gives them access to more skills, and loyalty supposedly makes them more powerful maybe? The main thing I found when their loyalty went up was they became more flirty. Which, when half of them are naked, is a bit weird. Especially when they say a sultry “Raidou!” when they level up.
Demons generally only exist in the demon world, which is like a dark shadow of the real world. You have the power to slip into this and often need to in order to rescue people (it’s very Tokyo Xanadu at this point), find items, or reach places you can’t access in the real world. This shadow realm is much like a dungeon, really, and often they have puzzles and a boss.
Boss fights are the only bit of the game which I found even slightly tricky, and even then most of them were very easy if very long. You don’t seem to be able to do much damage, even when you’ve maxed out your sword in the creepy blacksmith-cum-frankenstein basement, so it’s usually a case of chipping away at the boss HP incredibly slowly. Not the most fun bit of the game, I have to say. There are attacks which have elemental affinities, and baddies will, as you’d expect, have weaknesses to some of these, but bosses seemed to mostly be immune to these effects, and even those that were weak to some merely took slightly more damage that way. A few could only be damaged with certain elementals.
Oh yeah – the basement. You can visit a dodgy guy there who can forge new or better weapons for you, but also he can smoosh two of your demons together to make a different one. As they drift off into the smooshing cage, they sometimes tell you they love you. It made me uncomfortable.
The whole game was shorter than I was anticipating too, clocking in at about 25 hours. I wouldn’t ordinarily say that was short for a game, but when it’s in the same category of game as Persona, Tokyo Xanadu, Pokémon and Xenoblade, it certainly seems it.
If I’m picking holes, then I should also mention how PS2 it all feels. Yes, it’s an updated PS2 game, and yes, the graphics are far better than a PS2 can produce. There’s also quality of life things added which I suspect were not in the original (like fast travel from nearly everywhere, being able to buy certain upgrade consumables, etc.). Loading times are almost nil too. But… it still has a clunkiness. A rubbish Original Resident Evil style camera. Invisible walls. Things blocking the way which you clearly would be able to walk around or climb over but mysteriously you can’t so have to pass a series of other events in order to do so (reaching the church being one, if you’ve played the game, you know). Things that modern games deal with better, generally.
These are all small holes though. Despite the jank it’s a great game. The plot, which is just insane – it involves space rockets and Rasputin for God’s sake, even though it is set in 1910s Japan, remember! – ticks along at a nice pace and all comes together in a way that only bizarre Japanese RPGs can. Slight spoiler as proof: there’s a giant warship which is also a transformer late in the game. You can feel bits of Megami Tensei, Persona and related games seeping in here too, not least that they share some enemies like Jack Frost and some events from SMT games are referenced. Yes, they’re set after Raidou.
Now, there’s a PS2 sequel to the original game and I would very much like that to get the same remastered treatment this one did, so fingers crossed.
