Shin Megami Tensei

From IGN.com:

If you’re new to the Persona series, getting into the swing of things can be pretty intimidating. The Persona games belong to the Shin Megami Tensei franchise of videogames, and the original Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 came out on the PlayStation 2 back in 2007. In 2008, publisher Atlus released an enhanced version of the game titled Persona 3: FES, which not only featured a handful of notable improvements but it also boasted an entirely new chapter of the story known as the Answer. Both titles were fantastic Japanese role-playing games which balanced social interaction and classical sim elements with traditional dungeon crawling and turn-based battles.

Now, the Persona 3 experience has almost arrived on Sony’s little black (or white… or silver…) handheld in the form of Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable. The game takes almost all the content from the original Persona 3 and comes with a few of the tweaks from FES (though it doesn’t pack in the Answer chapter). With only a few omissions made, the developers have squeezed an awful lot of the PS2 experience onto one UMD.

As was the case with the original, Persona 3 Portable is set in modern day Japan. You’ll balance out living life as a student in high school while spending nights vanquishing the forces of evil. Yes, there are ample evil forces to vanquish, as every night at midnight the world enters a strange phase called the Dark Hour. During this time in between one day and the next, normal people are unknowingly entombed in coffins and dangerous Shadows roam the streets. The heroes of Persona 3 Portable are special, though; they do not transform into coffins and instead use the power of the Persona to fight the Shadows and unravel the intrigue of the Dark Hour.

The biggest addition in Persona 3 Portable is an entirely new playable female character. Although the story and gameplay will remain fairly unchanged, the female character will give players a different perspective on the events of Persona 3, which is an enticing reason for gamers that finished the first Persona 3 to go back and play through it again.

After choosing your character, you’ll soon find that Persona 3 Portable is a bit different from its older brother/sister. Instead of anime cutscenes, there are more in-engine cutscenes, as well as still pictures. These changes make sense, considering the size of the original Persona 3 and the addition of the new main character, but it was still a little disappointing.

Another notable change is that certain exploration segments, like wandering the high school and dorms, is now done on a static screen with points of interest marked by icons. Some players might lament the loss of free movement here, but on the other hand it’s a lot easier to move from one place to another and all the dialogue is still there.

Dialogue is an extremely important part of Persona 3 Portable. By building your character’s Social Links (a fancy way of saying “makin’ friends”), the power of your character’s Persona will grow. These Personas are physical manifestations of a character’s mind and give the character abilities that they wouldn’t normally have access to in battle. So during the day, players need to build social relationships, attend school and lead a normal life. But come night time, the members of your party will head to Tartarus.

During the Dark Hour, a massive, haunting tower called Tartarus erupts from underneath the party’s high school. By exploring Tartarus every night, players will experience the dungeon crawling portion of Persona 3 Portable. Players must take a group of three students up the tower, floor by floor, and conquer the increasingly resilient Shadows that occupy the tower’s blood-stained halls.
The tower of Tartarus will challenge you.
Participating in a battle is fairly straight-forward, though there’s a lot of strategy in combat. But at its most basic, Persona 3 Portable battles are turn-based affairs where you directly control your main character and AI patterns handle control of the other two. By attacking with your currently equipped weapon and using your Persona to cast spells, you can defeat all the super creepy-looking Shadows that want you dead.

One of the best parts about Persona 3 Portable is the collecting of Personas, which have some of the coolest designs around. By collecting (and subsequently fusing) Personas together, players can give their characters a whole boatload of different abilities. And with an entire school year to play through and a dark tower to thoroughly explore, this has to be one of the most robust PSP games yet.

Persona 3 Portable hits store shelves and the PlayStation Network early next month.

More Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable Videos

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is set in the near future, when a strange black dome appears over the Antarctic. Dubbed the Schwarzwelt, the dome is slowly spreading to envelop the entire planet and destroy all life. The player takes on the role of an unnamed soldier, a member of a special exploration team that is being sent to investigate the dome. He is assigned to the Red Sprite, a super-advanced exploration vehicle that is capable of breaching the Schwarzwelt’s strange surface. More importantly, he is equipped with a Demonica suit of powered armor that’s capable of surviving within the Schwarzwelt’s deadly atmosphere. The mission quickly becomes disastrous, and the Red Sprite is separated from the other members of the team and trapped deep within the Schwarzwelt. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Schwarzwelt is filled with demons, all of which are incredibly deadly and invisible. In order to escape, the soldiers of the Red Sprite must use a mysterious demon-summoning program that appeared on the Demonica suit system. It is up to the Red Sprite crew to find their lost comrades and try to halt the spread of the Schwarzwelt before the unrelenting darkness covers the entire Earth.

Strange Journey‘s plot is rather interesting. Like most SMT games, it is about placing seemingly normal people into a strange situation and allowing the players to decide what happens. The Schwarzwelt is filled with demons, but not all of those demons serve the same purpose or master. As players travel through the Schwarzwelt, they will encounter a wide variety of different forces that are competing for control over the Schwarzwelt.
You’ll be asked to make choices that may sway your alignment, which are the sort of ideals you have: chaos, law or neutrality. Don’t assume that “law” equals good, or “chaos” equals evil, though. They tend to skew more toward how much freedom you believe in or your views on power. A character who aligns with law may believe that mankind is incapable of standing on its own and needs to be guided by a higher power to bring about peace, while a chaos-aligned character may embrace survival of the fittest and freedom over social structures.

Unlike many games, however, this isn’t a path to evil, or at least the traditional idea of evil. A player can also choose to be neutral, opting to remain focused on human matters and human goals, although this path has its own difficulties. Your eventual ending and the fate of many characters remain tied to your alignment choices throughout the title. It doesn’t quite make the game nonlinear, since much of your adventure is the same regardless of your alignment, but it does have a significant impact on gameplay. Regardless of whether you choose to follow chaos, law or neutrality, you’ll find that your adventure is different from that of another player with a different alignment.

As far as gameplay goes, Strange Journey has a lot in common with Etrian Odyssey, and for good reason: They use the same basic engine. If you played Atlus’ other dungeon exploration RPG, a lot will feel familiar here, although there are enough twists and difference to prevent the game from being Etrian Odyssey: Shin Megami Tensei Edition. You begin the game on the Red Sprite, which functions as your base and hometown; from here, you can heal, buy new items or accept missions from crew members. When you leave, you’ll be instantly thrust into the monster-filled dungeons, which are large and completely unmapped, so you must explore them to discover the structure. The Schwarzwelt is divided into multiple sections, with a new section opening up each time you defeat a boss character.

Like Etrian Odyssey, mapping is done entirely on the bottom screen, although Strange Journey uses an automap instead of Etrian Odyssey‘s self-mapping system. Every time you step forward, a new square of the map will be unveiled. The dungeons are fairly complex, so don’t think that this will be a straightforward exploration. There are branching paths, hidden doors, deadly traps and annoying pitfalls to be found on every floor. To best deal with the dungeon, you’ll have to make multiple trips into the depths, taking your time and exploring to find easier ways to travel deeper into the dungeon. The dungeon is divided into various strata, and you can only venture into a deeper stratum once you’ve cleared the previous one, which usually involves defeating a boss.

The game takes care of icon placement and wall-drawing for you, which is both a plus and a minus. It keeps the game moving forward so you don’t have to pause to map out a section, but it would’ve really been nice to have the option. There were more than a few times when I was wishing that I could make notes on the map or leave myself hints about something important. One good example of this is a side-quest that involves you finding dead members of the Red Sprite’s investigation team. You encounter the corpses long before you get the side-quest, and it would’ve been useful to mark them on the map instead of having to backtrack to find them. For the most part, the map is perfectly functional and gives you very accurate information about the area you’ve just explored. The lack of note-taking wouldn’t be so noticeable if Strange Journey wasn’t already so similar to Etrian Odyssey, but it can be a frustrating element to lack.

The dungeon design in Strange Journey is phenomenally good. Each section of the Schwarzwelt is uniquely designed and full of traps, gimmicks and enemies that occur only in that area. You rarely feel like you’re wandering through identical dungeons, as each area has a new and unique situation for you. One dungeon may be full of secret doors and teleport traps, forcing you to map your way through a nonlinear area to find hidden items. Another may be full of rivers that carry you in an uncontrolled current to a set location. Yet another is made up almost entirely of pitch-black rooms and forces you to slowly find your way through the maze without the aid of sight or automapping. Some of these dungeons can get a little annoying, but rarely do they stop being exciting to explore. You may feel aggravated when you’re trying to find your way through an invisible maze, but that is easily surpassed by the satisfaction of getting through the traps.

Strange Journey is also very good about placing save points and shortcuts around the dungeons. It’s rare to find a difficult area without a save point afterward, preventing tedious backtracking and the very possible risk of dying and being forced to redo a tough area. With that said, there are some areas that are just annoying. One of the most tedious and unenjoyable sections involves having to track down a series of items in a teleport maze, each of which is scattered in a different location. This means you have to map every single teleporter outcome to find the proper items. Since you can’t make any notes on the touch-screen, this reduces you to memorizing every teleport result or keeping something nearby to map it out by hand.

As you explore the various zones of the Schwarzwelt, you’ll inevitably end up in battles with demons. Your party is comprised of your character and up to three other summoned demons, and you fight in a traditional turn-based style, where you use regular attacks and special magic spells against opponents. There are some differences from other recent SMT games, though. To begin with, every enemy is invisible. Your Demonica suit allows you to see demons, but only as indistinct globs. The first time you encounter a demon, you’ll have no idea what it is. This is the most dangerous time, as any spell you cast has a risk of being one that it can reflect back at you. After you defeat an enemy for the first time, you’ll be able to see its name and picture. Continued fights against the same enemy will reveal its weaknesses and attacks, until you eventually know everything there is to know about it. This can be a bit frustrating, as running into an invisible enemy while you’re weak or low on health can be a potential death sentence, but it also adds an interesting element of danger to exploring new areas. You can’t rely on your knowledge of other SMT games to get you through.

As in games like Persona or SMT: Nocturne, hitting enemy weaknesses is important. However, it isn’t enough to simply figure out which elemental attack damages the enemy the most because weaknesses in Strange Journey only cause a small amount of additional damage. In order to truly exploit weaknesses, you need to take advantage of demon co-ops, which are special attacks that a party member performs if a teammate hits an enemy weakness. These co-ops only activate if the party member has the same alignment as the member who struck the enemy’s weak point, so alignment is the most important part of setting up your party. The more demons you have doing a co-op attack, the more powerful it gets. Three like-minded demons hitting an enemy’s weak point can massively increase the damage you do in a single round, but this comes at a cost. Just because a demon is like-minded doesn’t mean that it’s powerful. You may be forced to use inferior demons to take advantage of co-op attacks, or you may have to sacrifice the extra damage granted by a demon co-op in order to have a strong healer or tank on your side. Party selection requires more thought than in previous SMT games, and it encourages you to think harder about who you’re bringing along.

Demons can be recruited in a few different ways. You can talk to them during battle, which starts a brief dialogue selection minigame where you choose the option that best pleases the demon. Make it happy enough, and it will join you or give you a useful item. Tick it off, and it may storm out of the battle or attack you. You can also fuse together demons to form a new, more powerful demon. These fused demons can be further modified by demon sources, which allow you to give specific spells to demons and limit the need for long fusion chains. The most useful and unique way to get demons is through the use of passwords, which you can use to summon it. This can allow you to summon a demon without needing the source, you can also trade passwords with other players. If you get stuck in a certain part of the game, can’t find the right demon to fuse, or want a low-level demon with high-level abilities, you’ll be able to get these through the use of passwords. This lowers the difficulty of the game, but it also cuts down on the frustration. While there’s a certain satisfaction to creating the perfect demon, it’s tedious to grind when you just want to advance the plot or defeat an annoying boss.

Your main character in Strange Journey is an average person, and his only advantage is the Iron Man-like Demonica suit that he wears. He lacks many of the special powers of characters in other SMT games; he can’t cast spells or use special physical attacks, but he mimics demonic powers through the use of modern technology. He has a series of equipment slots on his Demonica suit: accessory, armor, gun and sword. Basic attacks normally do physical damage, but anything you equip in the sword slot will alter the physical damage that he does. For example, one weapon may hit once for heavy damage, and another weapon may hit multiple times but can inflict a status effect.

Armor changes your character’s strengths and weaknesses, which is, by far, the protagonist’s most useful ability. By default, the Demonica suit is immune to Expel attacks but otherwise has no special attributes, but with the proper armor, you can make him a tank in almost any situation. Accessories give you a special attribute, ranging from improving your Demonica’s stats to nullifying certain kinds of attacks.

The gun slot replaces your magic abilities, but the kind of gun you use can alter how damage is inflicted. A machine gun may be able to hit an entire row of enemies, while a shotgun can hit random enemies multiple times. Each gun has a few different special abilities that mimic magic spells. These spells cost MP, although they are both less powerful and more expensive than a demon spell of comparable levels, so your main character is far more customizable than demons but has difficulty matching their damage output.

In addition to your Demonica suit’s combat abilities, it has passive abilities called applications, which come in two forms: main and sub. Main apps are always available and include the ability to detect rare items, find hidden walls, unlock doors, see in the dark, and many other useful powers. They’re important and are usually required to advance the plot. You’ll usually gain a new main app upon completing a mission or defeating a boss, and they can unlock new areas of the Schwarzwelt for you to explore. On the other hand, sub apps are optional and can do anything from reduce the enemy encounter rate to change the demons you create from fusion. Most sub apps take up a certain amount of space on your suit; the more powerful it is, the more space it takes up, so you can only equip a few at a time. Sub apps can be changed at any save point in the game.

Upgrading your Demonica suit isn’t a simple task. You can switch between weapons and armor you have acquired at any time, but you need to obtain those items first by creating them from Forma — rare materials from demons themselves — that are found in the demon-infested lands of the Schwarzwelt. To find Forma, you must explore the Schwarzwelt and find hidden stashes. Forma are invisible unless you go near them, but once you find them, you can pick them up. Some Forma are best if obtained straight from the source. When you defeat a demon in battle, there is a chance that it’ll drop special Forma, which are necessary to create the best weapons and items in the game.

Once you’ve collected the proper Forma, you can go back to the lab on your ship and convert it into new armor, weapons and items. Collecting Forma is very addictive because each one leads to new items, which lead to ways to make your character more useful and powerful. However, there is a fair amount of grinding involved in getting proper Forma. Item drops are randomized, and getting the proper items for your equipment usually means spending some time negotiating or battling with demons until they give you the proper items. It’s possible to beat the game without buying every available weapon and armor, but those who enjoy having maximum flexibility in combat will spend a significant amount of time farming for rare Forma.

Like most SMT titles, Strange Journey is not very forgiving. Early on, you can burn through fights with your available demons. As the game progresses, you’ll find yourself thinking very carefully about which demons to bring along, especially as your alignment changes. There are certain bosses who are nearly impossible to defeat without at least two other demons of a similar alignment hitting them with a co-op attack. At the same time, you may have a hard time finding a demon of the proper alignment with the correct strengths or weaknesses to survive an enemy’s attacks. This adds a very interesting element of strategy to the game, perhaps even more so than in many recent SMT titles, since your choices depend on more than your most powerful demon. For a good chunk of the game, I was carrying a demon that was almost 10 levels behind the curve, simply because his resistances were so useful. It may be frustrating to gamers who like to use any demons that catch their attention, but it makes the combat a lot more interesting.

Strange Journey‘s only real weak point is its visuals. The dungeon exploration is very much in the same vein as Etrian Odyssey, for all the good and bad that implies. The dungeons have very interesting art design, but much of your time is spent wandering through identical-looking corridors and rooms. Fortunately, the level design is interesting enough to prevent the limited variation in textures from becoming boring too quickly. The enemies are represented by still pictures with very limited animation, rather similar to the Pokémon titles. Combat is little more than basic visual effects appearing over animated gifs; this is an extremely small step up from Devil Survivor, where the monsters didn’t move at all. Like the dungeon design, however, the combat is intense and exciting enough that you’re unlikely to care that this isn’t the prettiest game on the market.

The soundtrack, on the other hand, is perfect. The music is almost universally ominous and somber. The early areas are filled with pounding drums and eerie chanting, and as you delve deeper and deeper into the Schwarzwelt, you’ll find the music alters to match the tone of the area you’re exploring and really set the atmosphere.

The Shin Megami Tensei series has proven itself as one of the most consistently well-made RPG franchises in recent memory, and SMT: Strange Journey is no exception. There are few dungeon exploration games that are as solidly well put-together and interesting. It’s more accessible than Etrian Odyssey while still being very similar, so it’s a good game for dungeon-crawling fans who couldn’t survive Etrian Odyssey‘s punishing difficulty. The dungeon design is top-notch, and combat is fast-paced and intense, especially since your party makeup has such a huge impact on tactics. The plot is engrossing and interactive, encouraging players to carve out their own story and giving their choices actual gameplay effects. Perhaps the only weak point is the unimpressive visuals, which are fortunately bolstered by the atmosphere and a well-crafted soundtrack. The difficulty can be high, especially in some of the later areas, but it’s easy to get help with the password system. If you’re an RPG owner with a Nintendo DS, Strange Journey is a must-have and easily one of the best games on the system. It may not have the visual charm of a Mario and Luigi game or the high production values of a Square Enix title, but it’s hard to name another game as challenging and engrossing as Strange Journey.

Score: 9.3/10

It’s been a long time since we last heard anything about the followup to PS2 swan song Persona 4 – the last we heard, longtime Atlus composer Shoji Meguro had been credited with doing the soundtrack to Persona 5, but nothing concrete materialized from those rumors.

Now, however, we may have something definite, reports Kotaku. Katsura Hashino, who previously worked as producer and director on both Persona 3 and Persona 4, told Japanese game mag Dengeki PlayStation that work was beginning on the next Persona – but that things might be changing up a bit.

“We are preparing to start work on the next Persona,” said Hashino. “I want to add things that are being expected of the series,” he elaborated, but added that he also wanted “to change things that can be changed within those boundaries.”

Smart money says the next game will likely be about Japanese teenagers who have the ability to summon powerful alter egos based on their innermost selves, and who each fall into a different category of the tarot arcana. The power of said alter egos will depend as much on how much time the teenagers spend hanging out after school together as it does on how much time they spend level grinding in dungeons recreated out of the human psyche.

But that’s just a guess. He did say that he wanted to change it up, though. So maybe they’ll be… Japanese college students this time around? What would you like to see in a new Persona?

In other news, Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft has excellent taste in pairing preferences.

Atlus USA has released the official full trailer for its upcoming Nintendo DS release of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Here is a brief description of the story from the official site.

“A slowly expanding black spot has begun to cover the Antarctic, and if left unchecked, it could swallow the world. Don your cutting-edge Demonica suit and join an elite group of soldiers tasked by the Joint Project to enter and explore the Schwarzwelt, with the primary objective of destroying it from within, but stay sharp: there are things inside the Schwarzwelt man was not meant to know…”

Strange Journey will be the next game to carry on Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne’s demon negotiation system, which is used to get the various demons you will come across to join as allies with you and help you fight, once you acquire demons you can also begin using the demon fusion system which has always been one of my favorite parts about the Shin Megami Tensei games, as you can merge different demons together and make an even more powerful one, or sometimes weaker ones if you aren’t paying attention.
 

The game released in Japan October 8th last year, and will see its North American release on March 23rd, 2010.

In the near future, a mysterious, growing, black void appears at the Earth’s southern pole. Unable to determine its cause and powerless to stop its deadly encroachment, humanity sends an elite team of explorers into the heart of the phenomenon, just as Strange Journey’s look and feel represent a return to the heart of Shin Megami Tensei, bringing to mind the all-time classic Nocturne™. With over 300 demons to bribe, coerce, and negotiate with to gain assistance in battle, Strange Journey is every bit the deep, rewarding RPG experience fans have come to expect from the SMT franchise, yet delivered with a fresh new sci-fi story that taps into mature themes of morality and introspection.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, which already comes with a soundtrack CD packed in a collectible outer box (launch copies only), can now offer décor-concerned gamers who pre-order a copy of the game at GameStop with a nice mini-poster (available online and in stores while supplies last) with which to add class to their living area.

“Some of the best bonus items are the kind you can listen to, hence the soundtrack CD we’re including with launch copies of the game,” commented Aram Jabbari, Manager of Public Relations and Sales at Atlus.  “Still, sometimes you want a bonus item that you can feel, something you can caress gently and hold against your face, something you can take a big whiff of and enjoy.  That’s what the mini-poster is all about.  With its gorgeous aesthetic, courtesy of master artist Kazuma Kaneko, Strange Journey stands out as a unique science fiction RPG experience, and this collectible mini-poster is the perfect way to show your friends that you are onboard for the adventure (and also, that you’re better than them).”

When the black spot appeared in the Antarctic, mankind became nervous; when it began to spread, that anxiety turned to panic. The Joint Project, convened to discuss how to deal with the expanding anomaly, decided to send in four ships carrying humanity’s finest soldiers and most cutting-edge technology. The mission: to investigate what lay on the other side of what had been dubbed the Schwarzwelt and find out if there was a way to stop it from eventually covering the Earth.

You are an elite soldier hand-picked for the Strike Team, outfitted with a Demonica environment suit and posted to the Red Sprite under Commander Gore. Upon entering the Schwarzwelt, the crew finds itself forced to deal with harsh conditions, supernatural interference, and throngs of demons populating the bewildering world. What exactly is the Schwarzwelt? What awaits at the end of this strange journey? It is entirely in your hands to find out…

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey will feature a potent demon password system, allowing players to generate and exchange codes representing their customized demons, and introducing an all-new facet to the franchise’s beloved “collect every demon” gameplay.

Key Features

• Shin Megami Tensei goes beyond — Strange Journey’s game mechanics represent a return to the proud tradition of the all-time dungeon-crawling classic SMT: Nocturne, while its story takes players into the near future on a mission to save Earth and to understand humanity’s position within the larger universe.
• A dark turn into science fiction — Who or what is causing the black hole that is engulfing the Earth? A mission to investigate the cause uncovers a whole world of demons that humans knew nothing about. Do they seek your destruction or will you seek theirs? Will you decide to save Earth or choose another path for humanity?
• Team up with demons — Demons may be friends or foes depending on your ability to negotiate, bribe, and coerce them to join your party. With more than 300 types of demons, you’ll have a huge variety of battlefield encounters and an equally large base of options on which to build your party strategy. 

Atlus U.S.A., revealed that a PlayStation Portable version of its insanely popular RPG game, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, is in development. Aptly titled Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable, the handheld adaptation of one of the company’s highest-rated role-playing games of all time, will be released in North America in July.

The “Portable” version of game promises a new player-controlled female protagonist, dozens of additional hours of content – in addition to the 100 hours of total play time found in the original game, various improvements and enhancements to streamline play on the PSP, and a whole lot more to be announced.

SMT: Persona 3 Portable is currently scheduled for release on July 6. For more information, visit the official Persona 3 Portable website at www.atlus.com/p3p.

Come March 23, 2010 most fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series will be playing the new title Strange Journey. Included in the retail release is not only the Nintendo DS cartridge, but also the soundtrack with every launch copy.

Along with new screens, Lead Editor for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Nich Maragos published a production diary highlighting the localization of the title. Be sure to read through it here.

Come March 23, 2010 most fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series will be playing the new title Strange Journey. Included in the retail release is not only the Nintendo DS cartridge, but also the soundtrack with every launch copy.

Along with new screens, Lead Editor for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, Nich Maragos published a production diary highlighting the localization of the title. Be sure to read through it here.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, perhaps more than any other core Shin Megami Tensei game, is designed for an international audience. Players interact with a hodgepodge crew featuring characters from various nations, most of which have their names written in katakana.

In a developer diary, Nich Maragos, Lead Editor, details how tricky translating katakana to English can be, especially when you’re dealing with world mythology. Some names like Williams immediately click. Others like “Sukuugusuroo” or Skogsra, the name of a Sweedish forest spirit, require extra work and J.A. Coleman’s The Dictionary of Mythology to decipher.

The post is worth a read, at the very least, to appreciate the headaches the localization team at Atlus went through to ensure Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey was properly translated.

Shin Megami Tensei is a franchise that has earned quite a name among RPG fans, due to a large number of high-quality entries. Nocturne and the Persona are regarded as some of the most interesting and challenging JRPGs on the market, but we’ve never actually gotten the early Megami Tensei games in English-speaking countries. The closest would be Persona, which has a lot in common with the early entries in the franchise, but quite a few differences as well. The earlier SMT games resembled Wizardry meets Pokémon, combining first-person dungeon exploration with monster-raising. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a return to the older SNES style of Megami Tensei. It’s quite a bit different from Persona or Nocturne, but it’s shaping up to be one of the most addictive RPGs on the DS.

Strange Journey is set in the near future, when a strange black dome appears over the Antarctic. Dubbed the Schwarzwelt, the dome is slowly spreading to envelop the entire planet and destroy all life. The player takes on the role of an unnamed soldier, a member of a special exploration team that is being sent to investigate the dome. He is assigned to the Red Sprite, a super-advanced exploration vehicle that is capable of breaching the Schwarzwelt’s strange surface. More importantly, he is equipped with a Demonica suit of powered armor that’s capable of surviving within the Schwarzwelt’s deadly atmosphere. The mission quickly becomes disastrous, and the Red Sprite is separated from the other members of the team and trapped deep within the Schwarzwelt. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Schwarzwelt is filled with demons, all of which are incredibly deadly and invisible. In order to escape, the soldiers of the Red Sprite must use a mysterious demon-summoning program that appeared on the Demonica suit system.

As in most Megami Tensei titles, your decisions have a major influence on how the game plays out. While you begin as a neutral character who is simply there to do his job, things change as the game progresses. You’ll be asked to make choices that may sway your alignment, which are the sort of ideals you have: chaos, law or neutrality. Don’t assume that “law” equals good, or “chaos” equals evil, though. They tend to skew more toward how much freedom you believe in or your views on power. A character who aligns with law may believe that mankind is incapable of standing on its own and needs to be guided by a higher power to bring about peace, while a chaos-aligned character may embrace survival of the fittest and freedom over social structures.

Your character will end up as one of these three alignments, depending on his choices throughout the game. This has a tremendous impact on how the game progresses and will alter your eventual ending, but it also impacts the game world. Demons have their own alignment as well, and their like or dislike of you will be determined by your alignment. It will be far easier to recruit law demons as a law character, for example. It also heavily factors into combat, as co-op attacks can only be triggered with demons of the same alignment. Unlike most RPGs, Strange Journey holds you to what you say, so think carefully before you answer even innocent-sounding questions.

It’s actually far easier to liken Strange Journey to Atlus’ Etrian Odyssey than any of the recent Megami Tensei games. If you’ve played that game, you’ll find much of this to be familiar. You begin the game on the Red Sprite, which functions as your combination base and hometown. When you leave, you’ll be instantly thrust into the dungeon, which are large and completely unmapped, so you must explore them to discover the structure. Like Etrian Odyssey, mapping is done entirely on the bottom screen, although Strange Journey uses an auto-map instead of Etrian Odyssey‘s self-mapping system. Every time you step forward, a new square of the map will be unveiled. The dungeons are fairly complex, so don’t think that this will be a straightforward exploration. There are branching paths, hidden doors, deadly traps and annoying pitfalls to be found on every floor. To best deal with the dungeon, you’ll have to make multiple trips into the depths, taking your time and exploring to find easier ways to travel deeper into the dungeon. The dungeon is divided into various strata, and you can only venture into a deeper stratum once you’ve cleared the previous one, which usually involves defeating a boss.

When you begin, you’re only able to explore the most basic elements of the Schwarzwelt, but as the game progresses, your Demonica suit will receive upgrades that allow you to explore deeper. For example, an early upgrade is a sensor that lets you find Forma, a rare material that appears semi-randomly around the map. If you’re close to Forma, the sensor will light up and pinpoint the location so you can collect it. Later upgrades allow you to access previously hidden doors or passages and venture into areas that would otherwise be dangerous or battle deadly invisible monsters. Your Demonica suit is upgraded automatically to take advantage of these new features, but it is best to be cautious and know your limits about where to explore. There are areas in early parts of the game that you can only access after venturing to a deeper floor.

Upgrading your Demonica suit is a big part of the game. Unlike the protagonists in other franchise offerings, your main character in Strange Journey isn’t any kind of superhuman or magician. His powers are limited to the special Demonica armor, and this is both a plus and a minus. The Demonica is pure technology and not magical, so your protagonist can’t use the same magic spells as the demons but he can equip weapons and armor to mimic the demons’ abilities. Instead of having natural strengths and weaknesses, he can equip different armor to change his defensive abilities. Rather than casting magic spells, he can use a gun and special bullets to use elemental damage or debuffs. This makes him extremely customizable, so you can alter his abilities at any time during the game and switch attack and defensive abilities on the fly, as long as you’re not in battle. As a trade-off, your main character tends to be a bit less powerful than demons. His strength comes from his customization, which allows you to alter your combat style for any situation. Beyond weapons and armor, you can also find sub-apps, which can be attached to your Demonica to alter its features, including your character getting into fewer battles, earning better prizes from demons, and altering the way a demon’s skills grow, to name a few. These sub-apps take up a certain amount of space on your Demonica, so you can only equip a few at a time.

Improving the Demonica isn’t simple as buying parts from a store. In order to upgrade your suit, you need Forma. Some can be found by using the Forma Search function on your Demonica, while others must be earned from demons. Regardless of how you come across Forma, it serves as the synthesis material for Demonica items. You take Forma to the Red Sprite’s lab and pay the Macca (currency) to convert the Forma into items. While there are a few items that can be made without Forma, almost everything else in the game requires Forma for creation, including armor, weapons and healing items. You could have a near-infinite supply of Macca, but it wouldn’t help unless you had the Forma to generate the equipment, so you’ll probably have to make trips into the dungeon just to farm the material. The payoff is very worth it, as each piece of equipment in Strange Journey is incredibly important and can completely alter the tide of battle.

Battle is a major part of Strange Journey. The Schwarzwelt is packed to the brim with demons, and you’ll have to fight your way through hordes of them before you can escape. The combat system is rather simple; your party is made up of your Demonica-using main character and up to three demons that he has summoned, and you battle opponents in turned-based combat until one emerges victorious. As in other Megami Tensei games, your main character is the backbone of the party, so if he falls in battle, the game is over.

On the other hand, demons are replaceable, so if a demon falls or you want to change the demon you’re using, you can summon a new one during the main character’s turn. Your demon selection is very important, as certain demons can provide benefits that others can’t. In addition to each demon having a strength and weakness against certain elemental attacks, each demon’s alignment can alter combat. If you hit an enemy weakness with one of your attacks, all demons with the same alignment will perform a “co-op attack” on the unlucky foe, and the more demons who perform a co-op attack, the more powerful it is. To get the biggest benefit out of combat, you have to keep a team of like-minded demons, so you can have three characters contributing to a co-op attack each time. Of course, this isn’t as easy as it sounds, and you may sometimes have to sacrifice co-op power in order to have a strong or useful demon on your side.

One of the more enjoyable aspects about Strange Journey‘s combat system is that it isn’t entirely based on combat. Like the early Megami Tensei games, you’re also given the option to talk your way out of fights. At the start of combat, you can attempt to talk to a demon by engaging in a brief text-based mini-game. You choose what to say to the demon, and it may react positively or negatively depending on its likes and dislikes. Positive reactions tend to pay off for you. If a demon likes you enough, it will be willing to negotiate with you, so you can ask for items or Macca — or get it to join your party. In exchange, you may have to give up some health, MP or items to keep the demon happy. Negotiation isn’t always successful, but it will usually lead to you getting rare items or a new demon partner, all without having to fight. Successful negotiation automatically ends the fight, so it is a good way to avoid an energy-draining battle against tough foes.

Failing to please the demon can hurt you as well, though. At best, the demon may become angry and refuse to talk anymore, but at worst, it may suddenly attack and get in a free round of combat. In rare situations, it may be so disgusted by your failure to talk that it’ll storm out of the battle, thus denying you of useful experience and Macca for fighting the demon, but at least you don’t have to fight. You can also use negotiation as a way to make certain areas a lot easier. You can’t recruit more than one type of the same demon, and if you try, the demon will notice. This functions very similarly to an automatically successful negotiation. The demon will leave, ending the battle, and sometimes earning you rare items. If you keep a stable of demons in your party that are tough to battle, you can greatly reduce the amount of fighting you have to do.

It’s important to note that Strange Journey takes an unusual approach to enemy encounters. All the demons inside the Schwarzwelt are invisible, and the only reason you can see them is because of the demon-summoning program installed on your Demonica suit. The program isn’t perfect, though. The first time you encounter a demon, it’ll appear as distorted data. You can’t talk to it, don’t know its name, and can’t even see what it looks like. This is the hardest time to encounter a demon because you can’t even use your prior Megami Tensei knowledge to guess at its weaknesses. You have to use attacks that are unlikely to backfire or make a random guess at an enemy’s weaknesses. Once you defeat an enemy, the Demonica begins to analyze it so you can learn its name and appearance. From then on, you can raise the demon’s analysis level by interacting with it by fighting it, talking to it, or even raising and battling with your own version of the demon. As you analyze the demon, more information will become available, including its weaknesses and attacks. Fully max out the analysis of a demon, and you’ll know exactly what you’re coming up against every time it appears.

Strange Journey has an interesting balancing game involved with raising your demons. For the most part, demons are only good for a few levels. They’re strong for a while as you get them, but keeping a demon leveled can’t prevent it from eventually becoming outdated when compared to the foes you’re fighting. At the same time, it’s important to level up your demons. Every time a demon levels, it has a chance of giving you a reward, such as Forma, which is always handy. The most useful prizes are sources. When a fully analyzed demon levels up, it’ll give you its source, which is a special item that can be used in fusion to pass along the demon’s skills, even if they were not part of the fusion. This allows you to pass along difficult-to-acquire skills to a monster without having to go through long fusion sequences. Sources are also limited, though. You can only have one of a demon’s source at a time, and it’s gone if you use it in a fusion. Furthermore, getting a second source is much harder than getting a first one. You must be careful when and where you use a source, but smart source usage leads to significantly more powerful demons.

One unique feature about Strange Journey is how it handles the demon compendium. In other Megami Tensei games, the compendium is pretty straightforward. You can resummon any demon you’ve recruited to your party before, and register demons that you’ve changed so that you can summon an already-leveled version of that demon instead of the base version. This costs Macca, but it’s easier than summoning one normally.

Strange Journey adds the new password feature, so any time you register a demon, it also gives you a password for it. This password can be entered to summon that demon as if it were part of your compendium. While this may sound useless, keep in mind that passwords work on any version of the game, so if you have a friend who also has the game, you can use passwords to help out one another. He may be able to send you the code for a demon that will allow you to defeat a tough boss, or you could give him the code for a demon he needs to fuse to get a particularly useful monster. These codes are not without their limits. You need to be of the same or higher level as the demon you intend to summon, and you still have to pay Macca for it. This feature will make it much easier for Megami Tensei fans to help each other, since difficult-to-fuse demons are just a password away.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey feels a lot like Etrian Odyssey meets Nocturne. The levels and dungeons are laid out very similarly to Atlus’ other dungeon exploration game. There are a lot of familiar strategies and mechanics that work in both games, and if you enjoyed Etrian Odyssey, you’ll probably love Strange Journey. The combat, the story and the atmosphere are pure Megami Tensei, so it’s exciting to explore the depths of the Schwarzwelt, and the story grows more interesting the further you progress. Battling alongside your demons is fun and challenging, and there is a lot of room for customization and strategy. You’ll likely die more than a few times trying to get through the game, but each death encourages you to come up with better strategies and fuse stronger demons. Strange Journey will be released not long after the juggernaut that is Final Fantasy XIII, but that doesn’t mean gamers should overlook it. It may not be as shiny as Square Enix’s monster, but Strange Journey has the potential to be as exciting and engrossing as any Final Fantasy game.

Atlus U.S.A., Inc has just launched the official website for their new sci-fi RPG, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey for the Nintendo DS.

The website will list details on the game’s story, cast, and systems. The site also contains a mission breifing to set the stage. For the uninitiated, the “What is SMT?” section tells newcomers the history of the series. A downloads section will let them take something away once they’ve been initiated into the series.

“The official website for Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is the only source of information anyone needs to consult for breaking news on the situation in the Schwarzwelt,” proclaimed Aram Jabbari, the Joint Project’s ad hoc minister of information, shutting a door behind him through which flashing red lights could be seen. “Please remain calm and bookmark the website for regular updates from trusted experts on the subject.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is scheduled for release on March 23 with an MSRP of $34.99. Every copy will be a boxed set with a bonus CD with music from the game!

Check out the website and pre-order your copy today.