RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army

2025-09-13
Saying "Is that Rasputin?" when a new character was introduced and being right was not on my bingo card when I went into play Raidou but boy howdy am I pleased that it happens. Among Raidou Remastered's many strengths, the Bat-Shit-O-Meter being frequently maxed out might be my favorite. It is one of few pieces of media where I genuinely could not for the life of me predict what the fuck would happen next. Whatever substance the writer was on when they wrote this I would like to cautiously try some, perhaps in a forest in the Pacific Northwest with a close friend. Let me give you a sampling--and yes, spoilers for this list (the rest of the review is C L E A N):

• Rasputin is in the game.
• Rasputin is an android. From the future. Who sends you to another dimension.
• A tiny god comes out of a man's mouth and then proceeds to project a PowerPoint presentation about their evil plot.
• A satellite is launched in 1920's Japan to power a giant mecha.
• Your talking cat companion gets sent on a solo mission to space to disarm said satellite.
• The final boss fight is against a person who turns into a battleship, who then turns into a mech, and then into a mech with a giant demon face in the middle.

Besides madness, Raidou's other strength is its effusive vibes. Exploring 1920s Tokyo and boroughs and canals and forests is a refreshing setting in SMT land where we're used to Hip Tokyo's, Neo Tokyo's, and Blasted Tokyo's. And don't forget the charm of the era-accurate clothing and hairstyles paired with those classic Kazuma Kaneko character designs. The real beating heart as with a lot of SMT games is the demons. Each demon can follow you around with their own little unique idle animations and in this redone version each one is beautiful: Inugami twisting and swimming his tubular dog body through the air or Onamyaki doing his cute little hopping jig. You can tell a lot of love, care, and, with the $50 asking price, money went into breathing life into this classic cast of weirdos.

Ok vibes and story but what about the actual game? It's fine. Initially the sound of a more interactive, real-time SMT experience where you're running around with Raidou stabbing, shooting, and firing off spells at enemies while your two AI demon companions do their own thing sounded incredible and--in the tutorial--even a bit overwhelming in the best way possible. But I quickly realized Raidou falls into the same trap as a lot of action RPGs with combat that doesn't feel great due to weak feedback and spongey enemies. Raidou might as well be hitting demons with a baguette and shooting them with a Nerf gun for all the gravitas his attacks have on screen. And while casting spells feels better, the cooldowns plus the expansive enemy health bars and their boring tactics means most fights feel incredibly listless. Yeah sure whatever I'll have Raidou run around the screen again waiting to cast my nuke + sword-spam combo to deal another 5% damage. So color me surprised when the final boss of the game was incredibly fun. I'm dodging criss-crossing AOE attacks with different timings while simultaneously summoning and calling back my demons to make sure they don't die, and then jumping at the boss for the brief window where I can get some damage in. This is what it means to be a devil summoner! It's a shame that it takes the legitimate final battle of the game for them to ramp it up to an actually engaging level.

It's funny I complain about the battles being low energy because if they're tea that's been steeped too little, the gameplay outside of combat is tea that's had a bottle full of Nyquil dumped in. You walk around a sparse map and uh talk to people. That's it. Don't go in expecting the whole "detective" element has any bearing on the gameplay at all, it's merely the setup to the start of the plot. That's it. There's occasional "puzzles" which usually involve summoning the correct demon (read: press a couple buttons in a menu) to use a power like Fly or Swim or whatever. And there's almost no secrets. Your reward for going down an unseen path is usually a worthless healing item or, if you're lucky, an item that will permanently increase one of your stats...in a game where if you're not comatose you'll inevitably max them all anyway. Yay! And the dungeons are the same sparse tedium except sub in enemies for people to talk to. I genuinely only remember the last dungeon because it was all over-saturated whites and blacks set in some place between dimensions, in short: horrible monochrome tedium.

But don't worry even if that Nyquil got you nodding off, you're gonna perk up for the jams. It's rare I'll pause a game to listen to a song but Raidou had me do this multiple times. Shoji Meguro, go figure. Kind of an aside but I love checking out video game soundtracks on Spotify and seeing which songs have the most listens because gamers have the fucking worst taste in music. As of writing, the transcendental Tsukudo-cho ATLUS Konishi Remix has 5433 listens, putting it firmly in the bottom half of all songs on the album. Now listen, maybe I spent one too many hours in a sweaty pit of patchouli-smelling Phish fans off their tits on ketamine but come now, how could you possibly not enjoy a song that's just some session musicians straight jamming RIFFS for 3 straight minutes. What the fuck guys? Really, you want to listen to Battle -Naomi-, a supremely by the numbers (but admittedly still ripping) battle theme, more? Ok, credit where it's due: one of the top listens is also the absolutely delightful, simultaneously maximalist and ethereal edm remix of Lax Detective Agency which pops off firmly. Yeah the kids are alright.

And you know what? Raidou, you're alright too. Sure your overworld makes me want to visit the Aokigahara forest with a nice long rope and your combat has the makings of greatness but isn't quite there--but the slurry of insane plot, novel setting, beautiful demons, and shredding tunes is proper good and I’m happy I took the trip.