Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army Impression

The variety of base abilities is expansive enough for every fight to feel different in those opening hours.  Everything combines to a well-polished and exciting beginning to the game.

Atlus’s titles have an air of quality that makes them easy to revisit.  This is definitely true of their turn-based entries, but happily looks to be true for action spin-offs as well.  Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army returns players to Atlus’s Shin Megami Tensei action RPG spinoff with some enjoyable updates to spruce up this original PlayStation 2 entry for the modern day.  RPGamer got a chance to check out the first couple of hours of the game to see if things handle as well as they look, and early signs are promising.

There’s a title bestowed upon a promising summoner, one that is able to protect the regular citizen from the supernatural.  This protector is called Raidou, and the protagonist undergoes the trials to become Raidou Kuzunoha XIV to look after 1930s Tokyo.  After impressing the governing clan, Raidou is sent to apprentice as a detective with the Narumi Detective Agency, which acts as a cover for him to keep an eye on the supernatural beings that threaten to break into the city.  This period and its atmosphere are brought to life with added colours and detailed character designs to bring out the best in the new HD visuals.  The voice acting that brings demons and NPCs to life is very capable and adds a new layer of nuance to this exciting mystery detective story.

Soon after Raidou settles in the Tsukudo-Cho district of Tokyo, he and his detective mentor Shouhei Narumi are approched by a teenage girl who states that something ominous is going to happen on her sixteenth birthday and that the detectives should kill her.  As they process this, the girl is kidnapped by a shadowy organization.  The interactions between the demons and the detective as well as the mystery behind the kidnapping are exciting to dig into as the mystery goes deeper and deeper.

While exploring 1930s Tokyo there is a fun navigation technique in which Raidou uses demons he has captured to potentially alter the surroundings such as revealing hidden rooms in the nearby area.  Meanwhile, conversing with NPCs occasionally gives prompts for demon skills, which can cause NPCs to blurt out their emotions or be used to read their minds.  Almost every NPC has something to uncover, and it pays off to explore every area to find little clues for the case or helpful items.

While moving around town Raidou can come across side cases from NPCs as well as Aril Rifts.  These can be very simple, with one involving using one of Raidou’s demon skills to obtain something off a ledge and return it to the nearby citizen for a quick reward.  Aril Rifts are reappearing portals that refresh with each new moon phase that try to release demons into the city, but which Raidou can close by hopping into to defeat a hefty group of enemies.  These optional rifts are worth taking advantage of for their increased experience, money, and item rewards, as well as plenty of demons to recruit.

Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army has a lot of demons to encounter.  Raidou starts with six tubes to collect demons with, which increases as he builds loyalty with his demon allies.  Maxing out loyalty, usually by fighting alongside them, can provide items or refresh either health or magic, and is needed to fuse demons down the road.  Raidou can have two demons active alongside him at any time, and swap them on the fly.  These demons are more intuitive as they have an upgraded AI that makes them easy to swap between utilizing their skills, regular attacking, or allowing the player to take them out of harm’s way of an area of effect spell with one press of the button.  Experience and loyalty are gained quickest by being in the active party, but sitting on the bench still gains some.  Provided the demon is not a higher level than Raidou and they have an empty tube, players can attempt to capture a demon at any point during combat; what follows is a series of rapid button presses that sees players gain first an item and eventually the demon if successful.

There is a lot of variety in the controls for Raidou.  He can use elemental signs to target a demon’s weaknesses, while mixing light and heavy slashes with a free-aiming infinite ammo semi-automatic gun that reloads on a cooldown.  Hitting weaknesses freezes the enemy in place as they take extra damage for a small amount of time, which is extremely beneficial against tougher enemies.  All of these features feel like they expand on the original title’s more simplistic slash, ordering a demon, and auto-aimed gun gameplay.  As demons and Raidou share magic points, they can deplete quickly, making sure to swap up magic and gunplay from a distance with at least some light slashes to build up magic is imperative.  This is easy to do as the battlefield is now a free-flowing square with a new maneuverable camera, so things can get quite frantic with all these options.  This is all just touching the iceberg of changes within a combat system that has the potential for plenty of depth and nuances to keep every single fight feeling exciting, engaging, and fresh.

It’s always fun to see what new demons are created by fusing them in the Goumaden.  The game certainly plays the sentimentality card with demons sending little “goodbye” and “thank you” messages.  However, the highest levelled versions of these demons can be saved for quick re-summoning to use again in fusions or to promote to the active roster.  Unusual fusions can also happen depending on the phase of the moon, so it’s worthwhile to check it frequently.

The sharpened HD graphics of Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army stay true to the original visuals.  They just expand upon everything with more detail in the city as well as the battle animations that invites a more intimate story and frantic gameplay.  A new “quicksave” button gives more freedom to gameplay and unlike typical quicksaves are manually activated by the player and stick around until the feature is used again.  Toss in a capable voice cast and there’s a lot to look forward to in this revamped yet faithful remaster.

Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army has a lot of charm and intrigue surrounding it.  Adding voice over to an exciting plot will be fun to explore.  The early pacing is nice and brisk, always giving players something new whether it is a demon to collect or coming across the next clue, and hopefully that continues throughout the full game.  The variety of base abilities is expansive enough for every fight to feel different in those opening hours as well.  Everything combines to a well-polished and exciting beginning to the game.  Luckily those wanting to jump into Raidou’s shoes don’t have to wait long as Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army releases for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2 on June 19, 2025.

Disclosure: This article is based on a build of the game provided by the publisher.