The Shin Megami Tensei series has been around for quite a long time, though most of the games we’ve seen from Atlus have been in the Persona, Digital Devil Saga, and Devil Summoner spin-off series. Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is part of the mainline series with more of a roguelike style to how it plays out than the more prolific and traditional SMT role-playing games like Persona. After a good ten hours, we’re enjoying what we’ve played of the upcoming DS RPG from Atlus.

Strange Journey takes place in the present as a catastrophic event has happened to threaten the lives of every human on the planet. Rather than worldwide destruction like the movie 2012, this phenomenon, called the Schwarzwelt, started at the South Pole in Antarctica as a small column that grew slowly until the United Nations took action by the time it grew to be a few miles wide. They sent in four teams of trained men and women to figure out how to stop it from engulfing the Earth and their attempt to get inside surprisingly didn’t go as smoothly as they’d hoped. This leaves all of the transports scattered around the Schwarzwelt and you to figure out what this place is and where the other transports are at. What you find out is that the Schwarzwelt is some kind of portal that’s allowing the demon world to take over the Earth and that you must enlist the help of some of these demons to help save the world.

If you’ve seen the box art for Strange Journey, you’ll notice the odd helmet that the main character is wearing. It’s called the Demonica and it is essentially the all-in-one HUD for the game, as it is based around apps that are mostly modifiers and bonuses for stats. There are basic apps that are installed periodically with the first being a mysterious app you receive from nowhere that lets you see, communicate with, and control the demons around you that is key to your survival. The next app you receive lets you detect Forma, which are minerals exclusive to the demon world that are required to make all of the new weapons, equipment, items, and apps that you can purchase from the merchant on-board your ship.

Not having much experience with the other Shin Megami Tensei games outside of the PSP remake of Persona, there are definitely elements of that game that appear in Strange Journey that are much more streamlined. The whole mechanic of talking to demons is simplified to remove the need to worry about their emotions, so you just answer a few questions in whatever way that would please them until they are willing to answer a request and you can ask them for items or for them to join your party. Demons won’t join you without a few of their own requests, which ranges from money to HP and MP and they will even ask for something else if you happen to be short on something. This makes it a lot easier to assemble a team and the ability to merge demons whenever you want makes this whole process much simpler than it has been in the past.

To get your team to be stronger, merging demons is a must in Strange Journey to gain a more powerful team with a wide variety of moves. In the Persona games, you visited specific spots to be able to merge the demons you collected, but it’s immediately accessible at any point once you unlock that ability. You can register, bring back old demons, and see if you have the right combo to create special demons whenever the mood strikes you. Before completing the merger, you also have the option to add a Source to the mix for added skills, which are special items containing the essence of a demon’s skills and spells that you receive as a gift when they level up while in your party. There is even a password system that allows you to input codes to get special demons from friends or send your own to others.

Strange Journey’s battle system is a very simple system with some nice touches that help give it depth and strategy. It’s a standard turn-based system like many Japanese RPG’s, but the co-op attack mechanic adds a new strategy for how you build your team to account for the moral standing for everyone in your party. You will notice that the colors of the names of your demons and yourself vary from blue (good) to white (neutral) to red (evil) and party members with like-colored names will join in for a follow-up co-op attack if you hit an enemy’s weakness in a spell or attack, which can be very helpful to defeat enemies more quickly and limit the chance for your teammates to get attacked. The morality comes into play during the story as you have a chance to weigh in on things and that change how people react to you, but it has a bigger effect so far on the battle system. Adding to that, as you fight demons more, the information you have for each of them in your database gets more accurate so you can better take advantage of their weaknesses, which appears on the bottom screen during the fight.

Despite having put about ten hours into Strange Journey at the moment, we still haven’t made much of a dent on the story as we near the end of the second dungeon. The dungeons have only been a few floors deep so far with a steady pace of progression in both story and level progression. Progression in dungeons seems to be more about learning the layout before you earn apps for your Demonica that lets you unlock special doors that open up as things progress. It was a bit of a surprise to see that the game has achievements in the form of medals, which don’t seem to offer any benefits to the player and are just for fun.

In this particularly busy year for RPG’s, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey looks to be one of the best RPG’s of the year from what we’ve played so far. We’re definitely excited to continue playing more before the review goes live on February 23. Due to a small delay, Strange Journey will not be out until March 23, which will come with a soundtrack CD for all of the launch copies.

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