With Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, Atlus proves that the muddy ground between remaster and remake can be a good thing, actually

I really don’t think anyone out there does it like Atlus. For better or for worse, really. The studio marches to the beat of its own drum without a hint of self-consciousness, spinning weird tales about Satanic rites, the power of friendship, and the end of the world (localised to the city of Tokyo). Whether you’re looking at the parent Shin Megami Tensei series, the spin-off Persona games, or the Metaphor-shaped wunderkind that landed last year, Atlus always lands on its feet.

The developer is no stranger to remasters and remakes. Persona 3, weirdly, has had both within the last two years. MegaTen V got the standard ‘definitive’ edition re-release with the sublime Vengeance last year, and we all know about the likes of Persona 3 Portable, Persona 4 Golden, and Persona 5 Royal. It’s a quirk of Atlus’ – to address the flaws, round out the edges, and give you a little more bang for your buck on the second bite of the apple. Consumer friendliness quibbles aside, it does at least mean we get improved versions of solid games with cast iron regularity.

With Atlus’ latest joint, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army, the developer has muddied the waters a little between what a remaster and a remake is. That’s nothing new, of course; Square Enix remade Final Fantasy VIII without the original source code and dubbed it a remaster, and we’re getting the same with Final Fantasy Tactics later this year. But I have found the route Atlus has taken here quite fascinating.

The curious PS2 game (which originally enjoyed a 2006 release in Japan and North America, and 2007 in PAL regions) carries on Atlus’ fascination with the occult and the Satanic, but with one major variation from all the developer’s other titles (up to and including Metaphor): this one is an action-RPG. And ‘Raidou Remastered’ is a bit of a misnomer. What we’re getting here is more of an enhanced version, with a lot of significant changes to the PS2 original.

There are remake-level changes in this remaster: for a start, Atlus has remade the game’s pre-rendered backgrounds into actual 3D. It has added voice acting. It has lifted the improved combat system right from the second Raidou game and transplanted it into the first. It has tinkered with the menus, adding modern MegaTen/Persona systems into the demon fusion process. You can even dash on the overworld, for Christ’s sake. These things might sound small, but it makes a fundamental difference to the overall flow of the game.

It’s odd, because I remember the game looking and playing exactly like this. So out of curiosity, I booted up an old (and now quite expensive) version of the game on my PS2, and it’s fascinating what nostalgia does. The original Raidou game is a right pig to play. Atlus has worked some developmental magic in this re-release, and put a lot of effort into it, too. But maybe that’s to be expected when many of the same developers that worked on Raidou and its sequel during the PS2 era are still, inexplicably, working at the studio.

In my head, what’s happened is that Atlus has been able to say to its staff: “hey, remember that game you very nearly got right at launch in 2006? Have another swing at it”. The interceding nineteen years have clearly emboldened the developers, and the result is this remake/remaster crossbreed that sets out a template for how developers should be treating rereleases of the sixth (and maybe even seventh) generation of video games.

This curious halfway between full remake and barebones remaster is a beautiful chimera that has paid homage to the weird, slightly off-beat original game, whilst making it more accessible and easier to play. There is even brand new content (mostly revolving around demon’s pilfered from the ranks of SMT V, like Hayataro), which helps pad out the skinnier experience you’ll find thanks to the decreased encounter rate. This is a good thing, trust me.

Raidou Remastered still has its flaws, don’t get me wrong: the 1930’s Japanese setting is wonderful, and plays host to a truly you’ve-got-to-see-it-to-believe-it plotline, but the storytelling has aged. The combat, whilst much better this time around, is still fairly limited, and if you’re not in it for quite simple ‘Simon Says’ action, you will probably get bored of it all quite quickly. It’s still a PS2 game, and one you can wrap in about 20 hours, at that. Which, hey, as a busy person, I’m actually pretty OK with.

But it’s what this game represents that enthuses me the most. It’s an efficient, smart way of reusing old code to make something worthwhile and new, a peculiar halfway between remake and remaster that I think respects the developer and the consumer in equal measure. Trust Atlus to happen upon this Frankenstein’s monster of a solution to rereleases. It’s all very on-brand.

My deep, aching hope is that Sega and Atlus will use this unexpectedly strong foundation to work through more of its classic PS2 catalogue. If we get a Digital Devil Saga 1 + 2 rerelease on modern platforms because of the success of Raidou Remastered, you’ll never hear me shut up about it.