Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (DS) review "The throwback to games you never played"

In 1987, roleplaying games were setting Japan ablaze. Wizardry, the Black Onyx, Dragon Quest, and a flurry of games capitalizing on Dragon Quest’s success inundated the Japanese market. There was something bigger happening too, beyond video games. The Japanese had a history of using entertainment media to work through the effects of emerging technology on their lives. Godzilla, Mobile Suit Gundam, Akira, the Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei novel triology, and countless others showed glimpses of a world where technology had a range of influences, both positive and negative.

The popularity of RPGs prompted publisher of Digital Devil Story, Tokuma Shoten, to license the property to create a game. Atlus and Telenet were contracted to create a Famicom and a computer game respectively (it was not uncommon at this time for different developers to be contracted to develop games independently with the same title to hit different consumer markets–the idea of multiplatform releases was still years away). You might recognize Telnet for its subdivision, Team Wolf, which went on to create the Tales series and then scatter to the wind when Telnet collapsed in 1993. Telenet’s Megami Tensei was a top-down action RPG that has been largely forgotten to history. Atlus’s contribution was much more enduring.

Megami Tensei on Famicom is a first-person dungeon crawler in the style of Wizardry–a series that was immensely popular in Japan at this time thanks to some fantastic console remakes–but Megami Tensei is a unique take on the genre. It tells a much more complex story than Wizardry’s thread-bare premise, and provides a lot of quality of life improvements like an in-game map and removing permanent death as a fail state penalty. It also introduces the defining feature of the series and created a new sub-genre of RPGs: monster collecting. By recruiting enemy demons, the player can summon them as party members and even fuse them at special locations to acquire new demons. The implementation in the debut title is very basic compared to the complex fusion systems in later games in the series, but the foundation is here.

Despite being a watershed moment in Japanese roleplaying games, Megami Tensei and its sequels remained locked in Japan for a decade. There are a number of reasons for this. The most obvious is the story, which borrows many elements from real world religions. During these pre-ESRB days, Nintendo of America was very conservative about publishing any games with religious stories or iconography in the North American market. Console roleplaying games were not very successful in North America as it was, with the most successful titles being Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, both of which required significant localization assistance and financial investment from Nintendo. Megami Tensei and its sequels were simply non-starters in North America.

By the mid-1990s, the North American market had changed a lot. Atlus formed a North American branch but hadn’t had a big break. In 1996 Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (rebranded Revelations: Persona in the West) was a bit of a sleeper hit, garnering a cult following. Before Final Fantasy VII and Pokemon, localizing such a large RPG was both risky and forward-thinking. Atlus USA also localized Persona 2: Eternal Punishment (though not its first half, Innocent Sin), but the series remained niche and was only enjoyed by the limited number of English-speaking enthusiasts developing a taste for RPGs, rough and incomplete as we received them.

It wasn’t until 2004, nearly two decades after its initial title, that the Megami Tensei series finally had the breakthrough it needed. With Squaresoft doing the work at building a large market for Japanese RPGs in North America and a general change in attitudes towards anima, manga, and Japanese media, Atlus invested heavily in the localization and marketing of Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. While it was easily the best selling game in the series by that point and a critical success, low relative sales still ensured that it was another cult hit in North America, simply unable to grab the attention of the right players. This would change with Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, which is the point where Persona’s name arguably became better known than the series from which it was born. Within a few years, the Persona brand dropped the Shin Megami Tensei name altogether.

This brings us to 2010 and Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. Despite more than two decades of history, this re-envisioning of the classic Megami Tensei gameplay–first person dungeon crawling–is the first time such a game in the series had actually been localized. The Shin Megami Tensei name in North America was associated with edgy high school drama, stylized art direction, and quasi-dating sim mechanics, not science fiction or labyrinthine mazes. For the Japanese, this was a throwback to something well established and understood; to the rest of the world, Strange Journey was, well, strange.

“Shin Megami Tensei” is an Odd Way to Spell “Etrian Odyssey”

Strange Journey is a joint work between Atlus and Lancrase, a partnership that also created the Etrian Odyssey series on DS. Being a first-person dungeon crawler as well, it is not surprising that Strange Journey is running on a modified version of Etrian Odyssey’s engine. While Etrian Odyssey had only sold around 300,000, it was enough to prove the viability of first-person dungeon crawlers on the DS. This sparked a renaissance for this genre of RPGs that pushed well into the 3DS. By the end of the 3DS, there were 10 Etrian Odyssey games, not to mention many RPGs inspired by it, including the 7th Dragon series, The Dark Spire, Persona Q, and of course Strange Journey.

While Strange Journey shares an underlying engine with Etrian Odyssey, it is decidedly not an Etrian-SMT crossover in the same vein as Persona Q. There are no F.O.E puzzles, no manual mapping on the touch screen, and combat is completely different.

Strange Journey takes its narrative premise somewhat shamelessly from John Carpenter’s The Thing, though it shares a lot in common with other 80s media such as Aliens. You are a member of a task force sent to investigate an odd space-time thing known as the Schwarzwelt, but disaster strikes early and you and the crew become trapped in what appears to be layers of alternate dimensions. The mission turns thus from investigation to escape as the player tries to reunite with survivors and find a way out of the Schwarzwelt.

The name Schwarzwelt encapsulates the main theme of the story, literally translating from German to mean “black world.” The environment of the Schwarzwelt and the demons that inhabit it are a mirror of humanity’s abuses of its own world, depicting war, excess, waste, unrestricted indulgence, and other failings of human society. While it tends to lean on text and dialog more than its environments, the story is consistent and laser focused on these themes. The world is broken–you know it, the other characters know it, and the demons know it–and Strange Journey invites the player to ask how it can be fixed.

At first glance, the gameplay loop of the Schwarzwelt is not very different from the yggdrasil dungeon in the Etrian Odyssey series. Each sector of the Schwarzwelt is equivalent to a stratum in Etrian Odyssey, with multiple floors and a boss at the end. Strange Journey starts to vary this structure quickly by introducing subapps, additional abilities that can be added to the player character’s in-game suit. These subapps are awarded at various parts of the story and allow Strange Journey to double back on itself, opening up new areas and opportunities in previously explored areas. The main quest is mostly linear so it never quite hits the level of backtracking of a good metroidvania but the path through the dungeon is knotted and complex.

Scanning the environment for secret doors and items is one of several abilities unlocked over the course of the game

The boss of a sector is usually not on the deepest floor, but rather somewhere in the middle as the player’s path twists in on itself. Some later sectors (such as the infamous Sector E) will lightly test the player’s ability to solve navigation puzzles. Teleporters, holes in the floor, traps, and other familiar elements of the genre are used throughout, while unique mechanics like a “phase shift” that changes the interspace dimension of parts of the map add something even veterans of the genre have not seen. By the end, the Schwarzwelt itself becomes one of the more unique dungeons among dungeon crawlers and deserves more recognition for its creative layout, use of abilities in navigation, and variety in environments.

It’s the focus on story and meandering dungeon that set Strange Journey apart from Etrian Odyssey. They might have a technical history, but it really ends there.

The Road Between Heaven and Hell

The Megami Tensei pantheon of demons takes the role of story characters, quest givers, enemies, and party members in the Schwarzwelt. Demons are a motley assortment of real world religious and mythological figures from a wide assortment of global traditions, with a wide range of styles and personalities. Some demons are more like spirits, friendly helpers ready to join in on a good cause; others are malicious and horrifying penis chariots that conjure up Jungian horror from deep in your subconscious.

Like other SMT games, demons join your player character in combat and make up the three other members of your combat party every time you enter the Schwarzwelt. Demons gain levels and occasionally skills, but because they cannot use equipment or items end up being outclassed faster than they grow. As a result, the player needs to constantly rotate new, more powerful demons into their combat strategy. This is done by either persuading demon’s to join by talking to them in combat or by combining two existing demons into a new one.

Demons within the dungeon comprise your enemies, party members, and characters

Unlike other SMT games, the alignment (lawful, chaotic, or neutral) of the player characters and the demons has a profound impact on the gameplay. Demons will frequently refuse to talk to players of an opposing alignment, which directly impacts what demons can be recruited and indirectly which ones can be fused. Within combat, alignment also plays an important role. Strange Journey, being a throwback to older SMT games, intentionally avoids using the press-turn system introduced in Nocturne and instead provides “co-op attacks.” Any time the player or a demon strikes an enemy’s weakness, all other demons of the same alignment will cause additional damage. If the entire party is the same alignment, three bonus co-cop attacks are applied every time the player hits a weakness, which can be extremely powerful. A careful player needs to thus consider not only the skills and abilities of each demon in the party but also the alignment.

Contemporary reviews of Strange Journey lamented the lack of press-turn, but combat here is no less strategic. Carefully building a party, ensuring that all elements are covered, and finding strategies for dealing with specific enemies is just as engaging here as it is in Nocturne and subsequent entries in the series. True to series fashion, combat can be brutal–every battle must be approached with care and thought. If you expect to get through a random encounter by simply spamming normal attacks, you will not get past the first floor.

Some players may find the amount of time fusing demons and blundering around a dungeon deciduous. After all, the player does not have the satisfaction of watching a party grow like other RPGs in this genre, but rather something more like completing a Pokedex. One cannot just keep the same demons through the game and except to succeed–the demon that is useful now will fall off quickly and need to be replaced, which can lead to a feeling of spinning the wheels of combat and getting nowhere.

While snubbing press-turn might seem questionable, co-op attacks demand careful attention to alignment choices and your party throughout the game.

Nowhere is this more apparent than with the main character himself. The player does not have direct influence on his stat growth and his meager abilities are tied to whatever gun he has equipped. I ended up using the same weapon on him for more than half the game, simply because it had better skill coverage than the only marginally more powerful replacements that came later. Narratively, the main character gets to make some interesting choices, but in combat he’s nothing but an item slinger since that’s really all he can do that a demon cannot.

The fusion system in Strange Journey is less refined if you are used to subsequent games in the series, lacking several quality of life features that can make the process more tedious than fun. For example, every demon can provide a “source”, which can be used during fusion to add skills from that demon. Which skills are actually selected and carried forward is completely randomized, so the player will need to toggle between screens dozens of times if there is a specific skill set needed in the resulting demon. I actually found myself often not using sources for that very reason.

Aforementioned demon sources are received after a demon has been fully analyzed and has leveled up. In the later stage of the game, leveling up just to get the source of a fully analyzed demon takes way too long, especially when it’s a demon that doesn’t fit well into your combat strategy. A lot of grinding time is spent just trying to get sources before fusing a demon, which doesn’t feel like a good use of the player’s time.

Strange Journey lacks a surprising amount of quality of life features, including many found in Etrian Odyssey. There’s no safety item to warp the player out of the dungeon and no quick save. There’s little in the way of shortcuts to make returning to previously visited areas faster. If the protagonist dies, even if the rest of your team is healthy, the game ends. Most of these issues are small, but they add up in the original DS game to create a barrier to players not accustomed to older dungeon crawlers.

And to this end, Strange Journey saw an enhanced version in 2017, Strange Journey: Redux. This version addresses a lot of these quality of life issues and adds a number of features to make the game more accessible, such as a difficulty setting and sub-apps that make specific segments of the dungeon (such as Sector E) easier.

This Sounds Strange

Megami Tensei has developed a reputation for a sound track that covers gamut of modern genres, with tracks that rip out grunge and metal rock that fits with the post-apocalyptic themes of the series. Some of these games have dozens of battle themes, and each one is a banger. Shoji Meguro, who has had a hand in some mainline Shin Megami Tensei titles and has been the principle composer for the Persona spin-off, has developed his own distinct style, incorporating jazz and rap in ways that are both surprising and delighting. It is a scientific and objective fact that Meguro's work is both awesome and slaps.

The strangest thing about Strange Journey may not be its rebuke of press-turn or its dive back into first-person dungeon crawlers but its music. Composed by Meguro, Strange Journey sounds like it has more in common with horror films from the early days of cinema than video games. Those metal guitars are are hung up and replaced with unearthly chanting voices while screeching violins give narrative segments fill the player with pensive, unexplained terror. You'd never believe that this is the same person that wrote "Burn My Dreads".

The music tells the story of Strange Journey as much as the words. It turns a science fiction piece with some horror elements into the rare horror RPG with some science fiction elements. The body horror and dread of the narrative are distilled and heightened by by tracks like "Eternal Throne" (the title screen) and "A Scorched Nation" (first area of the dungeon) that use stringed instruments like thunderous percussion. Tracks like "Prayer" (used on the ship that acts as the player's base of operations) make even your safe place feel uneasy.

Strange Journey isn’t so Strange

While the Megami Tensei series has yet to return to the first-person dungeon crawler in a meaningful way since, Strange Journey has nonetheless found a comfortable place in the series pantheon. In a series where the plots are sometimes borderline nonsense, Strange Journey’s narrative strength’s make it stand out as one (if not the best) stories outside Persona.

Forging a different path from the now well-established press-turn system from Nocturne may have even helped it secure it a long-term place in the Megami Tensei canon. Discourse around Shin Megami Tensei V seems obsessed with pulling the pants down on all the press-turn games in the series and measuring their worth against each other. Strange Journey’s legacy largely avoids that, and it’s become better known for the interesting alignment decisions the player gets to make, its complex and diegetic dungeon maps, and the way alignment choices will impact your compatibility with demons and how you can build your party. It’s not just another game in a series. It took the series roots in dungeon crawler, integrated many of the systems and ideas that came after it, and created an experience that is unique in even this bizarre and edgy series.

Strange Journey saw an enhanced version in 2017, Strange Journey: Redux. This version is probably the most readily available (until the 3DS eShop closes). It is not too different from the original, but adds some quality of life features as well as some questionable bonus content. There’s a new character, Alex, introduced fairly early as well as a new dungeon, the Womb of Grief. The new narrative elements are not very good nor are they well integrated into the original story. The artwork has also been tweaked, adding more facial details in portraits but also forsaking the horroresque and foreboding look that defined the original.

Some mechanical changes are welcome, such as adding additional save slots, the ability to create a suspend save anywhere, a difficulty setting, and selecting skills from a demon source rather than leaving it to chance like the original. New commander skills give the main character more utility and value in combat, making encounters more interesting at the cost of being easier. Redux is, in general, an easier game, thanks in large part to allowing the player to equip any sub apps freely, granting boons like regenerating MP and reducing damage from trap floors–selecting sub-apps was a careful decision in the original game. These allow the player to be much better prepared for routine encounters and travel greater distances on less supplies. Some new sub-apps will change the way you play as well. For example, using equipment that defends against instant death light and dark attacks is very important in the original game because the protagonist's death is an instant game over, but in Redux, there is a sub-app that prevents that failure state.

Overall, I prefer the original game for the limitations it places on dungeon exploration and the personality of its muted art direction, but the Redux version is a valid preference too. Strange Journey is a re-imaging of a classic style or RPG that relied heavily on the success of the renaissance the genre experienced in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and as a result we are unlikely to see the series return to first-person dungeons any time soon. Regardless of which version you play, Strange Journey is a fantastic RPG and one of the best first-person dungeon crawlers ever made. Its maps are full of character and provide ample secrets and light backtracking as the player unlocks new abilities, while the bestiary enables traditional level grinding as well as the fusion-centric progression the series is known for. It’s an experience that is so unique and imbued with so much passion that there simply isn’t another game like it, even in its own series.

Unlike Etrian Odyssey, Strange Journey may yet survive beyond the DS and 3DS dual touch screen era. Aside from displaying a map on the bottom screen, Strange Journey does not rely on any DS features that prevent it from appearing on another console. In 2018, Eiji Ishida, Strange Journey’s director indicated that part of the goal in creating the Redux version was to lay the groundwork for a potential sequel. It’s been several years without any indication that such a sequel may be coming and a lot has changed with both Atlus and this series, but stranger journeys have happened.

Community review by dagoss (August 16, 2022) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.