Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers Review

Take Your 3DS on a Trip to the '90s

→ April 16, 2013 While all fans of the Shin Megami Tensei series will likely find something to like about its latest release, Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers -- it is, after all, cut much from precisely the same cloth as contemporaries Persona 4 and Devil Survivor -- the folks most likely to fully appreciate its unique quirks are gamers of, shall we say, a certain age. Namely, those old enough to remember when Soul Hackers was new, way back in 1997.
I don't mean to suggest that younger gamers won't enjoy it, but despite this being the most recent U.S. release in the MegaTen franchise, the content is actually as old as many fans of the series -- and it shows at times. Yet that same sense of age gives Soul Hackers a very unique personality that sets it apart from other first-person RPGs. Its story's tone and style feel heavily inspired by '90s cyberpunk authors like William Gibson and Neal Stephenson; in fact, the virtual city Paradigm-X seems drawn directly from Snow Crash. At the same time, the presence of demons adds an unconventional element of the supernatural to the plot, and some of the most meaningful plot exposition takes place in the form of vision quests through which the protagonist is guided by a being that appears in the form of a coyote and other animals -- a bizarre element of Native American flavor amidst a near-future Japanese urban development.
Atlus hasn't gone in for a full remake with Soul Hackers, opting instead for a heavily enhanced port to the 3DS. On a fundamental level, this is still a decidedly 32-bit-vintage creation, which feels disappointing after Atlus' own Etrian Odyssey IV (which plays much like Soul Hackers but looks and sounds much better). The simple 3D graphics move choppily and lack clear detail, the music sounds like it's being performed on a digital chainsaw, and the interface can be murky, complex, and quite confusing. Combat is often very difficult, with surprise attacks that can wipe out an unprepared party, inflicting steep penalties for failure.
Yet rather than tinker with the fundamental balance and design, Atlus chose instead to overlay some new features that essentially work like cheat codes. For example, an optional new menu

section allows you to trade all those 3DS Play Coins you never use for "D-Souls," which you can cash out to buy rare or advanced demons like Black Frost. You can use these new options to ease the relative difficulty of the dungeons. In combination with the existing in-game options, those tweaks mean Soul Hackers can be as harsh or reasonable as you like. It's a nice balance between barebones port and comprehensive reworking, preserving the original game but making it much more approachable than its previous releases. Certainly Soul Hackers doesn't lack for substance. You'll need to manage a surprising number of moving parts in order to win -- multiple forms of in-game currency, your demons' levels, your party alignment, phases of the moon, your demons' loyalty and personality, and completely separate resources for your two human protagonists and your host of demonic companions. Yet this intricacy never becomes overwhelming, and once you make your way through the tough first few hours it all levels out nicely. Soul Hackers uses a portable computer metaphor for its demon-summoning interface, so you can collect "hacks" to ease the difficulty.
These features demonstrate why Atlus could even begin to consider regurgitating a 1997-era RPG for a contemporary audience. It was, in many ways, a game fairly ahead of its time; its aesthetics may date it, but it plays with surprising smoothness for an early 32-bit RPG. And the MegaTen conversation system, which allows you to talk to demons in order to negotiate for goods and even allegiance, seems to work better here than anywhere else in the series. If not for the need to win battles to collect Magnetite (the currency that allows you to summon and maintain demons), you could potentially get through Soul Hackers with very little combat by shutting down the majority of random encounters with words alone.
Admittedly, much of what made Soul Hackers special in its day has been muted by the series' iterative evolution in the years since. Its impact will definitely be greatest if you can put yourself in the mindset of an avid RPG enthusiast champing at the bit to play a tantalizing, unlocalized masterpiece circa the late '90s. For those fans, Soul Hackers isn't simply a solid RPG, it's a long-awaited treat. Nevertheless, it a solid RPG by any measure, with a cool story and challenging dungeon-diving adventures to keep players on their toes. It may lack the character-driven appeal (and expansive length) of a Persona game, but there's something to be said for its comparatively compact design, which ends well short of overstaying its welcome.