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Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, the most recent addition to the rather scant roll of the series’ mainline continuity, is a game with significance for the series as a whole. As the central pillar of the Shin Megami Tensei series, the mainline entries have always been fairly old school dungeon crawling affairs, considerably darker than the numerous side stories that have spun off of them. It has been a major point of curiosity to see which direction Atlus would take the series: outward into the younger, more upbeat world of spinoffs such as Persona and Devil Survivor, or back inwards, towards the darker, more chaotic entries of the early series. Interestingly, Strange Journey seems content to pick its own path, taking to heart many of the upgrades the series has seen in interaction and depth of character, while maintaining the disturbing, often sharply critical edge the older Shin Megami Tensei games had. The end result doesn’t quite have the same bite as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, but Strange Journey‘s excellent story, solid character customization scheme, and exceptional dungeon design mark it as an excellent game in its own right.

The plot of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a little unusual for the series. Set outside of Japan for the first time in the series, Strange Journey takes place in Antarctica where a strange phenomenon known as the Schwartzwelt is gobbling up land at a frightening place. The player takes charge of a member of the United Nations task force sent to investigate this bizarre phenomenon, which threatens to absorb the entire planet. In short order, the player is drawn into the Schwartzwelt, thrown into the middle of a vast conflict between demonic invaders and angelic interlopers, and tasked with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of saving the world and somehow getting home. Though there aren’t quite as many paths open to the player as there were in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Strange Journey does a very solid job of allowing players a free hand with their own fate.

The dual-screen setup organizes information quite well, but Strange Journey doesn’t have many options for direct touch screen control.

The plot works both with themes that are familiar to the series — the idea of a multi-sided conflict which the player must pick a side in, with widespread moral ambiguity allowing the player to pick which side they think is right — as well as many themes that are not. For example, large parts of the game can be read as an indictment of humanity and a roll call of its sins. The Schwartzwelt holds demonic constructs which mimic and mock events in the human world. In essence, the Schwartzwelt shows humanity’s worst parts — our careless destruction, our lust for war, our mindless consumption — and uses them as weapons against us. But there’s always a note of hope buried. Whichever path the player chooses, it shows humanity trying to come to grips with its problems, and trying to move forward. On the whole, the plot is exceptionally well executed with well-developed characters, a central theme that really hits home, and a sense of tension that simply never lets up.

As with many Shin Megami Tensei games, a lot of weight is placed on alignments and elementals, but Strange Journey takes this one step further. Rather than the Press Turn system of Nocturne, Strange Journey uses the Alignment Assist system. The system works by allowing all party members of the same alignment to execute a combined attack when one character hits an enemy’s elemental weakness. This system has some easily recognizable positives and negatives. To begin with, the Alignment Assist system is a bit more balanced than the Press Turn system. It’s a lot harder for a party of demons to wipe the player out simply because they ambushed the player and guessed the right element, resulting in an eight-turn beatdown. On the other hand, since the Alignment Assist system is only available to players, the player has a distinct and easily exploitable advantage over monsters, which makes the game as a whole a little less challenging. On the whole, the Alignment Assist system isn’t quite as strategically interesting as the Press Turn system was, though it is a lot more player-friendly.

One addition to the game which doesn’t quite fit is the password system. It’s a fairly simple system; upon request, the game will output a password for any demon in a player’s Demonic Compendium, allowing others to input the password and add that demon to their own Compendium. Essentially, it’s a demon trading system. The password system is an unusual turn for the series, and one that has some interesting potential, but the way it’s used in Strange Journey is a huge problem for the game’s balance. To begin with, it’s pretty easy to get demons with game-breaking skills at a low enough level for new players to use, effectively cracking the game’s balance right from the start. Furthermore, a major part of the Fusion process involves Demon Sources, which can add massively powerful and useful skills to a demon but are single-use only. By using the password system, a player can create a powerful demon with a long list of skills, output its password, reset the game, and then input the password. The player can now re-use the Source but still keep the new demon, all at the cost of a few Macca.

But perhaps the biggest problem with the password system is the trouble it causes for suspension of disbelief. Strange Journey takes place in an sequestered area with only a few people, with the idea of conflict between ideals and the struggle of isolated and threatened humans in a harsh environment forming some of the game’s major themes. Bluntly put, the idea of large groups of players sharing allies over the internet simply doesn’t work here. It actively runs counter to the ideas being presented in the story.

For a long time, Shin Megami Tensei games have been plagued by interface issues. Over the last couple entries, this has largely been reduced to a handful of annoying twitches in the way menus are set up, and a few bothersome holdovers. One of these — the need to exit and re-enter the Demon Fusion menu in order to reshuffle the skills a new demon will learn — has largely been taken care of, though not in a terribly satisfactory way. For the most part, the skills a new demon will learn are now fixed; usually only one or two very specific skills are carried over. This was probably to encourage players to make the most of Demon Sources, which do allow for skill reshuffling. The end result is that demons fused without Sources tend to be much less useful than those with Sources, though whether or not this was intentional is unclear. This, at least, doesn’t seem to cause any major balance issues, though the lack of control over what skills demons will learn is still a bit of a frustration.

As with some recent games in the Shin Megami Tensei line, Strange Journey features longtime series composer Shoji Meguro trying something a little new. This time, Mr. Meguro goes for the heavy-handed doom and gloom classical music, heavy on the ominous Latin chanting. The style is very unusual for Mr. Meguro, and there are times when his lack of comfort in this particular genre is fairly obvious. By and large the soundtrack is solid, and there are some places where it works quite well, but more or less the entire soundtrack uses deep Latin chanting in some form or another, meaning the tracks tend to bleed together.

The game offers a number of achivements. It’s a nice, if pointless touch.

Being on a less technically advanced system, the visuals of Strange Journey are understandably a bit of a step down from those of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Strange Journey does bring a similar sensibility to the table where visuals are concerned, though where Nocturne opted for slick neon and deep black, Strange Journey tends towards earth tones and a more grotesque style of design. The slickness of Nocturne does rear its head every now and then, particularly in boss design, but for the most part, Strange Journey uses a rougher, cruder style. This actually fits Strange Journey a bit better, synching up well with the terrible things on display in the Schwartzwelt. Ultimately, the visual style does what visuals are supposed to do best: increase the game’s impact.

Due in large part to the password system, Strange Journey simply isn’t as tough as some other games in the series. Make no mistake, this is still a Shin Megami Tensei game; it will gleefully punish a lack of preparedness, and it loves throwing the player curveballs whenever possible. But the player’s ability to produce password demons that are well above what should be available to them at any given time goes a long way towards breaking this balance. This is less pronounced towards the very end of the game as the difficulty level starts to really ramp up, but for most of the player’s journey, password demons represent a hand delivered, gold embossed, engraved invitation to break the game’s balance.

In the end, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is an excellent game and a solid addition to the mainline series. Though its underlying systems are a bit less deep than the more complex mechanics of Nocturne, and players should probably ignore the password system on the basis that it breaks the game balance at every opportunity, Strange Journey sports a solid visual style, an exceptional level of character building options, and a story with strong characters and central themes that really hit home.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a retail copy.