With so many developers pushing barely-changed ports on us and calling them remasters — or worse, remasters that actually ruin the game —we need more to follow ATLUS’ example with RAIDOU Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army. It’s an unwieldy title, but no less so than the original game that is its namesake, Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, which released on PS2 in 2006 as a spin-off to the much more well-known series Shin Megami Tensei. It’s been largely forgotten by the world, but the high-profile releases of Persona 5, Shin Megami Tensei V, and Persona 3 Reload have all helped to boost the franchise into massive mainstream popularity. What a perfect time to revitalise Raidou!

Like so many new Persona fans, I’ve never played the original Raidou and therefore carry no nostalgic torch for it: I’m coming into this as a completely fresh experience. If you had told me that this was a brand new game, while I wouldn’t quite have believed you, all of the work that’s gone into modernising it would really help your case. Apart from a few tell-tale signs that it’s built off the bones of a 20-year-old game, it’s basically as good as any new Shin Megami Tensei. All main characters have been given a graphical facelift, not quite as pretty as Persona 3 Reload, but not that far behind. The iconic, thickly-lined eyes at least give this game a distinct look that separates it from the rest. Major NPCs have been touched up, too, as have the now 120+ ally demons Raidou can recruit. It’s really only the background folk that wander the streets of Tokyo that still scream PS2, which definitely doesn’t ruin the experience, but does look a little jarring.

It’s not just the combat that has been given a generous improvement. Numerous quality of life features allow Raidou Remastered to skip so many of the frustrations that can bring down older games. There are literally dozens of little changes that have been made, so I’ll run through some of the bigger game-changers:

Quicksave, and autosaving, is an obvious force for good. If there’s anything that can be left safely in the past, it’s losing two hours of progress because you died unexpectedly. I wish there were an option to lower the difficulty level on the game over screen too, but the lack of one isn’t a deal breaker. The game is already naturally made easier by another modernisation: all your demons gain EXP from battle, even if you don’t summon them, so there’s virtually no chance you’ll end up underlevelled and needing to waste a bunch of time grinding levels — at least on easy and normal difficulty. Harder difficulties are available, and I’d recommend them to any returning Raidou veterans lest the experience feel too easy. It also means that virtually every battle ends with a level-up screen for any demon who’s levelled up, which quickly gets a bit tedious. A notification at the corner of the screen would have been perfectly fine to convey the same information, especially once a demon has learned all its possible skills.

Here’s a gripe I’ve always had about Persona and SMT games — I dislike the inscrutable logic behind fusing demons. I didn’t even know there was any logic behind it until I recently thought to search it online, so random do the results seem. It leaves me unable to plan ahead for what element of demon I might want or need, which, for any kind of strategy game, seems incongruent. Raidou Remastered saves my life by adding the ‘reverse demon search’ option introduced by Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, which allows you to view fusions by their possible results. The old-fashioned method of selecting each demon one by one to check any fusion options just ain’t it.

Playing on PC is a bit overkill – this game doesn’t need a particularly powerful graphics card or CPU. Initial reports from those with Steam Decks or other handheld devices like the Rog Ally seem to indicate that it runs pretty well on handheld. There’s something about it that screams like I should be playing it on handheld. Maybe I’m just getting nostalgic for playing Persona 4 Golden in the PS Vita.