#Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux

[everygame]

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (Nintendo 3DS)

Developed/Published by: Atlus, Lancarse / Atlus Released: 15/05/2018 Completed: 13/09/2022 Completion: Finished it with the new chaos ending. Did barely any of the side quests, admittedly. Trophies / Achievements: n/a

Hmm. Might sound surprising, but Strange Journey has always been the Shin Megami Tensei game I’ve been the most interested in. Something about the setting–a scientific team investigating a world-threatening anomaly at the south pole–really intrigued me.

(I tend to wonder if it also really intrigued Jeff VanderMeer, considering Annihilation is pretty similar, if not actionably so, and the book came out about four years after this.)

After playing Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, I have to admit I was pretty jazzed to finally play this! And you know what–when it started, I was having a pretty good time! The setting was what I hoped, the first few levels were entertaining first person dungeon fun… but then the problems started to mount up. And quickly.

First things first: the whole demon fusion system in this game is completely wack. Now, I know that I played a remaster of Nocturne, so it was definitely made a bit easier to cook up exactly what you’d like, but Strange Journey saddles the players with demons who don’t learn anything when levelling up, and who instead give you their “demon source” after a few battles with them. This source, which is extremely hard to collect more than once per demon, is the only way to get to choose what skills a demon inherits, by which I mean “you can give it the skills attached to the source.” (Meaning that if you’ve got two low-level demons with great skills who turn into a much higher-level demon with crappy skills, uh… you’re stuck. Hope the source you use has good skills.)

You might think this doesn’t sound totally ruinous, but it all incentivises which is what I would call “completely the wrong way to play the game.”

What it means is that as any time spent with a demon that has given you its source feels like wasted time, you’ll be fusing them at an absolutely insane pace. And, because you’re using demons for, like, five to ten battles, it feels like a waste to use your sources on them, especially when you can’t guarantee that a future demon will inherit those skills without you pouring over online fusion tools to try and get the best outcome (on a demon you’ll use for twenty minutes.)

It creates a pretty tedious cycle, which is made even worse by the fact that the game doesn’t use the Press Turn system in a real “let’s re-invent the wheel” move, and instead gives you free almighty damage follow-up attacks from team members with the same alignment. Considering you’re (probably) cycling demons like a maniac, this can be insanely annoying to sort out and is.. only mildly rewarding.

So if I’m going to advise anyone on playing this, I’d say “don’t be trying to fill out your demon list and/or collect all the sources.” Instead, just try and sort out a team in each new dungeon that’s your alignment, give them the needed elemental attacks etc. via sources (just use ‘em up, you’ll get more) and only fiddle about in the periphery with fusion when it’s going to pay off or it’s demons you’ll never use. You will have a much better time.

But I think this problem fades into insignificance, honestly, compared to problem number one. The dungeons. Now, I don’t want to get ahead of myself here. It’s not like Strange Journey is Wizardry IV or anything. But it does, very quickly, reveal itself to be for CRPG experts… by which I mean insane masochists. The game might auto map, it’s true, and they can’t get away with the old trick of spinners as a result, but every other dirty trick in the book is used here. You’ve got warp mazes, invisible walls, hidden paths, dungeons layered on top of dungeons that you need to switch between to navigate… oh, did I mention that the warp dungeons sometimes need you to do the warps in specific orders? And they never label which warp takes you where on the automap?

It is… miserable. There are huge segments of this game that are tedious beyond belief I think unless you absolutely adore this kind of dungeon design. I’m the kind of guy who just wants to walk down corridors and punch things, filling out a map. This game’s maps turned me off from that so much that by the end I was literally just looking up the maps online and going the fastest way from point A to B not even filling in all the squares of rooms I was going in. That’s completely contrary to my beliefs!!!

SEVENTY SEVEN HOURS. Seventy seven hours is how long I spent playing this even resorting to such cheap tricks and avoiding most of the side quests!

And three hours of those seventy seven were just trying to beat the final boss!

Let’s talk that final boss. It’s probably the hardest boss in any video game I’ve ever played–certainly any RPG that I’ve committed to finishing. Fair play to it for being thematically appropriate, I guess, but it’s designed in a couple of ways: one, it reaches a point where you can only damage it through same-alignment follow-up attacks. Two, it casts a spell reflecting all damage from the predominant alignment in your party for several turns. 

Can you work out why that’s unbelievably cruel? Yes, because if any player hasn’t made sure to have literally three, top-level demons that aren’t of their alignment available, they’re fully fucked. Meaning that advice I gave you about using up your sources on same-alignment demons actually means you might not be able to finish the game without some insane grinding.

Here’s the weird thing though… it was a bit exhilarating, though, beating this boss. I’d probably have snapped my 3DS completely in half if I had died in my final run considering it alone took about an hour, but if you can survive the first time it reflects an entire alignment, you can swap your “good” demons out and put them back in once she sets up the wrong alignment protection.

I literally had to set up my party with sources to make sure I had three demons with the ability to resurrect and most of them offering healing and I barely survived it, with my MC dying at least six or seven times (including one particularly hairy moment when only one demon was alive and in the party.)

Once I’d won… I dunno if I felt anything but relief, to be honest, but it was definitely one of those moments you only get from video games.

But right, uh, do I recommend this or not? I think you can have a lot more fun with this if you let yourself get more attached to your party of demons than collecting sources, but you really need to love just the most horrible dungeon design to bear this at all, and an enjoyably brutal final boss doesn’t pay it back at all. I can’t say I regret playing this–it’s on 3DS, you pick it up and play it when you’ve got some downtime, there’s telly on in the background, you’re on a plane, etc.--but I don’t think I would knowing what I know now.

Will I ever play it again? It’s absolutely wild to me that these games track which endings you’ve got like you’re going to play them from scratch every time to see them all. Who on earth has time for that? Six endings in a game you could maybe speedrun in… 20 hours if you knew it inside out (yes, speedrun.com has several at about half that, but those are serious outliers.) Anyway, no.

Final Thought: However, speaking of endings, I will say that I appreciated that this game pushed me into a position that I didn’t expect, which was choosing to go Chaos. Without going into too much of spoiler territory, I think this manages to nail the ol’ “maybe man is the real monster” trope and offer the player the choice of forgiveness (or not). I took not, saw it through to the end, and really did feel like I got the best, most fitting ending. Thankfully. Did I mention I played this for seventy seven bloody hours???

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[burneeho]

Now that this blog is officially focused on all of my interestd again, i can FINALLY post this zelenin drawing i made like last week

This schwarzwelt shit ain't no joke (i have not finished strange journey yet)(zelenin is already one of my fav law reps though)

[bestgameostcrownduel]

Round 1, Side B: Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (2017) vs Golden Sun (2001)

Shin Megami Tensei | Golden Sun

Campaigns under the cut!

Campaign for Shin Megami Tensei:

Strange Journey's OST is super underrated when it comes to SMT. IV gets the love it deserves, but SJ doesn't and I want to change that.

Campaign for Golden Sun:

Best GBA soundtrack (⁠ಠ⁠_⁠ಠ⁠)⁠━⁠☆ﾟ⁠.⁠*⁠･⁠｡ﾟ

[eastern-kingdom-of-smt]

o7

A fellow that survived strange journey redux

What ending did you go for? I went for chaos

Hell yeah! Welcome, fellow survivor! It sure felt like I survived after going through some of those sectors.

I ended up on chaos. Not the new chaos but the original chaos one since I wanted to see what an original ending of strange journey was like. For most of the game I was fairly neutral. I love Jimenez though and thought he was great. Zelenin originally got on my nerves a lot but with time I enjoyed her character for the most part but yeah I usually don’t go for law endings. I actually wound up on chaos because I decided to get revenge and take out the men who tortured and experimented on the demons, Bugaboo and Jimenez. The game said “you’re chaos now” and I was all like “no regrets. I’d do it again”

I heard the new endings you have to go through the Womb of Grief and after looking stuff up about it… yeah I’m not willing to go through that area for the new endings. I did read up on the new endings and they’re cool. I have a lot of thoughts on the positives of the og endings but also appreciate the new ones too.

Thanks for the ask!

[megaten-and-other-polls]

Megaten Funny Little Guy Tournament: Preliminary Match 25

[ya-kiri]

Well this aged poorly...

[alephskoteinos]

Wait

[ethrelite]

[lemmon-grove]

She’s so pretty💕💕

personal take on SMT’s Doi’s demeter (another remake of my old sketches)

[sl33py-g4m3r]

game collection ramble~~~

wonder which games I'm gonna need to download a rom of and play on the computer... or play on steam assuming i buy the steam versions too...

rpgs in general have some kinda small text~~~ I hope if it does come down to me having to do that to play my games it's not a crime or something; cause as a teen emulation didn't bug me but after I got really worried and scared about torrenting stuff, I've kinda lost it for emulation too...... (I've posted about this before i think)

where do I even start with megaten? I'm not exactly that big on (or good at potentially) juggling my time with social links... but it could be fun~~~

current games I have just bc i like collecting things:

persona 1-4 golden (vita) might have persona 5 but idr i have the artbook somewhere tho~~~

devil surviviors (overclocked and 2 3ds)

strange journey redux (sadly not og cause I heard that one's better (3ds))

Shin Megami Tensei iv and apocalypse (3ds)

nocturne remaster (switch; which is garbage cause minor nit pick i like the text in the older version and the lighting, lol but also raidou in switch version i think)

devil children light book and dark book (gba) how obscure were these ones?

and that's it to my knowledge.... I think I dug through my files of (extra content) on my 3ds after looking through all the games and it says I have Persona Q data there but I don't have the game installed and bought it digitally.... guess I made room for something else and now can't redownload it if I bought it cause the 3ds servers and eshop have been dead for a while....

also had Persona 1 and the earlier games started but for some reason my vita decided to spit up a screen after my battery died for idk how long and deleted everything I had for some reason.... thx vita..... had to reformat and redownload everything ~~~

(collects games... never plays the games...... I'm also the same way with books...)

hate how rpg interfaces are kinda small~~~~ but I'm the blind one so that's a me problem~~~

rip persona q forever lost in the void bc I can't redownload you~~~

I've loved this franchise for a while~~ but haven't played any of the games at all.... Just collected the games and some stuff~~ don't really even remember how I found it tbh~~~

idk if it's a text and sight issue on my part or just anxiety about playing something new~~?? which I've just made a post on actually, lol. could be all of the above~~

might need to emulate cause as I've said on this blog; I'm disabled. Legally blind and the text in RPGs is usually too small for my good eye to read, so I'd need either emulation to read the text or to play older rpgs with bigger more readable text...

the limit of 30 tags on this website is dumb cause now I can't put the (visually impaired) tags there....

tldr; don't know where to start with megami tensei, and just wanted to share my game collection~~ of this franchise specifically, lol

i hope this post isn't near as scattered as I think it is. the bad part is if it is in fact scattered and hard to follow; I'm not even tired yet and completely competent to my knowledge....

just scatterbrained i guess~~~ idk..... and super excited to share my megami tensei game collection~~ however small it may be~~~

[agnol117]

i'm gonna struggle to articulate this, because i'm upset and kinda sick and otherwise not firing on all cylinders, but:

i want more mainstream games where i can play as a girl. and by this i specifically mean things like Shin Megami Tensei and Dragon Quest and whatever other games have a fucking blank slate protagonist that never talks and never does anything and still has to be a fucking dude. like yeah, sure, i *could* go play something like Atelier Ryza or Blue Reflection: Second Light, both of which are on my list and pretty close to the top (Ryza's gonna be what i play next on Deck, actually), but i don't want to. i don't want a game that's specifically designed to be girly. i want to explore the Schwarzwelt as a girl. we know there's female soldiers on the mission -- Strange Journey Redux gives them voices! that so many games still only offer the option to play as a guy is incredibly disheartening, and i kinda hate it.

(to be clear, i don't mind if the male character is actually a character. i have no objections to Cloud or Kagame Date, to cite two other games i'm currently playing. i'm just so fucking tired of being forced to be a dude if the narrative doesn't actually need me to be one)

[thablkgd]

The end of the year is a approaching and I’d like to commemorate all the games I finished in the year 2022

With some honorable mentions at the bottom that I wasn’t able to add.

MW2

Going Under

Resident Evil 5

Sekiro Shadows die twice

Resident Evil 8 Village

Spider Man miles morales

Here’s to more gaming in 2023

[eastern-kingdom-of-smt]

Well I finished SMT Strange Journey Redux and I’m not sure how I feel about it overall. I think it’s one that I need time to think on. It was a very good game and I have a lot of positive things to say about it but I also had some things that I didn’t vibe with. Maybe I’ll make a post that goes more in depth with it all

Adding on with an edit I feel like thinking about it for a few hours it’s more that I got extremely burnt out on the complex dungeons and was more so not vibing with the gameplay. However, I think the characters, story and atmosphere are fantastic. Like legit the endings I could make a whole post on by itself. There’s a few bumps here and there that I’m meh about but I am very glad I played it

[megaten-and-other-polls]

Megaten Funny Little Guy Tournament: Round 1 Match 1

[slugdragoon]

Dungeon Appreciation Post #4 - Womb of Grief (Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux)

I mean, just look at this thing. The scale of the optional extra dungeon in SMT: SJR is something I aspire to. I mean, the original game came out for Nintendo DS in 2009, the remake (and thus this dungeon) in 2017, but the design here is truly old school.

While the dungeon itself is super recent, it follows the general design of dungeons in the main game, which is to fill just about as much of the map grid as possible on each floor, except this one has seven, and you return to it, going deeper each time as you go through the main story. Typically, you go to a lower floor and eventually open a shortcut to the one above so that you can return more easily.

The Womb of Grief makes heavy use of conveyor floor tiles and teleporter tiles with unclear destinations, classic but controversial elements in DRPGs, some say outdated. Strange Journey was notable for throwing back to these designs that have in some ways fell out of fashion, but they are classic confusion tactics. My first experience with both of these was Pokemon Blue, with conveyor tiles in the Celadon Game Corner and teleporters in Sabrina's Gym. It also has some invisible floors, and pit traps that can take you to an unfamiliar part of a lower floor. It's main characteristic is that it's huge and very difficult to traverse, and is so despite having the map fill in as you go.

In a simpler game like Pokemon, similar traps present no real problem, but are a nod to the games that inspired them both, but in the Womb of Grief, though you map the dungeon out and can try paths you haven't yet tried, the complexity is cranked to such a level that you can have a hard time keeping track of where teleporters lead that you definitely have already been through, just because there are so many to keep track of. There's also a floor where teleporters have multiple destinations depending on the order you used them in. Both enemy encounters and poison and sleep tiles will drag and punish your failures of memory and mapping, which you might need to do on paper.

Takeaways for my own game: The Womb of Grief upsets players. It's beautiful. Strange Journey directly inspired my decision to make a dungeon crawler. But, I don't want my own game to feel as oppressive, necessarily, that requires trust from the players that I as an unknown will not have. However, I do love a sprawling dungeon that feels dangerous and uncharted. I'm not necessarily as interested in having a dungeon fill literally all available space to the point it loses a readable form, but mine will have verticality, so there's a ton of space to play with layout. I don't have to use traditional conveyor tiles, but what about a slide? It's already possible to fall off ledges, so why not have pitfalls and leaps of faith? I do want the spaces to feel real and take advantage of three dimensions, which is where the intertwined maps of Dark Souls (the first) might guide me. I'm considering having the bulk of the game take place in one mega-dungeon, so I'm looking for ways to add variety within it. In that sense shortcuts to different sectors as a progression mechanic will be a must.

[purseowner4thequalityanimation]

Shin Megami Tensei NINE's demon roster consists of new designs, returning designs and REPEATED designs. And no demon demonstrates this better than Harpy, whose model appears in NINE's roster no less than 5 times. Rather than just post 5 gifs and be done with it like I normally do, I have decided to curate a short overview of the BEST Harpy appearances in MegaTen! Hit "Keep reading" (after viewing this post in my blog because the formatting gets fucked up if you don't) NOW!!!!

Harpy and Furiae appear in Shin Megami Tensei 1 but they don't share assets yet so who gives a crap. Siren is a blue harpy, I guess.

Furiae returns in Shin Megami Tensei II with a new sprite, joined by

Ocypete, Celaeno and Aello! There's some slight asset resharing among them as Aello and Furiae share the same base sprite, but the others share with non-harpy demons so as far as this post is concerned they're original. Combined with artist Kazuma Kaneko's tendency to embellish demon designs in artwork and you'd never expect that all these birds were destined to be textureswaps for an underperforming 2002 XBOX JRPG.

But they were! Now we're cooking! In Shin Megami Tensei NINE the 5 bird-ladies return in one fabulous package. If you love Harpy then you'll love Harpy being given a haircut and a dyejob and reappearing four times. You'll love how they appear alongside themselves for hours of gameplay because they're within the same 10-28 level range. As an added bonus for the asset-reuse lover, said gameplay takes place in looping CG render backgrounds arranged into dungeons so just imagine leaving the town square in Ocarina of Time and arriving in that exact town square except mirrored. By the end of NINE you will love asset reuse, because you will not make it to the end of NINE otherwise. (The harpies are also in Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE but without the looping backgrounds it just isn't the same.)

Honorable mention to Persona 1 which squeezed in the named furies Megaera, Tisiphone and Alecto by using the same upperbody sprite as the three named harpies. Unfortunately Atlus were too afraid to include the named harpy Podarge for a total of 7 unique birdladies, so Persona 1 will only be commemorated by an opacity-reduced overlay of the six they bothered including.

Only regular Harpy survived to the DS-3DS era, using her Soul Hackers design where her head kind of looks like a pinecone. After gracing us with her presence in Strange Journey (+ Redux) and Shin Megami Tensei IV(+ Apocalypse), the Harpy disappeared from the pages of SMT history never to be seen again. As for actual history, I think Harpies were evil birds in Greek mythology but don't quote me on that.

Special thanks to @veskscans for the SMT1/2 art of Harpy, Furiae, Ocypete, Celaeno and Aello, and @eirikrjs for the Soul Hackers Harpy scan. NINE gifs by me, other sprites from the MegaTen wiki.