Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (2017)

On paper I should like SMT. Evil edgy Pokemon. Encounters that can feel different each time because you could actually talk and haggle with the evil edgy Pokemon. Stuff to manage and unlock, fusing the evil edgy Pokemon to make them eviler-er, as well as all the usual RPG resource management. And a story that's at least as good as most Pokemon games. What's not to like?

But I keep throwing myself against games like this and bouncing off. To put it simply, these games bore me. They bore me in the way that most edgy things bore me. In an attempt to feel more gritty and grown up the environments are uninteresting, bland color combinations and tired edgy tropes. The demons are so strange they are uninteresting, I can't project onto them or love them or hate them because I don't really understand them, not cognitively or metaphorically or aesthetically. And that means I have no real interest in collecting them, which is the main mechanic of the whole game series. And the rest is barely better than an SNES dungeon crawl, which was old 10 years before it even came out.

Or maybe Persona 5 just spoiled me. Maybe I shouldn't have started there.

Anyway, this half-assed review is the tombstone to my playthrough. Did not finish the game and don't plan to return anytime soon.

PS - Forgot to mention the game has buttons dedicated to making the game go faster (and so end sooner). What does that tell you?

Strange Journey was an incredible game when it released, but it definitely had some rough grinding points and confusing dungeon layouts. Redux comes back to this and revamps graphics, plot, and adds a whole load of goodies that make this journey worth re-taking.

Following the same journey of venturing into the Schwarzwelt, you control Earth's last line of defense against demons as you talk to, summon, and battle. Much like from the previous iteration, alignment plays a key role in battle as exploiting weaknesses and critical hits allow co-op attacks with demons that share your morality choices.

Plenty of the game is in exploration, and many dungeons have fiendish puzzles with teleporters and pits abound. Fortunately, the game adds additional applications that spot these traps ahead of time and allow the player to see where teleporters go. It makes the dreaded Eridanus maze a comfortable excursion and can be optionally used (for those who miss the old pains).

The biggest addition is a new character, Alex, and a gigantic dungeon called The Womb of Grief. Alex is gruff but fits neatly into the story of fixing the bad endings of the first iteration, and the Womb is puzzling and challenging, filling in points where players would regularly have to grind in the previous Strange Journey.

All in all, this version feels like it was a necessary step in making one of the best Shin Megami Tensei games even more enjoyable and playable, with six different endings across three alignments and even more demon teams than you can shake a stick at. This is the definitive version of Strange Journey.