Stranger still.

Those who hear the words, “Shin Megami Tensei” might think only of the ever popular Persona series. Little do they know, the SMT series spans well over a dozen games outside of the Persona entries and is one that has been going on since 1987.

One such game was “SMT: Strange Journey” for the Nintendo DS, and while it’s unlikely to make any best RPG lists, it was still received favorably by critics. Given the recent trend of Atlus going through their previously released DS games catalog and giving them the remastered treatment on the 3DS, it came as little surprise to see that Strange Journey would make its way to the 3DS in a similar fashion.

So, the only question that remained was whether or not it would be a remaster that would be worth the time, and the only way to find the answer was to embark on this strange journey once more.

The brand new character, “Alex” is out to make your life more difficult or easier depending on how you approach what she has to offer.

MSRP: $39.99
Platforms: 3DS
Voice Acting: JPN Only
Length: 50~hours

When a mysterious black hole forms near the South Pole, mankind is put to the test as the slowly expanding menace threatens to cover the entire world. Putting together the best and the brightest humankind can muster, they set out an expedition to explore this strange zone with the hopes to put a stop to its expansion.

If that sounds strangely familiar to the plot of the movie, “Annihilation”, that’s because it’s basically the same premise. To be fair, Strange Journey was originally released in 2009 while the book that inspired the movie was released in 2014 so there’s a bit of food for thought for those interested. Luckily, the similarities end there as once the expedition makes landfall, they’re not greeted by an alien entity but by demons and angels thought only to exist in legends.

As is the case with with most of the mainline SMT games, there’s a strong focus on the ideals of law and chaos without making one or the other seeming too much of the “right” choice to make. Delving into ambiguity and the subjective nature of morality has always been a strong suit of SMT, and it’s no different here.

The overarching story is renewed in part thanks to the addition of a brand new character named “Alex”, who first seemed bent on my destruction, but as I made my way through the “Womb of Grief”, I began to learn more about her motives and saw her as much more than just a deadly assassin. As for the newly constructed dungeon, it’s about as pleasant to explore as its namesake makes it out to be, and while it was decidedly more difficult than the story related areas, the various exclusive rewards made it well worth the effort.

The presentation has received a significant bump as well as now that all main event scenes are fully voiced in Japanese and there were newly drawn CGs that were used to accentuate the severity of various events, which was a nice touch. While it’s a shame we didn’t get an English voice option, the Japanese VA did an admirable job in their roles and I could feel the personalities of the various characters coming through with their performance.

Even though there was already quite a lot of content available in the original release, the Redux adds 3 more endings to the list as well as a slew of new demons to encounter and fuse.

The added CG helps inject a bit more drama to the event scenes.

As for the combat, it’s the standard SMT fare where characters are often weak or strong against certain types of attacks like fire, ice, wind, holy, dark and more. However, instead of affording another turn to the player when they hit a weakness, in Strange Journey, they are instead offered an opportunity to follow up the attack with demons that share the same… let’s say, moral disposition to the player character, which made building a capable team more complex than I originally anticipated.

When I was able to fully grasp the concept I was able to do the maximum amount of follow up attacks, which made short work of my foes, but I wondered if this was truly a better system than just getting a free turn when hitting weaknesses.

The limitation on sub-apps where I could get a variety of handy dandy effects like lowered encountered rate and passive regeneration was removed, allowing me to use as many of the sub-apps at once as I liked. Given that Strange Journey is a difficult game by nature, it was a nice touch to have more options in powering up my squad in passive ways.

There was also the addition of commander skills, which were unlocked via sub-apps which gave me the ability to use a powerful skill during battle that made a difficult fight into a simple one by letting my entire party get the first strike, reducing the number of enemies before the fight even began.

The quality of life extended far beyond skirmishes, as during demon fusion I was able to use a demon source which I could get from leveling up a demon in my party and by using one, I could directly transfer over a desirable skill instead of placing my hopes on RNGESUS to carry me through.

The combat will feel familiar to SMT veterans with some minor tweaks on the formula.

The biggest failings of Strange Journey is that it feels dated in more ways than one due to it being released almost a decade ago, as it suffers from pacing issues and lackluster level designs.

The beginning segments felt painfully slow as there was an excessive amount of dialogue, and it took more than a full hour just to get into the swing of things. While you could bring up games like Persona 4 where it takes hours to really get going, I would say that it’s not so much the “slow” part that is bad but rather that it is boring while being slow at the same time, making it feel even longer. The various dungeon areas often felt generic and uninteresting, and even though there were new hazards that were introduced from time to time, compared to the meticulously designed levels in Etrian Odyssey, it felt underwhelming.

Since 2009, Atlus has released many games and made strides in both storytelling as well as gameplay, and despite its many improvements, Strange Journey falls short of lofty standards Atlus has set for its modern games. Despite it certainly being the definitive version of the game to play, it leaves much to be desired under the shining banner of Shin Megami Tensei.

Fun tidbit – Some of the sub-apps and demons exclusive to the womb of grief are nearly game-changing and I highly recommend going through the dungeon as soon as new levels are unlocked.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.