Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey Is An Underrated Treasure

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Is An Underrated Treasure

Strange Journey isn’t as well-known as other Shin Megami Tensei games, but its unique setting and excellent writing make it one of the best.

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Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey Is An Underrated Treasure

Shin Megami Tensei is gradually gaining popularity, and, as with any growing series, a common question new fans have is where to start. Good cases have been made for games like the legendary Nocturne or the excellently-written Devil Survivor. However, one title that’s frequently overlooked is the series artist Kazuma Kaneko’s personal passion project: Nintendo DS dungeon crawler Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

Beginning as a spin-off to the main franchise, Strange Journey took on a life of its own with a more adult cast and international setting. For the first time in the core series’ history, the story broke out of Tokyo and dealt with a global crisis. When a black hole-like dimension known as the Schwarzwelt opens in Antarctica, the Earth finds itself crossing over with a realm of demons, and humanity must send its best to investigate the disaster. This unique narrative resulted in a game that was at once familiar and yet quite unlike anything the series had ever seen before.

Shin Megami Tensei Strange Journey Is An Underrated Treasure

What immediately sets Strange Journey apart from almost any other RPG on the system is its tone. Many games attempt to be mature through a gratuitous combination of gore, nudity and profanity but fail to speak to deeper truths. Strange Journey, by contrast, while no stranger to adult content, is a refreshingly slow burn that lacks the desperate edginess of its competitors. Its opening cutscene is filled with tension, carefully exploring how the Schwarzwelt isn’t just another demonic abyss. When the player finally braves its depths, they’ll find it full of tacky cities, shopping malls, piles of garbage and other twisted parodies of human civilization.

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These may not sound like especially disturbing locales, but each one represents a failing of the human race. Instead of leaning on old tropes about hellish punishments, Strange Journey takes a more contemporary approach to the Seven Deadly Sins. The rubbish-laden city represents peoples’ wastefulness and the lack of respect for the world they live in. The shopping mall, plastered with commands to purchase and consume, is an explicit criticism of capitalism’s excess and its struggle to satisfy humanity’s constant need for more. Such critiques form the backbone of the game’s writing, as its story questions whether people can correct their flawed systems or if changing their nature is the only way to save the planet.

This question isn’t necessarily new for SMT, but Strange Journey’s international setting makes it more relevant than the games about Tokyoite teenagers. Most children don’t have a detailed grasp of the world’s political and ideological problems, so asking them to recreate a planet they barely understand often seems absurd. In Strange Journey, the values held by different peoples directly informs the plot. The greedy but freedom-loving American Jimenez gradually warms up to the Schwarzwelt’s inhabitants, implicitly relating their survival of the fittest mantra to his homeland’s self-deterministic ideals. Contrasting him is the kind but paranoid Russian scientist Zelenin, who likely grew up in the USSR given the game’s early 21st-century setting. Her longing for harmony and hatred of demons leads her to find kinship with the opposing angels, who reward her faith with the power to directly enforce it.

By spiritually alluding to the Cold War, Strange Journey brings the conflict between Law and Chaos much closer to home. Its representatives feel less like cardboard cutouts arguing for tyranny and more like real people making moral compromises to realize their utopias. While the original game accidentally undermined this by making Neutral the most positive ending, the 3DS re-release Redux amended this with additional content. As a result, the game now has the most interesting and even charming alignment endings, letting Zelenin and Jimenez achieve their goals without losing sight of their humanity, while Neutral becomes far more morally complex.

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For all its narrative triumphs, however, Strange Journey does have some flaws. Its dungeons are conceptually brilliant but can be obtuse to explore, and Redux’s new environments aren’t as interesting to look at. The Demon Co-Op system, which lets party members assist allies of the same alignment, is a decent battle system but lacks the strategic depth of the absent Press-Turns. Finally, the difficulty is somewhat uneven. Once players get past the first few levels, it doesn’t take much to build an optimized party and annihilate the remaining challenges.

Yet, despite these shortcomings, Strange Journey is still a fantastic game. Its gameplay still has a lot of depth, and its strong writing offers plenty to both returning fans and series newcomers seeking a more mature story. While physical copies are hard to come by, Redux’s continued availability on the 3DS store makes it a necessary purchase for those with the system. While the game may lack the epic scope of Nocturne or the refined mechanics of Digital Devil Saga, it’s still an excellent reimagining of everything that makes the series great. Those willing to make this journey won’t soon forget it.

Link Source : https://www.cbr.com/shin-megami-tensei-strange-journey-underrated-treasure/

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