Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers

[Max Edge]

Soul Hackers, forgotten Shin Megami Tensei from 90s, published finally on 3DS in 2012. It's continuation of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner, Japan exclusive from 1995, and precursor of Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army.

From this three games, Soul Hackers is the nearest to classic Shin Megami Tensei - quite abstract game with dungeons and FPP view.

Story has no sense. From wiki: "The game takes place in the small fictitious harbour town Amami City in Japan. The company Algon Soft has made Amami its headquarters, which has led to the technology in the city quickly being upgraded; Algon Soft has connected every home and business in the city to its new network in order to demonstrate how a "city of tomorrow" could work. The Japanese government is impressed, and grants Algon Soft permission to expand the network across the rest of Japan in the coming years. It also takes place in the virtual world Paradigm X on Algon Soft's servers,where the citizens of Amami can visit virtual attractions.

The player character is a young man who is a member of the hacking group Spookies, which was founded by a man who calls himself Spooky. The other group members are Six, Lunch, Yu-Ichi, and the player character's friend Hitomi Tono.The group mainly hacks the city's network for fun or to play harmless pranks, but Spooky holds a grudge against Algon Soft Among other recurring characters are the demon Nemissa, who possesses Hitomi and Kinap, who teaches the player character to enter the souls of people who have recently died "

All this this has no pont, because virtual world has only two streets, Amami is only dungeon system, in middle of city berth Frankenstein-vampire and all guns you buy in movie shop.

But just as a game, it's pretty good. Just exploring dungeons and farming monsters, without this Personas personal mumbo-jumbo. Even like in first Megami Tensei, there is two protagonist, boy-fighter and girl-magician. Balance is nearly perfect, however there is few point when you must return to farming place and farm levels.

3DS have additional features, like improved graphic and (optional) saving in any place.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

From this three games, Soul Hackers is the nearest to classic Shin Megami Tensei - quite abstract game with dungeons and FPP view.

I found dungeons in Devil Summoner more brutal and closer to the essense of SMT, while Soul Hackers had more straightforward design in comparison.

Heck, Atlus had to supply a map of Chinatown in Devil Summoner re-releases, because that dungeon chewed people alive and raped the remains. Reaching that kind of brutality is quite an achievement in itself.

3DS have additional features, like improved graphic

Disagree. Texture filtering looks like ass -- the game wasn't designed with it in mind. It's still a good game, though.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Sexy Nemissa best. Soul Hackers was pretty cool, but I never got the itch to replay it.

 

[Max Edge]

I found dungeons in Devil Summoner more brutal and closer to the essense of SMT, while Soul Hackers had more straightforward design in comparison.

Heck, Atlus had to supply a map of Chinatown in Devil Summoner re-releases, because that dungeon chewed people alive and raped the remains. Reaching that kind of brutality is quite an achievement in itself.

I know first Devil Summoner only from youtube. Atlus experienced with FMV, so Soul Hackers, where is less that kind things, looked for me more classic.

Disagree. Texture filtering looks like ass -- the game wasn't designed with it in mind. It's still a good game, though.

On 3DS 3D always looks like ass, but at last they added better sprites.

Sexy Nemissa best. Soul Hackers was pretty cool, but I never got the itch to replay it.

Best girl Nemissa.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I know first Devil Summoner only from youtube. Atlus experienced with FMV, so Soul Hackers, where is less that kind things, looked for me more classic.

Soul Hackers looks a lot better, since IIRC DS was their first attempt to move to real 3D. DS looks pretty butt-ugly at times, but it's the content that matters.

On 3DS 3D always looks like ass, but at last they added better sprites.

Did they? Most of the sprites looked very similar, if not identical, to the Saturn version.
They also reused the data from the Saturn version in the 3DS port -- same models, same textures, just with issues caused by mindless usage of bilinear filtering (seams, blurry appearance, etc).

It's still better than the lazy port of DS to PSP, where they added Demon Compendium but fucked up everything else.

 

[Puukko]

This is on my to-play list, I've put a few hours into it already but opted to play Strange Journey first which did a much better job of hooking me. It's definitely a unique game and differs from the more recent entries I've played in some ways, being somewhat of a middle phase between early and modern SMT. Shame it seems to be pretty damn easy.

 

[Latro]

Soul Hackers has the best pre-PS2 SMT soundtrack. Dungeon design is pretty decent, most people didn't like how you don't really control the your allied demons. As ZZ says, the game kinda looks like ass compared to Saturn Version.

The game has some really cool narrative design and ideas (vision quests especially) going on, but the overall plot is pretty by-the-books and the cast isn't really memorable or really likeable. If you're just in the mood for good dungeon-crawling it's great.

 

[grimace]

Spoiler

Was Nemissa's name meant to connote a female nemesis? There's some exceptionally artistic fan created artwork depicted Nemissa.

Spoiler

 

[Latro]

Was Nemissa's name meant to connote a female nemesis?

do you really think the japanese care about accuracy in their references?

 

[Nathir]

I love Soul Hackers. The actual story and characters are very simple and straightforward. The gameplay is standard fare too. But where Soul Hackers excels is in the soundtrack and visuals. The game just creates this wonderful atmosphere that makes it very enjoyable to play. Also, the Soul hackers demon designs are peak Kaneko. Some of my favourites ever like Tezcatlipoca and Chernobog. Also features old man Odin with a beard, who for some reason permanently dissapearead after this game.

 

[Max Edge]

Did they? Most of the sprites looked very similar, if not identical, to the Saturn version.
They also reused the data from the Saturn version in the 3DS port -- same models, same textures, just with issues caused by mindless usage of bilinear filtering (seams, blurry appearance, etc).

It's still better than the lazy port of DS to PSP, where they added Demon Compendium but fucked up everything else.

From: https://shinmegami.wordpress.com/ga...er-soul-hackers-differences-between-versions/

PS1—>3DS | What changed?:




New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.
Faster loading times: Battles load quicker, screens load more faster and in general the loading times are better.
Updated interface: The battle interface now resembles Strange Journey’s. You can see portraits of your characters/demons in battle.
Voice acting: Much of the dialogue during major story events in the game are voice acted.
New character portraits: There are brand new character portraits drawn by a newer artist.
Fast battles: Autobattle in this new version speeds up the speed of combat. Allowing for quicker fights.
More animations:Soul Hackers 3DS has some new battle animations.
Several new demons: Over 30 new demons can be yours! Exclusive to the 3DS version.
Demon/Sword Compendium: A demon and sword compendium were both added to the 3DS version. Allowing players to summon previously registered demons and fused swords.

Spoiler

Was Nemissa's name meant to connote a female nemesis? There's some exceptionally artistic fan created artwork depicted Nemissa.

do you really think the japanese care about accuracy in their references?

Do sky is blue?

I love Soul Hackers. The actual story and characters are very simple and straightforward. The gameplay is standard fare too. But where Soul Hackers excels is in the soundtrack and visuals. The game just creates this wonderful atmosphere that makes it very enjoyable to play. Also, the Soul hackers demon designs are peak Kaneko. Some of my favourites ever like Tezcatlipoca and Chernobog. Also features old man Odin with a beard, who for some reason permanently dissapearead after this game.

Maybe because most SMT is making by core team? In first game he was purple.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.
Faster loading times: Battles load quicker, screens load more faster and in general the loading times are better.
Updated interface: The battle interface now resembles Strange Journey’s. You can see portraits of your characters/demons in battle.
Voice acting: Much of the dialogue during major story events in the game are voice acted.
New character portraits: There are brand new character portraits drawn by a newer artist.
Fast battles: Autobattle in this new version speeds up the speed of combat. Allowing for quicker fights.
More animations:Soul Hackers 3DS has some new battle animations.
Several new demons: Over 30 new demons can be yours! Exclusive to the 3DS version.
Demon/Sword Compendium: A demon and sword compendium were both added to the 3DS version. Allowing players to summon previously registered demons and fused swords.

We were talking about the 3D quality and demon sprites, not other features. But thanks for the detailed info.

 

[Latro]

New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.

lulz, you know it's decline when the NEW DIFFICULTY MODE isn't something that makes the game more interesting/challenging for people who already played once.

 

[Max Edge]

lulz, you know it's decline when the NEW DIFFICULTY MODE isn't something that makes the game more interesting/challenging for people who already played once.

Kids these days plays in SMT only to score all "Persona" games and want do it quickly.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.

lulz, you know it's decline when the NEW DIFFICULTY MODE isn't something that makes the game more interesting/challenging for people who already played once.

It's a common thing among re-releases and remakes of older MegaTen games.
Which is funny -- I never found Soul Hackers hard, even when I played the Japanese version and lagged behind due to language barrier.

 

[Nathir]

New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.

lulz, you know it's decline when the NEW DIFFICULTY MODE isn't something that makes the game more interesting/challenging for people who already played once.

Not to mention Soul Hackers is one of the more straightforward and easier games in the franchise imo.

 

[Duraframe300]

New difficulty mode: Soul Hackers 3DS has a new difficulty mode. The easy difficulty. Intended for players who want a easier playthrough.

lulz, you know it's decline when the NEW DIFFICULTY MODE isn't something that makes the game more interesting/challenging for people who already played once.

It's not a surprise though. As zwanzig_zwoelf mentioned they've been including them for years.
Though *easy* mode is a bit of an overstatement as Atlus has just been giving out *I win* buttons for people.
The Persona Games for example are impossible to lose in easy difficulty as you get automatic god mode
(you get revived to full health without penalty whenever your charachter would die in combat).

 

[Nathir]

SMTIV:A Has a story reason for why you immediately respawn after dying...

 

[Max Edge]

SMTIV:A Has a story reason for why you immediately respawn after dying...

In Japanese games story always follow gameplay, not like on West now, when gameplay is derivative to story.

 

[Werdna's Revenge]

I beat soul hackers when the remake came out on the DS. I honestly don't remember much about it. Nemissa was + and the manitou villain concept I remember thinking was neat. Still a very middle of the road SMT game from my recollection.