The designs, atmosphere, setting and overall style of this game is amazing, the GUMP is my favorite COMP in the entire megaten franchise, i also kind of like the loyalty system and feel like it fits the game quite well, demon interactions (with how a demon that belonged to the previous owner of the GUMP deciding to join you because you have it) are great and full of personality, combat wise it's just simple systems so i don't have much to say about it, neither bad or good, however storywise i wish the game didn't pull out the same card 5 times just for a character you saw 3 times to just outright say it to you and the game just ending shortly after

O Pior Shin Megami Tensei que já joguei..

Soul Hackers 1, o smt que desde o início me parecia estranho e fraco mas q dei uma chance para ver qual era a dele, e eu não podia estar mais do que correto de que este jogo é sem graça, desinteressante, chato, datado, e fraco. Eu fiz uma "jornada" de vários SMT's pra jogar no meu 3DS e soul hackers 1 foi pra finalizar com chave de decepção e vazio.
Soul hackers 1 tem um culto de fãs por aí, que afirmam coisas boas do game e que ele é um hiddem gem da série, pena q ele não é isso que pintam dele... bora lá

= A história é desinteressante, não te cativa com o que vai acontecer, o mundo deste jogo é básico, não te intriga em nada, o decorrer dos acontecimentos mais me pareceu uma coletânea de informações sem nenhuma marcação relevante para o enredo como um todo, sua premissa também não é complexa, e não surpreende, Basic Basic. Única coisa que foi "ok" de começo são as vision quest's de poucos personagens que estão entrelaçados no enredo principal, que servem de background para te situar do que já aconteceu e te dar informação da Lore do jogo, que logo em seguida você vai esquecer de tão Basic q ele é. Minha vision quest q mais gostei foi a última , a sessão da "Naomi" de resto, que caia no esquecimento.

= Os personagens são todos 90% sem carisma..... sério, eu não me importo com nenhum deles.
O protagonista foi o pior de todos que eu já vi, tanto visualmente e quanto mecanicamente, o fdp não acerta porra nenhuma, não usa magia, e morre pra qualquer peido q ele sofrer de algum inimigo,só serve pra trocar ideia com os demônio e falhar miseravelmente ( a mas tem o set do masakado, pena q só dá pra pegar ele no final do jogo então não adianta de merda nenhuma ).
A E A NEMISSA?????? sim ela é a garota propaganda do jogo, e a sua party member mais IMPORTANTE  DO JOGO TODO( isso apenas na gameplay kk ) tirando tudo isso, ela apenas é uma personagem q vai te acompanhar com Amnésia do seu passado e que carrega algo importante pra lore q só é revelado pro final do jogo ( não é grande coisa....) no começo sua personalidade seria uma personagem debochada, que com o passar do tempo adquire respeito pela humanidade e por sua equipe Spookies que é o seu grupinho de amigos no jogo.
Agora bora ver o grande elenco de soul hackers 1 valendo!

Hitomi- Amiguinha do protagonista, gentil e que só tem um tempo de tela por conta  da nemissa ter possuído nela,e pra fazer uma ceninha sem graça escolhendo a roupa pra nemissa que não acrescentou em porra nenhuma

Lunch- O carinha revoltado com o pai porque ele fez algo ruim com sua mãe, e depois se reconcilia com seu pai. Uau

Six - Covarde do grupo que tenta ser algo mas falha por ser inútil e é constantemente zoado pela Nemissa

Yu-chi - o mulekinho do grupo, q se sente inútil e que quer mostrar seu valor no grupo, grande coisa....

Spookie - O mentor do grupo, o cara que está carregando investigação e que se importa com seus parceiros. Uau

Percebeu o quanto foi vago cada descrição deles? Infelizmente com o passar do jogo eles não tem nada alem desta premissa básica cara, nada mais nada menos. Não tem momentos emocionantes que me fazem lembrar do personagem em nenhum momento, nada de interessante de se acompanhar do personagem. Eu já disse que eles não tem nada de interessante?

Enfim com o passar do jogo vc terá q resgatar seus membros de perigos q irão acontecer mas como eu já disse...... neste jogo, eu não me importo com eles :D

Agora os personagens secundários? - oque q vc acha? Nada além de uma  referência ao jogo anterior Devil summoner, como a rei kuzunoha, que aparece na  trama principal mas que fica de lado tbm. Quem diria...

Os antagonistas e a phantom Society..... fracos também kkkk eles literalmente são um grupo do mau q quer coletar as almas das pessoas porque faz parte do seu plano maligno do paradigm X deles. Ou seja apenas um grupinho do mal pro seu jogo que muitos dizem ser um Hiddem Gem incrível e desvalorizado. Boa campeão
Os vilões são completamente bregas e terríveis, imagina ter q lutar com um golfinho random q tá afim de comer a minha irmã no metaverso? Uau mas q jogo foda hein(inclusive a forma de lutar com ele é estúpida assim como o chefe).a única coisa legal foi ver da onde surgiu o nosso querido Azazel ( porque ele é daora? ) apenas visualmente, de resto é brega como todos os outros :)
O final boss é feio, seu design não é daora, é tbm não me pegou.

Os npcs? São apenas npcs, muitos deles eu não vou me importar com eles até porque não tem motivo, além do nosso Victor, e o dono do mercadinho na esquina que te vende itens. O engraçado é q nesse jogo eles deram bastante portraits e ilustrações para os npcs, oque é incrivelmente estúpido kkk imagina vc desenhar uma porrada de personagens da forma mais esquecivel possível? Aqui nesse jogo você tem ;)

Gameplay - Imagina pegar um jogo antigo datado, velho e ainda assim sofrer com a idade do jogo? E aqui aonde tudo isso acontece, ele não é intuitivo, o tutorial dos status do jogo é uma merda, principalmente em relação ao seu protagonista inútil, a dificuldade do jogo é horrível mais pela progressão e exploração, com um monte de demônio que podem te matar e que vão te matar do nada apenas por ser apelão. O sistema de personalidade dos demônios é chato, e frustrante ( sly, calm, kind e etc ) imagina ter q coordenar uma party q não te obedece e q não funciona tirando a porra da nemissa? Yeah..... pois é.
As conversas com os demônios são horríveis também, com as falas mais estúpidas do porque vc não pode tê-lo na sua party, e também dos motivos mais idiotas do porque ele querer entrar na sua party, enfim... estúpido.

Dungeons longas e chatas, nenhuma é marcante e legal, a taxa de encontros aleatórios do jogo é horrível de chato, ele é do começo ao fim irritantemente frequente, forçando vc a lutar, fugir ou conversar e adivinha o elemento comum destas 3 opções?   Sim...... todas são ruins neste jogo ;)

Tem o sistema de mag que serve apenas pra te deixar mais uma dorzinha de cabeça porque este jogo é o "hiddem gem" né kk

A trilha sonora de início foi um dos poucos pontos que me fizeram olhar e pensar " até que tem 1 ou 2 ost's legais aqui" o resto já sabe, vazio.

Bom acho que já acabou por aqui. Realmente este jogo foi a pior experiência q já tive envolvendo frustração e tédio, pena q esse jogo até onde pesquisei ganhou um certo culto na Internet ( principalmente dos gringos ) de que ele é subestimado e desvalorizado, se caso vc ainda tenha interesse em jogar, jogue a versão de 3DS pois é a única oficial, e a melhor q tem, ela tem um ajusta de dificuldade decente e um mapa um pouquinho melhor q acredite em mim vc vai querer usar estas 2 funções, se com elas eu senti que o jogo beirou o INJOGAVEL imagina sem kkk e olha que eu alternei várias vezes essas opções pra sentir a diferença pra ver se o problema era meu mesmo e não se preocupe com o que os outros pensam disso, a gameplay deste jogo é uma merda mesmo, a versão de 3DS tem mais demônios e tem bosses a mais pra enfrentar que são outros personagens da série devil summoner como o Raidou e o prota do 1° jogo. E uma única coisa boa deste jogo.... a abertura deste jogo é legal kkk enfim obrigado por ler até aqui, tem muitos jogos pra vc jogar e este daqui com certeza não vale o seu tempo ;)

This was a game that at first, I really couldn't see myself having that great of a time with. I found the whole resource management part of the game to be extremely tedious, and the demon loyalty system to be very annoying to play around. And I did really feel this way for a little while.

However there came a point where I realized I was having a lot of fun with it. I don't know if it was whether it finally clicked for me and I fell into a groove, or if I finally accepted it for what it was instead of wishing it played exactly like mainline smt. I think realistically a little bit of both. I also certainly have to give a little bit of leniency to the mechanics designed for a game that originally came out in 1997.

With some practice and some time invested I found the systems which I found annoying at first to work extremely well with the overall gameplay loop that this game was going for. I'm not gonna miss the loyalty system in any other megaten game, but ,I will admit it sort of worked here.

This game also has some absolutely fantastic dungeons. I'm a huge dungeon crawler fan and a lot of the later ones in this game stack right up with some of my favorites. Pair this with the resource management that I found tedious at first and it was always a joy mapping out everything.

I also found the narrative to be pretty good, if not a little cheesy because it was written like 25 years ago about the future of technology, but I cared about the characters a lot .

This game is also really short. I rolled credits at a decent bit under 20 hours and frankly, the fact that this game doesn't overstay it's welcome or even come close to it makes it a little easier to appreciate.

All in all this is probably far from my favorite game in the series but if you're able to appreciate it for what it is, it's a pretty good time.

Not really sure what drove me to finish this game. The music wasn't remarkable and some dungeons were a massive pain. The story itself was very decent and expected from a 90s game, and there were characters that I enjoyed (like Mary). The part I liked the most was the setting that Soul Hackers takes place in.

Recruiting demons was interesting, and the personality system helped keep a somewhat refreshing feel to it, but being an old SMT game it usually didn't feel rewarding to forge a new demon. Cutscenes and dialogue were also unskippable and had to be sat through every time. Because of that, the old-JRPG-features like random encounters and dying on the first turn to some Mudo was tiring. One of the most memorable bosses (in a bad way) was one really hard boss that came after a 2-3 minute cutscene. Luckily, the 3DS port of this game comes with modifiers that include difficulty. Among those mods is an automap hack, which will automatically give you the layout to the dungeon floor you're in, making the game less of a slog to get through, especially through the evil dungeons where they make you go up and down it multiple times. (One dungeon that stood out in particular was a huge room with invisible walls and doors and you had to find a certain room to enter - but they weren't invisible on the automap.)

That being said, I did have enough fun to finish the game. In the end, there were a couple demons that felt satisfying to fuse (after searching for the base demons and hoping my conversations went well enough, and then finally fusing up to the final demon), and because of that optimization, the final boss was fairly simple. However, the ending of the story felt pretty abrupt to me, and I have no desire to do New Game+ nor the post-game dungeon that unlocks after the first clear. This was the first SMT game I've played - discounting Persona 3 to 5 - and the start of my journey through these old SMT games. Next on the to-play list are the 1994 games like SMT2, if..., and Devil Summoner. I'm not expecting these games to be any more fun, but I'm starting to understand the appeal for old JRPGs and excited to get through them.

To be honest, the reason it took me so long to beat this game was because the third stratum in Etrian 3 kind of ruined the thought of playing video games for a while (It's such dogshit that I'm talking shit about it in a review for another game!).

At first, I was little turned off by the fact that demons can't level up in this game (something I'm used to in the MegaTen games I've played), but I've got over it and actually enjoyed this game a lot.

Gameplay-wise, it obviously shares a lot of core MegaTen mechanics with other games (summoning demons, fusing them to create stronger ones, etc.), but it has some mechanics that are exclusive to the Devil Summoner series, such as Demon Loyalty, and Zoma Fusion.

Zoma Fusion was ok, it allowed you to create your own demon with it's own skillset, but it was only helpful during the mid-game, at least for me. Demon Loyalty (which is where demons have personality types and having them respond accordingly to those types increase their loyalty to you) on the other hand, is a great mechanic that might seem limiting and complex at first, but once you figure it out, it gives demons a little bit of individuality that they don't get in the mainline games.

This game has a great story, where the protagonist obtains a gun-looking computer that unleashes a demon that possesses his friend. Together, they fight against a secret society that conspires to steal everyone's souls to summon a demon that will destroy the world. I don't want to spoil the story, but it gets pretty crazy.

The soundtrack is good and so was the voice acting, especially Cassandra Lee Morris' performance as Hitomi/Nemissa. I also liked the Vision Quests and how they used the perspectives of other minor characters to progress the story, as well as the first Vision Quest being used to help the player get a feel of how the game plays. The dungeons were good as well, and unlike some dungeons whose name I will not repeat, they feel don't like a slog to get through.

It's a MegaTen game so some of the random encounters can feel unforgiving sometimes, but overall, I'd say you should check this game out if you like JRPGs. If you're a MegaTen fan, than this game is a must play

Man, talk about getting caught off guard by how much you enjoyed a game. (Partially because I played Persona 1 before it) I went into Soul Hackers expecting to like it but not love it, and I finished very much liking the game. The dungeons and combat I had fun with, the story (even if it isn't as deep as SMT and Persona) was a good time, and had some real good songs.
My only gripes would be the final boss (because it's two bosses with no save between), the inability to skip cutscenes (even on 3DS), and the flawed App system (in there's basically like 4 you'd wanna stick to for the rest of the game), but otherwise than that, I think this is a great time, and (speically given it's not very long and a bit easy) a great starting point to MegaTen...
Shame the only officially translated version (at least in the States) is the 3DS version, though.

I played this game a LOT as a kid. Used a dreamcast emulator for the first and ONLY time in my life to this day to play it, and while I couldn't really follow the plot, I did get to watch a map screen fill up as I slowly stepped on every panel. Dungeon crawler RPGs are slowly becoming a favorite genre of mine after buying and getting disappointed in (and also addicted to) Dungeon Encounters last year. This time around, I got the same emotion and more from this. My cartographer ass stepped on every damage trap, took every clearly wrong path, all for the joy of seeing a full map on my bottom screen.

Back then, I couldn't appreciate how silly and wild this game's plot was! Oh my gosh, I love it. Another reason to try and replay SMTIII and try the rest of the series now, lol. So many funny things happen- supported in their hilarity by an English dub that really plays up the "evil beyond evil" villains whenever they speak.

I never really learn how to play RPGs perfectly, I just kinda let whatever demons decide to join me stay with me till the end, lol, which is definitely gonna bite me in the ass once I play Nocturne again. Anywho! Play Soul Hackers, girls! It's SO fun!!!!

I don’t know why I keep doing this to myself.

I really don’t care much for JRPGs anymore, at least in their most basic form. It’s something I’m really not shy about. In a medium where you can do and be anything, there’s a whole genre where the idea seems to be as hands-off and formulaic as possible. Menu-based combat! Random encounters! Level grinding! Linear character and equipment progression! Vast tracts of exposition! Filler arcs that you can’t skip! Every anime trope under the sun rolled up into one narrative! And more! Series like Dragon Quest have barely evolved from their decades-old initial offerings, and there are new IPs cropping up on a monthly basis claiming to “recapture the magic of that lost era of RPGs” in spite of each other – and as if you can’t just go back and play Chrono Trigger any time you want. No, you can’t apply my complaints to every game in the genre. Some of the more popular ones do make a point of throwing a wrinkle in someplace, and they could also be applied to a lot of other genres or developers as well. The biggest difference, as far as I’m concerned, is that most of those examples are inherently more dynamic and interactive than even the most convoluted JRPGs. You could argue that DOOM and Mario’s most recent offerings aren’t that different from where they began, but in either case I can boot those games up, get into some gameplay pretty much right away, and said gameplay is energetic and engaging throughout (though I can readily accept that itself is highly subjective). With many JRPGs, you can cut out all the fluff and the bulk of the experience would be a handful of boss fights and hours upon hours of text and cutscenes. It's like if I ordered something really interesting off of eBay and the person who sent it to me wrapped it up in six layers of duct-tape. Like yeah, it got my Demley Auto-Dice to me just fine, but look at all this crap I have to put up with just to get at it!

I know that’s a heck of an opener, and I’m not bashing the genre just for the sake of it. I actually have a lot of appreciation for the JRPGs in general, insofar as it’s one of the few genres that consistently seems dedicated to the idea of meaningful storytelling, character development and worldbuilding - even if the creators don't always succeed. Some of my favorite video game narratives come from games that I didn’t have a whole lot of fun actually playing. And even then, I can appreciate the presence of a type of game that is straightforward enough that it can be played and enjoyed by just about anybody. No reflexes or even planning required, at least most of the time. As long as you’re willing to grind up and read a few guides you can get through a significant number of these games with little issue, meaning there’s nothing standing between you and the juicy bits you’re really here for. For me personally, though, I just need that little extra something to get me hooked if I'm going to sit down and spend anywhere from 30 to 60 hours on a game that uses one button.

So no, I don’t have a whole lot of desire to interact with them these days. But Shin Megami Tensei has, for me, always been one of the few exceptions. The unique setting, cyberpunk and supernatural flavors, focus on difficulty, broad cast of recruitable characters from history, mythology, and folklore, team building and more mature themes are just too much for me to ignore. I’m still not huge on every single aspect of the games, whether it be the core series or any one of its myriad spinoffs, but they very much tend to be more than the sum of their parts for me and I can generally play through the more modern titles without feeling too put upon by their more antiquated mechanics.

But what happens when ATLUS localizes a previously untranslated game from the 90s over ten years later? What if it, at surface value, appears to be everything that I desire from a Shin Megami Tensei game? What if its siren call is so alluring that I can’t help but overlook its age for the sake of being able to dive into concepts that are seldom adequately explored in the video gaming space? What do I do?

I hurt myself, that’s what.

I’m going to do something a little different this time – instead of writing a “proper” review, I’m just going to make note of my thoughts as they come to me. I’ll try to keep it as organized as possible. I’m also going to try and avoid including any serious spoilers, so you should be good to read this if you plan on playing it in the future.

--

- The introduction to this game is really strong. It does an excellent job at framing the narrative and explaining your role in the world of Soul Hackers. It doesn't take long for things to get underway, either, which I can really appreciate. As much affection as I have for other entries in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, some of them are really poorly paced towards the start. Not so here, though your mileage may still vary on that.

- I happen to have a soft spot for Soul Hacker’s cast. Nemissa (and Hitomi by association) are often held up as one of the stronger points of this game so I’ll leave them alone for now. I do quite like the other members of the Spookies and I would have liked to spend more time learning about them. Sadly, none of them get all that much development. One in particular gets an entire dungeon dedicated to them, and a couple of the others have a few moments between big plot points, but that’s really about it. As far as the supporting cast goes, there’s a few others that I quite enjoy. Some of the vendors have unique enough personalities and their stores have a lot of flair. Your demon fusion assistants likewise have a creepy-cool vibe that I greatly appreciate. Carol J is set up as an early antagonist who has a fun design and attitude, but you only face him twice before he’s taken out of the picture. I was honestly kind of hoping he’d end up being a Team Rocket kind of villain who just keeps showing up and being largely ineffectual comic relief. At least he gets a fairly happy ending, all things considered. I was also quite fond of another character you only get to spend a little bit of time with – you’ll know who they are because their COMP is built into a saxophone. Really, the character designs in this game are generally great. There are a few others I’d like to talk about but they could constitute spoilers if you’ve played previous Devil Summoner games, so I won’t get into them here.

- I adore how on-point the aesthetics and themes of this game are. It’s delightfully cyberpunk – an oft-forgotten aspect of SMT in the modern age – and the way it’s tied into mysticism and the supernatural is neat as hell. I really appreciate the in-game cutscenes and the way they portray the various devices and networks you’ll interface throughout the story. Amami City’s virtual counterpart Paradigm X is wonderfully realized as a cozy digital façade hosting portals to various forums and attractions. It brings to mind a lot of the quirkier GUIs of the 90s such as Microsoft Bob or Packard Bell Navigator, or perhaps one of the early 3D chat spaces of the late 90's/early 00's. In battle, the trippy backgrounds add a good dose of surrealism and feel like something I would have used as a desktop wallpaper when I was a kid. There’s a fancy HUD effect when you or your opponent summon demons mid-battle, and the little notifications that pop up indicating that a helpful piece of software just kicked in are equal parts rad and cathartic. Given the game’s setting is about a stone’s throw into the future from its original release, the Internet is still being treated as something fresh and new, and there’s a lot of discussion about its potential – both good and bad. In 2013 or 2024 it feels a bit quaint and antiquated (in the best way possible, of course) but you gotta remember this game came out in 1997. That predates Serial Experiments Lain by about a year, and there’s a lot of thematic overlap between the two. It serves as a wonderful time capsule into that era (even if the 3DS release made some completely unnecessary changes like replacing the more era-appropriate cellphones with a Blackberry lookalike). I don’t know how much of the relevant dialogue can be attributed solely to the translation, but I would like to imagine that in the game’s original context, it was a very timely and impactful setting for a game. All said and done, I feel like this game has a vibe to it that a lot of people in recent years have been chasing after with their own projects, but just can’t seem to nail down.

- Tying into the previous, the fact you can modify your COMP by purchasing black market software is awesome. You have names like CAPS LOCK, Copernicus, Lady Killer and Moon Pulser that may or may not vaguely hint at what the programs actually do. Some of them have handy functions like preventing back attacks or allowing you to see enemy weaknesses, while others just add a clock to your COMP or make cosmetic changes to your interface. It really makes you feel like a hacker, and my only real complaint is that there aren’t more of them in the game, especially the just-for-fun ones.

- Combat is really snappy. Too snappy, even. I do greatly appreciate the brisk pace at which things move once you’ve punched in your commands, but for at least a little towards the beginning the action was playing out so fast I couldn’t even really tell what the hell was happening. I caught on eventually, but a little bit more visual feedback would have been a nice tweak.

- Demon negotiation here is fun. A lot of the dialogue is entertaining and it wasn’t too often I felt like my choices didn’t matter at least a little bit (although it wouldn’t be SMT if I didn’t get an egg tossed in my face for no good reason every now and again). The rules for how to woo demons are pretty clear and concise this time around, although there’s still no guarantee you’ll get what you want out of the exchange just because you made them happy.

- I didn’t do much level grinding. Demons here don’t level up so the only two characters you need to worry about are yourself and Nemissa, and EXP comes easily enough assuming you don’t outpace the level curve of the game. There are a couple of side dungeons you can duck into if you want to earn a bit more, and the Sea Ark corrals most of the random encounters into one location which can be handy if you want to battle and recruit without having to go across the map for it. All in all, it was refreshing not to feel like my progress was gated by having not spent enough time wiping out random encounters. I did try to squeeze in a few extra levels towards the end so I could reach a few higher-level fusions. The game finds other ways to put the brakes on you, though, don’t worry.

- The dungeon design isn’t universally great but it is by and large good. My favorite thing is that most of them feel purpose-built. Locations like warehouses, factories and museums all have layouts that make sense instead of just being a mess of hallways with a visual theme slapped onto them. When they do get a bit more avant-garde, there’s a good reason for it, such as the paintings you must enter in the VR art museum. One particular standout for me was the chess painting, which has you walking around a massive chessboard, dwarfed by the pieces while a clear blue sky hangs overhead. When it wants to feel grounded, it feels grounded, and when it wants to get weird it gets weird. Where things fall apart a bit are the gimmicks when they’re present. Some of the puzzles are a bit tedious to deal with and at least a few are explicitly designed to waste your time. That might feel like a fairly common RPG trope and so maybe it won’t stand out to some, but in a game like Soul Hackers even minor setbacks can sting a bit, for reasons I’ll get into later. Even so, with one notable exception, I didn’t really dislike any of the dungeons. One particular endgame dungeon runs on a bit too long for my tastes, but at the very least it wasn’t too annoying.

- I’ve heard a few people say that the soundtrack in this game isn’t anything special, and while I can sort of understand where they’re coming from I feel like it’s doing a big disservice to the OST as a whole. Yeah, I think if you were to set it alongside some of the more popular offerings today, like SMT III/IV+A/V or Persona 3/4/5, it’s not going to seem particularly noteworthy. However, Soul Hacker’s OST is still really good all-around, and most importantly, the tone and style perfectly suit the aesthetics of the game. 2D Field is a great mood-setter when you’re moving across the map. A lot of the dungeon tunes spark with dark electricity. The Sea Ark is an absolute groove and is good grinding music. The Hotel Goumaden has an otherworldly but fancy feeling to it. And Akane Mall? C'mon. I can understand it not being suited to one's personal tastes, but I vibe with this OST hard. The only thing I think really holds it back is that a lot of the tracks are pretty short and don't really get the chance to set in due to the frequent random encounters.

- One of the most contentious features of this game seems to be the demon personality system, where every demon has a proclivity for certain types of actions and will occasionally insist on performing them despite your commands. This is tied into a “loyalty” system where you can curry favor with demons by letting them do what they like or piss them off by going against their whims. The higher their loyalty, the more likely they are to follow your commands without issue, and vice versa. If you displease a demon enough that their loyalty bottoms out, they can even leave your party permanently. When I write it out like that, it doesn’t take a whole lot of imagination to see why people wouldn’t like the system, but at least in my playthrough I never had much of an issue with it. It’s trivially easy to butter up your demons by letting them do what they like in some low-stakes random encounters, or by giving them gifts. It’s true that there’s still a chance that they’ll defy you even at max loyalty, but it seems to be remarkably small and by the time you’re late-game, it’s unlikely they’ll do anything that will jeopardize your strategy. A big part of this is the lack of the now-commonplace Press Turn/One More system, which means that if your demon hits a resistance, you’re not going to be throwing away precious chances to act. What’s more, personality types mostly seem to align with the demon’s strengths (Kind demons don’t like violence but mostly come with support skills anyways, for example). I also noticed the more “intelligent” demons will actively take known enemy strengths and weaknesses into account when they act, although that could just be confirmation bias. Honestly, I kind of liked the system – it lends a bit of extra character to your team and makes your demons seem more like individuals than just some rando you picked up off the street. I would say it also means you have to put more thought into how you use them, but as I mentioned previously, there are plenty of ways to game the system (I’m not even getting into how you can literally booze up your demons to change their behavior). With that in mind, I’m actually a little sad the system doesn’t go further. It never factored much into my gameplay. There’s another similar system involving your demon’s alignments, where having party members that lean too far into either chaos or law will prevent you from summoning or recruiting demons that don’t gel with them. Also an interesting concept, but one that likewise didn’t impact my own playthrough much – although I can see how it would be a big sticking point for somebody who wanted a certain team composition. Shin Megami Tensei III and V had a system where demons could interact with others out on the field if they were related to them in some way. Having something like that with the demons in your stock, where they could actually develop relationships with one another, would be neat. What if your demons would react to your choices in the story or in negotiation? What if high-loyalty demons would continue to fight for you when you’re KO’d in battle, keeping the game from ending and giving a strong incentive to stay on their good side? I think there’s a lot of potential, here, though my suggestions are probably a bit too complicated to be feasible.

- There’s one character you’ll encounter a few times throughout the story named Finnegan. He stood out to me as having some layers to him, despite not factoring into the overall plot too much. He’s first introduced as one of the Phantom Society’s aces – a Summoner they can count on to get tough jobs done. He’s smug as can be and makes it clear he thinks he’s hot shit, and he’ll try to take you out a few times as you continually toss wrenches into the villain’s plans. At one point he’ll try to taunt you into ditching Nemissa for one fight (read: a bad idea), suggesting you’re weak for relying on them. Funnily enough, given Nemissa is by all accounts a very powerful party member who you probably wouldn’t want to remove even if you could, he’s actually making a marked point from a meta perspective. You can’t rely on them in place of solid team composition in the long run, although you can’t pretend like you wouldn’t be willingly shooting yourself in the foot by benching them, either. Depending on whether or not you agree to set Nemissa aside, the battle goes differently. Later on, when things get really bad for both parties, he actually offers you an opportunity to work with him. Like before, you have the option to either accept or decline, and what you choose impacts how things play out. He doesn’t get too much screentime when all is said and done, but he’s a consistent rival throughout a good portion of the game and I wish they had done just a bit more with him. It was refreshing to have a villain who is unquestionably an asshole but is still willing to be reasonable when the chips are down.

- Speaking of Nemissa, let me talk about them for a minute. Early on in the game, your best friend Hitomi is body-jacked by Nemissa’s spirit. At first, Nemissa is obviously just using Hitomi out of convenience and has no particular interest in anything other than doing whatever seems most interesting at the time. There’s a lot of comic relief as Hitomi continually objects to Nemissa’s decision-making, only to continually get vetoed by her new and unwanted roommate. From your other friends’ perspectives, Hitomi just decided to get a dye job and has started acting a bit weird. Nemissa makes a point of not suggesting they’re anybody other than Hitomi, so pretty much nobody catches on throughout the game. Eventually Hitomi and Nemissa start to get along better, and as the stakes get higher Nemissa also starts to take things more seriously. I know that Nemissa’s character design is probably one of the bigger aspects of their popularity, but they are a fun character and the constant banter between them and Hitomi was enjoyable throughout. It’s an interesting way of designing a partner character where you’re basically getting two for the price of one.

- While I would say Soul Hackers isn’t especially difficult overall, there was one notable point about halfway through where I was forced to reload a few times. I won’t tell you which dungeon it is, but people who have played before already know: The boss of this section has a very sudden spike in difficulty, with a set of hard hitting spells that can lock down your party and one more that is likewise very effective at preventing you from acting. If you haven’t been making a point of building up solid support demons, this fight is most likely going to give you a lot of trouble. Sudden difficulty spikes aren’t out of the question for this franchise, let alone the broader genre, so that alone wouldn’t have been a big deal… If the boss fight wasn’t preceded by a lengthy, unskippable cutscene. As far as games released in 2013 and beyond are concerned, I consider that something of an oversight. Thankfully I was playing on an emulator, so I was able to use fast-forwarding and save states to make that way less of a chore. However, I’m thinking I probably would have been awfully unhappy to have to deal with that if I was playing on real hardware.

- This game seems to have a decent number of ways that you can break it open. About a quarter of the way through the game you gain access to a pet shop where you can fill requests for demons that fit certain criteria. Some of the rewards for this are really good, including rare demons that can exceed your level or a piece of software for your COMP that lets you make fusion accidents all but guaranteed. The casino has some insanely powerful equipment that takes nothing more than your time to acquire. Sword fusion can produce some remarkably potent weapons and feels almost like a concession included for the fact the PC can’t use magic. Even all of the “boring” stuff you can purchase with yen is trivial to acquire, simply because magnetite is fairly easy to farm and you can exchange it for yen at an exorbitant rate. All this is to say that if you’re so inclined, you can invest a little bit of time and trivialize a significant portion of the game, without even needing to touch the various extras included in the 3DS version. I deliberately skipped out on using those since I was emulating (not that I’m expecting to get much use out of these features in 2024 anyways), so I can’t tell you exactly what that brings to the table, but there are also optional features that can be turned on to sand down some of the game’s edges. While I didn’t use them myself, I wouldn’t knock anybody who did. I can definitely see the value in them and I think they would help make some of the more awkwardly paced sections a little easier to bear.
Before I go any further, let me just briefly point out how awesome the idea of fusing a demon into a sword is. You agree, right? Okay, let's carry on.

- On a related note, though, it’s probably for the best that MAG isn’t too hard to come by, because the classic SMT mechanic of burning it every step you take with demons in the party is here in full force. Most of the time this wasn’t a big deal. As long as you’re mindful about what demons you have summoned and when, and don’t toss it all away in negotiation, you will rarely ever be in danger of running out of MAG. However, it is very easy to burn through, whether because of negotiation, summoning demons from your COMP or paying to return them from your Compendium. Toting around higher level demons can also burn through your stock of MAG surprisingly quickly, meaning you might be deterred from wandering while you have your party out. This even applies to locations where there’s no action happening, like Paradigm X. There were a few moments in the game where this ended up getting on my nerves a bit. Soul Hackers has a bad habit of dropping boss fights on you without a whole lot of forewarning, and while a couple of examples I probably could have anticipated had I just been a bit more savvy, some are unleashed on you completely out of nowhere. In those events, it’s a bit of an issue when your demons are still in your stock because you didn’t want to burn MAG walking around. There’s also a dungeon or two, with one particularly sterling candidate, where you’ll be moved away from your destination by a not-insignificant amount if you make a mistake. Naturally, all that ground you have to recover directly translates to lost MAG. If you find yourself tight on magnetite, you’re going to need to make a pointed effort of grinding it out again. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but given I never felt much of a reason to level grind in Soul Hackers, it does come off as a bit of a slap in the face that I’m still going to need to work some grinding in somewhere.

- There’s one particular optional dungeon that is very obviously custom-built to be a pain in the ass, although in practice I didn’t end up having too much difficulty with it. The first thing you’ll notice is that the enemy encounter rate is comically high. I mean every few steps. It’s insane. Thankfully this can be mitigated by installing the CAPS LOCK software on your COMP, which results in the equally humorous sight of enemy encounters trying to begin but failing. It looks like something is desperately trying to tear open spacetime to get at you, but can’t. The constant visual effect did become a bit irritating after a while, though (a small message in the corner and a little electronic chirp probably would have been better). There are also minor hazards in the way of… Banana peels on the ground. That you can slip on. Causing you to fall on your ass and take minor damage. Ow. You’ll be forced to answer questions to proceed. Soul Hackers has the ignominy of being one of the few games that has made me perform math. It was mostly funny, though. The room with invisible walls ended up not being too bad just because your automapper shows what adjacent routes are available. The boss is a chore, though, and not for the reasons you’d probably anticipate. I won’t say any more just in case you haven’t had the chance to experience it yourself.

- Coming up towards the end of the game, I started partaking in what is simultaneously my least and most favorite aspect of Shin Megami Tensei: Fusing demons to curate their skill sets. It’s a lot of fun tracking down the entities carrying your desired abilities and mashing them together until you get something that’s as powerful as you need it to be. It takes some of my favorite aspects of Pokemon and makes them a bit more methodical and experimental. Here’s the problem, and this is hardly unique to this game… I wish you could just recall demons from the compendium any time you wanted without needing to pay for it. Yes, I understand it’s for the sake of game balance, and yes, I understand that it’s generally easy enough to simply hunt down the demon in question and recruit them. However, I feel that the high cost of recalling demons really puts a hamper on the spirit of experimentation. Maybe if you could reverse fusions, if there were ways to get freebies on summons, that sort of thing… I think it would help. But more often than not I find myself looking up a guide to find the most efficient way of getting a desirable demon rather than just playing around and seeing what I can see. That’s really a me thing but if there was an option in a menu somewhere to enable something similar, I’d probably use it for just one playthrough. At any rate, after some shopping around I did eventually manage to get ahold of a few solid party members that I intended to have carry me through to the credits.

- On that note: My goodness, reflection spells utterly trivialize the final boss. There's actually an earlier event in the game that will alter whether or not the boss will have an inclination towards physical or magical attacks. Get a fast demon with Tetrakarn and Makarakarn and you're laughing, even if you weren't sure which one you were going to end up facing (but you do get a rather helpful hint just before the fight). Sadly the payoff isn't much better - while somewhat touching, the ending is fairly abrupt and underwhelming. At the very least, the final dungeon was mercifully brief, especially compared to the dungeon that came just before.

- My final team was comprised of Hanuman, Kartikeya, [Jeanne d'Arc](https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Jeanne_d'Arc) and Black Maria.

- There's evidently a significant amount of post-game content, but I'm not going to jump into it right away. I think some of it will be of interest to you, though, if you have experience with Devil Summoner already.

--

So now that we're here, at the end... I don't really know what to say. I started to realize towards the last dungeon that I really think I enjoy dungeon crawlers more as a concept than in practice. Games like Baroque and King's Field have narrative and exploratory chops in spades but counter it with clunky-ass combat systems. Games like Nethack and Caves of Qud are remarkably robust, almost to the point of needing to take a night class to complete them. And JRPGs like Etrian Odyssey and Soul Hackers have a load of character, but... Gosh darn it, man, they're still games you play with one button. I still enjoyed all of them, and I likewise can't say I didn't enjoy myself here, but that was 25 hours of my life that went towards moving on a grid and clicking through menus. So I'm glad I played it, but a small part of me kinda wishes I hadn't. I don't know how to elaborate on that any further.

I think I'm willing to give games a lot of leeway if they can stand out from their kin in one way or another, and Soul Hackers is just another prime example of that. The world, music and art will all stick with me for a good while. I just don't know that I can readily recommend it to anybody who doesn't already have an interest in these types of games. I think I just want to live in Amami City, not interface with it through a JRPG. It's still cool as shit, though. I'll give it three stars as a base score and an extra half-star for being my friend.

But if you think it looks interesting... Give it a try. Its setting is still fairly unique for a dungeon crawler, even today. There's a good amount of content, here - if you have a 3DS or don't have any trouble emulating, I feel it's a solid experience overall.

I'm a hardcore hacker. Hack you.