Strange Journey is a great 1st person D-Crawler. One that will make you smash your DS on the floor, one that will make you wonder where you are and how to proceed, one that will frustrate you until the end to give you the satisfaction of beating a dungeon that you're not supposed to beat (or will make you search for a map of the dungeon on Gamefaqs but we don't talk about that). In a way I'd say that SJ is even rougher than the SNES titles besides If..., for the better and for the worse. The combat of the game is pretty ok and makes use the alignment of the demons of your party, you also have to get formas to buy items and equipements. For the most part the bosses are pretty fair, I never had problems with the famous Orobouros, though be prepared for tricky boss fights (especially the final boss).
Anyway, pretty good rough d-crawler overall.
Though I'm not a fan of the soundtrack. I get that it's supposed to be a callback to old sci-fi movies and to be honest I wouldn't imagine SJ with another soundtrack since it has become a part of its identity, but I can't forgive the lack of awareness of the soundtrack. It isn't bad on it's own but it doesn't fit anything most of the time. It's a soundtrack that I appreciate outside of the game.
As for the story I have things to say..This is an SMT game. SMT games are games that go far in questioning established judgements, that puts the player in front of questions without right answers. Games that captures the worse of the human condition to make us realize the best of it, while still doing all of that subtly (for the most part).
What does Strange Journey do? It tells us that humans are greedy and destroy the planet. And I already knew that when I was 7. To me it's a rather stupid and cliché message for a SMT game, if the game told me that water was liquid I would have the same reaction. Not to mention Jack's Squad as big greedy bad guys, angels that brainwash people because law sucks lol, dungeons based on the seven deadly sins like it was something original... Yea I'm not much of a fan. I kinda like Jiminez though. And Gore was great as a neutral rep too even though he didn't show up that much in the game.
The pacing really doesn't help, it's as repetitive as Persona 4 and really gets boring if you're not hooked by the gameplay. Also some scenes and events are taken straight up from SMT 1, but I guess that was intended as callbacks so I won't count it as a bad point, not to mention SMT IV did that worse. It kinda worries me about SMT V, I don't want this game to try to take things from past games and make them worse, I want something new and genuine, something that is different from Atlus games of the past while still being as worthy as them
To conclude I'd say Strange Journey is quite a strange game. Its simple-minded text and subtext really disapointed me but I guess it wasn't for me since a lot of people seem to know how to apreciate it, but it's also a really complete and neat dungeon crawler. If you played any 1st person d-crawler and enjoyed it, I'd recommend this game.