Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers (Saturn title but w/ full voice) announced for 3DS

Just watched the trailer and I'm really liking the music. Does anyone know who the artist/singer is?

They sound really similar to the singer in this trailer for the canceled Coded Arms Assault game..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoIFrQbkhD4

I always liked the song in this trailer, but could never find out who it was... maybe I finally will after six years?
 
This week's Famitsu talks about new bonus bosses and extra dungeons. Both
Raidou
,
Parallel Universe Raido
and
Giant Robot Final Boss of The Soulless Army
are now in the game. I don't know if I should spoiler that because it's a giant spread in Famitsu but, you know, whatever.

edit:
Screenshots:
LCuqH.jpg

NTkpL.jpg
 
xtrasauce said:
How does this game compare to Strange Journey for anyone who played it (or know enough about it to answer)?
Click to expand...

It's sort of like a proto-Strange Journey. It's 350% less malicious than SJ: The dungeons aren't designed to break you and the bosses aren't complete jerkfaces.

There's a greater variety of music/dungeons, but both are far, far less impressive than Strange Journey's. Like, you won't see anything as visually interesting/imaginative as the top of Sector E or anything.

Soul Hackers is set in a city in Japan, not hell, so there are safe zones (the world map does not have random encounters) and friendly faces to chat up.

Every human character in Soul Hackers has a dialogue portrait, which is nice and I wish they had done that in SJ. The storyline isn't great (it's a JRPG), but it's not nearly as heavy-handed as SJ's "HEY DO YOU SEE WHAT WE'RE SAYING ABOUT HUMANITY? IT HAS BAD PARTS LIKE WAR AND LUST AND POLLUTION AND STUFF."

The battle system is kind of similar to SJ's, except:
  • The main character doesn't get special abilties from guns. He literally can only swing his sword or shoot his gun. Guns consume bullets.
  • On the other hand, you have a second party member who learns magic.
  • You have a six person party (although two slots are taken up by your humans)
  • Demons don't level up. Fusion is much, much less flexible than in SJ. In fact, think of it kinda like when you try to fuse in SJ without a D-Source: A demon will either inherit a spell or they won't.
  • Battles have a positioning system similar to Suikoden 1 and 2.
  • Apps are in this game, but in a much more limited capacity.
  • There's a loyalty system, which means that demons sometimes won't obey your commands until you max their loyalty. You can raise their loyalty by issueing commands that match their personality (so, like, a friendly demon will want to cast healing magic). Personality types are clearly marked on their status screen.
 
cj_iwakura said:
The new OP song is pretty great.

God I hope Atlus USA don't remove the VA from this.

Victor sounds awesome, Redman too.
Click to expand...

A dual language on a 3DS game is unlikely though, with that limited space...
Remember what they had to do with the English version of Suikoden Tierkreis on DS to make just one track fit!
Of course I don't really believe that the main character talks so fast to save up space, but I like to believe it!
 
TurnipFritters said:
It's sort of like a proto-Strange Journey. It's 350% less malicious than SJ: The dungeons aren't designed to break you and the bosses aren't complete jerkfaces.

There's a greater variety of music/dungeons, but both are far, far less impressive than Strange Journey's. Like, you won't see anything as visually interesting/imaginative as the top of Sector E or anything.

Soul Hackers is set in a city in Japan, not hell, so there are safe zones (the world map does not have random encounters) and friendly faces to chat up.

Every human character in Soul Hackers has a dialogue portrait, which is nice and I wish they had done that in SJ. The storyline isn't great (it's a JRPG), but it's not nearly as heavy-handed as SJ's "HEY DO YOU SEE WHAT WE'RE SAYING ABOUT HUMANITY? IT HAS BAD PARTS LIKE WAR AND LUST AND POLLUTION AND STUFF."

The battle system is kind of similar to SJ's, except:
  • The main character doesn't get special abilties from guns. He literally can only swing his sword or shoot his gun. Guns consume bullets.
  • On the other hand, you have a second party member who learns magic.
  • You have a six person party (although two slots are taken up by your humans)
    [*]Demons don't level up. Fusion is much, much less flexible than in SJ. In fact, think of it kinda like when you try to fuse in SJ without a D-Source: A demon will either inherit a spell or they won't.
  • Battles have a positioning system similar to Suikoden 1 and 2.
  • Apps are in this game, but in a much more limited capacity.
    [*]There's a loyalty system, which means that demons sometimes won't obey your commands until you max their loyalty. You can raise their loyalty by issueing commands that match their personality (so, like, a friendly demon will want to cast healing magic). Personality types are clearly marked on their status screen.
Click to expand...

These two points sounds like it would be very...very annoying.
 
shinkansen.3000 said:
A dual language on a 3DS game is unlikely though, with that limited space...
Remember what they had to do with the English version of Suikoden Tierkreis on DS to make just one track fit!
Of course I don't really believe that the main character talks so fast to save up space, but I like to believe it!
Click to expand...

Do we even know how big the Soul Hackers cartridge will be? 3DS games can be up to 4 GB (up to 8 GB in the future). Either would be plenty of space to do dual audio.
 
shinkansen.3000 said:
A dual language on a 3DS game is unlikely though, with that limited space...
Remember what they had to do with the English version of Suikoden Tierkreis on DS to make just one track fit!
Of course I don't really believe that the main character talks so fast to save up space, but I like to believe it!
Click to expand...

I really don't care what language it is(though I would love a stellar dub), as long as it keeps it.
 
Esura said:
These two points sounds like it would be very...very annoying.
Click to expand...

Loyalty is passed on during fusion and the resulting demon's loyalty will be the average of the demons used to fuse it. So if you fuse two demons with max loyalty, the resulting demon will also have max loyalty. You can also temporarily change a demon's loyalty type by buying different types of liquor (the most effective is to change their loyalty to friendly so they gain loyalty by using the defend command).

Loyalty gains are also adjusted per action, so you can max out loyalty in a single battle (and since there's a visual indicator, you can see how much farther you need to go).

It isn't a great system, but there are ways to work it.

Remember that SH is a different game than modern SMT games: It doesn't include a robust selection of support abilities like the modern games do, so the more limited fusion aspects isn't quite as annoying as it might initially seem.
 
TurnipFritters said:
Loyalty is passed on during fusion and the resulting demon's loyalty will be the average of the demons used to fuse it. So if you fuse two demons with max loyalty, the resulting demon will also have max loyalty. You can also temporarily change a demon's loyalty type by buying different types of liquor (the most effective is to change their loyalty to friendly so they gain loyalty by using the defend command).

Loyalty gains are also adjusted per action, so you can max out loyalty in a single battle (and since there's a visual indicator, you can see how much farther you need to go).

It isn't a great system, but there are ways to work it.

Remember that SH is a different game than modern SMT games: It doesn't include a robust selection of support abilities like the modern games do, so the more limited fusion aspects isn't quite as annoying as it might initially seem.
Click to expand...
Only liquor?
 
mugurumakensei said:
Do we even know how big the Soul Hackers cartridge will be? 3DS games can be up to 4 GB (up to 8 GB in the future). Either would be plenty of space to do dual audio.
Click to expand...

4Gb cards are very expensive though, I highly doubt they'd use one for a niche release like this.
The only games so far that got one are, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D and Resident Evil Revelations if I remember correctly.

Let's say that the game gets released on a 2Gb card, the original game was on 2CDs, so 1.4GB at least gets filled by the original game data. Then there is the new OP, the new voice track and the battle animations.
I honestly don't think that 600MB would be enough to keep all this plus another voice track :/

cj_iwakura said:
I really don't care what language it is(though I would love a stellar dub), as long as it keeps it.
Click to expand...

I thought that you meant that you didn't want the original VA removed, it's pretty obvious that if it gets released here it will get at least one voice track, be it either the original one or an English one.
After playing Catherine in English I have complete faith in Atlus dub capabilities so it's not a problem for me too.
However the game is set in Tokyo so I would prefer a Japanese track to an English one.

All this of course, IF the game gets released in the west (and by that I mean both US AND EU!!).
 
shinkansen.3000 said:
4Gb cards are very expensive though, I highly doubt they'd use one for a niche release like this.
The only games so far that got one are, Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D and Resident Evil Revelations if I remember correctly.

Let's say that the game gets released on a 2Gb card, the original game was on 2CDs, so 1.4GB at least gets filled by the original game data. Then there is the new OP, the new voice track and the battle animations.
I honestly don't think that 600MB would be enough to keep all this plus another voice track :/
Click to expand...

Actually, a lot of the data on both discs was duplicate data. It's real size is much less than 1.4 GB. You're looking more at 850-1.0 GB.
 
mugurumakensei said:
Actually, a lot of the data on both discs was duplicate data. It's real size is much less than 1.4 GB. You're looking more at 850-1.0 GB.
Click to expand...

Yes, that's true. I hadn't thought about that. Maybe with more than 1GB it could fit...

But I guess they'll just use it as an excuse just like Sega did with Valkyria Chronicles 2.
 
Just died due to an instant death spell in the Saturn original. These things can generally only be avoided due to luck, ... right?

Esura said:
These two points sounds like it would be very...very annoying.
Click to expand...

The last point isn't as bad as the original. It's not that hard to get demons to do what you tell them to in this game.
 
CLOUDsea said:
Just died due to an instant death spell in the Saturn original. These things can generally only be avoided due to luck, ... right?
Click to expand...

You mean the stat or just plain luck? Don't know on the first, definitely on the yes. Doesn't seem to have too high a chance, maybe 50/50 odds.

God, I hated Erika.
 
Just take it with you. said:
Yeah, this is still a Megaten game from the 90s, so I expected fixed demon levels. And for the loyalty thing, I'm guessing it's similar to the Raidou games, so I'm not concerned about it.
Click to expand...

People who have never played an earlier MegaTen game will probably find Magnetite more annoying than the fixed levels/loyalty thing. =P
 
CLOUDsea said:
Just died due to an instant death spell in the Saturn original. These things can generally only be avoided due to luck, ... right?
Click to expand...

Once you get to a certain point, most armguards come with Curse/Mudo protection (several also make you weak to Expel/Hama, but you only rarely encounter Expel/Hama spells being flung at your party).

Also, as always, you can get the Tetraja spell, but due to the way fusion works and how situation it is, it probably isn't worth tracking down.
 
Magnetite is easy enough to come by that you'll probably make the majority of your income by converting it to Yen.

TurnipFritters said:
Once you get to a certain point, most armguards come with Curse/Mudo protection (several also make you weak to Expel/Hama, but you only rarely encounter Expel/Hama spells being flung at your party).

Also, as always, you can get the Tetraja spell, but due to the way fusion works and how situation it is, it probably isn't worth tracking down.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
 
CLOUDsea said:
Just died due to an instant death spell in the Saturn original. These things can generally only be avoided due to luck, ... right?
Click to expand...

That's why I always favour putting something that protects against instant death spells even with crappy defense. You're much safer like that.
But this is probably not an option in the beginning though.
 
Just got my copy in the post yesterday. Some initial impressions - just looking at it as a port.

The 3D textures and videos have been taken as-is from the original, with mixed results - pre-rendered backgrounds suffer from dithering, the textures in particular seem to have a filter applied to them that just makes them look a bit blurry, and the videos are pretty grainy, leading me to believe that they just converted the data they used for the Saturn or PSX version rather than working from a master. I don't blame them though, it's a '90s game so they probably don't have the original data any more.
It's been a very long time since I've played the original, so I'm wondering if this is a symptom of the port or an original issue, but there are models where the textures or polygons don't quite line up. For example, the corners of walls in the frozen warehouse have a bit of a gap at the bottom, and there are places in Paradigm X where the textures obviously don't line up: (Click for image)

No major concerns with the sound. It does seem a bit quiet, but that could be because I'm playing on an a 3DS XL, which has some really shitty speakers. Playing with headphones on, it sounds great. I think they've done a good job with the voices in general, though I'm not sure if I really like Nemissa's voice or not yet. They've really put a lot more effort into this than they did the graphics - every character is voiced, even people just wandering around the map. Even dialogue menus are voiced! It's a really nice touch.

As for things that have been improved, I think I can cover this pretty quickly as Atlus and the media have been putting most of their focus on this area. The speed and interface improvements are extremely welcome. I noticed the animation for opening chests is a bit janky, but I guess that's probably carried from the original.
Having an automap on the touch screen is super useful. I haven't used any of the COMP Hacks (make-the-game-easy features) yet, but I wonder why they included one to ignore alignment when summoning but not one that affects demon loyalty. The addition of a demon compendium (I haven't played any Megaten games in English, so I don't know what this is usually called) to the Goumaden is very much welcome, though I see it doesn't record loyalty. The lack of noticeable load times in general is by far the most welcome improvement.

I hate the style of the new anime opening, but the song's kind of OK. The remixes on the soundtrack CD are pretty nice, would be nice if it weren't almost entirely battle themes though. ;)

I can't really say much about the streetpass feature (Nemecchi) yet. Basically, the way it works is that:
- You earn a currency called D Souls from streetpass hits or game coins
- Using D Souls, you can buy exclusive demons from Nemecchi
However, the demons you can buy are limited by Nemecchi's level, and it looks like the only way to level up Nemecchi is from streetpass encounters. I might well be stuck with the shitty starter pack of three low-level demons forever. Would have been nice if you could have used game coins instead.

That about sums it up. If you have any questions, let me know.
 
@cultureculture: thanks for the impressions. Sounds very promising.
One question though: did you notice a change on the difficulty level? The original game was pretty easy.
 
Soulhouf said:
@cultureculture: thanks for the impressions. Sounds very promising.
One question though: did you notice a change on the difficulty level? The original game was pretty easy.
Click to expand...

It's been a looong time since I played the original, but I haven't really had any difficulty so far aside from a couple of times disloyal demons nearly made battles go tits-up. You can use COMP Hacks to make the game harder, but I'm happy with the current difficulty level. It's hard for me to say, at any rate, since I didn't speak much Japanese when I played the original, making it artificially hard.

NB: I'm not too far into the game so far - just finished the planetarium boss.
 
Interesting. Sounds like there's not as much new stuff as the P2 ports.

I wonder if we'll ever see this and P2 released in the west. I hope we do.
 
Dantis said:
Interesting. Sounds like there's not as much new stuff as the P2 ports.

I wonder if we'll ever see this and P2 released in the west. I hope we do.
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell, the following features are new to the 3DS version:
- widescreen
- always-on map
- COMP Hacks
- compendiums
- StreetPass feature and StreetPass-only demons
- full voices

So as far as enhanced ports go, it's pretty good. It also has the goodies from the PSX version, like the extra dungeon and casino. I love casinos in RPGs too much. Wish the game had a soft reset.
 
cultureculture said:
impressions...
Click to expand...

thanks very much. speaking as a major non- graphics whore, that one image is pretty disappointing (i've got little if any interest in all the voice work stuff, & would've been just as happy without it, so that does little to make up for it). i was hoping/anticipating the game wouldn't look quite this clunky :) ...

but, whatever - will be getting this day 1 (&, of course, a 3ds to play it on)...
 
semiconscious said:
thanks very much. speaking as a major non- graphics whore, that one image is pretty disappointing (i've got little if any interest in all the voice work stuff, & would've been just as happy without it, so that does little to make up for it). i was hoping/anticipating the game wouldn't look quite this clunky :) ...

but, whatever - will be getting this day 1 (&, of course, a 3ds to play it on)...
Click to expand...

If it helps, that's probably kind of an extreme example - it does look OK in general, but there are odd parts like that where there are problems. So don't worry about it too much. I'll add some photos of other bits later.
 
cultureculture said:
It's been a very long time since I've played the original, so I'm wondering if this is a symptom of the port or an original issue, but there are models where the textures or polygons don't quite line up. For example, the corners of walls in the frozen warehouse have a bit of a gap at the bottom, and there are places in Paradigm X where the textures obviously don't line up: (Click for image)
Click to expand...

This was present in the OG version as well.

Thanks for the impressions.
 
cultureculture said:
Just got my copy in the post yesterday. Some initial impressions - just looking at it as a port.

The 3D textures and videos have been taken as-is from the original, with mixed results - pre-rendered backgrounds suffer from dithering, the textures in particular seem to have a filter applied to them that just makes them look a bit blurry, and the videos are pretty grainy, leading me to believe that they just converted the data they used for the Saturn or PSX version rather than working from a master. I don't blame them though, it's a '90s game so they probably don't have the original data any more.
It's been a very long time since I've played the original, so I'm wondering if this is a symptom of the port or an original issue, but there are models where the textures or polygons don't quite line up. For example, the corners of walls in the frozen warehouse have a bit of a gap at the bottom, and there are places in Paradigm X where the textures obviously don't line up: (Click for image)

No major concerns with the sound. It does seem a bit quiet, but that could be because I'm playing on an a 3DS XL, which has some really shitty speakers. Playing with headphones on, it sounds great. I think they've done a good job with the voices in general, though I'm not sure if I really like Nemissa's voice or not yet. They've really put a lot more effort into this than they did the graphics - every character is voiced, even people just wandering around the map. Even dialogue menus are voiced! It's a really nice touch.

As for things that have been improved, I think I can cover this pretty quickly as Atlus and the media have been putting most of their focus on this area. The speed and interface improvements are extremely welcome. I noticed the animation for opening chests is a bit janky, but I guess that's probably carried from the original.
Having an automap on the touch screen is super useful. I haven't used any of the COMP Hacks (make-the-game-easy features) yet, but I wonder why they included one to ignore alignment when summoning but not one that affects demon loyalty. The addition of a demon compendium (I haven't played any Megaten games in English, so I don't know what this is usually called) to the Goumaden is very much welcome, though I see it doesn't record loyalty. The lack of noticeable load times in general is by far the most welcome improvement.

I hate the style of the new anime opening, but the song's kind of OK. The remixes on the soundtrack CD are pretty nice, would be nice if it weren't almost entirely battle themes though. ;)

I can't really say much about the streetpass feature (Nemecchi) yet. Basically, the way it works is that:
- You earn a currency called D Souls from streetpass hits or game coins
- Using D Souls, you can buy exclusive demons from Nemecchi
However, the demons you can buy are limited by Nemecchi's level, and it looks like the only way to level up Nemecchi is from streetpass encounters. I might well be stuck with the shitty starter pack of three low-level demons forever. Would have been nice if you could have used game coins instead.

That about sums it up. If you have any questions, let me know.
Click to expand...

Another "Live in Glorious Nippon to Enjoy Feature". :P
 
Atlus USA pretty much only has P4G announced right now. I'm surprised they haven't even announced EO4 yet. I wonder what's going on.
 
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