Set in the near-futuristic Amami City, we are introduced to a nameless protagonist who belongs to a hacker group called the Spookies. Amami City was created as a joint project between local government and a high-tech company known as Algon Soft, where its inhabitants are connected through a virtual reality system called Paradigm X. As part of the Spookies, you hack into the beta for Paradigm X and are confronted with a being called Kinap – who for inexplicable reasons appears as an adorable coyote. As the story progresses, an entity known as Nemissa – the objectively best, sassiest character in the game – possesses the body of fellow Spookie, Hitomi, and together you embark on a quest to uncover a dark conspiracy involving a connection between Paradigm X, the Phantom Society and Amami City with the emergence of demons and a little problem involving wide-spread soul-stealing.
A sequel to the 1995 Devil Summoner, itself a reaction to the praise of Shin Megami Tensei If‘s focus on narrative, Soul Hackers originally released in 1997 for Sega Saturn, ported and upgraded later to the PlayStation 1, and finally arrived in the West on Nintendo 3DS in 2013. SMT If‘s success provoked the idea to create two new spin-offs of the occult JRPG, in the forms of Devil Summoner and what would become a little known series called Persona – or Revelations Persona at the time. Devil Summoner notably looked towards more detective noir influences, whereas Persona followed a group of high school teens. Soul Hackers sought to develop the themes of the first Devil Summoner game, particularly influenced by the rise of internet usage and the dangers it presented – this in an era where the concept of the internet and what it could do was relatively new. Naturally accidentally summoning demonic entities and stealing souls are things we should continue to be wary of while safely browsing the infinite web. The internet can be a dark place, after all.
Thanks to its muted cyberpunk world design, Amami City feels more akin to the near-futuristic setting of Serial Experiments Laine than the flying cars, spider tanks and optic-camo tech worlds of Blade Runner or Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell. In addition, the presence of the internet, the cities reliance on it and how people are constantly monitored by the government and fed false narratives feels reflective of the present day. In many ways, it comes across as a closer successor to the original Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei novels than more popular later entries like Shin Megami Tensei III. Even despite its demon summoning saxophones and guitars, which absolutely need to return in Soul Hackers 2, Soul Hackers is grounded and this feeds into its world design. While traversing locations from its first-person perspective, buildings don’t feel overly “gamey” in terms of layout, rather every corridor you walk through adds to the impression of a more practical, real world design that helps to build a realistic, believable world. Just with the odd Norse god challenging you to a fight in the middle of an office building.
Following the trend of SMT titles of its time, Soul Hackers is a first-person dungeon crawler, moving around grid-based environments as you solve puzzles and fight random demon battles. Dungeons take the form of a dock based warehouse, demon infested supermarket, and office buildings, while Amami City itself serves as an over world map – the protagonist becoming a curser to move around the city to reach the next dungeon with possibly one of the coolest over world themes in SMT. You’ll also find shops to upgrade armour and weapons, buy and sell items to use in and out of combat, as well as Dr. Viktor’s ship, the Gouma-Den, used for demon fusion.
Speaking of demons, as expected of classic SMT, Soul Hackers makes use of series favourite artist Kazuma Kaneko’s phenomenal demon artwork. Some of his best designs can be found here – from the demonic winged Loki and Beelzebub to Kaiwan (exclusively in the 3DS version). However, in contrast we also have Penanggal, a vampiric entity from Malay ghost myth, typically depicted as a floating disembodied head and organs. In Soul Hackers, Kaneko bizarrely illustrates this grotesque figure as a bee with a large protruding stinger and buff arms. They can’t all be winners.
During combat, your party is formed of two humans – your protagonist and Nemissa – with four demons summonable from you GUMP. While you arm yourself with various melee weapons and a gun, Nemissa can make use of swords and magic, and it’s worth noting that while your protagonist is customisable in terms of stat allocation, he doesn’t learn any magic, making it as much a mystery as to why its an option to invest in his magic stat in the first place, as the demons running amok in Amami City. Nemissa meanwhile has the possibility to learn very powerful magic, where a dialogue option early in the game about her personality can determine what spells she can learn later on.
A recurring feature of SMT comes in the form of demon negotiation and fusion. Negotiation in Soul Hackers can be a little complex this time round, however, as it introduces demon personalities, on top of alignments, making some demons more erratic and harder to obtain than others. While your Chaos, Law and Neutral alignment doesn’t contribute towards the game ending, it can limit which demons you can summon in combat, creating a layer of strategy that helps balance your party so you’re not over-powered. Though this can be a cause for frustration during harder boss encounters, where you might find your best Law-aligned healers won’t come out to play with your most powerful Chaos-aligned fighters.
Personalities also play a decisive role in how your party functions, where Calm demons are more likely to respond better to being given healing commands and Wild demons prefer you to use the “Attack” command. Paying attention to their preferred roles helps to build loyalty in a demon, where loyalty can determine whether they obey or disobey you, or simply leave your party. That said, even a loyal demon can decide to randomly disagree with your choice to keep the party alive, singlehandedly causing the slaughter of your party or running away… just because. In addition, demon services don’t come cheap as you’ll need to have a healthy amount of Magnetite – obtained through winning battles – to summon them. Stronger demons can consume more and if you run low, this can make later stages tough, though you’ll find the game generally gives you enough for the most part. For new players, this can be off-putting and bewildering, but while it is frustrating, it does add to the personality and presence of the demons beyond simply being fodder in the field of battle.
Your progress will likely either be halted by a sudden, overwhelmingly powerful boss, random encounters or a seemingly never ending dungeon with unclear puzzle solutions – especially the Monolith: beware, some souls may be broken. Soul Hackers has a great deal of charm and character, with a story progression comparable to an anime “villain of the week” structure building towards a climactic ending, but with pacing and difficulty spikes that hold it back in a way that makes it feel more dated and clunky than it deserves.
As you make your way through dungeon after dungeon, you’ll level up to become stronger alongside Nemissa, however the demons in your party won’t. The only way to gain stronger demons is to either recruit them during battle, or fuse them. It’s an in-depth system that rewards players for learning its fundamentals and experimenting at any given opportunity. Admittedly Soul Hackers is a game where the difficulty spikes can shoot up, especially during later dungeons, prompting the need to make use of demon fusion in order to make it past harder bosses, though its poor balancing can be a weaker aspect of the game. At times, Soul Hackers can feel as if it is working against you.
Thankfully, the 3DS port added some quality of life improvements over the original Sega Saturn release. This includes the ability to see the map on the bottom screen and unveil it fully as opposed to slowly uncovering the map through exploration, difficulty options, and exclusive additions such as Nemechi, who allows you to trade in D Souls for new demons. On top of that are new animated cut scenes, music, a hard as hell bonus dungeon, and full voice acting which on the whole is excellent, boasting voice talents such as Laura Bailey.
Accompanying your conspiracy laden exploits in Amami City is a score with incredible atmospheric tracks with the likes of “Amami Airport” and the “Algon NS Building (Reality)”, to the phenomenal “2D Field” over world theme. To say nothing of its sharp, guitar driven battle theme and an opening theme for the 3DS version, which mixes the games atmospheric use of synthesisers with a more pop oriented pulse that would almost feel at home on the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex OST.
Ultimately, however, Soul Hackers needed to allow you to spend more time with the Spookies. As it stands, Nemissa and Hitomi are the only constant members, being active participants in the story as members of your team. The Spookies will drop in and out of the story at key moments and are formed by the leader Spooky, Masahiro Sakurai (sadly without a companion Kirby); Six, Shingo Sako; Lunch, Junnosuke Kitagawa; and Yū-ichi, aka… Yūichi Haga. Probably just ran out of codenames for poor Yū-ichi. There’s far too little time spent fleshing them out and as a result it’s hard to really form a meaningful connection with any of them, especially when the story explores Six’s traumatic past, or Lunch’s connection to Algon Soft and its shady practices through his father. “Shady” meaning stealing the souls of the inhabitants of Amami City. These are story beats that should have resonated with more emotional presence, but unfortunately fall slightly flat.
Some have criticised the 3DS port for maintaining the supposedly “dated” graphical and gameplay style of its 1997 original, though it continues to be regarded as a series cult classic. Or perhaps occult classic. Of the Shin Megami Tensei titles to have released at the time of Soul Hackers however, this is definitely the best looking and I think best playing, albeit with demon designs which are weirdly hit or miss in this game in particular. Whether or not it is considered “dated”, the graphical and gameplay style suits the more subtle, nuanced cyberpunk style of Amami City. Despite its hiccups, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers oozes charm and nostalgia, with a unique style that separates it not only from other SMT titles, but other RPGs available at the time and now.
