Devil Summoner - Kuzunoha Raidou tai Chouriki Heidan (Japan)
PlayStation 2
🇯🇵
Reviewed in 2006
82
✪ Reviewed on December 22, 2024
76
First episode starring Raidou Kuzunoha, establishing the 1930s art-deco world and action combat system with demons. Less accomplished than the sequel, with some gameplay aspects still to be refined. A solid first chapter laying good narrative and gameplay foundations.
Your verdict
Category
Action RPG1 player12+
Description
The first entry in the Raidou Kuzunoha series, released in Japan in 2006 with the subtitle "vs. the Soulless Army." Atlus's action-RPG blends steampunk-tinted detective work in 1920s Tokyo with real-time combat backed by summoned demons. A quintessentially Japanese release.
Devil Summoner - Kuzunoha Raidou tai Chouriki Heidan review
4/5
Art direction
★★★★★
"Striking"
4/5
Music
★★★★★
"Excellent"
4/5
Story
★★★★★
"Captivating"
The Japanese edition of the first Raidou lets the antagonist's retro-futurist side stand out. The subtitle names the super-power army corps, a military faction blending occultism and corrupted science, whose steam war machines, turrets and pipe-bristling engines lay a steampunk aesthetic over 1920s Tokyo. This contrast between old uniforms and impossible technology sets its visual stamp.
Where the action calls for guitars, the Taisho-era mood calls for Japanese colors. The score slips in traditional sonorities, plucked koto, muffled taiko, old flutes, beneath the investigation scenes and the historic districts, anchoring the occult in a Japan that has not yet renounced its roots. This blend of bygone instruments and modern tension colors the story with a muffled strangeness.
The story's subtext is one of inheritance. Raidou Kuzunoha is not a name but a title: the fourteenth to bear it, a young demon-tamer trained in secret and sworn, in the service of the Yatagarasu order, to protect the capital from supernatural threats. Beneath the police case runs this lineage charge, the weight of an inherited duty that a teenager in a school uniform must shoulder alone.
Gameplay
"Excellent"
Fun
"Pleasant"
Addictiveness
"Captivating"
Difficulty
"Balanced"
Lifespan
"Long"
Technical info
💾2,5 GB📅02/03/2006
Published by Atlus
Devil Summoner - Kuzunoha Raidou tai Chouriki Heidan (PS2) price, value & rarity
Complete: box, manual and disc/cart very clean. Lightly handled.
Q1 damagedQ6 completeQ10 new
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Collector interest
An Atlus action-RPG spun off from the Megami Tensei saga, transposing demon capture into a 1920s Japan blending investigation and real-time combat. Kept exclusive to Japan, its interest lies in this Megaten lineage and singular setting rather than marked scarcity. A niche piece for fans of the Atlus line attentive to spin-offs never localized at the time.
An underrated gem
Atlus transplanted its Megami Tensei mythology into a Taishō-era Japan, where a young detective summons demons in the heat of action combat. A spin-off that arrived late and in small numbers, it slipped under the radar. Its retro-occult setting and unique atmosphere will delight action-RPG fans willing to forgive a few repetitions.
Is Devil Summoner - Kuzunoha Raidou tai Chouriki Heidan still worth playing in 2026?
Released in 2006 on PS2 in Japan and later in the West as Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army, Atlus' project offers an action role playing game set in a fantasised Taisho era Japan. Raidou, a young summoner, must fight a mysterious army by capturing demons on the field. Kazuma Kaneko's art direction, the staging between detective and action and the music install a unique identity. The camera and the 3D modelling have aged. Recommended today for Atlus fans, for Megami Tensei devotees and for PS2 collectors fond of atypical signatures on Sony's second home console hardware globally.
