Keep your eye on Touhou ~ Artificial Dream in Arcadia by developer potemki11/Bar Holographic Otaku, currently in development with a recent demo available. As clearly stated and as is evident from taking a single look at the game, this is a blobber that adapts the Touhou setting to old-style Shin Megami Tensei of the Super Famicom kind. As a work of tribute, it's exacting; as a work of syncretic framing of one series through another, it's ingenious. The aesthetic grip on the material grasps firmly immediately, from the repetitive pseudo-3D mazes and facelessly evocative, gloomy character sprites, to the sublimely authentic soundtrack that arranges storied Touhou tracks into that SMT mold of irreverently oscillating dreary menace, haunting ambience and single-minded aggression. The attention paid to detail comes as no surprise if precedent is observed, as the developer's previous series fan game in the delightful UDONGEIN X treated its Mega Man X-derived source material with the same kind of diligence extending not only to mechanics of play but the sum total experience of immersing oneself in the text in look, sound and tone.
To apply the same mentality to SMT does not strike one as a fusion accident but rather a homecoming, as despite the wide gulf in primary genres the two series have existed with compatible thematic fibre, subject matter, and with the occasional direct influence flowing between them--certainly their mutual audiences have long since picked up on this kinship, with overlap between the two being common. Feeling out that compatibility through this era-specific referentiality lands itself as an enormous treat to the sensibilities as series concepts synergize between one another in how they're adapted together here: psychic dreamer protagonist Sumireko's jaunt through Gensokyo's various locales has her grapple with by-now retired game concepts from the visitor series, such as the magnetite mechanic that used to sustain demon summoning through dungeon ventures in Megami Tensei of old; its analogue here is her dwindling phone battery, refilled upon finding a save room in which she can wake up in the real world, charge her phone, and return through sleep and dreaming to Gensokyo by inhabiting her doppelgänger residing there. Similarly, demon negotiation is off the table in literal terms but its spirit remains: Sumireko instead attempts to hijack the brainwaves of the sleepwalking clones of Gensokyo's residents, a process which is presented and played through a danmaku shower of patterns to survive--these patterns are relevant to the individual from their source games, imbuing characterization through mechanics in absence of the push-and-pull of verbal demon sparring. Those who struggle with the patterns can weaken the target first through conventional combat before attempting a hijack; the resulting bullet pattern is thus also weakened in density and complexity.
The thoughtfulness is evident from every moment of the game's (a limited but substantial demo at this stage) duration and it's not all just marveling at how well the genre-unfamiliar material is integrated, but also how clearly the love for the SMT side of the equation is displayed. There are trap floors, status effects aplenty, an emphasis on elemental weaknesses and resistances, and an honest-to-goodness teleporter maze that's audacious in its early rise to the occasion... but more than those kinds of universalities it's delightful in its gesturing and invocation of series specifics, targeted at that formative Super Famicom context. The available party members are mostly static with their full skill loadouts present from recruitment; they can accrue levels and build up basic survivability numbers but their tactical roles are firmly set in place, placing more emphasis on picking a party for the task than gradually customizing your favourites into all-purpose responsibility. Hitting elemental weaknesses is always an advantage and leads into building meter for supplementary actions, but it's not framed as the end-all approach to combat that systems like Press Turn and One More have ossified the series play into. More imperceptibly but still keenly felt, the game is also happy to be just plain rude when it wants to, a fact of enduring within it that is an integral ingredient to most dungeon crawls that stay with one as memorable experiences exactly because the element of unpredictable risk is present. I would not call it archaic at an uncritical, unexamined level, since plenty of newer-school wrinkles exist in the preliminary systems present (demon--or "sleeper"--fusion, as well as the compendium, are not yet implemented in the demo), like shuffling affinities and skills via party member sacrifice that does allow for large customization possibilities, but its feet are firmly planted in evoking a sensibility, mechanically and aesthetically, that has long since left the adapted source material.
I can't pull the wool over anyone's eyes here because in light of the subject matter of this dual series tribute, this is a game that caters extremely to my preferences and interests, so I can't conjecture how it might go over with those who are disinterested or neutral on either part of the equation. I can only recommend it from within that myopic enthusiast bubble and argue that it ends up serving both sides of the aisle more than adequately, and one can only hope the demo represents a statement of intent that can be carried to the project's finish line as confidently as the game presents itself now in this preview.