Review: SMT Devil Survivor

Devil Survivor is yet another game in the Shin Megami Tensei series, the first entry for the DS (but not the last -- cannot wait for Strange Journey next month). The guy with the purple hair is the Main Character, and he and his merry band of party members get locked down in Tokyo when demons start showing up and attacking humans. While inside the humans eventually discover that they only have seven days to find a way out of the lockdown, though the circumstances differ based on your actions through the week. The game is a spin on traditional tactical/strategy RPGs in that it also features Dragon Quest-esque first-person turn-based battles. Let me explain:

Gameplay

When your characters are outside of battle, the majority of your time is spent either exploring the city for a route of escape, talking to civilians and finding clues, and general maintenance. Each member of your party, max four, owns a device called a COMP which is used to summon and control demons. Each party member has the ability to control up to two demons at a time, which you can arrange, fuse, and manipulate outside of battle so as to prepare yourself for combat.

When in combat, each party member moves on a grid independent of each other, same as your enemies, and when two opposing units get within attack range, the active unit gets the opportunity to engage. Once engaged, each side gets one turn to take an action before that round of combat ends; additional turns are granted by using moves that exploit weaknesses, similar to the Press Turn system that has become a staple of SMT. Between the six types of moves (Phys, Fire, Ice, Force, Elec, Mystical), different abilities of demons (determined by the demon's race), support skills that let you do things like move further in the grid or float over objects, the major emphasis is on preparation: if you build your teams right, a given combat scenario is over before it begins. Furthermore combat is initiated as part of the plot or by various "Free Battles", but you always have to decide to choose that event, so there's no random battles.

An example of the grid vs. the first-person view. Image courtesy of Destructoid.

As you go about your day, events take up time in the day, meaning you progress through the plot through a series of encounters, meetings, and exploration. You can do any amount of maintenance without using up time, as well as grind in Free Battles for cash or to crack skills without progressing the storyline. New demons are unlocked as you progress the story, and you purchase them with Macca, the game's currency, from the Demon Auction, which is basically like eBay for demons. Another SMT staple, you can fuse demons to make more powerful demons, etc. etc. etc.

Story

With this particular game, it's best I stop at the synopsis in the opening paragraph. Just to reiterate, there are a number of different endings, and the actions you take throughout the days determine your outcome, who your party members are, and what locations you see. The ending you receive has less to do with the strict "good/bad" mentalities as seen in games like Fable, Infamous, and Mass Effect, and more to do with your perspective on matters. The gravity of your choices, however, run deeps, to the point that your party members can (and sometimes do) leave you because they can't accept your actions.

Graphics/Sound

Ultimately the graphics and sound of this game do not use the DS to its fullest, especially as the game has no touch screen controls whatsoever, but for what they are they're very well-done. The hand-drawn character portraits are crisp, the music is fitting and catchy, but there's absolutely no voice acting. To me this shows Atlus's general mentality about production qualities: make a new IP that's clean and polished, but isn't exactly a filet mignon. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, a late-generation PS2 title, is absolutely absent of voice acting as well.

Overall

Devil Survivor has a very delicate and very intelligent balance of complexity, strategy and difficulty to make any fan of RPGs, SRPGs or games-that-make-you-think pick it up at least once, if not the five times required for all of the endings*. On that note, the game does feature a New Game+ mode, and you simply won't complete all of the maintenance one can do in your first playthrough without doing in on purpose -- I mean, sure, you could go ahead and get all your characters to level 100 or whatever but you still wouldn't have access to the ending-specific demons that are unlocked with each ending path, crack every skill, etc. etc. Ultimately the grind is pointless until you need a couple extra Macca to mess around in fusions some more, so don't be too concerned that the game will become a gigantic time sink.

If you're looking for a bit more challenge for your DS and are a fan of any kind of strategy game (hell, I'd count checkers as qualifying here), track down a copy of this game and fire it up.

- E

* This number is probably wrong, it's somewhere in the 4 - 6 range though.