So, I finally finished the game laying in my hotel room Tuesday night while my girlfriend was bathing with a bunch of wrinkly old women. Culture, eh? But I was on the final battle before she left and I only finished it moments before she returned almost an hour later. It was a hell of a fight but it really sent me off with loving impressions of the games. Hell, I almost want to play another Strategy RPG right now. And if you know how much I despise the things, that should speak something to you. (Hint: If you do not know, I hate them. So very much. It pained me to pick this game up thinking I would hate it very much.)
So why do I hate most SRPGs yet enjoy Devil Survivor so much?
The first big point that Devil Survivor wins me over with is no permanent death. Being rather OCD in my game playing, losing a character I worked on and gaining nothing out of that loss is just a big hassle. The amount of times I have restarted, say, Fire Emblem battles in order to not lose a character borders on the maddening and I have never even finished a Fire Emblem game. But that's not to say I didn't restart battles in Devil Survivor. In fact, there is something that can be "missed out" on (Albeit not so badly.) in the battles and that is the unlockable skills. All playable human characters in the game use skills from a pool of skills that are unlocked by targeting a specific player unit to destroy a specific enemy unit holding that skill. In another way any other game shows itself to be better designed than Final Fantasy 12, only one skill can be assigned to one human character on the time. This limitation forced me to create some interesting parties based around the different human characters. Heck, I spent far too much time crafting unique parties tailored to abusing certain skills (As much as a skill can be abused in a Megami Tensei game, which is to say not much.) It was definitely a blast.
But yeah, that's right. Parties. Each unit on the field is better called a party that is comprised of up to 3 different characters. The player's parties are made with a human lead and up to two additional support demons. When two units fight, the game switches to a turn based battle that anyone familiar to the Megami Tensei series will feel right at home with. Critical hits and targeting weak points lead to extra turns for either side of the battle. Extra turns can also be had from the start of the battle if the speed of the characters is significantly higher. Later on there is an Extra Turn skill that guarantees one for that character. (Whether or not that one can be cancelled, I don't know. I never actually used that skill.) Extra turns can be cancelled by, of course, eliminating that character or by either inflicting a status effect that restricts action or making the character lose their extra turn by hitting their weak point. Now the thing about these Extra Turns that I didn't quite figure out is why they are not guaranteed to be granted or taken away and getting them or canceling them, more so the canceling, seemed to be harder later on in in the game. That said, the lack of a guarantee did indeed add a good bit of excitement to the game.
So filling up the 8 demons slots (Once a fourth character joins. And while I'm sure they exist, only the truly mad wouldn't pack as many demons as possible.) isn't too different from the expected. Getting a stock of demons in the other Megami Tensei games tends to involve some sort of Talk system (Or just dumb luck in the later Persona games.) where the player must convince the demons to join their side. The thing about this is that it works fine with random battle games that has hundreds of fights. When the player successfully gets the demon on their side they leave battle. This wouldn't exactly jive with an SRPG so Atlus decided to go the route of having an "auction" system where new demons are acquired by bidding against annoying as hell AI bastards. That isn't to say that it's that hard to win most of the times but I found myself cursing a few too many times at the DS when I lost a sweet demon due to my final bid being too low.
The option to just outright buy the demon is available but logically at a higher price than the auction would tend to end at. I found the system to only annoy me at the beginning of the game where I didn't have that much cash. Later on I was able to afford a lot more for my various fusing and still saved some cash due to bidding well. Now since more demons are fielded in Devil Survivor than any other Megami Tensei game (Actually, I'm not too sure about the Majin Tensei games. In fact, how do you get demons in that one?) the game thankfully allows more than one of any non Limited demon to be kept in stock and even fielded. To add even upon that, the amount of demons
Anyone familiar with the Megami Tensei circle of games knows the demon fusing can be a rewarding yet painfully time consuming affair. Previous games required the player to try again and again to get specific skills on a demon and what exactly could result from fusing required manual checking. Both of these issues have been remedied in Devil Survivor allowing the player to both select what skills the new demon will use (Restrictions notwithstanding.) and consult a filterable list of . I would have loved to have a "What can this demon be fused with to create?" list but that's hardly a complaint.Truth is I spent a lot more time fusing demons in this game than I did in any other MegaTen game I have played. And the control that the game gave was thrilling.
Really, I have to say Devil Survivor is one of the best Megami Tensei games in terms of actually handling your demon partners. There has been lots of changes throughout the series, but most of the time I found it something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. Devil Survivor was almost Pokémon levels of "gotta catch 'em all" for me and I hope these improvements stick in further Megami Tensei games and develop further.
Going back to my hate for SRPGs, a lot that I have played often throw in reinforcements or alternate goals midway through the battle. Devil Survivor was slower to bring these qualities into its fights but when it did it felt right as opposed to an excessive challenge. The ridiculous challenge was already built into it like most Megami Tensei games but the changes mid battle always felt to flow nicely. I never felt like I had been doing the "wrong" strategy by the time the rules had changed, although I have often felt that way in other games. And there is always the option to level up characters and demons or just tweak the parties. Never did I get stuck without a way to progress like I did in Final Fantasy Tactics way back in the day.
If I had a complaint it would be the amount of dialogue there is. There is a lot. A damn lot. And even more I didn't see since there were so many conversations and paths I never took in the seven days of the game. Oh, I think I didn't mention that. If you haven't read up on the game, it takes place over seven days in half hour chunks. The option to talk to people, fight set battles and fight free battles make up the daily options. Only free battles don't take any "time" so to speak. Everything else progresses the day by a half hour. Some events can only be done at certain times of day, and yes, that means that some are destined to overlap making you choose. I'm not going to give away too much but it's pretty clear that there are multiple paths through the game. At least the ending I got was satisfying enough to feel any replay would be because I wanted to, not because I got a bad ending.
I see a lot of people begging for Archaic Sealed Heat to get a North American release and I agree with all those who say forget that game and pick up Devil Survivor when Atlus releases it. It's a better game and it is coming to the North American market.
Do it up, people.
