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Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga is the spiritual sequel to last October’s cult-hit—Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne . To clarify, it has nothing to do with the story of the former, but, in the fashion of most of the Final Fantasy games, it incorporates many of the same enemies and battle mechanics. Both games prove to be story-driven experiences, but SMT: DDS is much more cinematic—with real voiceovers and FMVs that intersperse with the gameplay. The story and setting of this game is both intriguing and unique. In some unknown time—possibly a post-apocalyptic future, the only apparent world that exists is called the “junkyard,” a depressing, bleak, polluted world that is always raining. The world is divided into several factions that are at constant war with each other—with the understanding that whichever faction becomes the victor gets to ascend to Nirvana, a tall tower at the centre of the planet that will apparently offer bliss, eternal happiness, and no rain. You play as Serph, the leader of the Embryon faction, as you lead your party to Nirvana. However, complications soon ensue; the entire populace intermittently turns into demons, yourself included, and the only thing that can control this strange new power is a mysterious girl with a beautiful voice. All in all, the story and setting is pretty bleak, but don’t worry, like all good stories there is still some comic relief and at least one character that tends to be a clown.
The battle system, at its core, is standard turn-based fare, but there are some interesting twists. In most ways it is much like SMT Nocturne. At the beginning of each random battle, your party starts out in demon form—and each party member has their own unique demonic persona. Determined at random, either your party or the enemy party will go first, and will be able to expend all their turns before the opposing team can expend their turns. The twist here is how you use those turns. Suppose an enemy is weak against electricity. If you cast an electricity spell on that enemy, you’ll get one extra turn. If the electricity attack results in the enemy receiving the shock status, then you can perform guaranteed critical hits on the enemy, and critical hits gain you more free turns. If, on the other hand, you use an ice attack on an enemy that absorbs ice, or your physical attack misses completely, you’ll lose one turn and the enemies’ set of turns come up sooner. The exact same types of rules apply to the opposing party as well—if they screw up—it’s in your favour—if they attack effectively, you might be in a lot of trouble because you won’t have as many turns to recover. If all this sounds a little unforgiving, it’s because, at times, it is. Fortunately, Atlus has scaled back the difficulty of this game compared to its predecessor in several ways in order to make it more accessible to a larger audience. In SMT Nocturne, if the main character (party leader) died, that was it. Game over, no exceptions. This is no longer the case in this game. It’s also easier to resurrect fallen members—they no longer disappear from the battle screen—so if a character dies you don’t have to waste two turns—one to bring the character back to life and the other to summon him/her back to the playing field. Most importantly, this game has a lot more save points, so you’re at much less risk to lose over two hours of progress, something which might have occurred from time to time in SMT: Nocturne.
Character development takes an interesting tack: In order to learn new spells and techniques, you’ll need to download special “demon software programs” at save terminals—and this can be quite expensive. Once you’ve downloaded the program, you’ll gain AP as you win battles, and even more if you manage to devour your enemy whole (not especially easy) and, once you’ve mastered the program by maxing out the AP, will learn all the new techniques the download has to offer—such as “feed frenzy,” which allows you to eat multiple enemies at once. Not all characters can download the same programs, so they will retain uniqueness and individuality. The programs are like a tree—learn one of a specific area—such as “ice wolf,” which lets you learn ice spells—and you’ll gain access to more expensive, more powerful ice-download programs, as well as the option to try a different type of program—such as special physical attacks—and see where that part of the tree takes you.
The graphical style of the game tends to lend itself toward Japanese anime, but the human personas do not have ridiculously large eyes and deformed faces. The colours and hues are subtle and moody, reflecting the dark tone of this game. Overall, the visual presentation is done very well. The sound is of a heavy metal influence, from the battle scenes to the FMVs—and while this isn’t the typical peppy, treble-induced music you’ll hear in many other RPGs, it fits the theme of the game very well. As for the acting portion of the audio, the voice-work, while not spectacular, isn’t terrible either.
One issue gamers just may have with SMT: DDS is the frequency of random battles that occur, which can be especially frustrating when trying to navigate through one of the game’s many labyrinth dungeons or while trying to solve a tricky puzzle. The random battles can cause a gamer to lose concentration and get lost more easily. The plus side of this is that more battles equals more experience which equals a greater chance to overcome some of the game’s particularly tough and brutal bosses.
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga might not be for everyone—but those looking for a solid RPG experience complete with a compelling and unique story, an interesting character-development system, and a hard-core battle system will find everything they need here, and a purchase would definitely be recommended.
