Blog:Danetheheroofworlds' thoughts about Devil Survivor

I just beat Devil Survivor, and, as a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series, I went in with high hopes for the game. After finishing it, I can say that this is my favorite in the series (excluding Persona) with no doubt. Everything in this game was so well made and polished in the smallest details, and I wanted to explain how. Note: I will focus on the Overclocked remake, though I will at time speak about the original, mostly for comparison purposes.

Graphics and Sound
The graphics are nothing too different from the original, although they have been adapted to the Nintendo 3DS'stronger graphics capabilities, and the text font has been changed to make it more legible and fitting for the new graphics. Personally, I welcomed this improvement. The sound has been left mostly intact, save for a few new songs, and I welcome this. Considering that the original pushed the DS to its limits both graphical and sound-wise, seeing that they could make things even better left me pleasantly surprised. That's one of the things a remake should do, and Overclocked manages to do so flawlessly. Overclocked also adds voice acting, and most of the time feels fitting, save for a few exceptions (Kaido's voice is too deep and he sounds like a middle-aged man instead of a young adult and Midori's voice is too loud at times). One thing that I liked is that demons don't have voiced speech, instead they communicate through cries and sounds like angelic choirs, evil laughs and squeaking sounds, depending from the type of demon you are facing. There isn't much else to say about the graphics and sound, so we can move on.

Story
The story might as well be one of my favorite in a video game. Everything is shaped in the tiniest detail (the best example I can think of is the Laplace Mail's functioning principle and what it's based on, coupled with the fact that the mail progressively glitches out as the game goes on since you keep cheating destiny, thus making its calculations useless), and the atmosphere is really desperate and conveys perfectly the feeling of fear for your life in a disastrous situation that only gets worse with time. In the last 3 days of the game, society has broken down and people fight over relief goods to survive, as it's either that or death. The setting is the usual Tokyo, which is used in nearly all Shin Megami Tensei games, although in this game everything was so good that it felt almost a completely different setting, and the only thing that made you understand that the city is Tokyo is the locations'names. There are also 5 different routes, and there's no good or bad morality: everyone is right in his or her own way, and the final choice is left completely up to the player's feelings. Since most routes need one character or the other's survival, one wrong move may result in you getting locked out of a certain route. New Game Plus is also a big help to get all routes, and the 8th day epilogue in Overclocked sheds new light on some of the characters and the story itself.

Gameplay
The gameplay is a mix of old SMT games with the gameplay tweaks of modern games, mostly the Persona series. The game is divided in two phases: exploration and battle. When exploring, you can choose the location you want to visit and partake in an event if possible. Most events that aren't free battles advance time and some events are available only for a certain time, which creates the need to properly manage time. Since anyone could die at any time, you need to be extremely careful about how you use your time. One wrong move may mean the death of a certain character, and this would lock you out of a certain ending. When exploring, you can also choose to "Free Battle" to enter a battle and gain some levels and skills without consuming time. There are also many battles tied in the main story events. In battle, the game goes into an isometric perspective. Battles take place on a grid, similar to Intelligent Systems'strategy RPGs (Namely, Fire Emblem and Advance Wars). Every character has a Speed stat that determines when it can act on the map, and a Range stat that governs the number of tiles it can move in a single turn. Every character can choose to move to a certain tile, attack an enemy within his or her own range, end the turn and allow the others to act, use map spells like healing spells and buffs, or let his or her demons do so. Every human character (with the exception of Black Frost) leads a team, made of a human leader and up to 2 demons. Demons work like in the Shin Megami Tensei series, with a set number of skill slots, elemental affinities and stats. When you choose the Attack command on a target, the gameplay goes into first-person perspective like the older SMT games. Each team member has only one turn available, and can gain an Extra Turn by striking enemy weaknesses, resisting enemy attacks, attacking first and obtaining critical hits. However, the enemy can do so too, and if they do this, they will take your Extra Turn. The character at the center is always the team leader, and defeating it will automatically defeat the entire team, at the cost of lower experience and money obtained. After battle, you receive extra money based on your performance in battle and the Magnetite meter is charged up (more on this later). If your party dies or the victory conditions that are issued at the start of battle aren't respected you lose and have to restart from a previous save. You can create a Suspend save in battle, so it's unlikely you will lose a lot of progress.

Advanced combat mechanics
Unlike most games in the series, demons have only 6 skills available: 3 Command Skill to use in battle, 3 Passives that are automatically activated at all times and confer bonuses of various kind, and either 1 racial skill for demons, which is unique to each demon species and has varying effects based on the species (for example, Wilder demons have the Devil Speed skill, which boosts their movement range, while Dragon demons have Evil Wave, which boosts their attack range by 1, at the cost of no extra turns available), or 1 Auto Skill for humans, which is activated at the start of battle and has varying effects (for example, Battle Aura nulls damage lower than 50, while Magic Yin doubles magic damage at the cost of double MP cost for every spell). However, this limitation has an important cost: you can choose skills inherited upon fusion, something new in the series at the time. There is also a search function upon fusion, so you don't need to merge random demons hoping you get what you want. Overall, fusion is far less tedious than the previous games. Before starting a battle, you can use the Skill Crack option to obtain one skill from an enemy you defeat and you can set it to use it freely if your stats are high enough. There is a series of limitations to this feature, but it's almost never unfair or tedious. However, if you don't defeat specifically the enemy with the skill you want with the character you set to crack the skill, said skill is lost. You can also freely change the team leaders'movesets from the Team menu. However, to change the demons'skills without fusion, you need to first charge an invisible Magnetite meter by defeating enemies. The Magnetite meter can be boosted by obtaining extra turns, defeating enemy teams in one hit, and finishing battles with no damage taken. However, one thing I disliked is that when you gain a new party member, even if they have skills before they join, they can only use the skills you cracked, which can be annoying, especially early on. Another problem is the poor AI, when you fight alongside friendly NPCs. Since there are escort missions in the game, this is especially annoying if the people you have to protect run head on towards dangers they can't face. However, notwithstanding escort missions, I liked the gameplay and combat system.

Final thoughts
Overall, I liked a lot the game and it's easily become one of my favorites. The gameplay is challenging but fair and becomes easy when you get the hang of it, and the story is simply great. There are several annoying flaws, especially in the original, such as very little options for certain elements and demon species early on, and fusion was extremely tedious due to the lack of the Demon Compendium. There were also several mistranslations. Thankfully, Overclocked fixed most of these problems and even then, they were mostly nothing that could hamper the gameplay experience. This game is simply amazing, and it has something for everyone, be it the deep gameplay, intriguing story, great music or the challenging difficulty.