SMT: Devil Survivor Review [DS]

29 Jul 2009 at 17:30:53 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (DS)

MegaTen – the most common abbreviation for the Megami Tensei series – has been running for over twenty years. It's been running for about as long as the rather more famous Final Fantasy series, in fact, but has never made as big a splash in western territories as the Square-Enix giant.

Atlus' baby has evolved and changed, though, and while the games have retained general themes and some RPG elements, we've seen the hardcore main series, the real-time Raidou Kuzunoha games, the utterly superb Persona series, and a lot more. Now we have the Nintendo DS' Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, another spin-off which plays out as a turn-based strategy game.

The entire game takes place in present day Tokyo. The main character and his friends are asked to meet up with his cousin, and on doing so, they receive COMPs – hand-held devices which look an awful lot like a Nintendo DS – which for some reason have a devil summoning program installed on them. Predictably, it's not long before all hell pretty much literally breaks loose, and you're hurled into a Tokyo that's gradually becoming overrun with demons.

Initial impressions are oddly reminiscent of The World Ends With You, with an otherworldly version of Tokyo as the primary setting, as well as the general theme of avoiding your own death. Once you receive the COMP, you receive a daily email which predicts the likeliest future, along with the ability to see when people are almost certainly going to die via a “Death Clock” above their heads – so it's slightly disturbing to note that the majority of the people in Tokyo, as barricaded by the Japanese military, have only seven days to live. More disturbing is that your party apparently only has one. Using the daily emails as guidance, you set out to keep yourselves alive and potentially save Tokyo in the bargain.

Much as the trappings are reminiscent of TWEWY, the plot isn't. As is standard for MegaTen, this is not a very nice world, and the way society starts collapsing as demons run rampant is extremely well-handled. Likewise, the multiple endings mean that you're not necessarily the prophecised saviour who will make everything shiny and restore everything to the way it was. Everything is subverted. While it's not quite as dark or well-characterised as other MegaTen games, it's nonetheless better than the majority of RPG or turn-based strategy plots out there.

Your team is divided into parties comprising a human leader with a COMP and two demons. All three characters in each party level up independently, but demons will generally only gain one or two more abilities when levelling, so it's in your best interests to fuse demons together, merging two to create a new one of preferably higher level, with better abilities and spells. In a nice touch, the fusion function contains a “Search,” showing all of the demons you're at a high enough level to create, as well as those you'll be able to access once you level a little more. Planning, clearly, is the order of the day, and not just in fusion but in battle. Make no mistake: Devil Survivor, like most of its brethren in the franchise, is hard.

It starts easily enough, pitting your initial three parties (you have a maximum of four parties at any given time, which prevents things becoming too overwhelming) against weak demons, but before long you'll encounter your first boss, which is likely a dozen levels above you and will tear you into bloody shreds if you're unprepared. A sound tactical mind is required, both in terms of which enemies to pick off first and making sure you don't get surrounded, but also in choosing the right parties for the job. A party made up of demons weak to ice attacks will be annihilated in one or two attacks from an ice-based opponent, and with reincarnation spells a rarity until later, this is far from ideal. Likewise, both health and mana points must be carefully rationed, as healing spells generally take a huge amount of mana, and with no items present it's extraordinarily difficult to pull yourself out of a tight spot if you've wasted all of your man on spells that haven't been doing enough damage.

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