I and I Survived

I finally beat Devil Survivor. I could have beaten it much sooner, but I got really engrossed in Need for Speed: Carbon for awhile.

As far as SMT games go, I maintain that Devil Survivor is top tier, but it suffers from a few unique problems.

First, the music is awful. Rather, the music is boring, and the sound quality is awful. Even the old (Super)Famicon SMT's managed to crank out some creepy, atmospheric tunes. Devil Survivor's music tries to do that, but it lacks a certain emotion that other MegaTen games have. I know I shouldn't expect much from a DS, but still, I've heard better music from other DS games than this.

Second is the undeniable fact that for a Strategy RPG, there really isn't a whole lot of strategy involved. Most MegaTen games are brutally difficult and require strategy, specific abilities, and an intimate knowledge of demons to succeed. Devil Survivor isn't too tough to begin with, excepting a few select battles, and unlike other MegaTen games, all enemies' weaknesses and strengths are visible. You can simply adjust your characters' skills before the fight to suit your needs. It's more a matter of preparation than tactics, and even "preparation" is stretching it. Much of the time, even if an enemy is strong against your attacks you can overcome it with a grind session.

I'm not saying Devil Survivor's illusion of strategy takes away from the fun of the combat. I'm just saying Devil Survivor totes itself as a strategy game and is actually more closely related to a standard RPG.

Last, the plus game is pretty boring. Typically, the purpose of a plus game run in a MegaTen game is two-fold: one, to treat yourself to the luxury of an easier game using the demons that carried over from your last playthrough, and two, to fight an absurdly hard optional boss battle. Devil Survivor is no exception. It's just that in a text-heavy game like this, it's hard to hide the tedium of scrolling through all the dialogue you just saw on your last playthrough, and since your dialogue choices effect what endings become available, you can't just zone out and keep pressing "A."

On that note, there are six different endings. You can get around having to play through six times if you manage to unlock every path in one playthrough, save your game before you make your final decision, and beat your way through the last boss without saving your game again(or dying and having to start from the day before). Then you can just keep resetting until you've beaten the game six times from that point. Keep in mind, you won't unlock specific demons for completing certain endings if you do it that way, and you will have to beat the game at least once to fight the optional boss. Decisions, decisions.

Nonetheless, Devil Survivor has done so much to make the game more fun that you can excuse the tedium in other areas. The Demon Fusion system has been simplified. Now recipes for creating demons can be viewed, and there's no more noise control as you can simply choose what skills you want to be carried over from one demon to the next. The Skill Crack system, allowing you to learn skills directly from demons, makes getting specific abilities less of a hassle, and the Devil Auction, where you can buy demons, makes acquiring demons much easier, albeit a little less exciting.

It may sound dumbed down, but it isn't. Devil Survivor took a complicated system, broke it up into more easily mentally digestible concepts, and made each unique to the game. As long as you're not expecting hardcore strategy from the game, you won't be disappointed.