- Epic sci-fi fantasy adventure with over 50 hours of gameplay
- Devour your enemies and absorb their devastating powers and special abilities
- Strategic battle system as you switch between human and demon to take advantage of your opponents’ weaknesses
- Customize and develop your characters using the unique Mantra Flow system
- All-new Break system allows you to protect you from an enemies attack and even reflect it back at them
Product Description
Brand New and Sealed PS2 Game. Backed by a 45-day guarantee…. More >>
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Having played most of the RPGs out on all three console systems, I had been looking into another time waster RPG that I could play that would not only keep me entertained gameplay-wise but also story-wise. There was a series I kept hearing about, Shin Megami Tensei. Two games have been released not even 8 months apart from each other, Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and now Digital Devil Saga. I quickly bought both. One I loved, the other not so much.
As it turns out, I tried playing Nocturne first and was completely and utterly frustrated at some design choices in the game. Not only that, but the story didn’t seem to be going anywhere, so I quit playing it. I decided to give the Shin Megami series a second chance and tried Digital Devil Saga. All of my complaints of the first game were completely addressed in this game.
Let’s start with the story. Digital Devil Saga incorporates a very dark story involving demons and human nature and computers into a wonderful package. The strengths of its story not only lie in the huge events that propel it along but also in some subtle areas. Character reactions that seem a bit over the top in the beginning make perfect sense the more you think about it. SPOILER: it’s like the characters are experiencing feelings for the first time and therefore all of their actions and reactions may seem over the top because they are experiencing this heightened feeling for the first time. The story continues up to a climax that leaves the game hanging. Good thing the sequel comes out in August.
Another positive is that you are playing with static characters, humans who can transform into demons. These characters allow more a story format to follow since you have a full party that talks and acts on their own. It’s also nice not to have to worry about screwing the characters up (like you could in the fusion system of Nocturne).
And this is a good thing because the combat system in DDS is exactly like in Nocturne. It’s based on strength and weaknesses. Every character in the game (save for some bosses) have strengths and weaknesses and it is through manipulating these weaknesses that you can win battles. For instance, if a monster is weak against fire, you want to use fire on him not only to do more damage but to also give you an extra turn to attack. Each character gets one action but by using a weakness, the character only uses 1/2 of their action points. Conversely, enemies can use your weaknesses against you. It’s here that you want to combat that. If they use an ability a character is strong against, it takes away their turns. By manipulating strengths and weaknesses, you can control the tide of battle.
I also like what they did with the abilities. Whereas in Nocturne, if you took a new ability you had to effectively forget another ability and it was lost forever, DDS fixes this by allowing you to learn abilities then giving you slots to choose which ones to equip. That way you never fret over having to “forget” an ability which might be the only key to your success later on. It seems like such a small thing, but the ability to customize your characters to battles really helps the game move along.
Speaking of abilities, DDS uses a system much like the sphere grid in FFX. Each character starts with certain abilities already learned from Mantras, and by learning beginning Mantras, you open up paths to bigger and better Mantras. You download Mantras from Terminals for Macha (the monetary system) and by winning battles you gain AP used to learn each Mantra. Afterwards, you can equip learned abilities how you see fit. This gives you a much more rewarding customization option than seen in Nocturne.
The graphic style is also like Nocturne and is real interesting to me. And the art style is also intriguing, the demon designs are inspired, especially the demon you and your friends can turn into. The music is pretty decent (you get the soundtrack album with the purchase) and the voice acting is decent. Once I realized why the characters were over-emphasizing every little emotion they have I appreciated it much more. In the beginning, it is a little jarring because they are talking about emotions in such a heightened, over the top, roll your eyes way. But it’s all for a point.
I know that in my review I kept referencing Nocturne. I can’t help it. The two games are so intertwined on so many levels that comparisons are impossible to miss. I also bring it up because there might be other players out there like me who couldn’t really get into Nocturne and are on the fence with this game because of it. I think if you are new to the Shin Megami Tensei series and want to get your feet wet, try this game before you try (if you even want to try) Nocturne. It is more in line with a traditional RPG format. I will say that DDS is a truly exceptional RPG game with a dark and mature story that brings to life questions about humanity. And it solves all of the problems I had with Nocturne (you can see my review on Nocturne to see what I mean). Not only does it fix problems in Nocturne, but it stands in line with what are considered the pillars of the console RPG community. An excellent adventure with fun gameplay. If you like RPGs you should definitely give this one a try.
Rating: 5 / 5
Great Game!!! I purchased this game with high expectations only to find that those expectations were right on!
It has a great story in that you are a gang struggling in a place called the junkyard to survive. Each gang (there are about 7 of them) must fight with each other, and the last gang standing gets to a place called Nirvana. That’s where the game starts, but it takes a twist right off the bat!
The graphics and sound are great! If you order the game now, you may be able to get the boxed set, which actually comes with the soundtrack, so you can’t go wrong! The graphics are the cell-shaded type, but it’s very well done. The tone in the game is a very run down civilization, raining all the time, and Atlus does a great job at giving that feel. In my opinion, the dungeons are one of the best in a long time in a RPG. It has a mix of puzzle and exploration mixed together perfectly. The puzzles are very minimal but really add a great experience to the game. There are a lot of places to explore, and there is actually some mini games mixed in as well!
The combat is where this game really shines! It is turned based, but thank goodness it is! With all the RPGs now going to real time combat (even FF XII is going to be real time), this game is a diamond in the rough in that it brings the turn base combat back with a challenge. You MUST use strategy each and every time you fight, and if you don’t, you won’t last long.
The leveling up system in the game is also very well done. Your character earns experience points after each battle just like every other RPG you’ve played along with currency. The twist that Atlus has done to make each character very customizable is that you need to buy what powers your characters will use! This adds incredible depth to the leveling up experience! The faster you defeat your enemies, the more currency you get, so again, the strategy you use really plays a big part in the game.
If you are looking for a great RPG, with a unique feel, you can’t go wrong with Digital Devil Saga. It’s a deep rewarding experience that any fan of the RPG genre will enjoy.
Rating: 5 / 5
The Amazon product shot for this game shows the Deluxe Box Set, but it IS NOT! All you receive is the game itself.
Rating: 3 / 5
Digital Devil Saga continues the Shin Megami Tensei trend of offereing more mature games for a growing audience. Immediately the game starts off with a heated and bloody confrontation between two tribes in a mysterious world called the “Junkyard”
This opening also introduces you to a style that just won’t quit. Eerie landscapes and one of the, if not THE best example of Cell shaded Graphics seen thus far.
Things pick up right away when a mysterious structure explodes amidst this skirmish, and everyone starts having violent spasms and begin turning into monsters. You know this takes a more supernatual seat as Your main character, Serphs Monoscope begins reading the words “EAT THEM ALL” All across the screen.
The Battle system is Turn based, with an emphasis on exploiting the weakness of your enemies. This can grant your team extra actions during its turn, but you’d best be wary. The same applies for the enemy. This adds a level of depth to combat that can make or break a good team. You won’t get away with simply button mashing here.
The Bosses are also some of the harder ones seen in a Role playing game. Things can heat up quickly, so you always need to watch out for potential weakness while covering your own.
The Music is very fitting for the Indian influenced theme, but some of the of the tracks are rather short. Still, with the boxed set you manage you’ll get the OST, so the tunes will quickly grow on you.
The plot remains fairly simple for the first half of the game, so the buildup doesn’t start until the latter half, which leads to a bit of anitclimax while it pauses, waiting for the second installment coming out this August.
In closing, this is an excellent start to what promises to be a satisfying end.
Rating: 5 / 5
I’m going to try and aim this review at both people who have and haven’t played this games predecessor, Lucifer’s Call. (OK, sorry but I live in the UK, so please bear with me when I refer to it under this name rather than the US title of “Nocturne..!). If you have played that game you are pretty much completely clued up in regards to what to expect…I’ll get on to the differences later. If you haven’t played Lucifer’s Call…my advice is to play that first. Although the stories aren’t connected in any way, I simply think LC is the better of the two. And it will get you used to all the customs and mythology that the Shin Megami Tensei series seems to be built around.
In Digital Devil Saga you are Serph, leader of a small band of rogues who live in a post-apocalyptic world of constantly warring “tribes” who exist and fight according to strict codes and rules of allegiance. As is customary in RPGs, a world-changing event is about to happen that throws all the tribes into turnoil, and in this game it is the sudden appearance of a black haired girl called Sera (which causes a sensation because nobody in the world has ever had black hair before), who every tribe suddenly wants to kidnap after hearing that, for some mysterious reason, she alone can unlock a forbidden (or formerly unreachable) place known only as Nirvana.
Anyway, enough of the plot. It becomes clear early on that the player is in for traditional turn based battles, and I’m glad to say the superior “press turns” system from Lucifers Call (in which you gain extra battle turns by knowing which attacks best exploit your enemies weaknesses – and likewise, the enemies also do the same with your weaknesses) is still in effect. What’s different from most RPGs is that everybody in this world has a demon “alter ego” and for every battle, you will see your characters with a completely different physical appearance, usually with lots of teeth, spikes and claws. This kind of de-personalised the battles for me as it was visually just a load of monsters against monsters, but story-wise it does have some importance. Apart from that, you’ll find yourself in pretty linear territory and with little room for deviation with regard to where you go after finishing each dungeon, and what you do next. What struck me most on playing was the surprisingly small scale of the game as a whole. There are only five tribes in this world, so I expected lots of twists in the story, but once the enemy tribe leaders are all thwarted in their efforts to seize Sera from you, the game is all but over, and you only have one other thing left to do, which is to take her with you and see what this so-called Nirvana is really about. Now there’s a very obvious reason for this brevitiy, but it’s not a very encouraging one – the game is designed very specifically to be Part One of a two game series. So if you choose to buy it, be prepared for much of the plot to be unresolved at the end, and to have to go and get Part Two to finish the story. Knowing this, I kind of expected a mammoth storyline that simply went on and on, but in reality, I think DDS1 only has about half the gameplay time of some other one disc games out there anyway, so the need to sell it in two parts seemed a bit greedy to me. It was definitely over sooner than I expected.
Now onto the next drawbacks, but these ones will only really hit gamers who played and enjoyed Lucifers Call (that’s me, then). The demon recruitment system, which let you add any monster you met in battle to your own team of playable characters, is gone, which means no more fantastic variety of team members to play with. The monsters you fight agaisnt are all familiar faces from that game though, so expect to encounter those pesky physical-immune elephants (Girimehkala), and the death spell-happy goat demons (Baphomet), as well as several new faces. But on your side of things, Digital Devil Saga has a mere five members, which is low among RPGs anyway, and compared to Lucifer’s Call, it seems very tame.
All the battle skills and spells still exist, along with the same unidentifiable names (Tenterafoo? Pulpina? Me Patra?), but to obtain the really good ones is much, MUCH harder work now, simply because they have to be paid for with money, and the top of the range spells like Debilitate, Dekunda, Megidolaon etc, cost massive amounts of cash, and you still have to buy and work through all the spells on the pathway to the top end (the skills are only for sale in a pre-set order, the weakest must be learned first before each next level becomes available).
Now I know in most RPGs this is the norm, and I don’t mind some serious levelling up to unlock the best skills. But here, every single top skill comes at the very end of all the other skill sets, and you will most likely reach the end of the game with several pathways nowhere near finished – unless you do nothing but grind away so that all the required experience and cash gets earned. Of course, the idea is to extend replay value…I realised this as soon as I read on the web that the “clear game” mode starts you off on a replay with all mastered skill still saved, so after two or maybe even three playthroughs, you might just have learned all the really good skills that there are…phew! Sorry but that’s not for me. And not even after seeing that many of my favourite basic safety support abilities like Null Death and Null Expel come way up at the top of the list. Actually, that in itself makes the game much harder that Lucifer’s Call, as you have to do a lot of battling against enemies who cast all those mean spells like Hama and Mudo before you’ll ever reach the abilities that protect you from them. Ok, you do get spells that cast shields against these attacks, but I wanted the permanent immunities!
This leads me to my other gripe – this being that with all 5 characters, the shopping list of skills is the same for everybody. One giant grid (a lot like the sphere grid in Final Fantasy X) shows you which paths lead to which skills. So individual character has little to do with how you deploy the skills of your team, you can make anyone into anything. Although the five characters do come pre-loaded with a definite slant (Argilla will always be the best magic caster and Heat the strongest physical attacker, etc), it’s nothing like the array of abilities that the “cast of thousands” in Lucifer’s Call had, giving you there the huge scope for a custom team with some real personality in it. I was very proud of my final, boss-beating line up in Lucifer’s Call, but in this game everyone’s going to be exactly the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning, just with more HP and improved spells. OK, I know thats the case in most RPGs…it just goes to show how memorable Lucifer’s Call really was. I’ll tell you one major improvement though: you no longer have to permanently delete skills to learn new ones – hooray!
The look of the game, however is wonderful. A step up from Lucifer’s Call, but still with the same anime style, except that now the graphics are even better. Thankfully they have improved on the drab locations that seemd to be repeated to infinity in that game, and some of the dungeons are now quite stunning – although they still repeat interiors over and over again for all the rooms and chambers in each dungeon! And now the characters finally have spoken dialogue. This is great, and it makes them all seem really alive, despite a very dodgy “Jamaican” accent given to one of them.
So in summary, a shorter game and with sadly less innovations than Lucifer’s Call. But it looks better and it’s definitely still in that league. And it actually has a better story – all the stuff about The Conception and choosing a Reason kind of went over my head last time, I’m sorry to say! So is that enough? I’d say buy Lucifer’s Call first and then get this one if you want more. Although you have to buy Part Two as well afterwards…
Rating: 4 / 5