Before we begin, a brief warning: Devil Survivor, like any Shin Megami Tensei game, contains occult elements. You play the role of a demon tamer who summons demons to do battle with untamed demons. If that bothers you, you probably shouldn't play this game. I wouldn't recommend this game for younger kids; it definitely deserves its T rating.
Gameplay
Having been an avid player of role-playing games for many years, there are some things that I've grown to like and dislike about the genre.
Things that I like about RPGs:
- Customization. The ability to modify the attributes of your party members ensures that you will always be able to play the game however you'd like. Whether its through equipment selection or teaching units specific skills, your party will always be unique.
- Raising a group of party members over time. Whether it's through level-ups or a stat reward system, I like controlling characters and seeing them evolve over the course of the game.
- Plot. Though it's not necessary, it certainly helps, and most of the RPGs that I've come to enjoy are those that have strong plots.
Things that I dislike about RPGs:
- Grinding. I especially dislike games where the only way to beat certain bosses is to level-up your characters. If I'm hunting down a certain piece of armor that will help me beat a boss, that's something tangible I can work toward. However, if my only goal in grinding is to increase the statistical attributes of my party, it becomes tremendously boring.
- Arduous dungeon crawls. The dungeon crawls where you desperately try to hunt down a save point to avoid losing an hours' worth of progress are stressful, not fun.
- Getting stuck. Combing every inch of the world map to try to find the one NPC who is supposed to advance the plot is something that I seldom find entertaining.
Devil Survivor is a game that includes all of the things that I like about RPGs while omitting all of the things that I dislike. It's a tactical role-playing game. You manage a party consisting of human group leaders and monster subordinates. You can selectively choose monsters to add to your party and you have complete control over what skills your human characters learn. Combat takes place on grid-based maps where units can engage adjacent units to trigger an RPG-like turn-based combat mode which lasts for several turns.
There is almost no grinding involved. I never lost a battle due to being underleveled. Although there were some battles I failed first time I attempted them, in most cases it's because I failed to achieve a map objective like protecting a certain target or getting to a certain location. The solution to many of the battles that I had difficulty with was to approach things from a different angle, changing my team loadout and equipping different skills. If you take a minimalist approach to story missions and only do the bare minimum required to pass each day, you will probably wind up having to do a bit of grinding for skills to make up for it later on, but this is more a case of reaping what you sow. The game never forces you to grind; if you're underleveled it's because you were being too minimalist during the story missions.
It's difficult to describe Devil Survivor by comparing it to other games. It has the grid-based map system common to many SRPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre, but the turn-based battles more closely resembles those of traditional RPGs like Dragon Warrior and Mother. It also has the monster collection system seen in games like Pokemon, Monster Rancher, and Dragon Warrior Monsters, most closely resembling the latter: monsters can be bought outside of battle or fused from monsters that are in your party.
Plot
On the surface, everything looks pretty cliche. I was initially turned off by the box art and the blurb that described the plot as "the tale of a 17-year-old high school student in Tokyo exploring mysterious recent phenomenon with his friends, also there are demons running around Tokyo." However, it doesn't feel at all cliche once you start actually playing it and once you get the hang of the navigation things flow very smoothly. In fact, the plot is one of the best parts of the game. The game takes place over the course of a week on Tokyo, and the protagonist and his companions have that much time to explore a government lockdown of the area (and, of course, save the world). One of the things I love is that although the characters are concerned with a catastrophe, the plot focuses just as much on society's reaction to the events as the events themselves. The human element is very present in the game's plot.
One of the wonderful things about the game's plot is that it has branching paths. There are a large number of characters that are in peril, and you get to decide which ones you want to help. Each scripted conversation or battle is presented to the player as an option that takes 30 minutes off the game's clock. There are a finite number of hours in a day, so you are limited in how much you can do. Your decisions during the first six days eventually determine what options you have on the seventh day, and you get to choose which route to take.
There are several reasons why this system is so great. The most obvious is that it gives the game a substantial amount of replay value. There are six different endings, so you're going to need to play through the game multiple times if you want to fully explore all of the game's paths. (Don't worry, the game offers you the option to have your unlocked skills and monsters carry over between playthroughs.) Another wonderful thing about the branching paths system is that you can deliberately avoid parts that you find boring or happen to dislike for whatever reason. There was one character that I absolutely hated, and during my first playthrough I was able to limit my interaction with him to a single scripted battle.
The only gripe I have about the plot is that it does have some boring parts that you cannot avoid. When your mission turns from "help the people you encounter" to "save humanity from destruction," you're forced into some scripted conversations that contain dialog that is a little bit dull. Another thing about the game's plot that may confuse some people is that due to the game's setting, a basic understanding of Tokyo's geography does help in understanding things from the start of the game. You can still ease into things if you don't have that background knowledge, but things in the beginning of the game will make more sense if you do.
Graphics and sound
One of the things that has bothered me about many DS RPGs is that many games have 3-D graphics when they're not necessary. Although the DS is capable of displaying 3-D graphics, having 3-D models in 2-D environments doesn't make very much sense. (I especially feel that Final Fantasy III and IV suffered for this.) Fortunately, Devil Survivor contains no clunky 3-D models. The game's graphics are relatively minimalist, which helps gameplay stay fluid. Because the menus don't have fancy animations where they fade in and out, you don't have to put up with menu latency. Battle animations look sharp but they are relatively short, which is nice when you're watching the same animation several times in a battle. In short: the game's graphics are not really all that spectacular or noteworthy, which I consider a good thing. Too often, games have graphics which distract and detract from gameplay, whereas Devil Survivor's visuals don't interfere with your ability to interact with and enjoy the game.
There are no voices. Given the mediocre voice acting that many games receive for their western localization, some people (myself included) regard this as a good thing. The game's sound effects are pretty minimalist, and like the graphics they're enough to let you know what's happening without distracting from what's important. The game's background music does a good job of setting the game's tone and most of the battle tracks are fun to listen to.
Controls
One thing that has frustrated me about the DS platform is that many games force you to use the touch screen for absolutely no reason. (Phantom Hourglass was especially guilty of this.) Devil Survivor doesn't offer touch-screen controls, and they're not needed because the menus are so easy to navigate with the d-pad and face buttons. Devil Survivor does an excellent job of utilizing all four face buttons (X and Y are used for shortcuts). If you want to access a bit of information, odds are that you can do it with only one or two button presses if it's not already on the screen. For example, in battle, enemies' weaknesses and resistances are conveniently displayed under their HP and MP gauges. If you're fusing monsters and want to check the outcome of a fusion, you can press the X button to toggle on viewing results by moving your cursor over a selection, instead of having to select and cancel an option every time you need to check it.
Summary
To call Devil Survivor's gameplay flawless would not do it justice. The game isn't just good, it's surprisingly good. For it to surprise me, it must be meeting expectations I didn't know I had. The game is fluid in ways that I didn't think possible. I fell in love with this game almost as soon as I started playing it and I would not hesitate to describe it as one of the best DS games to date.
If you're looking for a traditional RPG with sprawling dungeons and massive worlds to explore, this game probably isn't what you're looking for. If you enjoy customizing characters and collecting and combining monsters, I recommend that you pick this up. Fans of Dragon Warrior Monsters in particular should love this game.
