I've been at odds how to start this series, so I'm gonna approach each game I beat one at a time and put out my thoughts regarding them. I prefer to take an in-depth approach, so this will be more lengthy than the average review. I've chosen to go with the Digital Devil Saga games.

Beyond the premise and some characterization, though, I promise to keep things spoiler-free. "Spoiler" meaning, I'm not going to tell you what happens in the story beyond the premise and the world view of the characters. I am going to dissect how I felt about the story and characters, but not in a way that says what ultimately happens with them.

Let's get started.

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga II



Story

This is a two-parter and the most continuity you'll probably ever see in SMT spin-offs for a decade or so. It all begins in a Mad Max sort of setting called "The Junkyard" and you're in one of many of its tribes vying for supremacy. No one seems to know why they're at war with each other and they're so intent on survival and gaining turf that it doesn't matter why.

If that wasn't desolate enough, the tribes within the game have been exposed to a phenomenon that turns them into demons. They must devour each other so they can stay in control and return to human form. Chaos on top of chaos, things have become even more savage than before.

Basically, this is like like saying, "What if The Hulk had to eat people so he could be Bruce Banner again?" Only its everyone.

Then there''s a mysterious girl found naked at ground zero of the incident and,.for whatever reason, her singing can help keep people in control. She seems exempt from the demon condition overtaking the Junkyard. Your tribe - the Embryon - take her in.

And in addition to your newly found demonic powers, the people of the tribes gain two others they didn't seem to have before - memory and emotion.

Later the governing body of The Junkyard - the Karma Temple - calls for all tribe leaders to meet on its neutral zone to demand the tribes fight to the death decisively rather than engage in the typical turf wars. The victor is to bring this mysterious girl, Sera, to the temple and ascend to Nirvana as a reward. To achieve zen - or go beyond the Thunderdome, if you will - you must first not be so zenny and be more like Hannibal Lecter. Invite your enemies over for dinner and all that.

You know, the usual JRPG story. Trust me, it gets a even more strange along the way.

Gameplay

The gameplay is much akin to SMT: Nocturne. The emphasis here is on making effective use of your turns, gaining extra turns by scoring damage to enemy weakness or landing critical attacks. Conversely, you want to make your foes lose/waste turns by guarding your weakness and buffing yourself so they miss you with melee attacks or magic.

You will not be able to melee your way through the game and win - that's just not the way of the MegaTen games and their spin-offs. Your goals will be to overcome your initial weaknesses and play efficiently. The skill system is quite robust, and you can grow your character how you like at the end of the day, but it is also essential to learn skills that overcome weaknesses before powering your characters up according to your style of play.

Additionally, you want to eat your enemies to gain Atma points, as this allows you to gain skills faster and access new skill sets from the Mantra grid more quickly. Its like an Esper system and a skill tree in one, but you're free to move back down the grid and branch up to other skills you'd like to have.

There are benefits to being human as well. There are times in the game you'll get ambushed before you can change into demon form. Thankfully, there are instances where being human in the fight is of benefit. Gunfire can be a means of exploiting weaknesses or inflicting ailments and also renders you totally immune to light and dark-based death magic.

Unlike other SMT games, both Digital Devil Saga games drop the Demon Fusion and Negotiation elements the series at large (the Persona 3 and 4 games don't have negotiation, either) is known for. The loss of these elements is understandable, considering the characters transform and revert from demon status all the time, but the negotiation part is still sorely missed. Can't we all just get along?

The random encounter rate of DDS is fairly average, but if I didn't love the combat system of this game and its story, I would have dropped DDS2 like a bad habit. DDS2 picks up where DDS's encounter rate left off toward the end of the first game - we're talking Skies of Arcadia or FFIX kinds of ramped up. There are ways to manage this as you get deeper into the game, but it was a bitter pill to swallow as I started DDS2. I don't mind random encounters, but I tend to mind extremely high encounter rates if I can't control them.

I found myself spending a fair chunk of my earned cash on items that lowered the encounter rate - something I didn't do so much for the first game There just comes a time where a man wants to progress down the map, all I'm sayin'. Had thre been the negotiation system in place as well, it would have served to break up the monotony a bit.

There are some instances where they do break this up in chance mini-game encounters. Jack Frost might show up to quiz you on what you've learned about the game and its story and reward you with items. Then there's this brain-lookin' monster that challenges you to find its weakness and you get big EXP, Atma and money rewards for finding the weakness.

They do throw you a bone, but the ability to negotiate would have made the experience so much sweeter. These other encounters are just too rare in contrast to the general combat, but I will also say that the Mantra Grid system helps keep you motivated. You are constantly growing and learning new skills. There's so many you couldn't max out each character on them the first time through, nor would you want to, but that is a rather satisfying point. There's always another skill around the corner.

As with other SMT games, there are still choices you can make in the story's narrative and those choices do matter, but its on a Bioware party member/cutscene result level more than it affects the ultimate ending. It is nice to see its one of the few RPGs out there that lets you carry those decisions over to its sequel, as many or few as those choices might be. it even goes the extra mile to reward you with items for taking on the optional bosses of the previous game. Sweet.

The choices are of the Law/Chaos variety, I suppose this was to maintain the kill-or-be-killed nature of its world and it gets the job done. Digital Devil Saga narrowed this a bit to be more appealing to the mainstream JRPG crowd at the time, which is not very characteristic of SMT or SMT-related titles, but then again, the gameplay is just as efficiency obsessed as Nocturne's was, so it never loses its hardcore side.

So it looks like it could have flowed like FFX, but still ended up as tough as Nocturne before it.

Presentation

As for the quality of the story itself. Well told, well crafted, very well acted (except for Cielo, but you'll end up liking him anyway) and refreshingly different from JRPG norm. The narrative was thoughtful, modern and had several surprises in it. Chalk that up to the post-apocalyptic leanings of the series that inspired it. People are being stripped down to raw survival instincts where the worst in people comes out. Its not always easy to see where things will go since we don't live like that in the day-to-day.

Well and they also don't turn into demons (at least not usually, I've had an ex-girlfriend that was pretty scary, though

I was also happy to see the characters NOT being token whiny teenagers out to save the world. The characters here have a wider age range, most of them landing in their 20s to 40s in appearance and attitude. I'd say the Embryon skew low to mid 20s, with Gale seeming the oldest among them.

The strangest thing about any of them is their choice of hair coloring, but I have to say Argilla and Gale wore theirs rather well, for have pink or green hair. I think Argilla is the only character ever to have pink hair that I could take seriously. I think the scar and the actress behind her helped a bit, too.

But then there's her demon form where she has two mouths replacing her breasts. Um, yeah. I reverted her to human form a lot since her sniper rifle was more reliable than the automatic guns of her comrades. Her stat growth also lends toward being proficient with magic.



Gale was kinda like your Mr. Spock while Heat was more of a Leonard McCoy by way of road rage. In MegaTen terms, Gale would be your Law Hero and Heat your Chaos Hero. Its sometimes odd that Serph is a silent protagonist of the story, because at times it just feels like Gale has taken that role from you. He's your tactical adviser, the negotiator in cutscenes, but it is Serph's choices that ultimately affect how things unfold

The ending for me was kinda "Eh?" but the journey along the way was something I hadn't seen in RPGs very often. The epilogue was a nice recovery from the main ending, though.

There also was one bit that was kind of random and unnecessary. Think Otacon's back story in MGS2, but not as overwrought. Its just something they threw out there, but it added nothing to the story so I'm amazed they bothered since it added nothing to a particular character.

As for the music, well, I love Shoji Meguro's range as a composer, rather than gush about the whole soundtrack and its wailing rock guitars, I'm just going to say "YouTube it to sample it." There's some laid back stuff, some driving rock tracks and lovely piano work here as well. If I linked it all, I would end up linking most of the damn OST, so I'm not gonna bother.

Finally, there is nice replay value here, some extra boss challenges open up on the New Cycle games and all your skills from once Cycle can be carried over, though your EXP levels will not be. There's one option boss fight in which "Holy shit" wouldn't even begin to describe how epic and difficult it is.

Conclusion

Thanks to more recent reissues of the games, they can actually be found on Amazon for around $30 each new. You won't find it used in the PS2 bin at Gamestop that easily and it might actually run you more than than it would online if you did.. I can assure you you will never find this game lower than those prices, though, if anything they'll eventually get higher.

If you're into Persona or Devil Survivor, but looking for something a bit more dark and challenging, then DDS is certainly going to satisfy. That's not to say Persona isn't hard, this one just just a bit more rigid.

If you're looking for the upbeat attitude of Persona 3 and 4, it is nowhere to be found here. No talking mascot bears caring android girls here.

If you're new to SMT in general, you're going to be relearning the wheel here. Grab a walkthrough to get your head around the terminology if you jump right into this. But I will also say Persona 4 and Devil Survivor do a fine job of teaching you the ropes of the series and you may want to start with them before moving on to Digital Devil Saga.

Score

If by chance you've just rushed down here, I'm here to say I don't score in my reviews. I feel I've been in-depth enough to where you'd know if you wanted this or not by the time you got here. So:

If you batshit hate JRPGs, you will probably hate this one as well, you just won't hate it for a cliched JRPG plot, because there isn't one to be found here.

If you're beholden to the formulaic Easy Street JRPG, this game is like being mauled by a bear. But if you enjoyed Demon's Souls, then you're the masochist this game is looking for.

That's the score.