GamerNode: Reviews - Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor

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• Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Surv...
• Nintendo DS
• Atlus
• Atlus Co.
• June 23rd, 2009

Battles are your typical strat-RPG fare. You can deploy party members in a certain space on a battle grid and change their facing when necessary. Though your human characters aren't anything special themselves, the power of the COMP allows them to summon, buy, and train demons. You'll find the demons run the gamut between typical MegaTen characters such as Jack Frost and Sarasvati to a few newer and lesser-known demons, each with different abilities, elements, and appearances. The fun truly lies in encountering new demons and making them yours whether through Skill Cracking their spells and status effect-altering magic or by buying them through the in-game Auction House and fusing them together to create new demons that are harder to obtain.  

Battles play out very easily. You can move only a certain set number of squares during each turn, and you can also use spells or abilities. Your enemies can do this as well, so lather, rinse, and repeat until you meet the terms of victory (usually to destroy all opponents). It's simplistic, but it works. There are no overly complicated rules to follow or to remember to progress in battle. Just good, old-fashioned plugging away at enemies in order to gain levels to see the rest of the story unfold. One thing that can be said, however, is that the battles can get downright nasty if you don't prepare yourself beforehand. As previously mentioned, you'll want to utilize every free battle you can get (especially those labeled "hard") in order to pick up different cracked skills and even new demons. For those not used to skating through a video game without ever having a truly random battle, this can be a bit of a shock to the system and you'll find yourself losing perhaps a bit more than you should be. Devil Survivor boasts a colorful palette and vibrant characters. If you've ever enjoyed a MegaTen game, chances are you'll feel right at home with this one. Deep reds, bright blues, and mysterious purples are only some of the colors you'll see everywhere throughout the game -- a welcome switch from the rusts and earth tones of most games these days. While there aren't any cutesy 3D models like we've seen in the Final Fantasy remakes on the DS, there are sharp character portraits and intriguing demon portraits on the battle screen. It's a bit of a throwback to the olden days of RPGs (think Earthbound) when the enemies nor you move at all during battle, but it's not truly a necessary game mechanic. I still would have liked to see a little animation, though.  

If the graphics are gorgeous then the music's deathly catchy. MegaTen games always boast some of the best music within the RPG world and for that you can thank the musical genius Shoji Meguro. Spooky techno and guitar riffs annotate battles, and sneaky synths punctuate the dark storyline that you're working to uncover. This is one game you might want to check out the soundtrack for, even if just to make out what the vocoder-heavy boss battle music is actually saying.

Devil Survivor is one of the most engaging handheld competitors so far this year, and it's going to be quite hard to top it unless there happens to be another MegaTen title releasing this year. Luckily the campaign will take you well over 10 hours to complete (or longer, depending on your status and feelings on picking up all fusable demons). You'll be keeping this in your DS for quite some time, and for good reason. It's not trying to be anything but a good, solid RPG. What more could you ask for these days? Hey -- at least there's no mandatory waggle.

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