Shin Megami Tensei - Devil Survivor (NDS)

[ETC]

Only just arrived yesterday and had the chance to put it on for an hour or so last night.

Seems good so far, Story is great but havent played enough to really describe properly. The game plays in two main ways from what I have seen so far, first is a location screen where you move around the map and talk with people (like phoenix wright but not as in depth (yet?) and make your own brancing decisions. Battle side is very similar to the battle system of Enchanted Arms from what I can tell with a grid based board, normal turns are done then extra turns. You fight with Demons that you gain by defeating them.

Think this might even end up being better than TWEWY, play more tonight and post back

[abigsmurf]

awww beat me too it, arrived in the post today. Has to have the weightiest instruction manual of any DS game

[ETC]

awww beat me too it, arrived in the post today. Has to have the weightiest instruction manual of any DS game

no kidding that thing probably put a day on the time for delivery , you started it yet, I put it on at 11 last night (was gonna play for 5 mins) ended up playing till the battery died stuck at work now though so sure you will be well past me by the time I get home and on it

[abigsmurf]

Put just over an hour into it. Looks to be a very solid DS RPG.

The game is set in Central Tokyo and the plot involves the city being put under quarantine after being overrun with demons. You gain the ability to summon your own demons but also recieve emails that predict events in the near future.

The battle system is an interesting hybrid of a regular RPG and SRPGs. Each character can have two monster allies (and the same is true for enemies). When you attack someone, it switches from an SRPG screen to the standard RPG and both you, and the monsters get a turn attacking each other in standard RPG fashion.

The twist is the SMT staple of extra turns. Depending on your agility you randomly have an extra turn as you start but you also gain extra turns from critical hits or using spells that the enemy is weak to. Conversely you (or the monster) lose their extra turn if they are hit by one of these.

To kill an enemy group, you can either wipe out all three monsters or just kill the leader. You get less xp from just killing the leader and killing their minions lowers their defence so a risk reward aspect comes into play there.

When levelling stats are distributed automatically to team mates but you get full control over your own. Given that it seems if the hero dies, you die, it's probably advisable to put a lot of points into vitality and make him a tank of sorts, at least early on.

Overall it looks to be quite good. Dissapointing there isn't full exploration only "talk, look, event, battle" options at each location and it looks like there isn't the huge range of things to like in Persona but it looks like it'll make up for it by having a more branching storyline than in Persona.

There are only two negative points really: first, the text overlays the character art which is a strange design choice give the top screen is black during dialog. The character portraits are quite nice so it's a shame you don't get a full view.

Other problem is much less superficial: There's only a single save slot. This may seem like a non-issue for most people as they're going to be the only ones playing through but this game apparently has quite a few different endings. It's a good tactic in visual novels and branching RPGs to create lots of different save games so you can save it before big choices so that when you complete it, you can go back to it. Imagine Persona 4 and it's utter bastard condition to get the true ending What would that have been like if you had overwritten your one save? Incredibly bad choice.

Overally, early signs point to this being a polished, creative RPG that's well suited to the DS

[abigsmurf]

Experienced something of a difficulty spike.

There's an escort mission where you've got to evacuate a bunch of people (whilst preventing demons from escaping). The trouble is, they start next to the monsters and they're two turns away from you. By the time you get to them, they're near death and you basically have to kill all the monsters around it in 1 turn.

It's stupidly hard and unfair, especially considering they're all jackfrosts which have very good healing (which they can use after a turn, undoing all the damage you've done). Only way I can see of doing it is by massive over levelling.

The demon fusing and auctions are fun though.

[Psyduck]

I'm past that bit and I've done 2 of the free battles, otherwise all my XP etc comes from the main story fights. I think I'd only done one free battle before that, so it's definitely possible without too much levelling.
I'd imagine if you'd done a really good job of selecting and fusing demons you could do it without needing to level at all...

[abigsmurf]

Finding this rock hard at the moment. I'm on the mission where I have the demon's fuge it's incredibly difficult.

Most of the enemies are powered up Cait Siths or petrifying birds. Only the main character can attack the boss (and none of his demons). Not only that, he has an attack everyone move that recovers health and he can summon more enemies.

[abigsmurf]

Finally did it, had to do a lot of grinding for skills and money then fused the best demons I could. Still trying to figure out why it's so expensive to fuse elemental demons.

Can definitely see how the story branches now, the choices of who you speak to and which events you skip do seem to enable you to change the course of the story.

Spotted a bit of untranslated text left in, bad Atlus!

[abigsmurf]

On the Final day now

->Open Spoiler<-

You're presented with a choice of the endings you've 'earnt' through playing the story.

I had a choice between 4 of them. Was going to go with the "kill god" option but it turned out that would make you become an evil demon king and all the 'good' characters in your party leave you.

I've decided to go for the 'destroy the server' one which is still a bit sucky as you're god's bitch but it had the most developed storyline leading up to it.

Guessing there's a 'perfect ending' where you both defeat god and banish the demons that requires all characters to be alive (Keisuke got killed)

Overall it's been a good game, it's incredibly challenging at times and some missions require a lot of thought to beat. However it's pretty frustrating too, changing mission objectives suddenly without warning ("don't let the person who is standing near the exit and whose turn it is next, escape") and there are far too many escort missions that require you to be perfect (killing monsters in a single round, making sure some characters don't attack or get attacked so they can move across the screen in time).

I suppose it's a bit like all SMT games in that respect, it's tough but suffers from punishing bad luck