If there is perhaps any greater compliment I can pay to a game beyond a willingness to pick it up and play it again immediately upon finishing it for the first time, I do not know what it is.  For some games, such as Civilization, this is only natural; every game is different, and each session presents an array of new factors to differentiate it from the last.  In Metroidvania type games, perhaps it is an urge to top my previous time and make my way through the game more efficiently.  In sports games, perhaps it is simply the desire to hear John Madden speak to me again.

RPGs, on the other hand, are usually a different story.  After sinking thirty or forty or more hours into a game, I generally don’t have much of a stomach to start it all over again.  Generally, there is very little need for me to ever do so; the story has been told, and telling it again is going to bring me little in the way increased enjoyment.  For my favorites, I will often pick them up again someday (I play through Chrono Trigger and FFVI every few years, simply for the joy of it), but almost never have I started one over immediately upon completion.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor has broken that trend.

Devil Survivor is the latest entry in the larger SMT universe (home of Persona, among other things), and follows many of the series’ main tropes: it takes place in modern Japan, it focuses on high school students, and it involves people summoning dark forces for both good and for ill.

The story begins with the main character (MC) and his two friends, Atsuro and Yuzu, enjoying a late summer day in Tokyo during a break from school.  MC has been spending some time living with his cousin Naoya, a skilled hacker, but Naoya has been noticeably absent more and more recently.  In his absence, Naoya sends the three friends each a Comp (a personal computing device that looks suspiciously familiar…), with a warning that they will need them in the near future.

After Atsuro does a little hacking of his own, the group discovers that the Comps can actually summon demons, deliver emails predicting the future, and also let the MC see the Death Clocks of those around him (a timer indicating how long that person has left to live).  It also turns out that they aren’t the only ones with Comps summoning demons; a strange cult is also running around with them, though their intentions are unclear.  After a harrowing encounter with a powerful demon, the friends realize something big is going on, and that is quickly confirmed when the military locks down the entire central area of Tokyo.

Once the lockdown begins, well, that’s when things get complicated.

IT’S ALL ABOUT LAYERS

Gameplay in SMT:DS sticks to a pretty basic structure throughout it’s entirety: from a central navigation screen, the player can either manage their team, head to the auction house to buy new demons, fuse their current demons together, or navigate to locations around Tokyo to different encounters.

Interactions with NPCs take place in a very familiar JRPG format, with static “talking heads” staring at each other with a dialogue window underneath.  While this is not a very dynamic way of presenting narrative, it is undeniably efficient, and does exactly what it needs to do.  When the talking is over, the battles usually begin.

Combat in SMT:DS is takes place in two different phases: first, there is the Battle Map.  The map is broken up into a large grid, with obstacles and changes in height dependent on the location.  The player forms his team into (once you hit full capacity in your party) four groups of three units.  Each unit must have a human party member at the core, supported by two demonic units.  Enemy units are also split into groups of three, and all parties on the map are represented as a single “piece.”

Movement during the battle map phase is turn based, with all units moving a certain number of spaces, and with certain initiatives in the turn order based on their attributes and skills.  Faster units can move further, attack more often, while slower units can cover less distance and act less frequently.  Once two units move into attack range of each other (which is usually directly next to one another), they can choose to attack, at which point combat shifts to the proper Battle phase.

During the Battle phase, the view shifts to a set-up quite familiar to any old-school JRPG fan; the monsters show up as static sprites against various backgrounds, while your team’s icons and information are arrayed across the bottom.  In addition to being visually familiar, the play mechanics are tried and true as well; the player inputs battle commands for each of his units, and they are executed in turn-based fashion.  Each Battle phase lasts for one turn, with possible extra turns for individual units depending on a variety of factors.  After the turns are resolved, it’s back to the battle map.

Now, to be clear, there’s more to do on the battle map than simply moving around.  Players and demons have a variety of skills they can use outside of combat to help turn the tide in their favor.  Healing is the most basic of these, but there are also plenty of spells to buff units, slow enemies down, or speed yourself up.  Additionally, human characters can summon and dismiss demons, meaning you can reshuffle your team somewhat during the course of a fight.

While the basic mechanics are quite straightforward, they leave more than enough room for some rich tactical decisions to be made.  All characters, both demon and human, have different levels of resistance to six different elements, ranging from Weakness to Reflection.  Striking an enemy’s weak point does, first and foremost, more damage, but it also increases the likelihood of the attacker getting an extra turn.  Conversely, hitting an enemy’s strength may heal them or give them an extra turn.  Making sure you have the right team armed with the right skills to face off against various enemies is a constant process, and there is no single combination that will let you stand up to every challenge.

Human characters start with a few base skills, but from that point can only gain new skills through “cracking” them from various enemies.  At the beginning of each battle, each of your four humans picks a skill to crack, as well as the enemy to crack it from.  If that unit’s party kills the targeted enemy, that unit gains the skill.  If someone else kills it, the chance is lost.  This method of skill collection can really cause you to re-evaluate your battle plans, as sometimes a skill you really want may force you to deviate from the easiest plan of battle.

Demons, on the other hand, have set skills that they gain as they level up.  Additionally, when you fuse two demons together to form a new demon, you can choose to inherit some of the component part’s skills.  Over the course of a few generations of demon, with some proper planning, you can usually build up some pretty powerful skill sets.

The battle scenarios themselves offer a pretty fair spread of variety.  Some are simple, with a goal of nothing more than eliminating all opponents.  Others may have you protecting civilians or other units, and some have you preventing enemies from escaping from the map.  Often, the conditions of the battle will change depending on decisions you make during the battle, and this fluid system of goals can really keep you on your toes.  While some of the “Free Battles” (battles independent of the story, available for experience or skill grinding) can grow repetitive, I always found the story battles dynamic and engrossing.

SCHEDULING CONFLICT

While the battle and character-building systems are solid and enjoyable, I probably would not start the game over for simple pleasure of experiencing them again.  What really sucked me in about SMT:DS is the story – and, more specifically, the way in which the story is told.

The game establishes the 6-day timeline right off the bat, and from that point, it allows the player to progress through each day in 30-minute increments (from sunup to sundown).  During almost every half-hour period, the player can choose to travel to different points around Tokyo and view an event there.  These events, for the most part, consist of interactions with other characters, of battles, or of both.  The key thing here is that, for any given half-hour, you can only pick a single activity available to you.  In many cases, you will have two or three or even more options of where to go and who to talk to.

Now, in some cases, events may remain available over the span of several hours, but for many others, if you choose to do something else during a certain window, other paths will close to you.  The effect that this had on me on a player was a quick realization that, first of all, there were parts of the story I was missing.  Interactions with some characters would come and go, and I would have missed them completely, left to wonder exactly what would have happened had I chosen to go there instead of somewhere else.  Secondly, and even more importantly, it made me feel that the choices I was making had weight to them – I was shaping the progression of the story through my choices, with very tangible consequences.  In some instances, I was making decisions that were, quite literally, killing off characters.  Deciding that dealing with one situation versus another meant that someone would die, and that that path through the story was now closed to me.  Questions, of course, immediately surface: Could I have done it better? Could I have saved them both?

In addition to that, interactions with other characters are packed full of chances for the player to choose how they respond to a situation.  Some of these are minor, with the player perhaps deciding whether to respond with humility or with bravado in a certain situation, but others certainly feel like they carry much more weight.  In one very memorable part of the game, for me, the game even made me do something games rarely make me do: change my mind.  At the start of one scenario, the player is presented with a three-way battle, and the choice of whom to support.  After pondering how I wanted to respond to this situation, I tentatively made what I felt was a good choice.  At that point, one of my party members asked me, quite plainly, “Are you serious!?”  With those simple words, I was thrust back in a rethinking of my choice, and even more deep concerns about whether I was doing the right thing.  Ultimately, I changed my mind; the fact that a game presented a moral choice point that I not only spent a few minutes pondering, but actually had to rethink once I made it, is something I’ve rarely encountered.  This, to me, is a sure sign of storytelling taking full advantage of the gaming medium; presenting me with a story, offering me a chance to shape it, and making me feel that my decisions have had real weight.

BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE TOKYO

Of course, it does help that the story of SMT:DS is quite interesting to begin with.  Dealing with darker themes than most other JRPGs of late, it takes a world familiar to most of us and twists it into something dark and foreboding.  Dealing with issues of religions, politics, and the inherent goodness (or lack thereof) in mankind, the game doesn’t shy away from taking  a harsh view of the modern world.  It raised some interesting cultural questions in my mind, as well, regarding whether it was a game that could’ve been made in the USA.  For portions of the game, the SDF (the Japanese Self-Defense force) is presented not only as a potential enemy, but as a force actively killing innocent people.  Could a game be published in the US that portrayed the US Army or the Marines as the bad guys?  Could a game with US soldiers gunning down innocent civilians in the street hit shelves without a huge backlash from certain aspects of the media?  These questions are peripheral to the game as a whole, but I consider it a positive whenever a game can raise larger issues about society at large in my mind.

OVERALL

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is fantastic game; I can think of no plainer way to say it.  Through the union of a streamlined, layered battle system with a unique storytelling structure, the game creates a complete whole that manages to be constantly engrossing, and one that draws me back in even after completion.  With a dark story, told through a series of choices that guarantees the player sees a path only of their own choosing, the game offers some refreshingly new twists built on some classic JRPG standards.  SMT: DS shows that a turn-based game with a tactical bent can still play quickly, and that amazing stories can be told without a single voice-actor, pre-rendered cut scene, or cute animal mascot to be found.

So, even if you are feeling a little burned out on JRPGs (if you’ve been playing Star Ocean, perhaps), or if you’ve never heard of the Shin Megami Tensei series, do yourself a favor and give Devil Survivor a try anyway; you’ll be seeing a wonderful evolution of the genre, and a great example of designers using a medium to its fullest.

Just make sure you leave yourself time to play through it twice.