Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga

"A fresh and fun RPG that wears itself a bit thin before its through."

It's no secret that the PS2 has an absolute mountain of RPGs. Aside from the standout Final Fantasy franchise, where do you turn for some hot role-playing loving? There are lots of good alternatives, but it would criminal to skimp out on the Shin Megami Tensei series, or known in its shorter form as Mega Ten. Mega Ten is sort of like Pokemon before Pokemon, as it was one of the original games that featured the monster recruiting mechanic. However, instead of convincing cute critters to join your cause of violence, it involved demons and other creatures of various mythology and lore, all the way from Buddhism to Greece.

Digital Devil Saga flaunts an interesting RPG premise. Instead of saving the world with a ragtag team of teenage do-gooders, you control the Embyron, an orange clad rogue military-style tribe of soldiers located in a post-apocalyptic inspired city known as the Junkyard. During a tense stand-off with another tribe of soldiers, a strange object in the center of the battlefield explodes and pierces all of the city's inhabitants with a bizarre light. The light happened to infect the tribesmen with a strange virus signified by a sinister and hungry tattoo somewhere on their body. The infection forces them to transform into monstrous demons. From this moment, the new law of the Junkyard is to devour or be devoured. As your tribe leader, Serph, the goal is to systematically annihilate the rivaling tribes.

To make the turn-based combat more interesting, Shin Megami Tensei sports two shockingly intense qualities: elemental weaknesses and a high difficulty. Different enemies are weak to different types of attacks, and exploiting these shortcomings lends you extra turns in battle. Likewise, opponents can do the same to your party of fighters. This can create some very unstable tug-o-war situations. Keep in mind however, that Shin Megami Tensei is an RPG series intended for the hardcore. It's not easy. While the PS2 spin-off Digital Devil Saga no longer contains the demon recruitment system, it offers some notably more interesting mechanics in its place.

There is no doubt that Digital Devil Saga is still a pretty difficult game, but it's still considerably more forgiving than the previous PS2 Mega Ten game, Nocturne, most notably in the skill system. Instead of having a select few moves that can't be switched out, Digital Devil Saga's gameplay revolves around learning many different skills. As you fight battles against other demons, it's always a good idea to devour them, as this earns you extra AP to learn new abilities faster via the large Mantra Grid. Skill sets take a very long time to learn and can cost ridiculously copious amounts of cash to buy, so it's extremely important to be wise when deciding who should learn what.

But don't fret too much however, as Digital Devil Saga gives you plenty of opportunities to learn skills and grow your stats. Oh that's right, plenty of chances. More than you'll likely ever need. Thanks to the wondrous lack of ingenuity in battle transition, Digital Devil Saga throws an overwhelmingly common amount of random battles at you. It doesn't ruin the gameplay at all by any means, but having more fluid conversions or even just decreasing the amount of bouts would go a long way in enjoyment. Unfortunately, while the battles have an extremely fast pace, it's a shame that eventually they'll all fall into a rather monotonous pattern that can feel worn before the game is over. Otherwise, Digital Devil Saga delivers wholly. It's filled with clever dungeon designs and challenging boss fights so some bothersome mechanics don't go the whole way in paining the game.

Aesthetically, Digital Devil Saga looks and sounds stunning. The realistically proportioned characters, killer demon designs, morbid back drops and convincing animation are amazing when coupled with the entire package glossed over in a uniquely timid layer of cel-shading. While the voice acting isn't top-notch, it manages to be quality enough to provide some believable characters. Battles and cut-scenes are accompanied by a swell soundtrack of heavy rock and attention-stealing guitar.

Though there isn't much in the way of replayability, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga is a pretty lengthy affair of about 35-50 hours, so your money is well spent. Additionally, the game finishes on a rather bit of a cliff-hanger ending, so if you've found yourself attached to this crack team of commando devils, you'll have to purchase Digital Devil Saga 2 to discover the next adventure the demons face and the ultimate conclusion to their plight.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/04/07