Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga Review

By Rob Fahey Published 12 July, 2006

Devour the flesh of (and in) battle.

Version tested: PlayStation 2

I eat a lot of weird stuff with glee; as I've often reflected half in jest and half with a heavy sense of sorrow, you don't get a figure like mine by being picky with your food. Ever since the discovery that a childhood of refusal to eat fish had somehow left me ravenous for sushi by my early twenties, I've made it my duty to explore the culinary fringes of the world and try everything at least once, and probably twice if I was drunk the first time. My kitchen contains spices and sauces whose names I cannot pronounce, and I'm whole-heartedly of the opinion that eating out is no fun unless the mere thought of at least one of the dishes would have given my dear old gran a heart attack.

That being said, I'm still not sure I'm ready for the Junkyard, the post-apocalyptic world in which Atlus has set the adventures of its latest Shin Megami Tensei game, Digital Devil Saga. Admittedly, I've never really fancied living in a scrapheap world where the last vestiges of civilisation engage in bloody battle in the hope of reaching a mythical Nirvana and you suspect that, at any moment, Kurt Russell might hobble over the nearest junk pile sporting an eye patch and a dodgy mullet; however, where the Junkyard is concerned, it's really the diet that worries me.

You see, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga is probably the world's first role-playing game about... Cannibalism. Yes, eating people. Actually, it's about eating pretty much everything that walks, squirms, flaps or waddles its unfortunate way into your path, but on a fairly regular basis that's going to involve munching down on some tasty Long Pig. Sorry, did I mention that like much of the SMT (or "MegaTen" if you prefer) franchise, Digital Devil Saga is distinctly not for the kids?

Appetiser

'Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga' Screenshot 1

Digital Devil Saga shares a great deal in common with its predecessor in the European market, the stylish but rather flawed Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call. The simple yet dramatic art style makes a return, as does the signature post-apocalyptic world and the heavy use of religious overtones and iconography. The story, however, is completely disconnected from Lucifer's Call and set in an entirely new game world - one where a number of warring tribes, all that is left of civilisation, do battle in the hope of reaching Nirvana.

The game casts the player as Serph, a somewhat mysterious character (well, it wouldn't be a proper Japanese RPG if he didn't have Suspicious Elements To His Character and a Dark and Unexplored Past, now would it?) who leads one of those tribes, the Embryon Clan, in their struggle to escape the Junkyard and reach Nirvana. It opens with a battle between the Embryon Clan and their neighbours, the Vanguard Clan, which is interrupted by the appearance of an odd creature or organism in the battlefield - which triggers an event that unleashes a demonic force in each of the warring clansmen.

All hell, predictably, breaks loose - and straying almost at once into the not-for-kids category, the unleashed demons set about the aforementioned cannibalism with great gusto. Yum. From here on in, you control the Embryon clan as they attempt to use their newfound demonic powers to defeat the other clans and gain access to Nirvana - although, of course, it's not quite that simple, and the arrival of a woman who has the power to quell the demonic force with the sound of her voice will help to mix things up a little. Plus, there's always the question of whether it's really right, as such, to run around annihilating everyone else so you can go to heaven...

Main Course

'Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga' Screenshot 2

In terms of how the game actually plays, veterans of Lucifer's Call will be right at home - this is a traditional turn-based RPG in essence, with three of your characters lining up against multiple nasties (not that some of your characters aren't nasty enough themselves, mind you). However, the twists to the formula are very welcome indeed, and act as an excellent refinement of the battle system. Still in the mix is the blocking system which allows you to defer an enemy's turn by hitting it with the right kind of elemental attack - essentially allowing you to continue pummelling an enemy without it getting a shot in at you, as long as you don't screw up. This proved to be a fascinating part of the gameplay in Lucifer's Call - and particularly essential on tough bosses - and it was good to see it return in Digital Devil Saga.

New in this iteration, however, is the levelling system, which replaces the arguably over-complicated and obscure levelling system found in Lucifer's Call with a system which apes the Sphere Grid in Final Fantasy X, and allows you to develop abilities along a number of branching paths. In order to fill in points on this grid, though, you'll need to chow down on your enemies - since levelling up is accomplished by devouring their flesh. Lovely! Actually, this is in itself quite an interesting aspect of the gameplay, because just killing enemies is often easier than knocking their health down low enough to be able to devour them, so it becomes a knack in itself to be able to finish a battle and have a nice dinner, rather than just wasting the opposition.

Overall, the battle system is a definite strong point - it's varied and involved enough to keep you interested, and backed up with a good levelling system which really makes you feel like you're customising your characters to your own purposes, and avoids rewarding you for hammering the same attack over and over. The addition of demonic forms for each of the human characters is also interesting - a little reminiscent of Shadow Hearts, in fact - and there's yet another layer of interesting choice to be made regarding whether to keep your characters in human form or cut loose in demonic form.

Cheese Board

'Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga' Screenshot 3

If there was one complaint to be made about the battle system, however, it's a familiar one for fans of Lucifer's Call - we simply see too much of the bloody thing. The encounter rate of the game is very high, and much of the time you'll be wandering through huge, sparse dungeons which are really all about battling and levelling up for hours on end. This is forgivable to some extent because the battle system itself is so involving, but ultimately it spreads the story and character development of the game thinly over the experience, which is a shame because, otherwise, these would be major hooks.

The story is excellent, both mature and involving - a far cry from the fantasy worlds of many other RPG titles - and even the voice acting, often a bugbear in these titles, is pretty much uniformly on the money. However, slogging through dungeons for hours just to get a small amount of story payoff will leave many fans of narrative-heavy Japanese RPGs feeling a bit cheated, and not everyone will get into the battle system enough to enjoy it in its own right - especially in the latter half of the game, when the difficulty curve spikes significantly.

The sparse nature of the story will leave you feeling all the more cheated at the end of the game, when it emerges that this is simply the first half of a story which is continued in Digital Devil Saga 2. This would be fine if the narrative had been a little more concentrated in this first instalment; as it stands, it feels a little cheap to spread it so thin and then expect us all to hang on for a sequel.

Coffee

In other words, those thinking about purchasing this game should carefully consider what kind of gamer they consider themselves to be. If you're looking for a traditional Japanese RPG with a lot of story and character development - look elsewhere. However, what Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga delivers in spades is an interesting, atmospheric RPG experience with an enjoyable battle system, fabulous music and an excellent visual style that set it well apart from RPG cliches of recent years. You just have to learn to love the dungeon grind - oh, and be prepared to devour the flesh of your enemies to progress in the world. No matter how many times our business team here at Eurogamer claim otherwise, we'll never believe that that's natural.

8 / 10

Read the Eurogamer.net scoring policy
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About Rob Fahey

Read more articles from Rob by visiting the Rob Fahey archive page.

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Comments (43) Latest comment 6 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Blerk #1 6 years ago

    We liked it so much we appear in the manual. Right lads? :-)

    Edit: And nice to see you back in the JRPG reviewing seat, Rob!
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 13:28

  • Goodfella #2 6 years ago

    Played this earlier this year on import (and part 2), bloody hard games and the encounter rate really did get tiresome (for me) which is a shame because aside from that it's got a lot going for it.

  • Hog-lumps #3 6 years ago

    Excellent review, I am extremely tempted to purchase this now...........slightly put off by the encounter rate though.

  • Goodfella #4 6 years ago

    Had I really known how high it was before getting the game I think I may not have bothered. Seriously it's like a battle every 8 seconds on average.

  • rinoaMW #5 6 years ago

    yeah the encounter rate is putting me off as well.. which is a shame because the setting and style look ace. :(

  • itamae #6 6 years ago

    We liked it so much we appear in the manual. Right lads? :-)

    Righto. In fact, I liked it so much that I imported 1&2 from the States, completed them twice and have preordered the European version just for the T-shirt and the mention in the manual. And I absolutely hated Nocturne, so there.

  • Goodfella #7 6 years ago

    One other issue (for me) is that outside of battle it's very sparse and dull. There's no beautiful vistas, no forests, no valleys with waterfalls, no nothing really, just bleak right angled corridors and rooms. I know it's consistant with the setting but... :/
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 14:20

  • Blerk #8 6 years ago

    It's not very likely that you'd find all that stuff in a junkyard, man! Unless it was a junkyard for discarded bits of nature that they remove when they build housing estates. :-)

  • toy_brain #9 6 years ago

    Is there anything in the game that can decrease the encounter rate - y'know like holy water (Dragon Quest) or Migrant Seal's (Wild Arms 3)?

    Though actually, a battle every 8 seconds sounds pretty much average for JRPG's that havent been 'tuned' to a western audience.

    Still very tempted to get this.
    I just hope Ghostlight are also gonna release DDS2 in the near future.

  • groovychainsaw #10 6 years ago

    can you save anywhere? biggest problem with random battles is that it can make it often over an hour to get to the next savepoint, so you have to think REALLY carefully before you start playing.

  • itamae #11 6 years ago

    can you save anywhere?

    No you can't, as usual it's restricted to save points. The points are spaced fairly though so you won't lose a lot of progress when you die. It's still possible to die without even getting to act in this game when you're badly prepared, mind.

  • Goodfella #12 6 years ago

    "It's not very likely that you'd find all that stuff in a junkyard, man! Unless it was a junkyard for discarded bits of nature that they remove when they build housing estates. :-) "

    I realise that, as I said it's consistant with the setting, but I think they could have done more than had just corridors and box rooms.

  • Kain_Cross #13 6 years ago

    This is definitely my next purchase. The encounter rate in Nocturne didn't bother me that much, to be honest.

    It's nice to see the Megaten games reaching our shores. It's rare to see a good turn based RPG getting a PAL version these days.

  • Aysir #14 6 years ago

    "Is there anything in the game that can decrease the encounter rate - y'know like holy water (Dragon Quest) or Migrant Seal's (Wild Arms 3)? "
    Yeah there is...forgot what it's called but it's there. The random battles aren't too bad, what becomes frustrating deeper into the game is the enemies ability to wipe out your crew before you've have a turn! It was a bit of a slog getting through the latter half of this game, unlike Lucifer's Call, you never end up feeling powerful. Good ending though.

  • Goodfella #15 6 years ago

    Anyway, those are just the negative points in my view. The game still has an addictive and unique quality.

    Part 2 has a great opening movie/song which I really like.

    Aysir, totally agree, getting wiped out without having a turn is very frustrating, and like you said, you never feel powerful.
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 14:47

  • Singularity #16 6 years ago

    \o/ I was getting a bit worried reading reviews with poor scores for a game I paid for about two months ago but haven't received yet.

  • Teeth #17 6 years ago

    Eating your enemies? Nethack got there first :D

  • Cappy #18 6 years ago

    Eating your enemies? Nethack got there first :D

    Way behind Bubble Bobble and Pacman then.

  • Teeth #19 6 years ago

    Well, Rogue was released in 1980, and Hack/nethack was based on that. Can you beat that?

  • Cappy #20 6 years ago

    1980?

    What platform was it released on? The ZX80?

    Believability factor... low.

  • Teeth #21 6 years ago

    Not familiar with the ASCII RPG? Give 'em a try :)
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 15:29

  • Blerk #22 6 years ago

    Rogue.

  • jellyhead #23 6 years ago

    The ASCII based rogue/hack based RPGs were released in 1980 for mainframe machines like the PDP, they were based on even earlier text based D&D games like Dungeon released in the mid 70's.
    As soon as we made computers, we put games on 'em.
    / is proud.

  • Cappy #24 6 years ago

    Well, Rogue was released in 1980, and Hack/nethack was based on that. Can you beat that?

    Okay you asked for it. Digging through the fossils we have the 1978 game Frog with stunning sprite graphics and outstanding frog eating butterfly gameplay. Though the butterflies are not exactly a threat I will classify them as enemies.

    Rogue? Pah!
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 15:43

  • Teeth #25 6 years ago

    OK, but did eating the butterflies confer effects on the frog, sometimes allowing him to gain experience? Haaaai think not!

  • Cappy #26 6 years ago

    I believe consuming enemies was the only criterion that needed to be fulfilled. :p

    Don't make me start on the Victorian coin-ops.

  • Teeth #27 6 years ago

    Damn your pedantic eyes! I should have been more specific in my original post.

    /flies from thread, cursing

  • Blerk #28 6 years ago

    Don't make me start on the Victorian coin-ops.

    What the Butler Ate?

    Oh my! :-O

  • Cappy #29 6 years ago

    Damn your pedantic eyes!

    Ahhh...

    The muttered curses of sweet, sweet victory. :-)

  • Goodfella #30 6 years ago

    Wow, this place goes off on a tangent quicker than my forum!

  • fawe3 #31 6 years ago

    So what was Icewind Dale to Bladus Gate, this is to FF?

  • Scimarad #32 6 years ago

    One of my favourite RPGs ever and I've been playing them a long, long time:-)

    So much better than SMTIII it's hard to believe they are technically part of the same series - It's also hard to believe some people actually like Nocturne MORE than this, the freaks!!

    -edit-

    "If you're looking for a traditional Japanese RPG with a lot of story and character development - look elsewhere."

    I couldn't disagree with this more - The reason I like this game so much more than Nocturne is BECAUSE of the story and the characters. I'd say it's precisely the sort of game for people who like those things unlike, for example, DQVIII or SMTIII:Nocturne.


    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 18:10

  • YourMessageHere #33 6 years ago

    Can anyone tell me if this can be played co-op?

  • itamae #34 6 years ago

    Co-op? Er, not really, unless you swap teh controller after each battle.

  • Xephon70 #35 6 years ago

    Awesome, another great review for this game. Much like a few others, I had this and part 2 on import last year. Typical of gamesTM to get it wrong - some ejit gave it a 5. :p Silly billies.

    Next up - Persona 3...

  • Machetazo #36 6 years ago

    Xephon 70 writes: "Next up - Persona 3..."

    Not so. For Europe, it SHOULD go (after DDS)
    DDS2, Devil Summoner, then Persona 3. ;)

    I appreciated Nocturne's approach to introducing the player to the game...Here's the first boss. Meet Matador, best of luck!

    I didn't mind the random encounters in Nocturne. I also appreciated the fact that you had to learn a lot of how best to play, largely as you played. There was a fair bit you had to figure out yourself. If you went into battle with the wrong tactic, then at best you lost a turn, worst you earned a game over. That's quite right though. If you go into things underinformed or illprepared, you get taught a lesson, which you then learn from. Then ultimately gain a sense of satisfaction when you do figure out what you ought to do.

    The world in SMT III was as new to you (the player) as it was to your character...I liked that aspect a lot, too.
    Roll on the 28th! :D
    Edited by 1 at 12/07/06 @ 23:34

  • ilmaestro #37 6 years ago

    /high-fives his in-the-manual buddies.

  • #38 6 years ago

    "Played this earlier this year on import (and part 2), bloody hard games and the encounter rate really did get tiresome (for me) which is a shame because aside from that it's got a lot going for it."

    +1

  • Xephon70 #39 6 years ago

    "Not so. For Europe, it SHOULD go (after DDS)
    DDS2, Devil Summoner, then Persona 3. ;)"

    Well, as I already have DDS 2, I meant P3 as an import :) . We're not getting the DS PSP game though, the updated Saturn game, bit annoying.

    Can't get enough of that MegaTen goodness...with the PSone games now about to be emulated, maybe everyone will have a chance to play the older MegaTen and Persona games...
    Edited by 1 at 13/07/06 @ 08:54

  • oneshotgame #40 6 years ago

    ilmaestro wrote: /high-fives his in-the-manual buddies.

    me too!

  • Machetazo #41 6 years ago

    I see, Xephon 70, however I wasn't referring to the PSP Devil Summoner, there. But in fact the new PS2 one:
    "Devil Summoner: Kuzunoha Raidou vs. the Super Power Army" already announced for US release by Atlus in Winter of this year.

    1up has some articles
    [link url=h ttp://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3148719&did=1
    ]http://ww w.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=31...[/link]
    [link url=http ://www.1up.com/do/search?st=Devil%20Summoner
    ]http://ww w.1up.com/do/search?st=Devil%20...[/link]
    about the game.
    Edited by 2 at 13/07/06 @ 17:08

  • lemonfist #42 6 years ago

    I can't wait to play this. SMT: Nocturne is definitely my favourite RPG for the PS2.

  • dryden555 #43 6 years ago

    I enjoyed this game quite a bit for the battle system and character-building. The story is nothing special and the level design is lots of right-angled corridors. Worth a rental before you buy....