Oh, look, a gaggle of high schoolers. It must be JRPG time!

For those of you that are starting to figure me out, I like me some turn based strategy role playing games.  Final Fantasy Tactics?  Yes, ma’am.

So when I heard about Shin Megami Tensei- Devil Survivor for the DS, I was psyched.  “Woohoo! I can scratch my perverse need for micromanaging statistic min/maxing and level grinding!”

The story is somewhat unique.  A trio of loveable Japanese 17 year olds (go figure) are happily minding their own high-school business one lovely afternoon, when a mysterious friend hands you a trio of Nintendo DS consoles (no joke), tells you that you’ll need them, and then disappears.  Shortly thereafter, a giant detonation occurs in downtown Toyko, followed immediately by the Japanese government locking down the city. Surrounded and quarantined, your little gang is stuck inside as a demon invasion begin rampaging across the city.

Turns out the Nintendo DSes your friend gave you have the uncanny ability to write contracts with some of these demons, allowing your band of teenage misfits to gather a small army of demons to combat the horde.

The game takes place across the span on seven days, each day functioning as its own chapter.  The team eventually finds out that a catastrophe is scheduled to occur at the end of the seven days through fortune telling emails, and it’s their job to race the clock and try to figure out a way to stop the obliteration of Tokyo.

A little insane?  Sure is.  The story is about as unique as you can get, and it’s a lovely departure from the usual swords and sorcery bull honky that strategy RPGs usually come boilerplated with.  I’m definitely interested to see how the story turns out.  I think I’ve got an idea of where it’s heading, but I hope it surprises me.

Firstly, beware, it’s a modern-day JRPG.  The setting of the game takes place in Tokyo, for chrissakes.  It’s not nearly as unbearable as, say, a cutscene from Star Ocean might be (and my review of that game here), but it’s there in some supply.  If that kind of nonsense turns you off, you might want to take a pass, but it’s certainly not a game killer and I certainly don’t recommend it.  Secondly, the game lacks a great deal of exploration, literally giving you a laundry list of neighborhoods to go to with nothing but a few menu options in each.  Third, no inventory.  Sorry, no stacks of x99 health potions or your forged Sword of Super Awesome in this game.

That being said, these few negatives are offset by a number of great mechanics which really make this game sing.  If you like collecting Pokemon, well you’ll certainly love collecting demons.  I’m not sure how many there are, but there are dozens of choices, each of which have their own skills and racial abilities. Then, you can capture other demons’ abilities during battles using the “skill break” function and stack them on your star players to make up for their respective weaknesses.  While the game has no inventory for your characters, you instead have to rely on very strategic use of your demons and characters abilities.  This can make for some very frustrating fights; you always feel one or two turns close to defeat, and then manage to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, so your big boss fights can make you want to snap your DS in half after the eighth or ninth go at him.

The major driving mechanic of the game is time.  Most of your events take a half an hour, and seeing as there are only seven days in the game, you cannot grind out levels and cash to “purchase” demon contracts on the auction (yes, there is a demon auction).  There’s a prevalent feeling in the back of my head as I’ve been playing that I’m sure that I’m missing out on some time-based events as the clock ticks forward.  You know “be at this plaza at this appointed time and do this in order to meet this special character”.  This totally feels like a game I’m going to eventually look at the GameFAQs and be shocked at the amount of stuff I missed out on due to my disregard of the steady march of time.

There’s a different spin on the tactics side of the house as well.  Instead of your usual grid, one person per one square, each character standing on a square represents an entire mini party of three: your 17-year old kid hero and his two flanking demon helpers.  For enemies, you have an enemy “general” demon with his two flanking support demons.   This is for every fight.

If you take out the party’s center character, the support characters are defeated as well.  However, the support characters absorb damage and generally make it tougher to kill the general, so if you take them out first, you have an easier go of killing the central figure.  Again, each demon has its strengths and weaknesses, so each character with their demons will do better or worse against different groups of baddies.  It can be strategically complex at times, but it definitely makes for some great mind benders.

It’s such a refreshing change to the norm….oh, and you know why?  Guess who’s developing? Atlus.  Ah, yes, home of the bizarre circus freakshow of such unforgettably unique titles as Odin Sphere and the Persona and Disgaea series.

Overall, if you’re looking for some strategy RPG on your DS (or frankly for any platform), I don’t even know if you can find better than this right now.  I’m really starting to love those guys at Atlus.  They are crazy.  As in, crazy good.

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