PipOwO didn't finish... Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked — PipOwO

IS HUMANITY WORTH SAVING?

One of the aspects that caught my atention during the first hours was the narrative and how different it feels compared to other games in the SMT series. Devil Survivor plays out in Tokyo during the 2000s, where one day without any prior warning, the whole city is placed on lockdown while a demonic invasion starts to emerge. In the middle of this, we find the protagonist and his friends, Atsuro and Yuzu, and in the span of a week they will search a way out of Tokyo, or try to stop the invasion in any way.

What caught my interest the most was the focus they gave to the characters. While other games in the series use their characters as vessels for the routes like in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, Devil Survivor makes you care about them beyond the route they are aligned to, mainly because they feel like real people caught in a conflict that surpasses them. The protagonists and the secondary characters have their own stories, where they tell you how they feel in this situation, as well as their struggles from before the lockdown.

Apologies if I compare it a lot with SMT III but this was one of my main problems with that game. There I didn't feel the need to read or listen to the rest of the cast because their alignment felt like the only ounce of personality they had, one want order while the other wants chaos, zero nuance or something that makes you consider one over the other. Devil Survivor still has alignments, some characters will be connected to a certain route and if you give priority to their quests, you will unlock one of the six endings, but it's not really clear. It asks that you pay attention to everything they ask of you, what it means to you and if it's the correct choice.

If I have to mention a problem I have with the narrative, it would be that during the first two days feel like filler, with everything after this being exposition heavy over the true nature of the invasion and how to escape, but it doesn't feel natural, they just dump it all to you. However that is a relatively minor issue, the story is one of the best in the series, in big part thanks to the cast of characters and the dilema that's introduced close to the ending, even if it isn't particularly amazing.

GETTING TACTICAL.

Devil Survivor's second half that sets it apart from the rest is the gameplay. While it uses the same base as any other SMT game, it's modified to fit the form of a Tactical RPG. Each mission places you on a grid with your 4-member party and the enemies, your objective can vary between each one, but most of the time you will need to defeat all the enemies without the MC getting down. The fights follow a very simillar format to the rest of the series, giving a lot of importance to resistances, weaknesses and altered status, with every side having a leader and two extra demons.

And if you felt they didn't change the formula enough, on top of that they add little extra mechanics that make it even more complex. My favorite is Skill Crack, where at the beginning of the mission you can assign to each party member a skill to steal if they defeat the enemy that has it. This gives it another layer of strategy, not only during the fights, but also before them. If you manage to steal a skill, you can give it to any human in your party, letting you customize each one according to what you need and opening the posibilities to more than one solution. It's very satisfying being able to build a good team, especially when you manage to win by taking advantage of the tools at your disposal.

In fact I have an anecdote that made me realize how well done the combat was made. It was during the fight against Belial, near the end of the game, Keisuke and Midori were holding four demons on the other side of the map, Yuzu healed the MC and was holding two Decarabias, and the MC used everything agaisnt the boss. In one moment, Midori fell and in any moment Keisuke would follow suit, and so, either I finished with Belial, or it was everything from the beginning. The last points of MP went into an Shield All, so everything depended on the final attacks. A Bufudyne, and an Ice Dance, and I won.

This was one of the most memorable moments in all of my time playing SMT, and it's proof of how Devil Survivor works so well. I managed to create an strategy that barely worked, and the game put the scene to make me feel like this fight was a lot more big than it really was. This was the highest point of the whole experience, which is a real shame because of the reasons I ended up dropping it a few fights before the end.

SPONGE ME BOY

Shin Megami Tensei has always been a difficult series. It doesn't matter if its by design or by accident, the truth is that playing them is a constant battle and I like it that way. In the way as Dark Souls, the challenge and finding ways to beat it is a crucial part of these games. However, I don't have infinite patience and I believe that Devil Survivor's difficulty is too elevated, making that a big chunk of my playthrough got me feeling frustrated because of the design choices they took.

There's a myriad of things that frustrated me, like the RNG that felt very enemy-sided, or the length of the missions that made each Game Over painful because you would need to do everything again, even if you were doing everything to win, but the most frustrating part of it were the bosses. Some like Belial were really fun and interesting, but many others, especially those near the end, were horrendous.

They go against everything the game has teached you. They can completely skip the tactical and strategy aspects to be giant, static bosses, or they are damage sponges that require something very specific to deal good damage, or they destroy you with no mercy if you are in their range with one weakness. This is what made me drop the game, even before that I was already feeling very frustrated with the normal battles, but the last bosses didn't let me do the part that I actually liked, in favor of making you lose time by repeating the same action for 17 turns, and you better not fail any objective or you will have to see all the cutscenes again and try to take as much health as possible.

It is a very frustrating game to the point that after dying, I wanted to throw my 3DS out the window multiple times. And while many of these times it was my fault (bad positions or wrong party), many other times it was either pure luck or a fight that was designed to make you suffer. I've had many other very hard fights in this series, but this has been the only one where I lost all my will to continue playing it.

VEREDICT

I think the worst part of this is that I was really having a good time. Yes, the difficulty was a constant friction point, but this is Shin Megami Tensei, it's an important part of the series and the rest of the game had enough points to counter it. The flexibility in how you make your teams is fascinating, the story is maybe one of the best in all SMT with interesting characters with real personalities, the change to SRPG makes way to memorable fights, I love its 2000s aesthetic and the soundtrack is really good.

That's why at the beginning of this review I didn't know if I loved it or I hated it. because the difficulty made everything I liked about the game feel miniscule in contrast to the pure frustration I felt. After writing this review, I came to the conclusion that yes, I like Devil Survivor, and if you are a SMT fan with a strong resistance to its challenge, then I can recommend it completely, but if not, then I suggest that you treat it with a lot of patience and try to enjoy everything it manages to do succesfully.