Devil survivor

So, as I've decided to start to review all of the old or not-so-old games in my collection, I figured I may as well go by difficulty. That is, I start with the hardest ones and work my way down. And I can think of no harder game that I have in my possession than Shin Megami Tensei (Alternate Tale of the Goddess): Devil Survivor. With that, here is my review.

First things first, and I might as well get this out of the way now: This game is hard. This game isn't even N+ hard, and from what I've heard, that's pretty hard. No, this game is Meatboy hard. And the basic premise to Meatboy is the following:

"Meatboy is hard."

That is what you are looking at. The game's story, while interesting, as well as having probably some of the best narrative in a game that I've played, and is good enough to make the difficulty worth it, punishes bad mistakes just as much as the battles themselves. With that out of the way, let us begin.

The basic premise for the story is as follows: You are a group of 'ordinary' high school students who are just meeting up shortly before school starts after summer break. You, and your two friends, Atsuro and Yuzu, recieve a call from your cousin telling you to meet up in a specific location. You and Atsuro arrive a little late, and Yuzu apparently runs into your cousin, Naoya, who hands her three modified COMPs (which look suspiciously like a DS). As soon as you turn on your COMPs, you each receive an E-mail, containing ominous predictions:

Good morning. Here is today's NEWS.

➀ At around 16:00, a man will be killed in a Shibuya-ku Aoyama apartment. The wounds on the corpse are consistent with an attack by a large carnivorous beast.

➁ A large explosion will occur in Minato-ku Aoyama at 19:00. The cause is unknown.

➂ At 21:00, a blackout will affect the entire Tokyo metropolitan area.

Have a nice day.

This email was called the Laplace mail, and they will guide your activities throughout the game. All of the parts in yellow are actions that can be altered by your party, although the first day, the "DAY BEFORE" is linear in nature. After talking, Atsuro, who is a skilled hacker (a fact which will help you a lot later on), as well as Naoya's self-proclaimed apprentice, tries to hack into his COMP, while you and Yuzu wander around. After a couple of in-game hours (which take about ten minutes real life time), you two, realizing it to be 16:00, decide to visit the apartment where Naoya lives, which is in Aoyama. After Naoya gives you the ominous warning "What are you two doing here? Get back to Atsuro! It will start soon." and leaves, you get a call from Atsuro, who says that he's found something, but he needs you two to be there, too. Once you go back to where he is, Atsuro reveals that the COMPs can't be hacked unless all three of you, or rather, all three of your COMPs, are present. He boots them, unlocks them, and you see a run of text flashing by, with the ending:

Demon summoning program booted. Running...

And then demons come out of your COMPs. This is your first battle. After you defeat the demons, you form a "contract" with them, allowing you to summon them under your own control. Yuzu has a meltdown. Her first of many. Meltdowns that, after the first playthrough, especially if you chose her ending, where you escape, will make you hate her. More and more. But I digress.

The first couple of days aren't so hard. I mean sure, you have to kill a level 19 enemy at level 10 or so, but that's nothing compared to the third day. You have to kill an enemy that is immortal to all attacks but your main character's basic attack. You'll see why this is not fun in a little bit.

Continuing, the basic battle system works as follows:
You go to your team menu, and assign skills to your human characters, assuming they meet the stat requirements for the skill. Melee skills cost HP, magic skills cost MP. You get three active skills, three passive skills, and one auto skill that activates at the start of every battle, so long as you have enough MP for it. You can only assign one copy of each skill to your human allies- it is to your advantage to not have any skills on your inactive party members.

Each character can be assigned two demons, who each three active skills and three passive skills, but have a unique racial skill for what race they are. Effects vary from increased movement to being able to attack or move twice in a single turn. Demons gain new skills by fusing them with other demons to create a new demon that can be taught all of the skills of both of the other demons, as well as any skills that that kind of demon would naturally know.

When you go into a battle, you can assign four 'teams', groups of two demons and a human party leader, to go into the battle. The maps for battles are standard, grid-based fares, but the combat inside of battle is a more traditional turn-based RPG style. Characters normally get one turn to attack or heal each, but by landing a critical hit, certain passive skills, or striking an enemy's elemental weakness, you gain a chance to get another turn to attack. Conversely, if an enemy lands a critical on you or strikes your elemental weakness, you can lose your extra turns. Also Dragon and Vile demons increase your attack range, but remove you from gaining extra turns.

For out of battle events, the game gives you an extremely large amount of options for what to do. You only have to do about a quarter or less of the events that you can access, but doing optional events can get you characters, teach you more about he story, or even effect the ending that you could get in the end. Especially in days four, five and six, you have an extremely large amount of flexibility and probably won't be able to do all of the events that you want to. Because of the limited time that you have, this also renders it important to choose what you do carefully.

Overall, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is a fun game, if you can get past its high level of difficulty.