Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2

"Why do you like this game?"

It's such a simple question, one that I struggled to answer. It was asked in earnest, not in any way mocking me, by my roommate, who also likes games quite a bit. He wasn't saying the game was shitty - he probably thinks so, though - but he just wanted to know why I was playing it. "Just to play all the SMT games?"

I suppose that's part of it. It's hard for me to define aloud, though, so I'm going to attempt to do so here, even if it comes out stupid.

There's just something about weird stuff, to me. I don't like the anime crap that pervades so many Japanese RPGs these days - full of trope lines like "That's the power of friendship!" and other groan-worthy moments such as that. The truly weird stuff, though - the strange worlds they seem to create for those games is a big one for me. How many games have you played made by somebody outside of Japan wherein the last dungeon takes place on and IN the sun, that has you delving deeper within by jumping into lotus flowers all the while fighting progressively stronger demons from actual world religions?

Not many, I'd say.

I'm sure there are subtleties to the story of the two Digital Devil Saga games that I'd appreciate if I knew more about these obscure religions (or even the not obscure ones, like Hinduism). There were parts I thought were neat as it was! But not having that context stripped out quite a bit of meaning, I'm sure.

So why did I end up enjoying most of my playthrough?

Although the two games can be boiled down to pretty big grinds (you don't HAVE to play it that way, but it's probably the easiest way to get through it), I did enjoy customizing my characters quite a bit. I'd say that's something that Japanese RPGs still do very well for the most part - Etrian Odyssey, Persona, and yes, Digital Devil Saga all let me tweak my characters down to a very minute level. DDS even lets me switch moves in and out of my characters' move pools at will outside of battle which is always fun (and makes the bosses interesting, since it's assumed that the player will have varied skills by the time you reach them). But I talked about that in my last post about this series.

I don't know, though. It's hard for me to pin down why I feel the need to play through these games. It certainly isn't masochism, I wouldn't play a game if I hated it or even worse, if it was absolutely boring (like I think the DemiKids games are). Maybe I want to be able to notice callbacks in future SMT games or something to that effect (if there even are any. Who knows). I don't really consider it a "badge of honor" or anything like that, because who would be "impressed" that I played through these games? Who would even care?

I guess it just boils down to the fact that I like experiencing weird things. I like being presented stuff without much context and try to absorb it and figure it out. I like dreamscapes. I enjoy grinding levels and customizing characters. I guess that's it?

As for Digital Devil Saga 2, I'm glad I played through it and finished it. It was a very strange ride, and figuring out how to set my party up for the bosses was pretty fun (especially once I finally beat the last boss - I went from getting beat up pretty badly to winning pretty easily with some tweaks and no grinding - satisfying!). I doubt I'll ever play through them again, but you never know.

My next project, after maybe Soul Hackers on 3DS in a few weeks, will likely be the Devil Summoner games. I played quite a bit of the first one, but I feel like I should restart and see how far I get, considering I know this series a lot better now.