Devil Survivor 2: Devil Speed

Having beat Tales of the Abyss, I dove headfirst into Devil Survivor 2 and was immediately struck by how different the music is. I couldn't get over how retro-sounding it was, especially compared to the guitar butt-rock of the first game. I have since grown fond of what I've heard of the soundtrack, but it is much more Persona than Devil Survivor to my ears. Not a bad thing! Just not what I expected.

As for the gameplay, I must say that if the battles stay as interesting as they have been, Devil Survivor 2 might be an improvement over the first. There are more wrinkles to the battle system, but things generally balance out. I will say that the game starts out incredibly hard, mostly because you have no skills unlocked for your main guys, nor do you have much in the way of options for demons to summon. The game has gotten progressively easier as I go on, which is probably a mistake to say because I'm sure the game will hand me my ass as soon as I turn it on again.

Some of the stuff they've added is the ability to directly affect enemies Extra Turns with moves like Extra Cancel, which... Cancels the opponent's extra turn. But there are even passive abilities that change how easy or difficult it is to affect an enemy's or your own Extra Turn, which you'd think would get aggravating, but it isn't too bad. There's a few new demon powers, but most of the ones I've seen so far are as they were in the first game (they don't fix what isn't broken, basically). There's a neat new demon power called Ghost Wounds which doesn't seem much more than a nerfed Bind at first, but then you realize it limits the attack range of an enemy to one - imagine using it on bosses! I haven't done so yet, but it could change the dynamic of quite a few battles if used properly.

The battlefields start out as all repeats of battlefields from the last game, which would have been extremely disappointing had they not quickly switched things up. So far it seems like every battlefield from the first game is in this one, with a few slight changes, as well as a lot of new ones. My favorite map so far involves a set of four escalators (no, they don't move) in the middle of the field. These limit the center of the playing field to four narrow paths that demons and humans can only get through with demon powers such as Flight or Phantasm. There's also a neat parking garage map as well as some other interesting indoor levels that are overall much more interesting than DS1's set of mostly outdoor playfields that were all pretty much wide open. I just feel like so far, the battlefield design is top notch in DS2.

Now as for the story, I am only ten hours in. I am not too interested in what is going on, though. Maybe DS2's story is a slow burn (I hear it gets good later!) but one of the things I loved about the original was how quickly it hooked you with its storyline. So far, DS2 seems like I'm fighting some weird crap the Big Dipper sent to Earth (no, that is not a joke). Then again, I have no idea why there are demons around this time, and I have no idea what these JP people are all about.

No word from Metatron about humanity needing to purge the demons from the world yet either (I guess he figured humanity learned from last time).

There is this new Fate system, which basically seems like they're putting the Social Links from Persona into Devil Survivor. Can't complain much there, and raising the Fate relationship with one of your party members gives instant benefits, such as causing them to develop an innate resistance to an element (which doesn't take up a passive skill slot!) or allow you to Joint Skill Crack moves (which has allowed me to crack three moves at once by assigning three Skill Cracks to one demon and then having my main character kill it). They also unlock powerful demons for fusing just like in Persona. I'm pretty excited about this addition to the game, although my obsession with it caused me not to focus on getting an item for a character as fast as I could, which resulted in the death of a potential party member. It's too bad, but I can see myself playing through the game more than once to see everything like I did with the first game.

...Which is pretty much what I wanted from a Devil Survivor sequel. I'm going to obsess over this game. At some point I'll probably even try to figure out which DS is my favorite. The near 200 hours (!) I've played of the first game will probably win out in terms of game time, but that's just because I had to do everything over again in Overclocked.

Man, Shin Megami Tensei is such an awesome series.