Shin Megami Tensei is a series of games that have rapidly increased in popularity since the release of the Persona titles on the PS2. That sub-series is still very popular and to date is the last Shin Megami game to be released, and the only one to receive a release on the current gen main consoles. (There are still many games on the 3DS)
It's a shame because I fell in love with the series after playing Nocturne (SMT 3) on the PS2 many years ago. At the time it felt like a Pokémon game for adults: catch Demon, raise Demon, fuse Demon. Gotta summon them all.
One of the biggest criticisms of the Shin Megami games is that the difficulty is rather steep. But this is something of a fallacy, SMT games reward tactics and planning and having the right resistances and skills is the make or break of any battle.
Granted there is the occasional cheap one hit KO scenarios from instant death attacks but most of the time the game gives the player enough time to protect themselves from those attacks before they become far too frequent but the occasional cheap game over is a bit of a mainstay of the series.
Eventually the SMT team decided to make a more accessible game, one with a shallow learning curve and with a greater emphasis on narrative and characters.
The game they made was Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner (that's a mouthful.) It utilised Nocturne's press turn icon battle system which I personally find to be one of the most intuitive battle systems known to JRPG.
But before I run off on a tangent about battle systems lets mention one great thing about DDS and that's the focus on a character driven narrative.
We're all familiar with Final Fantasy's cinematic take on JRPGs and their memorable and most of the time lovable characters, but in the SMT games we're often introduced to a silent protagonist that is effectively us, the player.
And thus the story tends to be about personal discovery and is more interested in challenging your thoughts and perception on religion, philosophy and existence. Interesting and deep stuff but it's A) not for everyone and B) lacks variety for want of a better word.
So one of the things DDS does as soon as you hit new game is introduce us to core cast:
The intro also introduces us the Junk Yard; the world the characters of DDS inhabit. It's a barren wasteland that rains constantly. There is no vegetation or any other signs of life other than the warring Tribes.
In the intro we learn that our main character Serph, is the leader of the Embryon and they're currently skirmishing against a neighboring tribe; the Vanguards. During a skirmish the two tribes come across an Egg shaped object on the battlefield. Perceiving this as some sort of new weapon the two clash attempting to capture it, but are caught in it's sudden detonation where it the Demon Virus that transforms the soldiers including Serph into insatiable demons that devour each other in a blood bath.
With their blood lust sated, Serph and his comrades discover a girl called Sera resting in the spot where the Egg had been, they take her back to their base where she continues to sleep while they ponder who she is and why she appeared.
It's learned when Sera awakes that she can calm Demons from their insatiable bloodlust and refers to herself as a Cyber Shaman.
Serph decides to talk with the Vanguards' leader Harley and travels there with Heat and Argilla (two soldiers from his inner circle).
Unfortunately Harley is in no mood to chat and flees, sending his soldiers to fend you off. Serph and Heat accept that it's devour or be devoured and so embellish their new forms while Argilla refuses to eat the defeated enemy demons.
Upon finally confronting Harley, after laying waste to his base, he finally succumbs to the Bloodlust and goes berserk, transforming into his Demon form and is subsequently Devoured by the Embryon soldiers upon his defeat.
The following day all the surviving tribe leaders are called to the Karma Temple: a colossal tower that somewhat governs the Junk Yard and will grant the victorious tribe access to Nirvana.
At the temple the leaders are spoken to by a voice that refers to itself as Angel. It restates that the purpose of the tribes is to fight until only one is left and that the introduction of the Demon Virus was to end the stalemate that had occurred.
Now as these revelations are made, the characters of the Junk Yard's eyes flash and their grey iris' become coloured. Along with this slight physical change the person's complete personality changes and they become more human.
For instance; Heat becomes passionate and reckless. Argilla becomes empathetic with a strong morality.
There are also two other primary characters introduced in the beginning that join Serph proper after the Karma temple and they are Gale and Cielo.
Gale is an intelligent and calm taciturn and Cielo is well, always cheering everyone up and not taking things too seriously.
Serph's team also affect the gameplay; each one of the team has elemental strengths and weaknesses that play into the press turn system. Each party member gets one turn, if they hit an enemy with a weakness or a critical attack they gain half a turn. The maximum amount of turns the entire party can have is six as you only allowed a maximum of three party members.
Conversely your enemies can also take advantage of the press turn system by exploiting your party's weaknesses, the enemy can also double their own turns and there in and of itself is the basis of all encounters. Knowing weaknesses and resistances.
Mastering the press turn system is key to survival in DDS, you are always forced to have Serph in your party and so will always have him weak to fire attacks but very early on you can learn skills and one of those allows you to void an elemental attack for all party members once per turn.
So as well as gaining bonus turns by exploiting weaknesses, in the press turn system you can also block attacks and prematurely end an enemies turn. A missed or voided attack loses the enemy two turns, but you can also repel and absorb attacks and they incur further turn penalties. These penalties also apply to your own party. It's great to see a JRPG enforce the same rules on the enemies as there are on the player.
So as you can see there is a lot to consider in each battle but unlike Nocturne, DDS eases you into this gameplay. Elements are introduced gradually with more complex enemy party groups only really appearing late in the game and instead of obtaining and fusing Demons, you always know your party's elemental attributes. Unlike in Nocturne where without pre-warning, it's very difficult to discern enemy weaknesses and resistances by the area you're in or by the enemy's appearance.
Coupled with the fact you may have fused or caught demons that are not suitable to the next area you're in this can all add up to be a bit of a nightmare and frustrating.
Now a static party does help simplify this system but it's not the only way the SMT team made DDS more accessible. Skills are no longer inherited or learned automatically through levelling, each party member has access to an expansive shared skill tree that requires AP to master. Each skill node has one or more skills and/or abilities within it that you can view before purchase.
The game puts you directly in the frame of what skills you wish each party member to learn and to top it off you can equip these abilities as you see fit with the only restriction being that AP can only be spent at save points.
So if you enter an area that's full of fire skill using enemies who are also weak to Ice, you could have Heat (who is resistant to fire), learn some Ice skills to counter these foes.
It's a really helpful feature that removes the punishing element from Nocturne when you don't have the correct abilities for the situation you're in.
Also as mentioned, skill nodes require AP which is obtained by defeating demons. However you can gain amazing boosts to AP by defeating enemies with "Devouring Skills". These skills are context sensitive and require the player to exploit enemy weaknesses to have them enter "fear" states that then grant Devouring Skills damage modifiers so they can deal killing blows.
It's a great addition that rewards tactical play with a genuine benefit and helps player progression in a big way. In fact the quickest way to learn late game skills, is to Devour demons with stronger Devour skills that further increase AP gains.
One gameplay element that is still very SMT but has been streamlined is dungeon environments. Most SMT games rely on labyrinthine style of level design with lots of branching paths that lead to dead ends and traps.
Their dungeons also tend to contain puzzle elements that the player must overcome in order to complete them. For instance in Nocturne the player finds themselves in a construction yard that has been taken under control by troublesome fairy demons. The demons patrol catwalks above the pathways and if you take the wrong path you get teleported back to the entrance of the area. And only by luck or by process of elimination can you discern which catwalks are safe to walk under. It can be an irritating process at times and most of Nocturnes puzzle dungeons work in this way, sending the player back to the beginning or in loop. It's time consuming and frustrating when it goes wrong and Nocturne begins to rely on this gimmick a lot in the later dungeons.
Both games contain well designed mapping tools that aid the player's navigation, which is pretty essential as the dungeons in either game are quite expansive. Fortunately DDS's dungeons are more simplified with less branching routes and rewarding players for going off the beaten track with useful items or unlockable shortcuts for save points.
There are no horrible looping or progress resetting traps until the final dungeon and even then they're not spammed as much as they are in Nocturne.
Most dungeons in DDS centre around one theme, barring the first dungeon that is extremely straight forward and works more or less as a tutorial. Players will find themselves in a creepy castle that contains light puzzles where the player has to line up rays of light to progress. A derelict ship that's a straight forward gauntlet and a complex sewer system with one way pathways that force the player to consult their map and consider their routes.
Save points are also more commonplace in DDS and allow the player to fully heal themselves for some ingame currency and spend accumulated AP in the skill tree menu.
In Nocturne save rooms are separate from healing rooms and fusion rooms and in dungeons you only encounter save rooms and so you must be fully prepared to tackle the whole dungeon or be forced to retreat to a hub area to fuse more powerful demons or heal up.
Shops are detached from the save points and require the player to return to the Embryon base to purchase items and equipment.
It's been a long time since I heard anyone talk about a Shin Megami Tensei game that wasn't one of the Persona games. Indeed those titles have taken the series into the forefront of popular JRPGs but SMT has an expansive back catalogue of amazing games and I personally find their PS2 selection to be the undisputed finest works the company has released.
Having recently played Persona 5 I was glad to see that Atlus wanted to make Persona more accessible and while that game has a pretty big hurdle for players to overcome (90+ hours to finish means you need some endurance). It does a lot to encourage new players dive in and have a go with it's gentle learning curve and relaxed attitude to dungeon completion.
If you have a PS2 and some free time and have never tried Digital Devil Saga I wholeheartedly urge you to do so, it's a fabulous piece of gaming. Or if you've been too afraid to delve in to a Shin Megami Tensei game because you've heard they're "hardcore" or "too hard". Give DDS a try. You'll be surprised at how welcoming this game is and how easy it is to master the mechanics of the press turn icon system.
For me Digital Devil Saga is a beautifully crafted game that I always come back to every so many years. Far more often that I return to Nocturne or other SMT titles.
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