A More Complete Look at Devil Survivor

So a few months back I wrote a post comparing Devil Survivor to Ni No Kuni. In said post I essentially sung the praises of Devil Survivor (and denounced Ni No Kuni), but the thing is, at the time I had only played about 8 hours of the game. Since then I have played about 20 hours more of the game, and being just about done, I wanted to to give a more complete impressions on the game. Needless to say, that is where this post comes in. I feel I should note that my opinion of each game (and which is superior) has not changed at all, but there is certainly a lot more to say about Devil Survivor now.

So before I go on, let's recap what I said in the aforementioned post. The long and short of it is that Devil Survivor has very deep gameplay. It has several mechanics all designed around the concept of building a cohesive team of demons with a large degree of customization. Said mechanics are also introduced at a pretty snappy pace, you get just enough time to figure out each mechanic, and it doesn't take forever to introduce them all. That customization isn't that easy to achieve though, as it typically requires demon fusion, and thus a lot of thought has to go into how best to achieve the desired results. The result is some pretty cool SRPG combat. 20 extra hours of play hasn't changed my opinion of this aspect of the game one bit. If anything, it gets even deeper as you go. Even without adding more mechanics, just the number of demons and abilities you get access to continually adds to the depth of the demon customization.

Aside from the gameplay, one big thing that I wanted to point out about Devil Survivor is it's story. While it's presentation is very simplistic and it starts off just like any other JRPG, Devil Survivor actually has a surprisingly striking narrative. Three teenagers randomly get the power to fight demons and save the world, but they are also trapped in an area of Japan with no power and no cellphone service, with thousands of other people (most of whom cannot fight said demons). As the days go by the people trapped in the "Yamanote Circle" become more desperate and dejected, the demons get more aggressive, and unbeknownst to most, some unknown disaster is looming on all of them. What's so impressive about all this though is just the way each person react to it all. Their responses feels very realistic, and seeing the way each person handles the situation creates some pretty powerful moments. There is something very profound about the way that, in the middle of this battle against demons, mankind is still their own biggest adversary. Amidst all this, the decisions that the player can choose also really makes one think about the moral stance they want to take on things. It's all a very interesting situation, and I didn't expect it in a game with such a by the book opening.

Unfortunately, things are not all rosy in Devil Survivor town however. The game suffers a lot in the area of difficulty. Of course there isn't anything wrong with a hard game, but the way in which Devil Survivor gets it's difficulty is somewhat problematic. Personally I really enjoy the battle system, I spend time fighting battles just because they are fun, and as a result am almost always sitting at about as high a level as you can be at any one point in time. Given that, I found fights which are just your team versus a bunch of demons to be pretty simple across the board. Problems arise in two different situations however. Firstly, there are several fights in which you have to protect NPCs. Second, boss fights. Granted, there is a difficulty option, but you can only choose your difficulty at the beginning of the game. I'm not about to start a new game because I'm stuck on a hard fight 25 hours in. It also doesn't help that there is no way to skip dialogue, so every time you fail a mission you are forced to sit through several minutes of dialogue before trying again (often including dialogue options, too). But let's get to the two aforementioned issues.

Now when i say there are fights in which you have to protect NPCs, I'm sure every game out there knows instantly where I'm coming from. Everyone has played at least one game in which you have to protect some flimsy, incompetent NPC, or suffer a game over. Devil Survivor is little different. Killing the enemies is no problem, but making them not kill the NPC is a different story. What's worse is that said NPCs invariably start a long way from your party. This means that the challenge in this mission basically becomes nothing but "hope the NPCs don't die before you can get to them". This results in some pretty frustrating losses, because when you fail it feels like you got unlucky and/or there was nothing you could do better. It doesn't help that the NPCs rarely go where you would like, but this does make some sense in the narrative at least. Your party summons demons, it makes sense that civilians would be confused and perhaps scared of you. It's also kind of neat narrative-wise that you spend so much time trying to save other people, but none of this makes their incompetence any more tolerable. The final nail in this particular coffin is just the frequency with which you encounter this kind of mission. At a guess I would say that somewhere in the vicinity of 20-25% of missions involve someone from their own stupidity.

Which leaves boss fights. Luckily there aren't anywhere near as many of these. It sounds kind of weird to say that boss fights are too hard, seeing as of all the fights in a game bosses should be hard. Where Devil Survivor goes wrong is just the fact that the bosses are so much harder than everything else you fight. One would expect that if you are completely and utterly wiping the floor with every other enemy you encounter, you should at least stand some chance against a boss. You would be wrong though. There isn't a single boss that didn't give me huge amounts of trouble, despite being ridiculously over leveled. The problem here is that, if you aren't capable of at least putting up a good fight against a boss that you have to beat to advance the story, then the game shouldn't allow you to get to that point. The fights leading up to that boss should be challenging enough to prepare you for it. If you are struggling against the rabble, you know something is wrong. If you breeze through the rabble, then the boss becomes an impassable wall which you smack head first into. It's called a difficulty curve for a reason. It's supposed to be a curve. Devil Survivor's bosses provide some of the biggest difficulty spikes I have ever experienced. On a slight side note though, I did like how in the case of one of the harder bosses, the game really drives home the fact that they use fire long before you ever face them. It gives you a ton of time to think ahead and prepare your team accordingly. I still got slaughtered when I fought him though.

Ultimately, Devil Survivor is still a very fun game. It gives me all the things I want in a game, and I'm very glad to have played it. It has convinced me more than ever that I really need to just dive into the Shin Megami Tensei universe. It's definitely a game with some serious issues though. There aren't a lot of them, but I feel that crushing difficulty is definitely going to get in the way of a lot of peoples' enjoyment of this title in the long run. It's not a game that even pretends to be trying to appeal to anyone but the JRPG fanatics though. Some people are looking for that kind of difficulty. Honestly, I feel like this game is niche enough as it is, so maybe it's ok that it's so hard. It's not a game I ever see myself playing against though.

Why Devil Survivor is Superior to Ni No Kuni

A little while ago I wrote an extensive post detailing all of the things that Ni No Kuni does wrong. The short version is that, it's a good game but is it has terrible compantion AI, terrible pacing, tries to do too many things with it's combat and is very repetitive. The reason I mention this is because of the other game I've been playing recently: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overlocked. While it's a much simpler game with no exploration, no puzzles, simple graphics, almost no animation, etc, I feel like it succeeds in all of the places that Ni No Kuni fails. So I thought I would take some time today to explain my thinking on the matter.

To begin with, let's look at how Devil Survivor works, and why it's similar to Ni No Kuni. Basically, Devil Survivor is what you would get if you mixed a monster collecting game like Pokemon, and a strategy RPG like Fire Emblem. In battle you have up to 4 characters, each of whom leads it's own unit consisting of themselves and two demon companions. The player moves around the grid-based map and engages opponents in battle. Upon entering said battle, the game transitions to a turn-based combat system wherein each member of the two engaging units can use one attack. Beyond this, there is an "extra turn" system, wherein each combatant can earn an extra turn (or cancel the opponent's extra turn) if in this combat phase they hit an opponent with an element they are weak to, score a critical hit, or are just really fast. The way that this is similar to Ni No Kuni is simply in the monster collection aspect of things. While you don't tame demon's, just about every opponent you face in battle can be obtained for your own use. Furthermore, there is a big focus on building a cohesive team by choosing the best demons to place on your team.

Before I get too deep into how the monster systems compare though, I want to talk a bit about the rate at which new mechanics are introduced. As I stated in the other article, Ni No Kuni goes at a slugs pace. Several hours pass between each new mechanic. More to the point though, it feels like the game goes out of it's way to show you why you need this ability before it finally bestows it upon you. The result is basically just frustration all around. Before you get whatever ability, you feel frustrated. It's obvious something is missing and you are being forced to do things the hard way. When you finally do get this new ability, it's a sigh of relief or a "Now why couldn't they have given me this 3 hours ago?". In Contrast, Devil Survivor has a much choppier approach to doling out the goods. Devil Survivor's new mechanics are also all based around the mechanic of improving your demon party through customization. Between the speed and the fact that each mechanic builds upon the last, acquiring some new ability feels way more fulfilling than in Ni No Kuni. The feeling is more along the lines of "Wait, I can do what now? Wow, that's cool, I can't wait to give it a whirl!".

Now then, on to the matter at hand. When it comes to the whole matter of building a team of monsters, there is one main thing that I look for. I want to be able to look at the available allies, easily discern the basic strengths, abilities and weaknesses of each, and with that knowledge compose a team that has the highest possible effectiveness in the most possible situations. I'm a sucker for customization and planning long term. Ni No Kuni has none of this. Customization is minimal, and each monster has way too many factors to consider, making it next to impossible to put together a team that really complements each other as best as possible. You could certainly put together a good team, but it often involves ignoring a monsters elements or astrological sign. On the other hand, Devil Survivor strikes a wonderful balance with it's mechanics, despite having just as many or possibly even more. I suppose you could say it has depth where Ni No Kuni his complexity. It's mechanics complement each other rather than get in each other's way. It's pretty easy to put together a team that wrecks fire monsters, but is really weak against electricity. You could also then solve that by changing out monsters (which you can do in between encounters, even) or even fusing demons together in such a way as to remove weaknesses. Want a healer in this team, but your spellslinger knows no heals? Well, it's not too hard to teach them one, no matter who they are.

These are just some examples of how Devil Survivor does things better. I could go through a ton of specific examples, but I think you get the point. Devil Survivor is all about putting together a team that works well together. Exploiting your enemy's weakness is quite literally a core mechanic. The games goes to great lengths to accommodate your ability to do this by customizing your crew through interesting methods. Ni No Kuni is bogged down by trying to do too many things which get in each others way. In the end of the day a lot of people just end up going with whatever they think is the coolest. Which has merit in it's own I suppose. The fact that you can beat the game using pretty much whatever monsters you want will appeal to some. It's certainly not deep, compelling gameplay though. That about sums the comparison up, actually. Ni No Kuni is all flash but little substance, whereas Devil Survivor is all substance and no flash.