Survivor Series: Devil Survivor 2 Review

Recently, I imagine that you been asking yourself a question lately, ” Where the F#%k has Devil Survivor been for the last three months??” Well ladies and gentlemen I moved to South Korea and I’m teaching at a public high school. Its been a good time so far and finally I have time to write something. The topic this time is the second Devil Survivor game which came out in February. I have played through it twice now and I’ll give you a tour.

Background Story

The story in Devil Survivor 2 is a bit different then in the first game as the story this time takes place in different locations around Japan and in the first game you were locked down in Tokyo the whole time trying to escape.  Again your a boy in high school, this time a third year high student instead of a second year student,  who is coming back from an exam at school with his two friends. When at the subway station, they receive an email on their phones from a website that shows a video clip  depicting their deaths in  an explosion in the near future. The three students are able to avoid their imminent deaths because of a warning from an avatar from the site and then a train comes crashing and they run for cover. As they wake demons appear and a battle begins, after defeating the demons  the students form a contract with the demons and become demon summoners. Soon after the heroes encounter a mysterious government agency known as JP’s that is trying to protect the remaining Japanese cities that haven’t been completely destroyed by the disaster that  has struck Japan.  They ally with JP’s in order to find out what is behind the disaster that has befallen Japan  and find a way to survive.

Gameplay

The gameplay hasn’t changed much from the last game which used a turned based system combat system on a grid of squares. The combat system also featured teams of three, two demons and one of the human characters, and the game allowed you to use up to  4 teams at once.  You can carry up to 24 demons in your party at any one time and a great feature of this game is the ability summon a new demon if one of your demons lose all its hit points. Another feature from the first game is ability to create more powerful demons by fusing two less powerful demons. A new twist has been added to this feature called the demon compendium which saves all demons used or created in the fuse application, and for a price you can immediately summon that demon back to your party as long you have a free space. A completely new feature is called the Fate System which is a social relationship system that uses a 0 to 5 scale to rate the bond between the main character and the other characters. The benefit of having a high level bond with another character is that it grants you certain special abilities  that can only be used with that character.  Again present is the branching story lines like other SMT games, although it seems like there are as many  paths as was in the previous game.   The demon auction also still in the game, but is less important now with the demon compendium in the game.

Graphics and Cutscenes

The graphics in some ways are not much improved from the original game. The environments looks more detailed and the bosses look quite nice. However, some of the artwork from the first game was reused, but if you haven’t played the first one then you probably won’t notice that. The cut scenes are where the game shines  because the first game doesn’t have nearly as many as DS2. The cut scenes all look graphically bright and vibrant. Overall the game is an improvement in most areas in terms of graphics.

Audio and Music

The game’s soundtrack is exceptional, which is a hallmark of any of the SMT games.  Each song seems to fit the scene its being played in. The sound effects for the different demon attacks and other actions fit nicely with the overall feel of the game.

Closing Comments

Comparing this game to the original devil survivor it holds its own, while bringing some new gameplay elements to the table. I think Atlus could have put some more effort into making some more new artwork for the character interactions instead of just reusing some of the character models from the first game. Overall, the game is improvement over the first incarnation. One final note, if you haven’t played the first game yet, don’t worry because you can jump right into this game because the two stories have no bearing on each other at and are completely separate stories in effect.   

Cheers and Beers,

Devil_Survivor