I've been taking some time between other reviews lately to play through some old RPG's I always enjoyed a lot, so expect a couple more reviews like this in the coming weeks (I forget this remake was six years ago sometimes). A couple of you may remember back when I started blogging on Steem (Before the switch to Hive), I did a list of my favorite games of all time, and Devil Survivor 2 was the highest-ranked Strategy RPG. So I go into this game already have been a huge fan long before even the remake came out.
As is tradition with any Shin Megami Tensei title, the fate of how the world will turn out ends up in your hands. With the destruction of the world on the horizon, you make use of the Demon Summoning app and Nicaea, a service that provides you video footage of people who are about to die. Anything really interesting to talk about in terms of story is all spoilers, so to keep it as spoiler-free as possible I'll say that you inevitably have to pick a side in the coming confrontation. Each side has its own view of how the world should be shaped coming out of this apocalypse.
What makes the story work is how attached you can get to all the different characters. Keita being the odd one out for being insufferable, it's just a really solid cast of characters. Joe being a bit of an unfocused goofball also shows himself to be one of the most insightful characters of the bunch and is my favorite character. The way he can easily shift from putting situations into perspective and acting as a source of much of the story's comedy relief is fantastic, it's a really hard balance to strike.
That said, we do get to a bit of a problem, and that is the comedy relief can feel a bit much at times. While the game always does a good job at getting you back into the tense moments, considering the nature of the game and all the dark themes and tones the comedy can feel a bit excessive and like it doesn't quite belong. This isn't a huge problem, but it's enough of one to take away from the overall experience just a little.
As for the actual gameplay, it is some of the best in any Shin Megami Tensei title for me. You set up units of three, a Demon Tamer and two demons, and move around the field with each unit like any other Strategy RPG. You have four tamers on the field, and when you fight you enter a round of turn-based combat like you would in a regular RPG between the two units fighting. Each tamer can be customized with what abilities they equip, characters who join you have pre-determined stats based on the level while your main character is entirely customized. Abilities do have stat requirements, but even with the pre-set stats, you have a lot of options for each character. Of course, you also have the demons, whose abilities can be inherited from fusions or learned by leveling up. Each Demon has a degree of customization from this as well, though the real boon of the demons is the sheer volume of them.
What sells this game for me is the demon's racial abilities. Each type of demon has a trait inherent to that type, regardless of level. Beasts have Animal leg, which allows you to move, attack, and then get an additional move. Chaos Wave, from the Vile type of demon, lets you fight from a square away not allowing opponents who don't also have reach from fighting back, though at the cost of being able to take extra turns in combat. The list goes on, but this gives you so many interesting options when putting teams together. The two I listed, for example, if you have two on the same unit you can move in, strike, and move out before the enemies have a chance to descend on you, helping cover for the weakness inherent in Chaos Wave. Atlus has always done great with how much they allow for you to customize in their games, and it was great to see them applying that same level of detail in their SRPG's as they did their normal Turn-based RPG's.
It isn't all roses, because now we get to the grind. I normally don't mind grinding, but if you are playing on the harder difficulties, or just want to get as many demons as possible like myself, at any point in the game you are given at most two maps to play on for your free battles. Meaning you will get in a loop of doing the same fight over and over again, with no variation, until you get what you are looking for. Once you get to this portion of the game the momentum kind of grinds down for a while, and it becomes a chore.
I'll briefly touch on the fate system, which is just building relationships with your allies. You only have so many actions you can take in a day (Free Battles don't count against you), so you won't be able to max out everyone. Raising fate gives characters some inherent resistances, unlocks fusions, and gives you some other interesting in-battle options when fighting with those characters. Nothing all that in-depth, but it's nice to learn more about all the characters that can join up with you, and comes in handy.
I won't say much about the additional story added on to the 3DS remake because it almost feels like some fan fiction (Though really good and interesting fan fiction) especially when it plays off an ending that isn't possible to achieve in the main game. But pretty much anything I say about the main game applies here, and it doesn't detract at all. If you liked playing the main story, this one is likely to be satisfying for you as well, plenty of interesting elements of the lore are added here.
Devil Survivor is just a fantastic little series of games, and eventually, I'm going to look back at the first one's remake as well. If you like dark themes, challenging combat, or even want to get into the SMT games (If you aren't familiar at all with RPGs, I suggest not playing on the harder difficulty mode here), this is a great game to play. Get's my full recommendation.