Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2

[dreamcasthime]

Basic Story:You are a high school senior taking exams and on your way back home, you meet up with your best friend Daichi Shijima and you head off to the subway. He ends up making you sign up for a quote on quote "deadface delivery site" called Nicaea from your phone which apparently sends your friends video clips of your death. You meet another senior from another class, namely Io Nitta, at the station who says she also was signed up by her friends to Nicaea from her cellphone. You three get a video clip simultaneously that shows each of your deaths from the subway train. Suddenly, there is what's thought to be an earthquake and the bus crushes and kills all three of you. Yet, at your death, your guide from Nicaea gives you the choice to live and fight; you accept. You awaken unharmed along with your 2 friends and are attacked by 3 demons. You defeat the three and you all each get one. You then find Tokyo in ruins when you step outside the station. You then meet members of a Japanese secret organization called JPs that can use the demon summoning app. You team up with them and go on many missions to defeat the Septentriones (aliens that you must defeat to survive each day who are extremely powerful compared to the many demons.) and fight off demons running rampant throughout Japan. You are given one week to defeat all 7 of the Septentriones and prove the existence of mankind worthy alongside others who can use the summoning app and have made contracts with demons from Nicaea. Peaceful days are over; Let's Survive.

Gameplay mechanics: You spend 30 minutes in each place you go each day, except for free batle which you can go to as much as you like without taking any time at all. And you can choose to either further the story or spend time with a friend to go towards making your relationship with that character stronger. Be warned though, if you wait too long to further the story, it can possibly screw you over really bad. This game is set like many other turn-based RPGs  fighting-wise. It is set up with Skills that are physical and elemental and of course each enemy has their own strengths and abilities against different Skills; such as being weak against, nullifying, absorbing, reflecting, or being very resistant to different skills. This game is turn-based, so obviously no controls are broken whatsoever. The game never glitched out on me, which is good. The game had an interesting story as I could make many choices as the MC to determine what kind of person he becomes. I like being able to shape the personality of the MC by making different choices throughout the game.  It is also useful in this game having the Demon Compendium, which allows you to store the data of demons into a storage so you may re-attain the demon later in exchange for money. It was also great being able to use 13 different characters so you have a wide variety of people with different weaknesses and abilities to use.. There is also the system of social ranks (kind of like social links from Persona 3 and 4) that help your characters grow stronger by spending time with them and this allows you to fuse new demons only attainable from social ranks as well. The existence of "Skill Cracking" (a system in which before you fight a group of enemies, you may select a skill you don't have from any enemy and if you beat that specific enemy with the character is set that skill with; you attain it)  also helped me very much in the sense of allowing me to quickly attain stronger moves.

Some Pictures of Gameplay

Sound: Kenji Ito really did well when creating this soundtrack. The music isn't overdone or terribly mixed and the background music throughout the game usually fit the mood of the story quite nicely.

Characters: Each character was unique for they all have different backgrounds and personalities that set them off completely from the rest of the characters. This made going through each character's social rank interesting. I wasn't sitting through terribly written and cliche character life explanations.

The MC, Daichi, and Io (In respective order)

https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSGD9IiFgt0k_3gg517AdYasGShGbl9G5Dq6QwTMJbY8izUXBCGxA

Overall, I think for a DS turn-based game, this game is nearly perfect. There isn't much I'd change aside from the weak level enemies in free battle. If you have a spare $20 you have to freely buy a game I highly suggest trying this game out. If you like turn-based RPG games, I can almost assure you will probably enjoy this game.

I give Shin Megami Tensei:Devil Survivor 2 a 9.5/10

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[Tanassy]

Not meaning to be rude but I've never played this series and.. this review didn't make ANY sense to me. You didn't really explain it in terms I understood..

Maybe it's just me ^^;

[dreamcasthime]

Not meaning to be rude but I've never played this series and.. this review didn't make ANY sense to me. You didn't really explain it in terms I understood..

Maybe it's just me ^^;

If you could be a bit more specific, I'll edit it some. I probably explained it weirdly;I'm really tired.

[Hakudamashi]

Y'know, Shin Megami Tensei IV came out not too long ago...