The widely popular Shin Megami Tensei series has seen a number of spin-offs, such as the Persona and Devil Summoner series. For the first time ever, however, Atlus is bringing the demon summoning love to the Nintendo DS with a brand-new spin-off series called Devil Survivor: a strategy role-playing game that puts a nice twist on the familiar Shin Megami Tensei formula. Whether you're a fan of the series already or just like a good strategy RPG, Devil Survivor is an excellent choice for all Nintendo DS owners.

Devil Survivor places you in the role of a young high school student going to visit his cousin when a strange explosion takes place, trapping a ton of people in a relatively confined space within Tokyo. Around this time you're also given a COMP, which looks just like a Nintendo DS…only this handheld device can surprisingly summon demons and allows access to emails that predict the future. What do the email pertain to? Well, mostly death, as everyone has a death clock counting down over their head, and nobody has long to live. Will you be able to escape your fate and manage to find a way out of the quarantine?

As is the norm when it comes to Shin Megami Tensei games, the story is anything but ordinary stuff. Most RPGs either feature high fantasy or sci-fi operas as the backdrop, but for the most part the various Shin Megami Tensei properties are all about regular people, living in our very real world, though there are demons all around us. The Shin Megami Tensei games are also rather dark at times, as the material is often very heavy. Look at the game's story by itself: you're a high school student trying to survive your own death.

Ice Attack

Devil Survivor has a nice assortment of characters to get invested in, ranging from your otaku-loving friend to a cult-leading maiden and cosplaying cam girl. A few friends become more intimate than others, as the game devotes more time to them, thus making your attachment to them stronger. Players are able to further follow other characters, however, which will ultimately lead you down new dialogue options and finally towards a handful of different endings. Much like how social links worked in the last two Persona games, you'll have to manage your time and where you go within the game, because talking to someone will advance the clock, possibly making it so that you won't be able to talk to someone else.

The gameplay of Devil Survivor plays like the amalgamation of a strategy RPG with a standard turn-based RPG system. Devil Survivor isn't as deep with the myriad of options available in a game such as Disgaea, but the game is still pretty complex and features a handful of ways to tweak your experience. Each battle is presented on a level made of tiny squares, each representing a space that the player and enemy can inhabit. After placing your characters on the board, players and demons take turns moving about the board, advancing a number of squares based on stats, buffs, and debuffs. Once a player is moved into position, the player can attack their foe in a battle. Basically, each player can generally move once, attack once, and then use an ability of their helper demons each time they're selectable.

After issuing an attack, players are presented a Dragon Quest-esque view where you're facing the enemy head-on, in groups that can go up to three. Each character on the player's team can then select an attack or spell and choose whom to attack. Once you've decided on what your character and two demons are to do, the game randomly has members from your team and those of the enemy attack each other. Players only get one attack per character per interaction, but if they manage to exploit a weakness they can get an extra turn to attack.

When attacking there are two different methods you can approach any engagement: 1) kill the flanking demons first and then tackle the leader, or 2) tackle the leader first to instantly eliminate the threat. Killing the flanking demons first will net you more experience and money, but killing the leader is a great way to thin the herd. It's also important to make sure you're killing the proper demons, as you can crack skills and use them yourself, but only if the proper member on your team kills the proper character on the enemy squad.

It's hard to really get a quick fix of Devil Survivor, as it's not entirely pick-up and play friendly since battles are pretty lengthy, even when just grinding a free battle. You can save a current battle you're working on if you find you need to turn the game off, but it's often hard to jump right back in and remember what you were doing later on, especially remembering who was trying to crack what system. Another problem is that some battles require protecting people to make sure they don't die, which is sometimes tough when that character seems to have a death wish and runs headlong into battle; it's tough to protect or heal them when they're so far away and running away from you rather than toward. Both of those are really minor issues, however, as the gameplay is topnotch; it's neither ocean deep nor puddle shallow – just right.

Yoohoo

Demons are obtained primarily through the game's auction system, which has you competing against up to three other NPC characters, trying to be the highest bidder in order to procure a new demon for your team. Each auction takes five seconds to finish and then ends with a final bid; within this time NPC bidders can get worried or quit an auction. After winning an auction and paying the demon for their contract, they'll join to help you in battle. The demons aren't always truthful, however, so sometimes you can win an auction, only to find the demon lied about its stats and abilities or isn't even the type of demon you thought it was. Once a demon is officially contracted out to you, you're then able to take two demons, fuse them together, and get another demon that's often more powerful and that can inherit a handful of skills that the prior two owned.

The auction system is neat to begin with, but once you find strategies out, it's typically all too easy to win any auction and still not have to pay the "buy now" option price. It's entirely too easy to abuse the system by starting an auction and constantly bidding, never letting the NPCs get a bid in, and raising your bid by twenty or thirty macca (the currency) until everyone quits; by the time they quit you'll still find your demon cheaper than usual. Another nagging problem is the fact that fusing demons together don't offer up new demons as often as in other Shin Megami Tensei games. I love fusing demons together to try and get something I haven't seen yet, but oftentimes I found combining two different pairings of demons often led to the same demon being created.

Graphically the game is pretty solid, considering everything the game is working with and the platform of choice. The enemy demons aren't always crystal clear or feature a lot of detail, but the game still does a good job at representing the actual demons. While the demons don't look the greatest, the character portraits during dialogue driven cutscenes are excellent and each character has a nice styling. As for the game's audio it's pretty similar to the visuals, where there's nothing really bad and it's more a matter of personal taste. The sound effects aren't bad while the background music is mostly hard rocking guitar driven ditties.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is an excellent game, featuring a really interesting story, likeable characters, and a nice gameplay blend of strategy and typical RPG battling. I'd highly recommend Devil Survivor to both Shin Megami Tensei fans and those of strategy RPGs.

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