mould

REVIEW: Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga
Your ass is mine! - Heat at the start of each battle

Okay maybe I should just give up the stupid quote thing now. Actually this quote is probably better: Rend! Slaughter! Devour your enemies! There is no other way to survive. You cannot escape your hunger, Warriors of Purgatory. But thinking about it, the quote I used in the end sums it up anyway.

I played DDS in the summer of 2005 if I'm not wrong. Maybe it was the summer of 2004. It's all a blur to me now. Anyway, I played it. The story is quite simple, but very complex/deep at the same time. The gist of it is that there are a bunch of gangs in this junkyard place. Their aim is to defeat each other. The surviving gang gets to go to the Tower at the centre of the world map and do some magical stuff. I forgot what. The game starts with Serph (you) and the Embryons (your party) attacking the Vanguard. Suddenly a weird seed thing appears and opens up to reveal surprise surprise: A Nude Girl. More interestingly everyone turns into demons. Apparently the Embryons pwn the Vanguard. The rest of the story is about the Embryons eating the rest of the gangs while finding out more about the demon thingy and the girl.

The story is really quite basic, because all it involves is you killing off the gangs one by one, then going to the tower and killing the final boss. But the gameplay was very interesting. Two noticeable features. First, when each battle turn starts you get 3 hexes. One hex = one action. Passing is half a hex if I'm not wrong. But when you cast a spell or use an attack that an enemy is weak against, you do double damage plus gain half a hex. So you can theoretically gain an entire turn by hammering away at the weakness, which makes scanning and organising according to each dungeon very important. Second is the Atma system. You gain exp, the money equivalent (called karma I think?) and a thing called atma (this is obtained when you use 'devour' type skills on an enemy to finish them. Devouring is basically a weak physical attack, kinda like morph in FF7). When your atma reaches a certain level you can 'buy' a new demon class which bestows new abilities on you. It gets exponentially harder to access higher demon classes, so atma gathering can be tedious at times, but it's quite rewarding too.

Artwork is nice, with the character design quite interesting. The demons are quite ugly, with mouths being a very important part of the design, but they're ugly in a cool way. The music is okay. It's monotonous at times, but this is understandable because of the setting and the atmosphere.

So now I'll talk a bit about what I liked. Basically the concepts are very vey cool. The gloomy and bleak junkyard setting, with gangs fighting it out in a rainy, smoky 'concrete jungle' where only the fittest survive is very appealing. Everything is very grey and uncolourful, but attractively done nonetheless. Of course, the devouring concept is nice too, because I've been thinking a lot about it, what with Peco's Mug spell and my obsession with knowledge assimilation. I also like the usage of names from various mythologies, foremost amongst them Vedic deities, Christian angels and Japanese spirits. There's also quite a powerful one called Wikipedia. That's quite funny. Anyway, yeah, the demon idea is cool too - it's basically the dark side stuff I was talking about earlier - bestial sides in people coming out. Lastly, the slightly horror feel to it (this is my first time playing SMT games, so I haven't experienced what I suppose is a trademark of the series) is a nice touch. This comes through especially strongly in the Princess's Castle dungeon, where you need to navigate what was supposed to be some kind of amusement park.

I feel like listing how DDS might have copied my mind a little now. First there's the demon thing, which I envisioned Peco and Bink and maybe even Fiel doing in my idea. Then the devouring thing is just Peco through and through. The junkyard setting and concept is almost totally like CEIV in Systema Revera. So, copycat kiss the rat.

The only problem I have with the game is the mysterious overall plot. I read ahead to DDS2's story, so I know what's going on, but it doesn't seem that cool anymore. Maybe I'll have to play it, but apparently it's just like DDS1 with a few tweaks. So maybe not. DDS1 was nice because there were a lot of mysterious things happening (though sometimes they throw in very act cool stuff like Shroedinger's Cat which, thanks to the act coolness of the Wachowski Brothers I'm really not that impressed by anymore) and you couldn't quite figure out what was going on. So in the end you're left hanging, which takes the steam out of the momentum which has been building. 1 thing I find a bit wrong is introducing final bosses whom you meet for the first time only during the final battle. That's just damn wrong. Deux ex machina to the max. It's like, the universe is collapsing - you must now defeat the rot at the heart of it. Wrong wrong wrong. Ok, so DDS1 leads to DDS2. And ok, so they did mention the final boss once or twice. Fine, I'm wrong.

But now I have more things to add that I dislike. I dislike Sera, the stupid nude girl. She's a bit irritating. And for some reason I had very slow loading time for battle, but maybe that's just my copy.

Other than that I guess this game was quite nice. I'll try and strike a comparison - if the FF series is like Naruto or Kenshin or Bleach, large in scope and having a bit of the sprawling epic feeling, this is perhaps something like Peacemaker Kurogane - short and simple, high production values, strong emphasis on setting, aesthetically unique and appealing, maybe even a bit yaoi (yuri for DDS).

I've already got the next one planned, so I'm putting this here to make sure I don't forget or slack off. Look out for it - it's gonna be about elite organisations! Very exciting. I think my strength is really in the compare and contrast bits.