Say hello to my new method of finishing games: making it to the last boss and then watching the ending on Youtube. Except without the actual “watching the ending on Youtube” bit, because I can’t be bothered.
With a party between levels 59 and 62, I think I might be very slightly underlevelled against Polaris, but I was doing pretty well regardless. I made it to his third form, and then a lucky hit took out Io Nitta… along with all my Samarecarm-able demons! >_< Rrrgh. That was a very silly mistake I made.
This left me with a couple of options:
1. Try again. I might get lucky, or I might get wiped out again. Either way that’s another 10-20 minutes down the drain.
2. Grind my MC a bit in the free battles so I can fuse higher level demons. Put on Moneybags so I can afford to buy demons from the Auction and Compendium too. This will almost certainly lead to success, but it’s a 1-2 hour investment at the least.
3. Give up and watch the ending on Youtube. As a bonus I can watch both of Daichi’s endings in under 30 minutes, then if I figure it’s good enough to be worth doing myself, I can do options 1 or 2.
4. What I eventually chose: imagine the game ended how I wanted it to end. Kick Polaris’s ass, rebuild Japan, get on with our lives. This takes all of 30 seconds to do and is almost guaranteed to be better than the actual ending.
I should be quick to add, though, that I enjoyed Devil Survivor 2. I didn’t quit because I wasn’t having fun; I quit because fun time was over. What I was enjoying was the battles, and they were all but over. I can watch the ending without finishing the game, and I’m not invested in the story at all, so I decided to quit while I was ahead. If I change my mind, I still have the game and I can pick up right where I left off.
Apart from the battles, I also enjoyed the soundtrack, especially the individual themes. Aaaannd… that’s it, I guess? Oh, I also found it amusing how much everyone slavers and slobbers over my MC like he’s the most wonderful person in the world. I think it’s a trademark of Atlus’s SMT/spin-off games that everyone bows to the MC, everyone defers to him, everyone respects and worships him for no tangible reason other than that he’s the MC. I found it cool in the first such game I played (Persona 3), then it gradually became annoying, but now it’s just funny. It’s a feature of those games, along with demon fusion and evil optional bosses.
(Although, now that I think about it, it might be faster to name those RPGs where there’s a clear team leader who isn’t treated as the bee’s knees and savior of all mankind by his party members. SaGa 3 DS, definitely. Chrono Trigger and Skies of Arcadia to a lesser extent, maybe. I’m drawing a blank after that.)
Neon Genesis Megami Tensei. My impressions of the story.
Angels, Dolems, Novas, Septentriones. Call them what you want, a monster of the day is still a monster of the day. Their main job is to stretch a 3 hour game out to 23 hours by wasting the gamer’s time and energy. The ‘main’ story is that Polaris is destroying our world, but it would be far too easy and straightforward to let us go bash him, so we kill time on his lackeys instead. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. I’ve also played two games fairly recently (Arc Rise Fantasia and Hexyz Force) that involve choosing a vision for the world and presenting it to a higher power at the end. I’m not demanding absolute originality from every game I ever play, but can’t you try a little bit harder?
There’s also the issue of the ‘routes’, I’m supposed to pick. IMHO there isn’t much to choose between them. Yamato’s is too extreme (plus if anyone should be leader of the new world it should be me, since I kicked his ass), Ronaldo’s is also extreme but very poorly explained. I can tell Yamato had a clear vision from the start, but Ronaldo started out as a very reasonable “Let’s help each other” kind of thing which somehow spread and mutated into an absolute equality philosophy that I don’t think even Ronaldo bought into for a minute. He’s just full of contradictions. That leaves either Daichi, by default, or The Anguished One. The Anguished One doesn’t explain enough of his plan for me to want to follow him. What if I follow him and his plan turns out to be really stupid? What then? At the same time both of Daichi’s options (either get everything back to normal or wipe out Polaris) seem like cop outs. An opportunity to reshape the world however you wish doesn’t come along every day. So really it feels like I lose no matter which option I pick, and that’s all the more reason why I wasn’t motivated to finish.
Luckily I wasn’t playing for the story or the characters but for the sheer joy of the battles. Not like the combat was perfect or anything, but Atlus has made several improvements over the previous game. Plus I’m a sucker for SRPGs, even ones as simplistic as Devil Survivor 2. The escort/rescue/protect missions are much easier now because the target characters are much hardier and much less suicidal now. Initiative gives you motivation to get out there and get things done. Turn limits are generous. Race skills and useful passives allow for a lot of strategy, even if the last few battles did boil down to who has Chaos Breath/Evil Flow and who doesn’t. Skill cracking is still a PITA, but joint skill crack is a great addition. If I had to play again I would get everyone up to Fate 2 ASAP so they could help me crack. I’d also focus all my cracking on bosses, since I killed 99% of them with either my MC or Keita (Pierce + Phys Amp + Multi-Strike = Boss who?). I like games where you pay your dues in suffering early on and reap the rewards in ass-kicking near the end.
tl;dr, I had a really good time actually playing this game. It’s the walking and talking parts I could have done without. Thanks to Sol Trigger and Shining Blade, I’ve played worse stories this year, but this was still pretty up there in terms of annoyance and pointlessness. The Fate system in particular didn’t add anything and even robbed me of my best healer (Otome) when I needed her the most. I’d be tempted to play it again despite all the annoyances if not for the all the reading and choosing involved. If there’s a fast-forward or skip option in New Game+, I might seriously consider another playthrough at a later date.
In the meantime, farewell to Devil Survivor 2, on to new adventures! It’s a little early, but I’m going to start Final Fantasy Type-0, my game for November. When November hits proper, I’ll be able to spend a few more hours in Dark Cloud 2 as well. Hopefully I’ll like it enough that I’ll find it easier to carve out more time for it. In addition to these two, I feel like playing a proper SRPG, so I’ll scrounge around in my backlog as see what I’ve got. See you later!
The whole “choosing a vision for the world and presenting it to a higher power at the end” is actually an SMT trope in general. Apparently SMT fans basically expect that element to show up all the time or it “wouldn’t feel like SMT” otherwise.
Fascinating. I know choosing a Law-Chaos-Neutral route is a standard feature. It’s the “presentation to a higher power” part I hadn’t seen before. Then again the only regular SMT games I’ve played are Strange Journey, DeSu1 and Nocturne, so I don’t know much.
(Of course, it being standard doesn’t make it any less boring or me any less tired of it.)
Wait, now I think about it, Nocturne was about presenting a Reason to a higher power too. I’m not sure I ever finished that game, but I remember that much.