Latest / The #Backlog Breakdown / bite sized: shin megami tensei devil survivor 2 record breaker
Transcript
- 0:24Hey loggers. Welcome back to another bite sized episode of the Backlog Breakdown where today I'm going to be reviewing a video game. This is a video game podcast, so let's go ahead and talk about a video game. The video game that I want to talk about here today is Shin Megami tensei devil Survivor 2 record breaker. This is originally. Well, it was originally the original version. This is an updated version for 3ds, hence the record Breaker moniker. But the original Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 2 came out on the DS. So they did a clever little thing. It's a Shin Megami Tensei game, but it's a spinoff. Spin offs are called Devil Survivor which if you, I can't remember, you break that down, you make it shorter. It's Shin Megami Tensei ds. That's right. Because both Devil Survivor games are for, well, at least they were originally for the Nintendo ds. So dual screen Devil Survivor. There you go. That's these games for you. Anyways, this game, I recently just finished it up. It had been on my list for quite a while to play through this game. I've owned it for quite a while and I've played the first game, the first Devil Survivor game. And that is one of my favorite Shin Megami Tensei games for a number of reasons, but reasons that I probably will not be going into here today simply because we are here to review this second game, not necessarily the first game. So Shin Megami tensei devil Survivor 2 Record breaker. What. What exactly is this game? I'm. I'm glad you asked. This game is. It's a tactical rpg. Okay. It's got turn based combat. It's a Shin Megami Tensei game. So you know, you've got your regular demon summoning in there. You've got your team of, of. Of monsters of demons that you're fighting against other ones. You've got bosses coming up, but they, they. It is, it's obviously spin off of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It has some of the classic elements of, like I said, demon summoning, you know, fighting with demons, all that fun stuff. Recruiting demons to your team, fusing them to make stronger ones, and fighting against the powers that be. It also tackles a lot of similar themes that Shin Megami Tensei games do about the destruction of the earth and rebuilding the Earth. And if you were to rebuild the earth from the bottom up, how would you do that and what would your philosophy be for the inhabitants of the Ear Earth? So do you, do you believe that the the strong should rule over the weak. Do you believe in an egalitarian society where everyone should be valued, no matter their their strength or their capabilities? Do you believe that you should be serving a higher power? And which higher power should you be serving? So there's a number of different questions like that that the game kind of gets into some of. Again, the hallmarks of this series of Shin Megami Tensei. What makes this one different is, like I said, it is a tactical rpg. So if you think of something like Fire Emblem where you've got a little grid that you're on and you go and attack other other people. But it does use a version of the press turn battle system that Shin Megami Tensei series has been using since I believe it was Shin Megami Tensei 3. Nocturne was where that one was introduced. But basically, if you hit weaknesses, then you get extra attacks. So if you go attack someone on the field, they get a turn to attack as well. After you do. Well, not even necessarily after, but along the same time you do depending on your agility, stats and things like that. But if you hit weaknesses, you get a high chance of hitting again. And so even though the enemy attacked you, you might be at an advantage to completely destroy them. And. And it allows for lots of different strategies to use throughout the game as you power up, as you have even different kinds of. Not only different kinds of abilities, but also different ways to power up those abilities, especially when you really kind of dig into that. That's a lot of fun. I enjoyed this game quite a bit. So Devil Survivor 2 record breaker, I put in about 40 hours altogether for a single playthrough. There is quite a bit of extra content, there's a new game, plus to the game, all that. There's multiple endings. Again, depending on where you want to go ultimately within the. So there is tons of content throughout this game. That said, I only did a single playthrough and I'd like to talk to you about that playthrough and kind of my impressions of the game. Overall, I enjoyed my time with it. I would put this in the solid 7 category if you were using a 10 star category. This one's. It's a solid game and so let's. Let's get into why. Okay, so first off, we're talking story and characters. The game starts out and the main character and his best friend, they just got out of their college entrance exams and they're going into the subway to get back home. And there's a mysterious app that they heard about, called Nicaea, that you download on your cell phone. And the app is supposed to show you videos of people getting killed. So why you download this thing, I'm not quite sure. Just because you're reckless teenagers. But the thing is, they download app and they see themselves dying in the subway system. So what happens is not actually a death that has already occurred, but a death that is going to occur. And this proceeds to happen. But they've been warned, okay, they're freaked out. They see themselves dying on this video, but they've been warned. And so they're on their guard. And some mysterious things happens and demons show up and. And the subway system is derailed. And all of a sudden everything within Japan just goes cr. People are. People are going crazy. Demons are showing up, killing people. It's absolute chaos. And that is the beginning of the game's plot. And it delves into what happens if there's a major cataclysm, how do people react? So you meet probably about a dozen characters throughout the course of the game, and you see their different reactions to what's going on in the world. There's even some characters that have loved ones that die. There's a character who has an estranged loved one who you can possibly kind of build a relationship with. And they. They might. Some things happen to the different characters. I don't want to go into spoilers, but you see a lot of people rising up while there's this chaos. You see people kind of shrinking into themselves. It's. It's a character. The. The cast of characters is kind of a study in the different approaches that you can take. Even the emotional approaches, I think of one of. Not the main character, obviously you have control over the main character. You can make him into whoever you want somewhat, but one of the kind of close side characters, close friends of his. Even throughout most of the game, he's not very strong in his decision making, in his leadership abilities. And that was kind of striking to me that he didn't have a strong necessarily character arc. You see him leaning on the main character a lot. And it's because of this unprecedented series of events that occurs throughout. Throughout the game. So, you know, there's. There's a lot of themes here of Apocalypse, of. Of what does it mean to. To. To die? What, like what set of morals do you really hold when stuff really hits the fan, right? And. And at what cost are you willing to survive and who should survive and how do you ration what little you have left? Are you trying to Allow everyone to survive or would you rather the strongest who may possibly be able to continue civilization? Should they be the ones who are prioritized during this time? So you see some character development. I would say most of the actual character development because this game takes over the. Takes place over the course of eight days. Most of the development is simply people actually revealing what they truly believe. So there is. So people are generally guarded. Obviously when you first meet them, they don't know. They're not super trusting because of the way that the world is. And they gradually kind of reveal who they truly are. As opposed to kind of your standard character arts and arcs. Excuse me. And character building and things like that. There is a bit of that, but most of it I would say is. Is people just revealing their true intentions and things like that. Like I said earlier, there are various different endings depending on the choices that you make. And that actually goes into. Something I wanted to talk about is. Is the mechanics, the gameplay of the game. So outside of combat, this is pretty much a. What is it called? A visual novel is what it's called. So you're selecting different actions to take. If you think. If you know the. The Persona series, it's similar to that. You have. You have each action that you take takes about 30 minutes unless you do kind of these free battles to just to grind if you'd like to do that. But most actions throughout the game take a set amount of time and they might progress the main story or you might get kind of a side story and build more of a relationship with one of the characters. And you get to choose how to do that depending on the bonds that you build with your different. With the cast of characters, you get kind of railroaded into different decisions. The different characters do different things. You see different videos throughout the course of the game of other characters dying. And so are you going to choose to stay with them through most of the day to defend them so that they don't die? Or are you. Do you really want to get close to your other characters or figure out who this new character is or things like that? These are all choices that you make throughout the course of the game as you move towards the final eight days and make these choices. I talked about earlier, kind of the mechanics of the gameplay, I think this is where the game shines is the battle comp, the battle mechanics of the game, the turn based, excuse me, tactical kind of grid based strategy. I found most of the game. Now I didn't have it on the hardest setting, but I found most of the game to be pretty easy until you get to kind of the final two days or so. And that is when your skills are truly tested. And I actually really liked that kind of progression, if that makes sense, because I did like the testing, because by that time, you have a number of different skills under your belt. And if you min max certain characters, so say you choose a character that you want to have heavy physical skills, well, then you can give them certain skills to allow them to pierce. So even if enemies might be strong against physical, now you can pierce through those barriers and make it really strong. And then, hey, give them an attack that allows you to hit, you know, 10 different times, even if they're weaker hits. Now you're piercing through the defense and hitting 10 times. So you. You really kind of go all in on certain strategies. Make sure that you have a demon in your party. You get. You get three people in your party. You get the leader, which is a human, and then you get two demons at a time. Make sure you have a healer or at least someone in an. In a separate team, because you can have three, up to four teams on most of the battles in the game. Make sure that there's a healer close by, things like that. So I really liked the progression and I really liked the mechanics and the battles of the game. Demon recruitment in this game is simply through auctions, which is not my favorite. It's really just spending money to gain the demons that you want. But there's also a compendium so you can register your demons. If you fuse it to make something better, you can buy back that demon at a high cost from the compendium. You're. You're going to the auction and spending money on gaining new demons so that you can fuse up new ones. There are unique demons that you can only have one of in your entire arsenal. And you can carry over different skills, carry over different abilities and things like that with that kind of somewhat standard Shin Megami Tensei fair. Although it's a. It's a little different, it's a nice little flavor with this one. So the game mechanics, I think, is where this game really shines. I did enjoy the story as well. It does get out there. It does get weird. And I. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the. The human moments as well. Of what do you do, you know, when. When everything goes to chaos in terms of kind of presentation with this game, it is the, you know, anime art style and character designs and things like that. Music, voice acting was good. I felt like the voice actors were generally Good. It wasn't too over the top. It wasn't super serious all the time, like the tone of the game is. But I didn't find it to be distracting or anything along those lines. Performance on the 3Ds I thought was great. No problems there at all, about 40 hours. So I thought it's a good long game, but it's not too long into that 60, 70 hour territory. But again, if you want a new game, plus if you want to get other endings, there's ton to do, there's tons to do. There's tons of content in this, in this package of Record Breaker. Now I do have to mention that this game is only on 3Ds. And so how are you going to play this game? I'm not going to tell you what to do, but unfortunately because the 3ds shop is no longer with us, you know, my recommendation is to pick up a copy. If you're interested in it, pick up a physical copy. I don't know how much they go for though. My physical copy that I purchased, I had gotten it new when it was on sale, you know, way back when, years ago. So I've got a soundtrack that it came with and some stickers or so they call it, some decals of the different characters. So, you know, if you want some anime stickers then that comes with that as well. Again, I'm not going to tell you what to do. I'm sure if you sail the high seas then you can find this game. But unfortunately it is stuck on either the DS for the original version or the 3DS for this record Breaker version. So as we near the end of this review, this overview of this game, again, I have to say that I enjoyed it. Okay. I think its strengths are the story and the characters throughout it. There were some characters. Okay. I could take it or leave it. I did enjoy the fact that towards the end of the game you really have to start abusing the battle system. You know, you really have to start min maxing and you think really closely through. I'll give in an example is that I think some of the final bosses, you have to build a team or two around just beating that boss. So making sure you have skills that hit that boss's weakness and make sure that you have skills that defend against the way that the boss attacks and so you wouldn't win on your first try. You need to know what boss you're up against in order to face them. And I really enjoyed that. I like that challenge and I like overcoming those Challenges. I enjoyed the music as well. I believe it's Shoji Megaro that did this one as well. So. So it's quite good. I think it's a very. I think it's a fun game. I think it's an engaging game. The reason I give it a solid seven, there's two main reasons. Okay. The first reason is because of fan service. Okay. It's an anime aesthetic throughout this game, but there are some female characters that are drawn in such a way to accentuate different parts of their body. Okay. Think you know what I'm talking about. And for. For some of the game, I thought, okay, I don't like it, but okay, it's just a design decision, whatever. Until you get to a particular scene in the game where the characters are all. They all have to have physicals. And there's an entire scene of the guys in the game kind of eavesdropping on the women getting their physicals. And then the women proceed to discuss the results of their physicals. And it just. It felt pervy. And I. I don't like that. Again, it's. It's kind of. I get, oh, it's a little funny, you know, it's a funny little thing. And, you know, they're just perverts, whatever. And they're teenagers. Okay, whatever. But it's kind of the end of the world, dude. Like, it. It felt. It felt out of place. It was pointless. I say pointless. The only thing that I walked away from that, that actually affected the rest of the game is one of the characters in her insecurity. I'll put it that way. It kind of accentuated her insecurity about, in this case, her physical body, but it considered it. It continued throughout the rest of the game for. For who she was as a character. Okay. But outside of that, there really wasn't any point, and I didn't like it. So the fan service. Not a fan of it in this game. So in addition to that, I think what this game does well, it does really well. But I think this is my problem with it is that I think the first game actually does most everything better. I enjoyed the first game more and I haven't played it in years, so maybe I should go back and play that one. But I like the story more. I did enjoy most of the characters more. I liked where the story went and how the antagonist kind of revealed himself and what was behind all that in the first game more, even though the mechanics were largely similar. So while I did really enjoy this game, I would just recommend finding the first game and playing the first one. Devil Survivor on DS or Devil Survivor overclocked on 3DS. So I give it a solid 7. I had a good time with it and I hope you enjoyed this little, this little review that we have on the bite size this week. So till next time, loggers, keep eating down your backlogs and we'll keep breaking down the benefits.