Written 07.10.2008 - Uploaded 07.10.2008
I'm trying to make a habit of reviewing all the games I've played after putting up this site, so here's for trying.
Those who know me are quite aware that I'm a big fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series of games (and by this I mean whatever is put under the title in the US / Europe, be they spin-offs or what not). Because of that I had to eventually check out Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner – Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army. Who could ignore a game with such a cool title anyway? For those unfamiliar with SMT, it's a series developed and published by Atlus, a Japanese game company. The series is best known for demons taken from real mythology that often act as both adversaries and allies in the games. Another thing about these games is their game play which is typically more challenging and interesting than your in average RPG.
Devil Summoner is another spin-off in the series and its main hook is real-time combat, Atlus style of course. In the game, Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th (that's the protagonist's title, not his name) employs demons in a series of occult investigations both on the field and in combat. Of course there is a huge conspiracy involved and the plot has some twists to it but I'm not going to spoil you any further. The game is set in early 20th century Japan (Tokyo more precisely) which makes the atmosphere relatively interesting as this age is quite rarely seen in games of this nature. Overall the age is portrayed well, and the game is actually very impressive graphically – more so than any other SMT game - especially in the coloring department. In the real world, places and people are realistic and dressed according to the age. This leads me to another part about the game I really liked: its characters. While the silent protagonist is just cool-looking, the sidekicks are most interesting, curiously enough because they are like normal people. I see this as highly refreshing because more often than not, characters in games are highly stereotyped and not very credible as people.
While I like the atmosphere and characters, it is most unfortunate that the game entirely lacks a soul. At the beginning, things look promising but as the game progresses, the characters don't grow on you, making them just hollow concepts. They could've been very interesting but fall short of the mark. The problem a typical RPG pitfall: 99% of conversation is all business. No one seems to say more than the bare essentials required to move the plot forward. The plot itself is actually quite okay, although obviously not very seriously thought out. Too bad I lost all interest because nothing felt meaningful after a few hours into the game. The game took me about twenty hours to finish with a few game overs on top and I think I really couldn't have taken much more. I would've loved if it had taken a few hours more though, if that few hours were contributed to story content entirely. Also, in this day and age, I've come to prefer spoken dialog and this game has none of it, which is kinda sad.
As the game obviously fails in storytelling, let's take a look at game mechanics and see if there's saving grace to be found like we had in Lucifer's Call. The battle mechanics are relatively simple: the main character has two weapons: sword and gun which are both pretty simple to use. Most of the time sword is for damage and gun is for halting the enemies or hitting their weaknesses with special bullets. In addition to our hero, he has one demon ally by his side. A demon will have only two actions in addition to standard attack plus a possible combo attack. Basics are simple: hit the enemy's weakness and it freezes for a while, allowing you to hit critically or confine the demon to become your ally. Most of the time, battles in the game are not very challenging. In bosses, picking the right demon is usually enough save for a few more intriguing ones. I liked the final battle in this game by the way, because it was actually rather demanding tactics-wise. Normal encounters on the other hand get quite boring because they are not very threatening and usually quite linear too. The game has good controls and the player is given fair deal of control over his demon ally so it's bit of a shame that there's no need for advanced tactics. Most of the time, it's just attack, attack, attack, keeping the enemies in hit-stun. Dying in this game usually happens only if you get too lazy or run out of healing items. There's also a limit for summoning your demons called Mag which is decreased every time a demon is summoned. It turns out however that you get more than enough Mag from battles and I was never even close to run out of it, so this pretty much flies out of the window.
There's also some field mechanics worth mention, although just barely. From time to time, you'll need field abilities of demons in order to proceed with your investigation. All you really need to do is find a spot where such might be needed, and then, if you can't figure out from relatively obvious clues, try every demon you have. The only times this is problematic is when you don't actually have the demon ability needed. When this happens, you have to go get one but that's about as challenging as these get. Demon fusion is toned down from every other SMT game I've played. Skill inheritance is fixed most of the time, and the only way of getting more flexible inheritance is to use a specific type of demon, which in turn randomizes the inheritance process. There's another type of demon that randomizes the outcome but I never bothered trying to fuse those. There's also forge fusion, which fuses a demon with the hero's sword, making it more powerful. Because the processes are so simple, there's no big difference between fused demons and ones confined from battles.
To summarize, the game is full of wasted potential. It has an inspiring setting which is laid out quite nicely graphically, and promising characters without any depth to them. It has good mechanics that are also wasted because there's no challenge in the game and because it's been simplified a little bit too much. Dunno if the hard difficulty would be more interesting, the game wasn't attractive enough to get me to play it again. It repeats the storytelling mistakes made in Lucifer's Call but in addition has less interesting story, duller game mechanics and most importantly, no soul at all.