Written 16.10.2008 - Uploaded 16.10.2008
In addition to writing reviews of games I'll play in the future, I am also going to write redesigns of them. Here is my first attempt. These are written in train of thought fashion and not coherently and thoroughly like I would write a serious game design. These redesigns are more like thought plays on toys brought forth by others, and aim to keep the game sincere to its original concept and spirit.
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The redesign presented here aims at making Devil Summoner - Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army more like an adventurous detective game and role-playing game hybrid instead of as it now is an RPG with some adventurous detective flavor. If you haven't read my review of the game yet, it might be a good idea to do so as I go through the basic problems in the game there. In this redesign I'm relatively reluctant to touch the combat system itself although it could use some fixes as well.
First and foremost, the game should make better use of demons' field abilities as this is clearly one of its strong points when compared to other games in the Shin Megami Tensei brand. This calls for some chances in both problem and level design. Since we are going to turn it into a detective game, the player should be given more options to situations. As the game stands now, there is always only one solution to a given situation and even situations where demons can be used for advantage have been made obvious. First: conversations. When gathering clues from people, the player should be allowed to use various approaches when facing reluctant informants. Instead of just having to find the correct demon and use its ability, a typical questioning should be longer with the player trying to pick up hints about how to proceed next. Demons could be changed during conversations to answer to changing situations and there should always be more than one way to get the answer but various routes taken take various time. This would make a typical conversation with reluctant informants a good deal longer but it would be in the spirit of the game and absolutely not a bad thing at all.
If we take a closer look at how this system might turn out, I'd picture it like this: in conversations the player is always given various options as is typical in games of this nature and of course every one of them leads the conversation forward. The last option on the list would always be “Use demon” which would open a demon selection box. Once a demon is chosen it might change or add conversation options to make use of the demon's ability. For example, the player might use a fire demon's Ignite ability and then the option “Provoke” would appear. Selecting that would make the subject lose his temper and possibly slip something he shouldn't have. In the silent protagonist spirit, conversation options could be simple approaches instead of actual lines like Casual, Provoke, Flirt, Ask about X etc. You get the idea, especially since it's definitely not new. One important demon ability would also be added: Mind Wipe. With this, a person can be made to forget he had a conversation with Raidou. This can be used if things go bad and the person is pissed off at Raidou, becoming uncooperative. By making him forget, Raidou can attempt again from a fresh start.
In order to add more legwork-feeling to the detective business, the amount of useful NPCs should be increased. The player should be able to try to get information from anyone, and small hints or guesses (even misleading ones!) could be gathered from all around instead of just the few key informants. In order to make running around towns more comfortable, random encounters in real world should be entirely removed. This way the player could walk around freely and enjoy the game's great atmosphere and talking to people. By putting more effort into writing dialog this could greatly add to the game's detective feeling.
As a final note about dialog, it would definitely work for the atmosphere to make important to bring Raidou's boss, Tae and a few other NPCs to life. As the conversation system is already modified, the player could pry more into their lives by asking casual questions to get a better feel of these people. This way by leaving this optional it would also not annoy the player who is not interested in ordinary people drama, although I would add more casual conversation to cut-scenes seen between episodes of the game. Casual talk always prevails and writing it is not that much of an effort either if relationships between the key characters have already been thought through during game design. The Persona series also clearly shows that Atlus is more than capable of this.
Changing the conversation system and removing random encounters is the biggest difference to be made in the real world. How about the Dark Realm? Random encounters should be kept here of course, naturally because the player needs to train and capture demons somehow. Biggest change here that I would make is level design. Keeping the dark versions in the image of real world districts is all good but more warping could be included. Actually, first of all, let's remove those silly dragon's teeth blocks and create multiple ways to move around the level using abilities of various demons. This way it would be up to the player how to complete a level instead of having a set way to do it. Routes that rely greatly on demons would of course be quickest in order to motivate the player to actually get demons, and of course all kinds of goodies could be gathered by sending demons out, way more than in the game as of now. This is however slightly problematic given the current level design as the maps are rather small and do not have much space for creating alternative routes and what not. In order to do this, I would open up new areas that are unreachable in the real world like roofs of buildings and perhaps more alleys that could be under construction in the real world but accessible in the demon world. Something like that.
As one might predict, introducing these changes makes dark districts effectively larger and they would possibly take longer to explore. I would actually like to make most of the exploration optional: if the player only wishes to quickly find what he is looking for (i.e. what the plot demands), he can do that, but exploring comes with benefits. Also by making it more interesting by relying more on demon abilities I'm positive that the player can be motivated to do so. Also because random encounters have been removed from the real world, spending more time on the Dark Realm doesn't hurt the game because the amount of fighting would most probably still be smaller. Furthermore, in the game the player will need to capture demons and now he has to venture to the Dark Realm in order to do so. This could also be made more motivating by introducing rare demons that live in specific locations (hints could be gathered from Dark Realm demons just like hints from normal people in the real world). Making all Dark Realms available right away could also be a good idea to support this exploration spirit now included in the game.
With these changes I already feel the game would be much more enjoyable both in the real world and the Dark Realm, especially since these two now actually differ quite a bit, the real world being a relaxed place where the player can take his time doing detective work and even hanging out with his friends. As can be seen, most of the changes introduced are made to either content or level design, so we haven't touched actual game mechanics yet. I'm not actually going to touch that stuff too much, as the game does fairly well in this area, like Atlus games always seem to do. With some minor changes we can still do a bit better.
The demon system in the game is a little too simplified and having only two active abilities per demon is kind of dull. Especially since most buffs are quite useless in the game because the demons use them in all the wrong situations under AI control, and, well they aren't that strong either. Of course the game kind of explains this two abilities system by its controls, but it feels more like an excuse. Because Atlus has already developed a better system in most of its SMT games, let's just use that and give the demons eight general ability slots, with one to three starting skills and a list of skills that they can learn. Skill inheritance could be done better though, everyone hates the randomness as it leads to long sessions of reselecting the fusion and hoping for the right skill combination to inherit. However, as this is something that could be redesigned in several SMT games, I'll actually leave it to another day. Changing the fusion system will also give more value to it, because the way the game stands right now, it's almost the same whether you capture a demon or fuse one.
We're almost done with the redesign. Let us visit the battle system shortly and then look at the whole. As it stands now, the battle system is actually pretty good and once we have more interesting demons as a result of the fusion change, even more so. So actually what we're going to visit is encounter design. As is usual in games of the SMT-brand, the mix of enemies affects encounter difficulty greatly and such is true in this game as well: if there are enemies of multiple elements, it is hard to protect your demon from attacks against its weakness. Since this is a good thing, the encounter design could capitalize it more although not too often as this would make the battles too long too frequently, leading to frustration. Where this should be especially seen is boss fights as most of them are too simplistic. The final boss is a prime example of how interesting the system can get, with the player summoning various demons back and forth. Actually, since the game has the Mag-limit for summoning demons, it'd be nice to see more battles where changing and re-summoning demons is almost necessary. This can of course be done by re-examining mixes of enemies and their overall difficulty, and the latter will definitely change once a higher difficulty is picked.
For what it's worth, a command “Attack with me” could be added. With this, the demon would always attack simultaneously with Raidou, if able, whenever the player presses an attack button. This would have its uses in some battles in the game, and gives the last bit of control needed over the AI.
Looking back at the whole now, the game will most likely be longer but also more interesting to the player. It still retains its original strengths, the basic concept, battle system and plot but the detective side of the game has been brought into focus instead of the battle system. There is now a stronger contrast between the real world and the Dark Realm, and the exploration of the latter is now more up to the player but will of course be advantageous if explored. Encounters should be more entertaining and especially boss battles would require more advanced tactics where demons are switched more often. This concludes my vision of how Devil Summoner - Raidou Kuzunoha vs The Soulless Army could be a better game.