• Epic sci-fi fantasy adventure with over 50 hours of gameplay

• Devour your enemies and absorb their devastating powers and special abilities

• Strategic battle system as you switch between human and demon to take advantage of your opponents' weaknesses

• Customize and develop your characters using the unique Mantra Flow system

• All-new Break system allows you to protect you from an enemies attack and even reflect it back at them

This opening also introduces you to a style that just won't quit. Eerie landscapes and one of the, if not THE best example of Cell shaded Graphics seen thus far.

Things pick up right away when a mysterious structure explodes amidst this skirmish, and everyone starts having violent spasms and begin turning into monsters. You know this takes a more supernatual seat as Your main character, Serphs Monoscope begins reading the words "EAT THEM ALL" All across the screen.

The Battle system is Turn based, with an emphasis on exploiting the weakness of your enemies. This can grant your team extra actions during its turn, but you'd best be wary. The same applies for the enemy. This adds a level of depth to combat that can make or break a good team. You won't get away with simply button mashing here.
The Bosses are also some of the harder ones seen in a Role playing game. Things can heat up quickly, so you always need to watch out for potential weakness while covering your own.

The Music is very fitting for the Indian influenced theme, but some of the of the tracks are rather short. Still, with the boxed set you manage you'll get the OST, so the tunes will quickly grow on you.

The plot remains fairly simple for the first half of the game, so the buildup doesn't start until the latter half, which leads to a bit of anitclimax while it pauses, waiting for the second installment coming out this August.

In closing, this is an excellent start to what promises to be a satisfying end.

7 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Still top quality  Oct 05, 2006 By A. Griffiths "Adrian"
I'm going to try and aim this review at both people who have and haven't played this games predecessor, Lucifer's Call. (OK, sorry but I live in the UK, so please bear with me when I refer to it under this name rather than the US title of "Nocturne..!). If you have played that game you are pretty much completely clued up in regards to what to expect...I'll get on to the differences later. If you haven't played Lucifer's Call...my advice is to play that first. Although the stories aren't connected in any way, I simply think LC is the better of the two. And it will get you used to all the customs and mythology that the Shin Megami Tensei series seems to be built around.

In Digital Devil Saga you are Serph, leader of a small band of rogues who live in a post-apocalyptic world of constantly warring "tribes" who exist and fight according to strict codes and rules of allegiance. As is customary in RPGs, a world-changing event is about to happen that throws all the tribes into turnoil, and in this game it is the sudden appearance of a black haired girl called Sera (which causes a sensation because nobody in the world has ever had black hair before), who every tribe suddenly wants to kidnap after hearing that, for some mysterious reason, she alone can unlock a forbidden (or formerly unreachable) place known only as Nirvana.

Anyway, enough of the plot. It becomes clear early on that the player is in for traditional turn based battles, and I'm glad to say the superior "press turns" system from Lucifers Call (in which you gain extra battle turns by knowing which attacks best exploit your enemies weaknesses - and likewise, the enemies also do the same with your weaknesses) is still in effect. What's different from most RPGs is that everybody in this world has a demon "alter ego" and for every battle, you will see your characters with a completely different physical appearance, usually with lots of teeth, spikes and claws. This kind of de-personalised the battles for me as it was visually just a load of monsters against monsters, but story-wise it does have some importance. Apart from that, you'll find yourself in pretty linear territory and with little room for deviation with regard to where you go after finishing each dungeon, and what you do next. What struck me most on playing was the surprisingly small scale of the game as a whole. There are only five tribes in this world, so I expected lots of twists in the story, but once the enemy tribe leaders are all thwarted in their efforts to seize Sera from you, the game is all but over, and you only have one other thing left to do, which is to take her with you and see what this so-called Nirvana is really about. Now there's a very obvious reason for this brevitiy, but it's not a very encouraging one - the game is designed very specifically to be Part One of a two game series. So if you choose to buy it, be prepared for much of the plot to be unresolved at the end, and to have to go and get Part Two to finish the story. Knowing this, I kind of expected a mammoth storyline that simply went on and on, but in reality, I think DDS1 only has about half the gameplay time of some other one disc games out there anyway, so the need to sell it in two parts seemed a bit greedy to me. It was definitely over sooner than I expected.

Now onto the next drawbacks, but these ones will only really hit gamers who played and enjoyed Lucifers Call (that's me, then). The demon recruitment system, which let you add any monster you met in battle to your own team of playable characters, is gone, which means no more fantastic variety of team members to play with. The monsters you fight agaisnt are all familiar faces from that game though, so expect to encounter those pesky physical-immune elephants (Girimehkala), and the death spell-happy goat demons (Baphomet), as well as several new faces. But on your side of things, Digital Devil Saga has a mere five members, which is low among RPGs anyway, and compared to Lucifer's Call, it seems very tame.

All the battle skills and spells still exist, along with the same unidentifiable names (Tenterafoo? Pulpina? Me Patra?), but to obtain the really good ones is much, MUCH harder work now, simply because they have to be paid for with money, and the top of the range spells like Debilitate, Dekunda, Megidolaon etc, cost massive amounts of cash, and you still have to buy and work through all the spells on the pathway to the top end (the skills are only for sale in a pre-set order, the weakest must be learned first before each next level becomes available).
Now I know in most RPGs this is the norm, and I don't mind some serious levelling up to unlock the best skills. But here, every single top skill comes at the very end of all the other skill sets, and you will most likely reach the end of the game with several pathways nowhere near finished - unless you do nothing but grind away so that all the required experience and cash gets earned. Of course, the idea is to extend replay value...I realised this as soon as I read on the web that the "clear game" mode starts you off on a replay with all mastered skill still saved, so after two or maybe even three playthroughs, you might just have learned all the really good skills that there are...phew! Sorry but that's not for me. And not even after seeing that many of my favourite basic safety support abilities like Null Death and Null Expel come way up at the top of the list. Actually, that in itself makes the game much harder that Lucifer's Call, as you have to do a lot of battling against enemies who cast all those mean spells like Hama and Mudo before you'll ever reach the abilities that protect you from them. Ok, you do get spells that cast shields against these attacks, but I wanted the permanent immunities!

This leads me to my other gripe - this being that with all 5 characters, the shopping list of skills is the same for everybody. One giant grid (a lot like the sphere grid in Final Fantasy X) shows you which paths lead to which skills. So individual character has little to do with how you deploy the skills of your team, you can make anyone into anything. Although the five characters do come pre-loaded with a definite slant (Argilla will always be the best magic caster and Heat the strongest physical attacker, etc), it's nothing like the array of abilities that the "cast of thousands" in Lucifer's Call had, giving you there the huge scope for a custom team with some real personality in it. I was very proud of my final, boss-beating line up in Lucifer's Call, but in this game everyone's going to be exactly the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning, just with more HP and improved spells. OK, I know thats the case in most RPGs...it just goes to show how memorable Lucifer's Call really was. I'll tell you one major improvement though: you no longer have to permanently delete skills to learn new ones - hooray!

The look of the game, however is wonderful. A step up from Lucifer's Call, but still with the same anime style, except that now the graphics are even better. Thankfully they have improved on the drab locations that seemd to be repeated to infinity in that game, and some of the dungeons are now quite stunning - although they still repeat interiors over and over again for all the rooms and chambers in each dungeon! And now the characters finally have spoken dialogue. This is great, and it makes them all seem really alive, despite a very dodgy "Jamaican" accent given to one of them.

So in summary, a shorter game and with sadly less innovations than Lucifer's Call. But it looks better and it's definitely still in that league. And it actually has a better story - all the stuff about The Conception and choosing a Reason kind of went over my head last time, I'm sorry to say! So is that enough? I'd say buy Lucifer's Call first and then get this one if you want more. Although you have to buy Part Two as well afterwards...

7 of 8 found the following review helpful:


Great SMT spin-off  Aug 10, 2005 By Stephen J. White "Dragnilar"
Digital Devil Saga takes the gamer through a story that ends on a very open, but extremely promising note. On the way to the end though, the gamer will encounter a plethoria of all the right things to make one become immersed in an inovative yet slightly old fashioned experience.

Borrowing a lot from it's "father" game Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, the game utilizes a similar combat engine, variety of monsters, and graphics engine. The similarities do not stop there though, and one can imeediatily realize how unmistakable this is as a SMT spin-off. In fact, the game even includes some utilities that can be drawn to other RPG series such as Final Fantasy (the mantra system that the game employes to help the characters learn new skills has a slight similarity to FF6's esper system). Taking these already used mechanics, Atlus has intertwined them togother in such a fashion (and mixed in a puzzling but very good storyline)that makes the gamer wanting even more as the credits come to a close. And that is just where it begins, because this game also takes an interesting step by having a direct follow up sequil!

Digital Devil Saga's storyline kicks off in the middle of a war that is taking place in a strange post apopcalyptic version of earth called "The Junkyard". Tribes duke it out in order for one to conquor all the other ones to appease the ruling "Karma Temple", which promises to deliver the victorious tribe to a place called Nirvana. Things take a turn for the weirder though, and questions begin to arise all over the place when two tribes (one of which is the tribe lead by the character you will be playing as) discover a bizzare object that sets off an explosion, releasing a virus that causes everyone in the Junkyard to have the ability to transform into a demon... as well as have an insatiable hunger that must be kept in check.
Yes, the game employes canibalism as a pivitol mechanism, you could say, but it does it in such a fashion that you won't even think twice when it's time to devour a helpless enemy who you've slaved away at.

The music of SMT:DDS is really good. Just as it's "father game" SMT: N, DDS merges forms of fast paced hard rock with techno, creating a wonderful gaming soundtrack. And it is not limited to only that, as there are also well composed soft pieces for the dramatic moments, and a couple vocal tracks to seal the deal. The sound effects are also very well managed, as they all capture the feel of battle, and help with the addictive manner of slicing an enemy in half and reaping the exp/ap awards. And let's not forget about the voice acting, which is a triumph for SMT here, as it helps add much depth to the game.

Another great feature that DDS has is the plethoria of optional bosses you have to conquor, adding more hours to your gameplay. True, these optional bosses probably will not boost it by much (supposidly the average time for covering the whole game is only about 40-50 hours), but it will leave the gamer satisfied much more, especaly after they duke it out with the ultra difficult boss that they can only encounter on their second play through!

In the end, DDS has it all, despite being a little short on game length. It does have enough loose ends though and potential though that allows the gamer to look immensly towards it's sequil, which is shaping up rather well as of this writing (8/9/05).

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