So Devil Survivor is a game that i was excited for when I first heard about it. I mean I was a fan of RPGs and this seemed like a more mature RPG. And to some extent it gave that image of what a mature RPG was to me.
So first let's talk about the story. So the first thing that caught my attention when playing the game was the religious references which is appearent when you first start the game. Being a somewhat religious person myself I was a bit skeptical of this game, which is why i stopped watching TV because everytime a show brings up religious referenceses it always turns out that in the end, that religion was wrong and i was so tired of seeing it over and over like it was shoving it's opinions down my throat, This game doesn't do that to my surprise, infact it has a lot of religious references from many different religions, and to see that work in a pokemon type game is pretty interesting. Even though half of the religious references just flew over my head, spicifically when they were talking about the Tower of Babel, which I just don't get. This game may make you want to research some of the things they are talking about, and in my book any game thats educational without being catogorized as such is something special. Another thing that makes this story special is the fact that it's like a choose your own adventure book, yes you can choose what your player avatar says in this story, infact you can more or less choose what your character says in this story, now this is what firmly implaments my interest in this game. It's like JRPGs are finally taking that big step into the innovative realm. Which is good because I am a huge fan of anime and video games. So did it deliver? Yes and a little bit no, what I mean by this is that the game delivers on both the story and the choices it provides to you but a lot of the dialogue options it provides to you leads to the same path as if you were to pick the opposite option but some of the options it provides really does have an impact! Like if every single thing you said were to lead to a different path this game would have like a million different endings which would be a nearly impossible feat, like the writers would have to be kept in dungeons just to comply with this cruel demand lol. But these casual choices that don't have an impact is still a nice touch I mean like they could have just kept it so that you only choose when it matters but they didn't and it makes the whole choice thing feel like you are in control.
So I praised to story quite a bit and i bet now you are seeing where this is going. Yes it's time where I rag on the gameplay! It seems like everytime a video game story is good, the gameplay suffers in some way and in this case it's the battle system. So i'm kind of a fan of the shin megami tensei series which this game is just one of the many spin off titles of the series is, the shin megami tensei battle system, I find at least, is trail and error gameplay. Like, this game does give you the freedom of choice of how you go about these battles this game provides you, but this game is really freaking hard. Not in a challenging way like one of my favorite games Megaman Zero but in a way like you are in a pokemon where your opponent has all Water Type and you have all Fire Type. Like.... I like hard RPGs where you win because you found a clever strategy in this turn based system where you thought this game was all simple untill you found out there was a more clever and strategic way to go about your battles, like maybe you found a way to decrease your oppenents damage so that way you heal more HP than your opponent does damage so that way you are like invincible in this game, or maybe you found a way to kill your opponent in one hit, like your 1-hit kill magic spell only kills your opponent at a 20% hit ratio, maybe you found a way for the spell to hit 100% of the time! In this game and in every Shin Megami Tensei game i've played so far, it's like all about the elemental weakness and resistance meta-game. Your opponent is weak to fire? That is the optimal solution to this battle. Don't worry about thinking outside the box and being clever or creative about going about this battle, just use fire and this battle is going to cause you less stress! You don't even have to alter your opponents stats! Yes! I don't even remember getting one stat altering spell once in this entire game! This game forces you to pick demons based on what elemental weaknesses and restances they have instead of things based on i duno, their design, what moves they can do and even what level they are so! This game doesn't ask you to pick demons based on how much you like them but how worthful they are you, And if someone has to prove their worth to you to be your friend than they aren't actually your friend but if someone just i duno just resonates their personality with you like how I did with my JackFrost monster bit you have to give that away just because he wasn't worth you time and effort to make strong enough than that means you are a superficial person.
Of couse that doesn't mean this is a bad game but the hive mind; mindset is a powerful suggestion.
7/10
At least Pokemon doesn't give your opponent an extra turn when they exploit a weakness and thats sometimes against a real person and we all know how unforgiving a real person is when playing against. And on top of that if you like a Pokemons design you can keep that design, I personally like Quagsire and he's not a top teir Pokemon but i can still have a decent battle against a real person who uses top teir pokemon in that game.
So it all boils down to the gameplay if this was a perfect game it would have gotten 10 out of 10 all around i mean a perfect gameplay with a bad story would be a 9 out of 10 depending on what genre you are interested in, so this Shin Megami Tensei series isn't perfect so it gets a 7 out of 10 i hope you see where i am coming from with this.