As an rpg fan you have to have a special love for Atlus U.S.A. There aren't many gaming publishers that are willing to bring out and port over Japanese rpgs anymore unless those rpgs have mainstream appeal to the gaming masses out there like the Final Fantasy games. With the high cost of developing, translating, and porting games over to North America, small niche rpg games tend to get over look a lot even if they are consider to be highly rated because in this day and age, it's all about sales and profits on whether or not a game will sell good in North America since the rpg genre isn't as popular as it is in Japan. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner is one of those rpg game that is consider to be very niche, appealing only to the very small core rpg fans out there. Thankfully Atlus U.S.A was willing to take the risk and bring this game over to the North American market in 2006. However being a small niche rpg game doesn't always translate to being a good rpg game or an under rated rpg game. After completing this game, we can understand why this game might have been better off left in Japan as you aren't missing much from not playing this game.
STORY
Beware of the Soulless Army
"I shall destroy Japan!"
After completing your trial to be a devil summoner as Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th, you are assigned the task of defending modern Japan in the early 1930s from invading evil spirits and demons along with a cat sidekick by the name of Gouto. To help you set up a base of operation in defense against evil demons in Japan, the Kuzunoha Clan has set you up as a detective working for a detective agency run by Shouhei Narumi. Your first assignment as a detective is to meet up with a girl who is requesting the help of the detective agency for some unknown reason. Never missing an opportunity to gain a new client, your boss, Narumi, and you decides to meet up with the girl, Kaya Daidouji, at the Ushigome Gaeri Bridge in the late evening. Upon meeting up with Kaya, she explain to Narumi that she has a demon growing inside of her and wishes to hire the detective agency to help kill her. Stun by this revelation and before Narumi can ask Kaya why she thinks there's a demon growing inside of her, you are suddenly attacked by a group of men in red military outfit wearing capes. As you desperately try to fend off one group of red military men, Kaya was kidnapped by another group and hauled off to an unknown location. Sensing a mysterious case that needs to be solved, Narumi orders you to start the investigation of finding the girl and the mysterious red military men in hopes learning more on what is going on. What Narumi doesn't realize is that once the investigation begins, it soon leads to deeper events that involve a plot of military conquest of the world and the Soulless Army.
Now for the overall story, it's not a very interesting one and it borderline on just plain boring. The problems with the story are that it's too short, lack detail developments of plotlines, uninteresting characters, and borderline on silly elements that it's not too believable. This is pretty much a condense short story that they try to make it as short as possible without going into many key details on the actual plots that comes up during the story. There are just no exciting moments in the story at all. You spend most of the time going from places to places doing various small jobs to get leads on where Kaya is. Each time you get a lead on where Kaya is, you have to fight a mini boss to get more clues on the next lead. As you get deeper into the story and learn who is behind the kidnapping of Kaya, the story redirect into a plot of an evil demon grown from the hatred of humans in Japan. Gee, a villain or monster grown from the hate that people have developed over the years. Not exactly an original plot right there if you've played rpgs before since you pretty much seen this kind of plot before. And by the end of the story you end up fighting a giant size transforming ship robot which even for 1930's modern Japan, a giant size transforming robot and flying into space to invade a satellite make little sense. There's just no emotion in the story that make it exciting at all. It's just a poorly develop average story.
Score 6/10
CHARACTERS
Raidou Kuzunoha The 14th!
There's not much to say about the characters since the game only offers one main character with a couple of supporting characters. You play as Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th, the main hero and devil summoner in this story. The two supporting characters helping you out is your sidekick cat, Gouto and your detective boss, Shouhei Narumi. As Raidou, the main hero, you don't really talk at all or get involve in the story conversation. There's no background development toward your character at all outside of the initial opening trial of you becoming a devil summoner. Gouto does most of the talking in this story but the story doesn't go into any details as to where Gouto is from and who he really is outside of being a talking cat. Narumi is the second character in the game outside of Gouto that has the most scene time but he really doesn't get involve in the story much until near the end. For most of the game he only serves as your boss that you report your detective work and progress of your investigation. You get a little bit of a background development on him toward the end of the game but it's more or less a mention of what he did before he founded the detective agency than anything really deep in terms of character development. Other minor supporting characters include reporter Tae and the mysterious dark summoner Rasputin who serve as an enemy boss in the story. Overall none of the game characters have any real appealing aspect to them that can draw you in. You can't really connect to the characters because the game doesn't really go into any details in developing them and all of their personalities are just plain bland to annoying for you to like them. This game doesn't have any voice over or acting and it actually hurt this game a lot. One of the most average cast of characters in an rpg game around.
Score: 5/10
GRAPHICS
Modern Japan in 1920's
Sadly for this game graphics, it looks very outdated even by Playstation 2 standard. Truth be told this game look more like an early Playstation 2 game than a mid era Playstation 2 game. What the game does right is the background environments. You notice this right away as you travel through the various cities in Japan. The game rendered the early 1930s of modern Japan nicely with exact details of buildings, streetcars, alleyways, and the various people walking around between the streets. You actually get the sense and feel of how actual modern Japan is just from sightseeing the background environments. So visually the modern cities of Japan are impressive. Another good thing that the game graphics does right is the design of the demons. Each of the demons is design uniquely with some nice details to them. This is impressive because there are over 50 different types of demons in this game and each of them looks different from each other. The game doesn't just reuse the same render models over again for each type of demons like some other game which is why it's impressive that they design each demons differently. So background environments and demon designs are what the game does right in terms of graphics. What the game does wrong is the character designs and the CG movies. Unfortunately for this game, character models are weak in details despite being done in a 3D render form. Sure you have the 3D form of each character models but outside of that, the characters themselves lack the details needed to make them look more realistic. This is especially noticeable as you get a close up of their faces during some cut scenes. You have outlines of their eyes, noses, and mouth but that's it. In fact the character models look more like wooden figures than actual realistic 3D models. This also translates to the CG scenes in the game. The game does offer quite a few CG scenes but visually they aren't impressive which is surprising. In most cases it's the CG scenes that are always impressive but here things are different because the CG themselves also lack details and are too soft visually. It would have been better if they had sharpen the CG scenes a bit more and just like with the character models in the gameplay, the CG character models also lack details and look very much like wooden figures than realistic 3D render CG models.
Visually the entire game looks dull and boring.
Score: 6/10
MUSIC
"What's this cheesy detective music?"
I have to say the weakest part of the game is the game soundtrack. The soundtrack for this game borderline to none existent to annoying. While it's true there are over 20 different musical scores in this game, you just don't notice anything at all. In fact when playing the game, the game feels dead silent to the point where you can't hear or notice the music at all even if it's there playing in the background. That's how unimpressive the musical scores are in this game. There is one musical score that keeps playing over and over that you will notice in this game and it's the main theme score. Unfortunately the main theme sound like outdated early 1930s music. I guess the main theme score is just right for the setting and date that the game takes place in but it just sound very cheesy and annoying the more you hear it. Between being annoyed with the main theme and not noticing any other music at all when playing this game, the game musical soundtrack just fall flat. In fact for most of the game, you fill like this is a silent game that doesn't have any music and sound.
Score: 4/10
GAMEPLAY
"Destroy the Shikimi no Kage, demon."
"Get in my tube, you big snake!"
Game Information
Genre: Traditional RPG
Publisher: Atlus
Disc: 1 DVD Disc
Memory: 99 KB
Players: 1 Player Mode
Digital Control: Yes
Analog Control: Yes
Vibration Function: Yes
Rating: Mature
Release: October 2006
The game may look like a traditional rpg game but it's really an action rpg game base in modern times instead of the usual fantasy world that most Japanese rpgs are base on. This game is pretty much base on just following the story mode and exploring various different Japanese cities instead of the usual dungeons. The game does have some dungeons but not many since everything pretty much takes place in the cities and the dark version of them. The concept of the game is broken into the human world and the dark realm where demons reside in. Basically the dark realm is an alternate version of the human world but in a different dimension. The main concept of the gameplay is divided into using your sword to fight and summoning your demons to help on different situations including battles. The capital city of Tsukudo-Cho will be your main base of operations. You'll find the Detective Agency, Konnou-Ya Shop, and Gouma-Den only in this city. So for your saving needs, shopping needs, and demons fusion needs, you will always need to head back to the capital city regardless if you are in another city or not because no other city will have shops or save point available. Traveling around the capital city and other cities will be done in a semi 3D environment base on the streets and alleyways of the city. The camera angle will switch to different view each time you turn around toward another block of the streets. And like with any modern city, there will be different civilians walking around and hanging around the streets. The important thing to note here is that in this game, the cities themselves act like dungeons so you will be encountering a lot of random battles in them. When you leave a city, you will enter the world map screen which is basically a map of Japan and the various different locations of cities and neighborhoods within Japan connected by streetcar roads. When traveling to a different city, you will need to take a streetcar which will just ride you to that city. The progression of the story is pretty simple. You gather at the Detective Agency to discuss the case with Narumi, your boss. From there your boss or Gouto, your cat sidekick, will decide where to go next to find more clues on the case you are working on. Once it's decided on where you need to go to investigate next, just head out of the capital city and take the streetcar to the location of your investigate. Sometimes in order for you to progress in your investigation, you may need to call forth a demon and use that demon particular investigation skill to help gain access to further clues. Other times the story event may require you to head to the Nameless Shrine to access the Dark Realm version of that city to do further exploring and to face down the boss. Before heading over to the Dark Realm you should always stop by the Konnou-Ya Shop to load up on supplies. You also might want to head into the Gouma-Den to do some fusion to create some new demons or do some confining to get new demons to ensure you have the right level demons and their skills for whatever problems that may lie ahead in the Dark Realm. To sum it up again, gather at the Detective Agency, head over to what city you need to go to investigate your case, and then head over the Dark Realm version of that city to fight the boss to end the story chapter. Than repeat the whole process again in the next story chapter. It's very linear in terms of the game story progression as there's not much else to do besides following the story mode gameplay. Now for the battle system, this game uses an action rpg gameplay with random encounter battles. Be warn that the encounter rate for this game is very high so at times you might get into battles every 3 steps that you take. The good news is that the escape rate in this game from battles is nearly at a close 99% success of the time. Once you get into battle, the game switches into a semi 3D battlefield that you can move around in. From here you attack enemy demons with your sword or katana. If your demon isn't out yet, you can summon any demon that you wish to help assist you in the battle. The demon will act on it's own on using what skills and magic is has or you can direct what you want the demon to do or concentrate on doing the most from the battle menu. You can have only 1 demon at a time in battle with you but you can recall and resummon any demon you want from your tubes. This is a simple hack & slash sword game using only 3 moves for the attack button. You have the basic 3 attack combo where you just need to press the attack button 3 times in a row, a charging swing attack where you hold down the attack button, and finally a lunging sword attack. In between using your sword, you can take out your gun and shoot at demons with your bullets with the triangle button. Gun attacks don't do as much damage as regular sword attacks but they do stun demons. Stunning demons will allow you time to recover or readjust your strategies. The damage of gun attacks is also base on the bullets used. There are many different variations of bullets including elemental bullets. This is important because in order for you to stun a demon into a weaken state, you need to attack that demon with an element that it is weak against. You can do this by having your demon use an elemental attack on the enemy demon but incase where you don't have a demon with that particular element, you can then use your gun with the right elemental bullets to stun a demon into weaken state. Putting a demon into weaken state is very important because it is the only way to confine and capture demons into your tube. You can only confine demons that are at the same level or lower than Raidou. Once a demon has been confine, you can than summon it as your ally anytime you want. Of course another way of gaining new demons is by fusing any 2 of your current demons into a new demon at the Gouma-Den. Just like with the restriction on confining, you can only gain new demons from fusion that are at the same level or lower than Raidou. So the battle system is basically killing demons with your sword while summoning your own demons to help you fight with confining any new high level demons that you wish. As a gamer you won't need to worry about the learning curve for this game at all. Just follow the game along with it's basic in-game tutorial at the beginning of the game and everything should be okay. There aren't any big unique features in this game that stands out beside the demon fusion aspect of the game but we will go over some features to give you a better overall feel of the gameplay.
Detective Agency: Your base of operations is the Detective Agency. Here you can save your game, look through your files to get a summary of past events and chapters, and of course talk to Narumi to get clues on where to go next and what to do next. It's most important usage is the ability to save your game since it's the only place to do it whenever there is no save point around. Konnou-Ya Shop: The Konnou-Ya is the only shop available in this game period. But it is enough for all your buying needs since this game is pretty small in terms of world exploration. The amount of items available to buy will be limited at first but the more you buy, the higher your customer ranking will get. And of course gaining a high customer rank means more items will be made available for purchase in the shop. Gouma-Den: This is the only place where you can perform various different types of fusions on your demons. Performing fusions will also come at a cost of MAG. You can also register your demons here so that any demons that have been lost during fusion can be recall back to life. This comes with a price of course. Shin-Sekai Soda Joint: This special Soda Joint shop will allow you to trade in any extra demons for MAG incase you are short on MAG and gaining MAG from battles isn't sufficient enough. You can also buy various different sodas and drink them to gain special battle effects for a limited amount of time to help make battles more easier. Nameless Shrine: Whenever you need to visit the Dark Realm to progress your game or need to rank up as a Devil Summoner, you'll need to visit the Nameless Shrine and talk to the Herald of Yatagarasu. Gaining a rank as a Devil Summoner will allow you to not only gain a new title but more tubes to carry for your demons. MAG: MAG is the currency used to pay for your demons usage. In other words, summoning your demons to help you in this game isn't free. You need to pay them for their services and you do that by paying them MAG. You gain MAG from battle or at the Soda Shop. You have to watch your spending on MAG because if you run out of MAG at a bad time, it means you can't call forth any demons to help you. The cost of asking each demon to help you will vary from demon to demon base on their level. Shikimi no Kage: Shikimi no Kage is an elemental barrier that will block your path from further progress in certain field or dungeons. In order to destroy a Shikimi no Kage barrier, you'll need to summon a demon on hand and enter a battle with the Shikimi no Kage. You must attack the Shikimi no Kage with the exact elemental magic attack the Shikimi no Kage correspond to or else the Shikimi no Kage takes no damage at all. For example, if a fire Shikimi no Kage is blocking your way, you need to summon a demon with fire magic attacks in order to successfully defeat the Shikimi no Kage. Gunplay: Your secondary weapon in this game next to your sword is your gun. Using gunplay doesn't have the amount of damage a sword will do but it does have a stun effect that a sword doesn't have. In addition to a stun effect, you can load your guns with numerous different types of elemental bullets so you can exploit a demon elemental weakness. Ideally a gun attack is the best way to set up and stun a demon so you can confine it. Confinement: Confinement is the process of capturing a demon into your tube so you can than summon it in battles or on the field as a helpful ally. You can only confine demons that are on equal or lower level than Raidou. In order to confine a demon you need to stun it with an elemental attack that it is weak against. You can do this by using a gun attack with the right kind of elemental bullets. While the demon is stun in weaken state, just hit the confine button repeated till you are able to confine it. The number of demons you can confine depends on the number of demon tubes that Raidou has on him. Investigation Skills: Every demon in the game belong to a type of class. This is important because each type of demon class has their own unique special investigation skill that they can use to gain access to certain areas or gain information from average citizens on more clues to your investigation. Investigation skills are active and available only during field or city exploration and not in combat. An example of an investigation skill is Read Mind where Raidou can summon a Pagan class demon to read the mind of an individual to see if he or she has further clues that will help him in his investigation. Combination Skills: Every demon in this game has a combination skill that work with Raidou for battle usage doing massive offensive damage or defensive protection. A demon will learn their combination skill upon leveling up. Once the morale of the demon reaches max during battles, Raidou and the demon can perform the special combo skill move at the target that you desire . Fusion: There are 3 types of fusions that you can do in this game for your demons and they are Binary, Forge, and Sacrifice. Binary is the normal fusion between 2 demons in creating one new demon. The results of Binary fusion will vary depending on the demons used. At times you will gain a new higher level demon that may inherit the skills and traits from the 2 demons that were used for fusion. Forge is the result of fusing a demon into your katana sword. By forging a demon to your katana, you are than killing it so that your sword will inherit the attributes and stats of your demon. This is a good way in powering up Raidou attack power through his sword. Sacrifice work in the same way as Forge but instead of killing a demon to fuse onto your sword, you are killing that demon so it can be fused into another demon to boost that demon attributes and stats. It work like Binary fusion but instead of creating a new demon between 2 demons, you are just boosting one demon stats by merging another demon into it.
Devil Summoner gameplay isn't bad in a sense that it's frustrating or complicated to get into. It's quite the opposite being too simple and basic in terms of an action rpg game. For beginners this is a great game to get into if you want to try out an action rpg game for the first time. But for those that have been playing rpgs for awhile now, you are going to find yourself a bit disappointed and wanting more than a one button gameplay system. That's all it is really, just pressing your sword button over and over again, whether it's in a combo sequence or in a lunging attack. Oh you might switch it up a bit now and then to use your gun to shoot at the demons to stun them so you can confine them but for 90% of the game it's really just swinging your sword wildly. And that's enough to get the job done because battles or fights are very easy in this game. The only unique element in the gameplay is the introduction of confining demons and fusing them to create different demons. The fun of fusing demons tend to wear off pretty quick and in a sense since the game is so easy, it's not really needed to fuse demons together since you can basically capture 90% of the demon out there. You only want to fuse demons together if you are looking to try and combine abilities and special skills of 2 demons together. But that's more of an optional thing than a needed thing to do in the game. It doesn't help that the game is so linear that there's not much to do but to follow the game along with the storyline. This isn't like the typical rpg game where you can explore a world out there traveling to different places and various dungeons. Sure you can travel to different cities but all the cities are fairly small and offer nothing. You can't even shop or save in a different city as you always have to go back to the city where the detective agency is in order to save or shop. The gameplay is so simple that there's no variety. After awhile of playing this game, you are going to get bored a bit and start to lose a bit of focus on the game once you get tired of doing the same attack button smashing for each battles and going back and forth between the cities. So the best way to put it is that the gameplay just doesn't offer enough to really keep your attention going when playing this game. You can probably finish this game within a 25 hours range if you don't want to spend a lot of time fusing and capturing different demons. 25 hours gameplay isn't enough for an rpg game.
Score: 7/10
EXTRAS/REPLAY
"Alice needs to die fast!"
For in-game extras the game offers the Training Halls and a couple of minor side quests that you need to do in order to get a couple of rare demons for fusion creation in the Gouma-Den. Getting the demon, Alice, doesn't take long at all or very hard. It just requires you to be at a high level in order to activate the quest. Getting the best demon in the game, Beelzebub, will require you to travel down to the bottom of the Training Hall at the Nameless Shrine. The game offers you 5 different Training Halls for you to access as extra mini dungeons. The North, South, East, and West Training Halls only consist of 1 floor and every floor is similar and short. Each floor basically has items that you can ransack for extra items and nothing more which is kind of disappointment. It can probably take you less than 5 minutes to complete each of the 4 Training Halls so it's not the kind of extra dungeons to get excited for. The main larger Training Hall is the one located at the Nameless Shrine. This Training Hall consists of 10 floors that you need to climb down to. Certain floors will only be available base on the story chapters that you have cleared out. Reaching the bottom on this Training Hall will allow you to fight an extra demon boss name Beelzebub. Once you defeat Beelzebub, you can create him in fusion. Despite the fact that Beelzebub being an extra boss fight, he's really not worth much of a challenge at all. In fact none of the Training Halls and side quests offer any challenge at all nor do they add much extra gameplay time since they are so easy to complete. This is very disappointing for in-game extras as it seem like the game developers hardly put much effort in providing extra materials for the game.
For replay value the game does offer a New Game+ mode and a Hard mode to play after completing the first game. In New Game+ you do start over at level 1 but your ranking, demon charts, and shop rank get carry over. The only real reason to replay the game again in New Game+ is to be able to recruit and find the demon, Raiho. Not sure if you really want to replay this game again just for one demon considering the game itself is already easy that adding 1 more demon isn't much of a deal unless you are a perfectionist in getting all the demons in the game. If you opt to try the game again in Hard mode, be forewarn that it's not worth it as the game is way too hard to play in Hard mode. Your demons will be getting 1 shotted to death while you will be getting 2 shotted to death at the very beginning. It's too annoying to play where you are constantly dying after getting hit twice and this is at the very beginning at the start of the game. But to be fair, if you really want to take up the challenge of doing the Hard mode, I guess it's there for you to do so the replay value in doing Hard mode is there.
The bottom line in this segment here is that there's too little in-game extras and the replay value isn't much of an incentive since it's extremely too hard to play again in Hard mode.
Score: 6/10
SMT: Devil Summoner isn't the kind of rpg game you would want to spend full price on at all. It's the kind of rpg game you might want to pick up at a discount bin or if you really have nothing else to do. The overall game is a bit too lackluster in story, characters, graphics, music, and gameplay. Even though this game was made for the Playstation 2, it feels very outdated for the Playstation 2 console. Devil Summoner is an action rpg game that really have nothing compelling to offer that would really make you want to come back for more after each hour of gameplay. The story and characters lean on the dull side to just average while the gameplay is too simple and linear that there's really nothing else to do in the game but just press the attack button over and over. The game difficulty is too lop sided in a way that in normal mode, it's just too easy that is offers no challenge at all while in hard mode, it's just too hard to enjoy the game. There's nothing wrong with offering a basic rpg game to play but if you are going to do that then at least offer a more interesting story to keep gamers attention. When you play this game, you'll find there are moments where your mind starts to wander away because you start to get bored with the game due to the lack of excitement from the gameplay and story. The game is also fairly short compare to other rpg games too. I would classify Devil Summoner as a filler rpg game. If you are at a point where you don't have anything else to play for a couple of weeks till a new rpg game comes out, than you might want to play Devil Summoner to help pass the time. That's the best situation where I would recommend you play this game simply because there are so many better rpgs out on the PS2.
