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Add to SafariShin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 is a role-playing game with dungeon crawling. It's a direct sequel to Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga; this time, you and your comrades are sent to a dystopian world where God believes no one deserves to survive.
SpecsUpdate
Pros
Pro Bleak, engrossing atmosphere and soundtrack
Much like the first game, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2 has a lot of personality in its style, sound, and feel. There's just something about the dreary, gray visual filter to everything that pulls you in and helps you feel at ease in the world. The soundtrack goes a long way to instill a sense of chill attitude for most overworld and exploration music, with the catchy, futuristic rock and electronic music adding a lot to the game's unique charm. Overall, Digital Devil Saga 2 has a look and feel to it that stands out from the crowd in an attractive way, bleakness and all.
Pro Intense character-driven story that leans heavily into themes of enlightenment
Continuing from the first Digital Devil Saga, the protagonists are in a new dystopian world where the sun turns people to stone, and everyone lives either underground or within cities controlled by the authoritarian Karma Society. The main character, Serph, searches for answers with his friends as to what happened to their old world where everyone turned into demons and devoured each other to survive. All of the unanswered questions from the first game's ending are explored throughout the story here, with some amazing revelations as to the main cast's origins and backstories. Ultimately, that enlightenment is what brings Serph and his comrades closer to understanding why the sun is abnormal, giving them the tools they need to stop the problem, and so much more.
Pro Strategic and rewarding turn-based combat
The battles in the Shin Megami Tensei series are unforgiving in how difficult they are, though the challenge isn't as daunting in Digital Devil Saga 2. You fight as a group of humans who can turn into demons, aiming to pinpoint your enemy's elemental weaknesses and exploit them. Once you find the weakness, you're rewarded with an extra turn; if you keep landing the right attacks, then the game lets you chain a finite number of turns one after another.
But this also applies to your enemies -- if they exploit your weaknesses, then they get extra turns instead. And as you get farther along in the game, you get access to buffs to your party's attack, defense, evasion, and more, as well as debuffs to debilitate your foes. The sense of satisfaction you get helps you to keep pushing forward.
Pro Amazing amount of skill customization for your party members
The way you learn skills and assign them as needed works really well. You spend in-game money on a subset of skills that fall under one umbrella, like ice-related spells or a group of physical attacks. Then, once you gain enough points, you unlock those handful of skills to be able to set them freely to your character whenever you need to. The downside of this is that no one has a set "job identity", but it doesn't matter too much, since this system lets you tackle enemies and bosses with any party make up that you want. So if you're having trouble with a boss, all you have to do is shuffle your skills around and try again.
Pro Thoughtful lore based on Hinduism and Buddhism
Mantra, atma, and karma form the backbone of the Digital Devil Saga duology's gameplay and lore, like in the way karma is the equivalent of experience points, mantra are groups of skills you learn, and atma points are AP you accumulate to unlock mantra and learn those skills. Digital Devil Saga 2 takes things a step further by exploring the Hindu concept of Advaita Vendanta, or the idea of tiered realities and the soul being equal to the highest "divine" reality. The final stretch of the game is essentially a love letter to this idea, with the characters steadily gaining enlightenment and shedding their false ideas of the reality around them.
Cons
Con Story goes off the rails in the later part of the game
If you don't know much about Hinduism, then the story events just before and throughout the final dungeon will probably go right over your head. It's a lot to take in all at once, especially since there's hardly any lead-up to this change in tone and direction. Even if you are familiar with the Hindu religion, this part of the plot can still seem rushed, since there's so much that happens at once in a short space of time. The Digital Devil Saga duology has the most involved narrative in the Shin Megami Tensei franchise, but it's still rather thin for the most part.
The relatively thin storytelling style, along with some plot holes, plus the lack of foreshadowing or guidance into the finale, isn't the best mix for such a high concept twist at the end. Despite all of this, if the themes connect with you, it's still very much possible to appreciate this part of the story and the ending.
Con Even when importing a save from the first Digital Devil Saga, you start off at level one
It's cool that you get to carry over your save data from Digital Devil Saga 1, but not enough gets imported across the two games. You get certain bonuses depending on how much in-game money you had in DDS1, along with some special perks depending on which dialog choices you selected in the first game. The worst offender is that you have to start all over again at level one. There's a lore reason for this that the characters allude to at the start, yet it's still jarring to go from your super powered, high-level characters that defeated the final boss in Digital Devil Saga 1, and then back to rock bottom at the beginning of this game.
Con Eventually costs a lot of in-game money to unlock skills
While it's awesome and convenient that all you have to do is buy subsets of skills and unlock them by gaining enough AP in battle, this does have its downsides. As you get to the higher-tier skills, they end up costing a lot of money. It's understandable to not be able to afford the more costly ones, as there is a New Game+ option where you can go after the things you missed in your first playthrough.
But you may find yourself in some trouble if you're up against a tough boss, and in order to survive the fight, you need one of the more expensive skills. If you're diligent about exploring and picking up treasure chests, you should have enough money to get by, but you may still need to be conservative about your spending habits. There's a rare accessory you can get to help with this, and yet unless you look this up or somehow stumble on it by accident, it's hard to find out about it.
Con Missing a few staples from the Shin Megami Tensei series
Longtime SMT veterans may dislike the absence of things like negotiating with demons to join your party, fusing those demons together to create better ones, a moral alignment system where your ideological choices shape the fate of the world, and a story that is less about the characters and more about the world itself. Digital Devil Saga 2 does lean into the Law alignment concept of order and control at all costs, but the rest is noticeably absent. This game does stand on its own without everything else, though some players may still miss those features.
Con One particular character's accent is terrible
The voice acting is generally decent, except one character's accent is really off-putting. Cielo, one of your companions, has a voice actor who seems to be going for a Jamaican accent, but it's so obvious that it's fake. He's also the comic relief character, so a lot of his lines are silly and dumb to try and make you laugh; they sound even worse with the bogus accent. Because he's a prominent character, you can't exactly tune him out, either.
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