Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done - and here in the second round, that means narrowing our laser focus to one game per week (at least). Be sure to check out the Case File Repository for more details and a full list of games/links!
Extra Note: We've entered Shelftember! In this much-vaunted month, we will be processing one of the second round entries every day. I'll be spending one hour apiece with each game - inspired by DanielKempster's backlog-clearing series "An Hour With..." - and determining its fate from there.
I feel genuinely bad that I'm only giving Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga an hour to show me what it's got. JRPGs in general often take a while to get going, and Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei games and the many side-series and spin-offs that fall under that umbrella (DDS included) tend to be very lore-dense and incrementally roll out their many mechanics over long stretches. However, I am fortunate in this case for two reasons: the first is that SMT games aren't all that different from one another, at least in terms of knowing to exploit weaknesses for additional turns and how all the elements interact with one another in the series' rock-scissors-paper dynamic, and the second is that Digital Devil Saga mostly starts on the ground running, with its first dungeon showing up almost as soon as the introduction is over. Compare this to something like Persona 4, where I probably would've reached the end of the hour and still be watching Chie yell at Yosuke for breaking her Trial of the Dragon DVD.
Digital Devil Saga is a spin-off from Atlus's core Shin Megami Tensei series. Like many SMT spin-offs, 90% of the mechanics are the same but there are some distinct variations that sets the spin-off series apart. In core SMT, you build a party with demons you recruit via post-battle negotiations and fusing those you already have. In Persona, you foster your own home of imaginary monsters through post-battle acquisitions and fusing while your teammates have linear progressions standard to JRPGs. In Devil Survivor, you still recruit demons but the game uses a grid map for movement similar to a strategy RPG. With Digital Devil Saga, it's been a lot closer to Persona so far, but I feel like there's some yet-to-be-introduced heavy customization business on the horizon.
Worth noting that Digital Devil Saga is weird even for a Shin Megami Tensei game. The player is part of a Tribe: one of many groups warring each other for the right to the escape the wasteland-like Junkyard and enter the far more preferable Nirvana. Up until the start of the game, these tribes have fought each other with conventional weaponry: swords, guns, crossbows, et cetera. An event occurs during a battle between the Embryon Tribe (of which the protagonist, Serph, is the leader) and their rivals the Vanguards, in which a large egg-like structure awakens and causes every participant to suddenly turn into a monster - Mantras, as the game calls them. After this transformation, the Embryon Mantras devour many of the Vanguards before the latter flee the battlefield, and the start of the game concerns itself with figuring out what happened and why. The very first dungeon involves visiting the Vanguard base under a banner of truce, which falls apart when the visibly terrified Vanguards try to fight them off. It is telling that many of the characters I've met so far - Gale, Heat, Argilla (Italian for "clay") and Cielo (Spanish for "sky") - have elemental Matrix names, because I'm pretty certain the game is set inside a virtual computer world. I forget where I heard that, whether it was part of the game's "back of the box" synopsis that I'm supposed to already know, or a revelation that comes way later that I must've just picked up somewhere through cultural osmosis. At any rate, the title of the game pretty much gives it away so hopefully I didn't just ruin it for everyone (and myself).
The weirdest part of the game might be its focus on cannibalism. While Mantras grow in levels from earning XP in combat, they only acquire new abilities from a resource called "Atma Points". A small amount of these are earned from post-battle snacking on your foes - something your characters do automatically, without any prompting from the player - or characters can eat weakened enemies in battle directly instead with certain commands that carry the "Hunt" modifier. It's definitely more than a little bit like Quina Quen of Final Fantasy IX fame and the way he/she/it gains new abilities from eating sufficiently wounded enemies, except the DDS characters regularly have to deal with its grisly ramifications. In fact, it's taking a while for some of my Tribespeople to adjust to the idea, which I'd normally be glad about - acclimating quickly to eating people strikes me as a little extreme if I'm supposed to feel any empathy for my teammates - except that it's crippling their growth right now. C'mon, guys. We feastin'.
The Cenobite-like Mantra forms of the protagonists are what fight in battles, at least so far. Each has their own elemental focus, which unfortunately also carries with it a weakness to the opposing element, and a particular statistical focus (Heat is a physical tank, while Argilla's more of a mage/healer), with the exception of the protagonist: his stat bonuses can be assigned directly by the player, the only character so far for which that is the case. He's meant to be more of a blank slate than the rest; a silent protagonist that the player can choose to be a physical attacker or mage or healer or what have you. I suspect this is because he is the one compulsory character, and the game is kind enough to let the player determine which role would be the most valuable. For now I'm keeping him as a mixture of physical and mage, though I might need to make the decision to specialize before too long.
It's fair to say that an hour spent with this game, or even ten hours, is hardly sufficient time to understand its true nature. New mechanics are still getting rolled out, and I suspect that eventually characters will be allowed to fight in human form too; each is equipped with a gun, and I haven't had a chance to use any of them in these gross monster forms. I'm also intrigued by the early body horror stuff I've been subjected to, and the slow build up around the nature of this strange world, its apparently countless strict rules and regulations, and why the Tribes are fighting to enter Nirvana in the first place: all things the denizens of the Junkyard apparently know instinctively, but aren't quite as readily apparent to the player. I'm girding my loins for some notoriously difficult turn-based gameplay, and more of DDS's lamentably high rate of random encounters, but as has been the case with many games I've encountered so far in this feature I don't feel ready to move on from the PS2 until I have this one completed. No idea when I'll find the time to do so before the end of the year, though...
Result: Progresses to the Final Round.
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