A great story concludes with wonderful fashion.
Story:
The story starts off where you left off, as Serph you are alone in the real world where most of humanity has been killed by a petrifying disease that is producing from the sun. Moments later Serph is attacked by soldiers from the Karma Society who are humans that have the power of changing into demons. Once defeating these soldiers Serph moves on to locate his comrades, and find out what is going on in the real world....
After that, the story moves forward into discovering the purpose of the demon virus that everyone carries, and the meaning of life. The theme of course is death and rebirth, which is the typical SMT storyline, but in DDS2 the creators go further into the depths of the characters. Seeing the pain, the scarfising, the joy, and desire that each character faces making the character development the best in this series. The plot will always leave you with little answers, and more questions as you move on, but in the end the story will make you think and wonder about how you feel about things in your own life. A powerful story that can't be missed with a wonderful conclusion.
Sound:
The sounds of DDS2 share very much to DDS1 in being wonderfully done. The music in the background fits the mood of battle, and the surrounding as you walk through the dungeons to your next mission. The downside I noticed was that when any of the characters attack an enemy the sound of the slashing movement is really dull and not loud like DDS1. The voice acting though is beautifully done with all the voice actors really making the characters coming alive. Even Voice actor, Steven Jay Blum, manages to give the robotic like Gale a sense of feeling behind his emotionless face.
Not many improvements, but not many downfalls either so sound in DDS2 is worthly of being of a sequal sound wise.
Gameplay:
This is perhaps to me stopped me from giving DDS2 a 10/10. The downsides of DDS1 continue in DDS2 with rediuclous amount of encounters, and the limit to only casting a Drain/repel/ void skill once. The boss in DDS2 were too difficult to beat or figure out there weak spots. If I hadn't vist some walkthroughs, and spoke to other players I would still be stuck on the boss fights. The good side to this is Atlus made wonderful improvments to the grid system allowing you to move around in a Octagon to aquire your skills, and customizing any of your characters into a healer, attacker or magical attacker. The downside though was that often times you could have a group of three characters that you fight with all the time, but suddenly one of those members leaves the group and takes all your skills that you worked hard to earn with him. It would have been much better if the skills you earned were given to another member of the group so you weren't left with a weakly member on your team. I ran into this problem many times, but after hours of leveling up I manage to make the weak member into a somewhat of a strong character still it's annoying to have to do that.
Value:
The price tag for DDS2 was $59.99 (Can.), and unless you preordered you didn't get the soundtrack. I think the price should have been reduced since there are no extra bonuses or even a poster in this editon unlike the first DDS making you feel somewhat cheated for paying a high cost. However, what makes DDS2 worth the price would have to be it's wonderful graphics, it's characters, and the conclusion to the best storyline that has ever come along in the Shin Megemi Tensei series. If you own the first DDS1 I highly recommed you go down to your nearest video store and grabbing DDS2. It is worth to see this story finish and leave you wondering what else will Atlus come up with.