Put on your thinking caps, its time for another investigation!
The story takes place in the Taisho period of Japan (1920’s), where Ancient Japan assimilates with modern technology. You play as a high school student (insert name), who has special Devil Summoner abilities. After earning the title of Raidou Kuzunoha the 14th, he gets a part time job at Narumi Detective Agency to clear up the mess in the capital and at the same time perform his Devil Summoner duties. One day, Narumi gets a request from a 15 year old girl by the name of Kaya Daidouji who wishes to meet them at the bridge. After Meeting up at the bridge, Kaya’s requested “I want you to…kill me”. Before Raidou and Narumi could respond, the girl gets kidnapped by a strange group of men wearing red, and Raidou gets pummeled. It is up to Raidou to investigate the strange request and kidnapping that sparked a chain of disastrous events to come.
The moment you step into town, you’ll immediately notice the heavy ancient Japanese atmosphere in the town. Men wearing samurai suits and women dishing out kimonos squander across the road. There are men carrying wagons with barrels, high-school girls gossiping on the side-walk, public buses zooming in and out. Everything feels alive and populated., as if ancient Japan was compressed into a disc. Raidou will be traveling around with a talking cat named Gouto. Gouto’s history is still unknown, but his abilities to comprehend clues, see demons, and talk makes him a valuable partner for Raidou. You’ll also encounter ace reporter Tae Asakura, who is Narumi’s client and supports Raidou through his investigations. You’ll also seek the help of Dr.Victor, who specializes in fusing, sacrificing, and forging demons into weapons. Your foes will be prominent the moment you step into the first chapter as you’ll be tailing them from beginning to end. The Russian monk Rasputin is the dark Summoner who was believed to died awhile ago, is now working for the Japanese army. There’s Munakata, the Japanese general who firmly believes in super weapons, is the brains behind the super soldier project.
During our investigations, you’ll notice a few question marks that are potential clues, like a barred wall with no way through, or a soldier whose not cooperating. In these instances, you’ll need to summon a demon into the field and do the investigation for you. You’ll access information from a mute soldier by summoning a demon who can “read mind”. An angry man who is too mad to talk can be helpful once you cool him down. There are also situations where Raidou will need to summon the demon and let them handle the investigations alone. In this case, you’ll be manually controlling the demons to aid Raidou. For instance, to help Raidou cross the reservoir, you’ll need to summon a demon who can fly across the water and fetch a boat docked on the other side. To find items hidden in small areas that Raidou can‘t fit through, you’ll need to summon a demon with the Sneak ability to fetch the items for you. In battle, Raidou comes equipped with a sword and a gun. His basic attacks include a three hit combo, a slash that attacks everyone within a small distance around him, a thrust attack, and blocking. While the gun does less damage than the sword, it can be reloaded with element bullets. This comes big into play when exploiting enemies weakness. Every monster you encounter will have some sort of weakness. If your fighting the Pyro type who specializes in fire, ice attacks will deal critical damage and momentarily stun him. There are several advantages to exploiting an enemies weakness. You’ll be dealing the most damage when your opponent is in their stunned animation from a critical attack. You can also confine an enemy only after you launched a critical attack. By tapping the O button, you’ll be button mashing in a tug-of-war like fashion to capture them. You can capture enemies at and below your current levels easily. Those who are higher level than Raidou will be almost impossible to capture. Some demons will also require certain circumstances such as a full moon to be captured. Keep in mind that after you run out of ammo, you’ll need to re-stock them from a shop. Though Raidou can handle a handful of enemies on his own, his real weapon is the ability to summon demons in battle. Once summoned, you can give out orders to attack a certain enemy, use a certain skill, or just let the demon do their own thing. You can only summon one demon at a time, but you can return them and summon another one anytime (unless your demon has been inflicted with a status effect such as sleep, charm, dizzy, critical, etc). Demons will make battles much easier. They’ll literally do 1ox damage more than Raidou and can attack a wider range of enemies than Raidou can. Some will heal you, some are built to absorb physical damage and deal them back, some throw out projectiles, while others inflict status damage. Be warn that your demon can die too, they have an HP gauge that will lit up red to signal danger. They also have a moral meter which builds up in combat. Once it maxes out, it’ll glow green to signal a combination attack is ready. By pressing [ ] and X together, you’ll perform a combination attack that is allocated to that current demon. There are various combination skills out there, using them will give you and your demon a moment window of invincibility. Abusing these invincibility frames during tough boss battles can make huge difference. You’ll also encounter Shikimi no Kage, which are elemental walls that needs to be taken down to advance. Some of these are fairly simple, such as the bullet wall which requires a simple gunfire to take down. Others requires demons with certain elements to be taken down, which can be really frustrating if you don’t have the right demon at that very moment. You can always escape if that’s the case. After every battle, Raidou and his summoned demon will gain some exp and loyalty points. After leveling up, you and your demon are awarded one skill point and to be used on either Strength, for dealing more physical damage, Magic, improves elemental damage and decreases damage from magic, Vitality, increases current Hp and improves defense, and Luck, improves critical damage and chances of a successful fusion. Your demons will increase their own stats and learn new skills in the process. As their Loyalty meter fills up, Raidou will gain more magic. After acquiring a certain amount of magic, Raidou will be able to gain new titles and possibly expand his tubes to stock up on more demons.
When you have too many demons at hand, you can always discard them from the menu, or you can take them to Dr.Victor. You’ll be spending a lot of time here experimenting different combinations to create the ultimate demon. Fusing allows you to fuse two demons to create a new one. But, your required to max out both demons loyalty first, and the resulting demon must be at or lower than your current level. You can also make a sacrifice, which means sacrificing one demon to improve the stats of another. Lastly, you can also Forge, which means fusing the demon with your sword to improve its strength and change its elemental strength. Each demon in your inventory can be registered and if you got rid of them, you can re-summon them at a hefty price depending on its current level. Raidou and his demons can also get healed here for a small price.
The story is broken down into 12 meaty chapters. The mission objectives for each chapter is different, but the routine remains the same. You’ll be at Narumi’s place at the beginning of the chapter to go over the current investigation. You’ll set off into the city map which is a huge over world where you’ll be traveling in lines. You’ll head off to your next destination to find clues and gather hints, go to the shrine to be transported to the dark-realm, fight a boss, and end the chapter. it’s a simple formula that can get real old, but the gripping storyline is solid enough to keep you glued to the tube. If you ever find yourself stuck, you can always return to Narumi to clue you in. Gouto also provides clues to keep you on track.
The music is astonishing solid, just what you’d expect from the SMT series. Its composed of old 1930’s jazz with drums, pianos, guitars, and trumpets playing softly in the background. Each area has the same music, which can get old, but you’ll get used to it. The boss battles themes gives a sense of urgency and danger.
There are no voice-overs whatsoever, luckily the demons are all well voiced in Japanese. They’ll growl, giggle, laugh, scream, and blurt out Japanese words. Some of the dialog can be really funny, like the first boss who literally calls Raidou a “dumb-ass” for walking into a wall. Overall the sound department was solid at delivering strong sound effects and music to complement the Taisho period.
The graphics were done by Kazuma Kaneko, which are some of the finest to grace the ps2. The characters are all modeled in 3-d and wear attires that match their time period. Narumi wears a tux with a hat, ladies dress up in kimonos, and men wear samurai apparels. Those familiar with the SMT series will immediately recognize the artwork here. You have demons like imps, fairies, angels, warriors, to the more absurd giant elephant, large demonic crab, a monkey who reads a book, and girl with a rooster’s body. Very distinctive and enjoyable to seek out each one. The environments are also well designed and detailed, possibly the best looking ones ever in a Shin Megami Tensei game. Each city has their own distinct look with the npcs running seamlessly through them.
After completing Devil Summoner around 3o hours, you’ll be awarded with a more difficult Devil mode, however, all your demons, stats, items, and money will reset. But, you’ll get to keep the amount of tubes earned from the previous play through. Casual players may be turned off by the high random encounter rate, while others will find a lot to like here. Its not difficult as previous titles, you won’t be required to grind your way to defeat bosses, but its not so easy and linear to complete in a day either. Devil Summoner provides an epic storyline, beautiful graphics, strategic combat system, addictive and constructive customization, and trademark SMT music to boot. Put on your thinking caps, get out your notepad, its time to start the investigation. Have fun with Devil Summoner.