Devil Summoner is a quirky action game that mixes history and the occult for a generally good time.
Okay class, its time to say the whole name of this game; Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army (yeah, MS Word hates that entire name). As the name might suggest you will control Raidou Kuzunoha, the fourteenth person to carry the name which is more of a title. He is your typical silent protagonist and is your avatar. The game starts off in a humble Japanese city in the midst of a cultural revolution as aspects of the west take hold; automobiles replacing rickshaws, skirts replacing kimonos and other foreigners living in portions of the city. Over the course of the game you will encounter demons (of course), veritable gods and a number of surprises that take the game beyond what you initially thought it was.
The game doesn’t play like any of the other MegaTen games that have reached our shores. Rather than being a turn based RPG, like all of the other games, this game plays out in a semi-real time form. Fights are done with you performing combos, firing shots from your gun and while your demons to cast spells for you. However there are pauses in the gameplay while you do things such as changing the ammo in your gun or switching out what demon you have at your side. All of the things that would normally happen in a game from these series all occur in real-time including the capture of the demons themselves. What this ends up doing is providing you with time to strategize, think about what you want to do and then take action. It’s a fairly exhilarating change of pace to be honest.
One of the things that make the game so interesting is the fact that you will very heavily interact with the demons and Dark Realm in this game. About half of the game takes place in various portions of the Dark Realm which acts as a mirror to the normal human realm. In this place demons will be hanging around on the streets and can quite easily be conversed with for amusement or to gather information. This turns them from just a resource, as they are in some other games, and turns them into an interactive part of the game world. Even the demons who you force to join you via your confinement arts have personality, speaking to you in fights when something happens to upset them or do really well in a fight. There is personality in this aspect not found in most of the other games.
However in the end they are still quite effective as tools both in and out of battle. Outside of battle they have a number of skills, some unique to the class of monster they are while others are unique to that individual monster species. This requires you to have a variety of demons on hand at all times for a variety of out of combat purposes. Sometimes you cannot attain vital information without using one of your demons to read their mind or if they are too panicked or angry to talk to you then you can cool them down with a frost demon. It is usually obvious what you need to do but it does a fairly good job of making you feel like some supernaturally empowered detective, which you essentially are.
Of course you will need a variety of them on hand for the fights as well. Demons have a variety of spells they can use as well as resistances and weaknesses. Learning how to exploit these weaknesses and having demons and bullets for your gun, on hand to exploit these weaknesses are key to succeeding in the game. The right demon for the right job can make a nearly impossible fight simply tough. Of course the enemies can affect your demons the same way so you must figure out ways to balance things out by having carefully chosen your demons.
Making this daunting task all the more accessible are the various demon fusions you can access through a mad-scientist named Victor. When you visit him he will grant you the ability to fuse your demons together to create brand new demons. There are also numerous quirks to the demon fusion system that enable you to do odd things such as creating cold based demons who use fire spells and other such things. It’s a system that is easy to learn but hard to master. Later in the game you can even fuse your demons together with your sword to increase your damage and to give yourself resistance to particular types of magic, something that comes in handy in later boss fights.
While the graphics might have looked good a few years ago they have become very dated very fast, especially with some of the newer PlayStation 2 releases. They are still quite passable and they show the intriguing city, dungeons and Dark Realm in quite good detail. The cut scenes look quite good as well; the character models move rather smoothly and are fairly top notch. The major problem with the graphics is that most of the human character models appear to be fairly plastic. Their expressions look fairly good but the skin looks far too shiny and fake (silly to say about a game, I know). There are also a few random jagged pixels that are noticeable in some of the characters hair, but it really isn't anything all that noticeable.
The sound doesn’t really fare quite as well as the graphics. There is no voice acting to be found anywhere in the game except for the sounds the demons make and a few odd screams and such to be found in some of the cut scenes. Annoyingly enough there are even a few cut scenes where text bubbles pop-up distracting you from the pretty graphics with more reading. It’s a small annoyance admittedly but the music in this game is pretty good and if there had even been some voice acting this would be a laudable quality to the game.
In the end, Devil Summoner is an entertaining if not repetitive game. The storyline goes through some wild turns towards the end that some will enjoy and others will loathe. Essentially this is a game that will polarize people; some will love it for what it is while others will bemoan this one aspect or that (much like I do with the sound). More than anything else it’s a unique and interesting look into the Shin Megami Tensei games and I hope that there are more Devil Summoner games in the future.
Rating: 8