Serph and company return in this Role-Playing continuation that goes far beyond the expectations set by the first game.
After playing the original Digital Devil Saga, many gamers felt disappointed by the overly long dungeons and the poor dungeon to story ratio. Luckily, the second game contains longer and more frequent cut scenes and dialog than the original. While the long dungeons still remain, they are more interesting, and are usually split up with cut scenes and little events such as enemies attacking you with a short cutscene intro at certain scripted places, just to keep things interesting. Unlike in the first game, in DDS2 you will actually begin to feel for the characters, which are now thrown into far more involving circumstances.
The camera system is still fine. When you’re walking around it stays where it is unless a wall gets in its way, in which case the camera will get closer to the character in the exact same angle as it was facing. As a result, you never feel out of control of the camera, and you don’t get disoriented. In a few areas, the camera is in a semi-fixed position, to show a larger view of your surrounding area. This is usually in a town area, and is never obstructing to gameplay. A map is automatically recorded wherever you go, so there’s no need to worry about getting lost. A mini-map is in the bottom-left corner of the screen, and a tap of the triangle button lets you examine what you’ve explored in the full dungeon map.
The battle system is the same Press-Turn system from Nocturne and the original Digital Devil Saga. The same rules apply here. If you exploit an enemy’s weakness, you get an extra turn, and if your attack gets voided by the enemy’s strength you lose a turn. The same goes for your enemies, so if you aren’t careful, you can get wiped out in a single turn.
The Mantra grid from the original DDS has been replaced with a new and far superior one in DDS2. The new Mantra grid allows you to branch your characters in any direction you please, giving you full control over your strategy for each character, with no limits in mind. It’s complex enough for anyone who enjoys tweaking, and simple enough to be easily understood by less ‘eccentric’ gamers.
Once again, the beautiful graphics engine from Nocturne returns with all of the tweaks that made it so much more beautiful in DDS. The art design is the same from the first game, but the new setting of the real world is far more interesting and colorful than the grey Junkyard. The people are cel-shaded in a way that still gives them a lot of detail. It probably won’t blow you away, but it does make the game look unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.
The soundtrack in DDS2 is one of the best soundtracks I have ever experienced. This soundtrack tends to lean more towards techno than the original’s, but almost all the tunes in the second game are very catchy and do not get annoying. The soundtrack is better than the first game’s by a long shot, and arguably better than Nocturne’s.
Digital Devil Saga 2 is a game not to be missed. Act now and buy your copy as soon as possible, because like all of Atlus’s RPGs in the Shin Megami Tensei series, this game will probably have a very small number of copies made, and go on eBay for absurd sums of money in a few years. Its story will get you hooked, and the gameplay will keep you entertained. If you even remotely like RPGs, you can’t afford not to pick up Digital Devil Saga 2.