One of the more memorable and immersive console role playing games of the last decade.
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga features a truly original and creative plot you won't soon forget, and the gameplay is just an enjoyable as the narrative. Much like Final Fantasy X, every character can be developed as you choose, any character in the game can master all forms of magic and combat skills in the game.
This allows you to develop your characters strategically, you can develop an initially Ice-weak character to overcome their weakness to ice just by developing their abilities in that element. This is all done through a skill tree esque "Mantra" system.
As a result you can end up developing all your characters in a way not exactly suited to a certain boss, so the only disadvantage in this system is you may need to stop and grind certain mantras in order to be able to defeat a boss, so it's good to develop a well rounded party.
Where Digital Devil Saga truly displays superiority is in the sound department. The music in this game is extremely creative and high quality. The music in a way makes even grinding more passable. It is unique in it's use of rock-style guitar instrumentals and tribal drum beats, and it really works well for the game. Some of the game's tracks are amongst the most inspired I have heard in a video game. The sound effects are typical passable anime quality.
The english voice acting is great, I recognized the voice actor of Gale as Steve Blum, considered the King Of Anime, I recognized him from his work as Sun Jian in the earlier Dynasty Warriors games.
The combat is very similar to Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Most of the battles are random encounters. Every character gets a turn to perform an action, one by one, although this can effected by the character's Agility statistic. Press Turns are an additional turn granted to you or your enemy when a weakness is exploited, you pass on a character's full turn or a critical hit occurs. Also missing or otherwise failing in an attack costs you an additional turn, so your often rewarded for battling strategically or more often then not just playing it safe. All in all it plays like the Final Fantasy games, while up to X anyway. I found the story and setting far more compelling than in the Final Fantasy games however.
You play as humans that transform into demons to battle other demons (most of which are actually also humans who also need to feed). As a demon, you devour your enemies at the end of the battle to gain experience or "Atma" points. You can revert and fight in human form, but humans are only as effective in battle as the ammunition they use in their individual firearms.
Only demons can use magic, however humans and demons can fuse attacks to fire elemental shots. Sometimes you will be ambushed and enter the battle in human form, and will need to spend a turn transforming into demons. Like the rest of the Shin Megami Tensei series you will finding yourself battling demons from real-world Hindu, Buddhist, Celtic and other mythologies. Some of the boss fights are truly inspired and creative, and will require strategy regardless of how prepared you are.
There are some puzzles in the dungeons you will traverse. You will not be perplexed for long however they are a decent diversion from the grind of random encounters.
I am not a huge fan of turn based console role playing games, but I enjoyed this one. The unique plot and the setting are really what drove me through this game. The combat was fun at points and outsmarting bosses was entertaining. If you play games for a compelling story or like console role playing games, you will definitely get at least some enjoyment out of Digital Devil Saga.