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Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
By admin | September 7, 2010
The story for this sequel starts right where the original left off. So if you didn’t play the original, you might have problems getting into this one’s story. The members of the Embryon tribe, whom you controlled in the first game, have decided to leave the desolate world of the Junkyard behind. They have finally ascended to Nirvana, which they were working to achieve throughout the first game, but it doesn’t turn out to be like what they expected. The world they have been placed into isn’t different from their own, this world is ruled by the Karma Association and has forced most citizens underground. These citizens were forced under by the sun, which has turned black and turns everyone to stone if it’s rays touch them. Another interesting twist that is revealed early is that the old Junkyard is really just a war simulation program, which means all the characters from the original game were just AI characters but they have now been brought into the real world by a girl named Sera. The story is much more indepth this time around so you can expect story sequences more often this time around.
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You will spend a majority of your time walking around the world of Nirvana fighting various entities. You will be fighting quite often too because the encounter rate is ridiculously high. You will have three characters in the battle at any time which you can switch with your other characters at anytime during the battle. You have many options when you enter battle, you can always perform the standard melee attack. The biggest advantage between each character is using their mantras, which they will learn over time. Mantras range from physical attacks to healing and there are also elemental attacks such as fire spells and electrical attacks. You can learn these skills through a newly upgraded Mantra system, which is shown in a circular presentation with skills increasing in power as they reach the middle. The circle starts off pretty small but expands as you start to learn more and more abilities and as time passes you can actually acquire all abilities possible but this takes a great deal of time so its better to balance the different skills between all the characters you have.
The combat system looks pretty normal at first glance but you will discover the complexity as you proceed through the game. Each enemy has an attribute that it is weak against so discovering what that is, is a big part of the game and using the spells it is weak against can gain you more turns and make them lose turns. For example, if you are fighting an Ice enemy and you use a fire spell against them, it will deal extra damage and also make them lose their turn. The difficulty for this iteration has actually increased over it’s predecessor which was pretty high to begin with. I thought that the encounter rate was high in the first game but this one just punishes you with battle after battle, I mean in one dungeon I must have fought over 100 times which is pretty ridiculous. Another frustrating factor is the money which doesn’t come in as fast as you need to upgrade your skills which means at times you will have to sit there and just fight enemies for money so you can proceed in the game with new skills.
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The graphics for this game once again has the unique style that is brought to the table by Kazuma Koneko. The main characters have the same look as the original game but this isn’t a bad thing by any means since each one has a very unique look and some of the best animation in any RPG. The enemies once again are very disgusting and varied so you don’t need to worry about looking at the same enemies throughout the whole game.
The sound side of things are actually improved in this iteration. The music is very well done with nice rock tunes during battles and solemn music when you are exploring a town or dungeon. The sound effects have much more impact this time around with better spell sound effects and better monster sounds. The voice overs are very well done once again with great performances from the main characters.
If you are a fan of the first iteration or just want a very difficult story-driven RPG then you can’t go wrong here.
Topics: PS2 Game | No Comments »