Angry Anime Girl Attacking Demons... of course
The game starts off with Demons being unleashed throughout "modern day" Tokyo, and of course, through various mysterious plot developments, it is up to you and your friends to stop them in order to save Tokyo and the rest of the world. To do this, you will use the power of you COMP device (which looks like a DS...) to summon demons to fight for you, in order to kill the other demons. So, the premise follows along with other games in the MegaTen world, and for those who aren't familiar with that world, the demon gathering and fighting against other demons can be likened to Pokemon.
In Devil Survivor, though, the trick is that the game blends standard turn-based RPGs with Strategy RPGs. Battles are encountered and begin like other SRPGs you have played before. The "world" is a series of menus, you select a location to have a battle, and once you begin, you place the units you want to fight on the battle grid, and you proceed to move about the battle grid like you are used to in SRPGs. However, your "units" in this game are a party of up to three, consisting of a Leader (you and your COMP-wielding friends) and two demons. Also, when you choose to Attack an enemy, you are sucked into a battle encounter and you proceed to duke it out turn-based style. However, you are only given one round of attacks for each combat situation. After each side takes their turns, you are sent back out to the main battle grid, regardless of the outcome of the fight. So, if you managed to kill any of the enemies on the team you engaged, they are out of the fight for good. If you killed all of them, go you, on to the next unit. Also, you can get an "Extra Turn" in your attack rounds by "doing good", such as when you get a Critical Hit, or exploit an enemy's weak point. Also, sometimes you and the enemies can even start out with the Extra Turn already allocated, and could then lose the extra turn if hit by a critical or weak point attack. So, there's a decent amount of strategy involved with the turn-based mini-fights.
Your typical SRPG attack grid
The battle system, for what I have seen so far, really works well. This is probably the perfect SRPG for me, since I usually don't get in to them. I try really hard to like SRPGs, but usually the slow pace of the battles, the fragmented way of story-telling, and the lack of exploration wears on me until I stop playing. The only SRPG that I have ever beaten (of the many I have tried to play) is Front Mission 3 for the PS1. I even played the game half-through a second time because their were two main story lines in the game, so I'm not completely anti-SRPG. I just need the right situation. So far, I really like the mixture of Strategy and turn-based battles in Devil Survivor. This seems like a really good place for those new to the SRPG genre and people who don't usually like SRPGs to break into the these types of games. Also, there seems to be a big focus on the story as well, and the game has a lot of dialogue and a lot of dialogue choices. The choices will also lead you down multiple story branches, or so I'm told. I am not using a guide for this game (gasp), so we will see where my choices lead me.
If you are a fan of SRPGs, or just generally a fan of RPGs and aren't quite sure about this whole Strategy thing, I highly recommend checking out Devil Survivor. It seems like a winner so far.
Time to kill me some demon blobs...
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