On a normal day, three teenagers go to visit their teacher at Shinjuku Medical Centre- completely unaware of the events that will befall them. A cataclysmic event known as ‘The Conception’ transforms Tokyo into a Vortex World filled with demons and illuminated by the cold light of Kagutsuchi. Only a handful of humans survive to see this new and horrific world, including one of the three teenagers, who is granted the demonic powers he will need to survive and find his friends.

The Vortex World

SMT Nocturne sees you take on the role of the nameless hero (I chose to call him Ryuki Takeshi, and will refer to him as such from hereon in) who is given demonic powers and cast adrift to survive in a radically transformed version of Tokyo. From this point onwards, the game can be considered a somewhat dark and twisted version of Pokemon- you fight demons, recruit them to your side, and employ them in battles as you traverse this new world to find your friends.

Of course, this is no easy task, and as you wander expanses of the Vortex World, you will have to develop a liking for long, maze-like dungeons, many involving puzzle elements. You’ll be dropping through holes in the floor, getting teleported back and forth and generally finding yourself fed up with more than a few areas as you try to navigate them. Add in darkened areas and floors that can damage you (although both effects can be countered), and you will come to understand that even before you factor in battles, this game involves no small amount of commitment. Don’t get me wrong- for hardcore RPGs it’s par for the course and all good fun, but it’s definitely a game that requires no small level of patience and commitment.

The life of a demi-fiend

Battle is the flesh and blood of SMT: Nocturne, which uses an earlier implementation of the Press Turn system that also appeared in the Digital Devil Saga series. The basic idea is exactly the same: you get one turn icon per party member, with most actions consuming one icon, misses and voided attacks consuming two and criticals or passes consuming a mere half icon. The difference here is that characters take turns in order of their agility, rather than formation order- a subtle alteration that can have quite a big effect on tactics.

Of course, you aren’t going to want to fight alone (well, most people won’t, anyway), so the first order of business for any new player is to build up their party of loyal servant demons. At the beginning, a Fairy will join you, but for those looking for something more substantial, the good news is that any and every demon in the game is up for grabs. Normal demons can usually be recruited with a mix of bribes and canny negotiating skills, whilst everything up to and including bosses can be fused using the facilities of the Cathedral of Shadows. At the Cathedral, two monsters can be combined to create a new, third being, with many rules governing the process- for example, at full Kagutsuchi, a sacrifice can be offered to power up the resulting demon even more, whilst special demon types known as Elements and Mitama can be used to increase a demon’s rank or stats respectively. The possibilities are almost endless, and they must be used to their fullest to outfit a killer team.

Having a crack team of bloodthirsty demons does come with its drawbacks, however. Only Ryuki is able to replace demonic party members, use items and equip custom skills (more on this in a moment), making him the linchpin around which the whole operation must function. Given that it’s also game over if Ryuki dies, you can imagine that there’s more than one situation where you’re relying on Ryuki as healer, demon summoner and main attacker whilst everyone else has to just twiddle their thumbs. Luckily, this unequal balance was addressed in the DDS games, and by playing this one, you can see exactly why things needed to be changed.

When it comes to skills, demons have a pre-set pattern of learning particular skills as they level up, as well as a random chance of asking to change an existing skill- a risky gamble if you accept, since a useful skill could become something completely pointless. If you want to introduce new skills to your demons, you’ll have to experiment with fusion, although again there is an element of chance to this.

On the other hand, you can control exactly which skills Ryuki learns, but don’t expect that to make matters easier. Our hero learns skills by ingesting Magatama; not only does each one impart a unique stat bonus, but as he levels up, he can learn its innate skills, effectively giving him the entire range of magical, physical and support skills to choose from. Great, I hear you say, except of course that there’s a catch- you can only retain eight skills at any one time. If you choose to keep one ability at the expense of another, the discarded skill is lost forever- regardless of how much you might want, need or desire it later in the game.

Back in the field, the world you find yourself in is now controlled by the phases of Kagutsuchi- the mysterious light that appeared in the sky when the Vortex World was created. Kagutsuchi has eight phases from ‘New’ to ‘Full’, and it goes back and forth between them as you wander the world. The phase of Kagutsuchi is important to various puzzles in the game, whilst it also affects demon negotiations and fusion, especially at ‘Full’ status.

On top of all the puzzle solving you’ll have to do just to get around Nocturne’s many and vast dungeons, the game also comes with an infamous optional puzzle that involves manipulating blocks- an interesting diversion at first, but one that becomes increasingly frustrating as you struggle through its twenty consecutive levels. After dedicating the better part of a day to solving level 1-19 without help and then being forced to resort to looking up the answer to level 20 before I had to go out, it is no wonder that this is a particularly painful aspect of the game that still continues to haunt me.

An even more intense but far more rewarding optional aspect to the game is the Labyrinth of Amala, a complex five level dungeon that is progressively unlocked by fighting Fiend bosses and obtaining their Candelabra. Filled with puzzles and tough monsters, the Labyrinth is a great place for levelling up and offers plenty of rewards, including the chance to recruit Devil May Cry’s Dante as a party member. Completing the Labyrinth also alters the ending of the game, forcing you to fight a ‘final final’ boss after the regular final boss, and showing you a unique scene that isn’t really worth all the effort put into obtaining it. Still, completionists won’t be able to stop themselves from exploring the full extent of the Labyrinth.

If all that still isn’t enough for you, however, then you’ll be pleased to learn that there’s more to do. If fighting the game’s many bosses just once wasn’t enough, you can also revisit the ‘memory’ of battling them, complete with the challenge of trying to defeat them within a certain number of Press Turns. Luckily, this feature can be completely ignored, but it’s there for the more dedicated player.

Story

As one would expect from the Shin Megami Tensei series, Nocturne offers a dark, apocalyptic tale filled with demons and references to mythology- it certainly isn’t as complex as the worlds of Persona and Digital Devil Saga, but it’s solid enough to make for a decent game. Even discounting the special ending gained by completing the Labyrinth of Amala, the game has multiple conclusions depending on which ‘Reason’ (effectively a philosophy for the new world) your character supports, although they aren’t the kind of endings that drive you to complete the game multiple times just to see them.

Audiovisual

With its functional cel-shaded graphics, Nocturne creates the right look for a dark, monster-filled world, but unfortunately it is beginning to show its age somewhat. The human characters in particular look rather generic and simplistic, although there are some attractive monster designs to make up for it. The background music has the appropriate rock/cyberpunk edge to it and makes for solid listening overall.

Final Thoughts

Although tortuous at times, and certainly a bit rough around the edges compared to the later SMT games, Nocturne’s solid core gameplay ensures that it still a worthy and enjoyable title in its own right. It’s not one for the casual gamer, but the hardcore RPG fan will certainly want to play it and exhaust all the possibilities this game has to offer.

Just as the four .hack games must be effectively considered as one, so too is DDS2 basically an extension of the first game- albeit a very worthy one that shouldn’t be overlooked. With that in mind, most of the game play details are of course the same as the first game, so what I will be looking at here are the differences, tweaks and improvements that the second game brings to the series.

Emerging from the Junkyard

Having survived the destruction of the Junkyard at the end of the first game, your heroes emerge into the real world- a place filled with just as many dangers as the one you just left. Once again, you will move between a relatively limited number of areas, each of which takes a while to properly complete, ensuring that the playing experience is at least as long as it was in the first game, depending on how much levelling up you want to do.

Compared to the last game, however, there is a lot more interaction with the areas you visit- gone are the unlockable coloured walls for optional areas, but in their place getting through even regular dungeons is a bit more of a challenge. As well as the old staple of disappearing walls and working out which teleport will take you forward rather than the beginning, there are also areas of darkness and damaging electrical areas that will deplete your HP. In order to combat these, you will need to purchase Light Balls to banish the darkness and Core Shields to protect you from external damage. And for those of you who welcome more action orientated pursuits, there’s a rather stressful section in the game where you will have to escape from prison by running from the jailer on the field map.

The other changes are mainly cosmetic- for example, Solar Noise is now called Solar Data, macca and cells have been replaced with dollars and flowers (valuable in this post-apocalyptic reality), whilst the menu now also contains a ‘Recovery’ option that automatically selects characters with the appropriate skills to heal the party- a faster option than scrolling through the skills menu yourself.

There is one major addition to consider, however, in the form of a new type of equippable item called a Karma Ring. Each Karma ring offers either a boost to stats or an advantage in battle (anything from Void Phys at the start of battle to providing the party with an extra Press Turn each round), and can be further customised by filling its empty slots with stat enhancing gems. Each character can equip one Karma Ring, which in turn usually has 2-4 gem slots- but be warned, if you want to remove gems and put other ones in, the ones you remove will be destroyed forever.

For those who imported data from the first game, there are also some extra treats- if you made the right decisions in that game, you’ll be able to learn some unique special abilities in the final dungeon, as well as having the chance of recruiting a ‘secret’ character (whose identity must be the worst kept secret in gaming history).

Field hunting also makes a return and operates in much the same way as DDS1, although it is only available when Serph is in the party, making it unavailable for huge stretches of the game.

Devouring the enemy

Aside from a few changes to the interface, at first glance the battle system looks much the same as the first game- Press Turns are back, along with all the familiar spells and enemy types- but alongside it, a few new twists have been introduced. The first and most obvious of these is the new Berserk Mode- when Solar Data is at or close to its maximum, your ability to transform becomes unstable, causing you to sometimes enter battle in Berserk Mode, a fusion of your human and demon forms. In Berserk Mode, your strength and chance of scoring a critical hit are greatly increased, but it comes at a price- magic is unusable, defence is lowered and it’s also very likely that your attack will miss.

Once again mastering skills for battle is dependent on the Mantra Grid, but this too has been given an overhaul for the new era. Instead of consisting of several linear tracks for each ability type, the new Mantra Grid is now a hexagonal grid that allows more freedom for switching between ‘tracks’- provided you’ve mastered an adjacent mantra, you can always jump across to learning one from a completely different element or skill type, even if you haven’t yet learned lower level spells from that element. This is certainly useful later in the game, since you can skip learning the basic spells that aren’t really useful anymore.

The new Mantra Grid also has another twist in the form several secret mantra which can only be unlocked when all the mantra around them have been mastered (not necessarily by the same character, just the party as a whole). Some of these mantras boost the party’s stats, but others are of an ‘Esoteric’ type that enable the mastery of extra skills of varying usefulness. Also present are powerful Hidden Mantra that only appear when a character reaches the end of a particular track, alongside a couple of special mantra that only appear on the grid when special optional bosses are defeated.

Combos have also been expanded and retooled somewhat- as well as having more combos to discover in the first place, they have been made somewhat more flexible. For example, in the first game elemental combos needed both elemental spells to be at the same level (so as you levelled up your single target spells you’d lose your lower level all target combos), but this no longer happens- so Teradyne and Bufudyne don’t just allow you to cast Mabufudyne, they also let you cast the lower level Mabufula and Mabufu.

In terms of overall difficulty, Digital Devil Saga 2 is much like its predecessor in that you can’t brute force it- you have to take your enemies’ strengths and weaknesses into account if you want to get anywhere. The game also has a Hard Mode for those who have cleared the first game or started a New Game+, but certainly the basic game is challenging enough, with significant grinding and learning of mantras required in order to best some of the later bosses.

Veterans of the first game will recall occasionally running into Omoikanes, tricky enemies that yielded great rewards for those able to defeat them. They’re back in Digital Devil Saga 2, but this time around it’s easier to get the better of them- instead of being weak to gun attacks, they come in groups of five and are vulnerable to random elements, ensuring that you should be able to kill at least a few of them over the course of the game and reap in massive rewards.

When you’re not out encountering Omoikanes, there’s a chance you might run into Jack Frost, a quizmaster who has 100 questions for aspiring adventurers. Each question is multiple choice; getting them right will net you an item, but getting them wrong will see the battle end immediately. Once you eventually get all 100 questions right, a secret area will open up.

Playable characters (spoilers!)

Serph (Varna): Despite being nominally still the main character, Serph spends large portions of the game being unplayable (more on that further down). Nonetheless, when you have him in your team he remains a solid all-rounder whose stat growth you can customise as you like (as before, I recommend focusing on STR, MAG and VIT), making for a solid attacker with a good command of magic. His natural element is ice, with a weakness to fire.

Gale (Vayu): This time around, Gale is playable from the start of the game, and although he’s an all-rounder with a wind specialist, he tends to fill in as the fire-user too. Whenever Argilla and Cielo are available, Gale tends to take more of back seat, but he is useful to fall back on in situations where they can’t contribute.

Argilla (Prithivi): Once again, Argilla is the weakest of the team physically, instead specialising in magic with an affinity for Earth spells. For me, Argilla was usually the healer of the team, although when the occasion called for it she could let loose with powerful elemental magic and combos.

Roland (Indra): New for DDS, Roland is inexplicably the team’s second Thunder specialist, although unlike Cielo he isn’t weak against ailments (instead, Earth is his weakness). He’s an average character who proves useful early on, but he later leaves the party and only becomes playable in the final dungeon if you don’t fulfil the conditions to get Heat back. Personally, I would have preferred Roland to be a fire user (since otherwise you don’t have a fire specialist until the end), with mine proving to be a stolid backup for ice, healing and thunder attacks.

Cielo (Dyaus): A vital component of my team, Cielo may be a weaker character who likes to pump his stat bonuses into random places, but even so for me he became invaluable, mastering not only his native thunder but Death and Expel magic as well. With various stat boosting spells on his side as well, there was never nothing for Cielo to do in battle.

Sera (Varnani): Serph’s replacement for a section of the game, Sera is basically the female incarnation of Varna, and as such absorbs all of the skills that Serph has learned up to the point she replaces him. Just like Serph, she is a solid all-rounder, although as far as design goes I prefer the original Varna.

Heat (Agni): Unless you make the right choices at two points in the first game and then two further points in this game, you will only get to use the overpowered ‘True Agni’ in one battle; however, for those who go the extra mile, Heat can be used in place of Roland in the final dungeon (he absorbs all the skills that Roland learned earlier in the game). As before, Heat is skewed towards being a powerful physical attacker (although never stronger than Serph/Seraph) rather than a mage, but as he is the only playable fire specialist, it’s good to have him along for that as well as the nostalgia factor.

Seraph (Ardha): Disappointingly, when Serph and Seraph fuse to become Seraph, the demon thus created is an ugly bug-eyed creature with a hideous design. Ardha, is, however, a strong all-rounder with no particular weaknesses, which makes him/her a staple of the front line. Certainly I rarely switched him/her out of the party once s/he joined.

Story

Following straight on from the original game, DDS2 unravels the mysteries behind the world of the Junkyard and the nature of both the Embryon and the Karma Society. It all gets a bit convoluted and confusing at times, but the game remains none the less enjoyable for it.

Audiovisual

Unsurprisingly, the game is identical to its predecessor when it comes to visuals and effects, with only slight changes to the look of the interface marking it out from the original. The background music has been updated and remixed for this instalment, but is still in keeping with the first game.

Final Thoughts

Between them, the two Digital Devil Saga games have proven that the RPG genre isn’t as stale and tired as one might begin to fear- there is still room for innovative battle systems that force you to do more than just select ‘Attack’ all the time. Here’s to much more of the same from the team at Atlus.

In the world of the Junkyard, six tribes are embroiled in a war where the victor can claim the right to escape the turmoil and enter the promised land of Nirvana. The conflict has been locked in a stalemate as long as anyone can remember, but all that changes the day a mysterious light appears in the sky. Changed by the light, the people of the Junkyard now have the ability to transform into demons and literally devour their enemies- a powerful new ability that should decide the course of the war one way or another. And for Serph, the young leader of the Embryon tribe, it is the start of a journey to save a mysterious young woman who appeared in the Junkyard at the moment when this all began.

An offshoot of the ever popular Shin Megami Tensei franchise of games, Digital Devil Saga’s initially rather cryptic title (trust me, it will make sense by the end) hides what turns out to be one of the more compelling RPGs out there. With a battle system that demands skill and strategy rather than brute force, and a game play style so addictive that you simply cannot tear yourself away once you start playing, DDS is a hidden gem even for those who thought they knew the RPG scene.

The Junkyard

During your adventures in the Junkyard, you take on the role of Serph, the quiet leader of the Embryon whose goal it is to defeat all the other tribes and reach Nirvana. What this basically means is that you and your team are embroiled in a battle royale situation, and unlike certain other series, that means there’s no beating about the bush- you’re out to put a permanent end to your rivals.

What this boils down to, of course, is visiting different areas and taking on the other tribes. There aren’t actually all that many locations in the game to visit, but each dungeon takes a while to complete, so all in all you get a decent playtime for the game. Not only will each area have several levels (luckily you can refer to a map to see everywhere you’ve been), but you’ll be solving puzzles along the way- everything from simple gate and switch setups to a few more complex situations such as having a limited time to swim through underground water pipes.

Fortunately, save points (or Karma terminals, as they are known), are relatively plentiful in the game, although game play is so addictive that your intention to just play to the next save point usually becomes ‘play for the next three hours’. Karma terminal come in two types- large Karma terminals will let you restore your party (for a price), whilst small ones lack this facility but do allow you to teleport to the nearest large terminal (a good way to avoid backtracking once you’ve completed a dungeon). Also scattered about the world are vendors, life terminals and rejuvenation points; the latter two have the same function of healing you, but with the difference that life terminals cost money.

Whilst playing the game, you’ll also notice a gauge in the top left corner measuring ‘Solar Noise’. The manual will very vaguely tell you that ‘Solar Noise affects your characters in different ways’, but don’t worry if you don’t have much of a clue what it does; it only affects the selling price of certain items, the damage done by a handful of abilities and the aforementioned water pipe mini-game.

Also available in certain areas is the ability to go ‘Field Hunting’; a more action-orientated game play mode, Field Hunting lets Serph slash minor demons (basically balls of light)- get enough within the time limit, and you’ll battle against a special enemy, the Mitama. Mitama are strong against all but a particular elemental magic, but they are also prone to run away, so killing them isn’t easy (although of course, if you manage it, there’ll be a big reward). Equally tricky to pin down are Omoikanes, random monsters who are only weak against your characters’ human forms, but who flee at the drop of a hat- again, defeating them will net you a nice bonus.

Naturally, the game also comes with optional bosses and areas for the truly dedicated to explore, most of them hidden behind coloured walls that you need a key to pass through. It is in fact possible to complete the entire game without ever unlocking these walls, but if you want to do everything in the game, you’ll need to track down the appropriate keys.

Hunting: we eat to live, and live to eat

Battle is the flesh and blood of DDS (often quite literally) and whilst the random encounter rate is higher than most of us would have liked, the game is refreshing in that you can’t get anywhere just by spamming the attack button as you can with most games. Instead, strategy is key to almost every battle, and those who ignore it probably won’t be able to make it past the first dungeon.

Before getting into battle, it’s important to make sure that you have the right selection of skills set up; as well as basic attacks, each character has room for 4, 6 or 8 skills depending on their level, and although that might seem quite generous, you’ll have to carefully pick and choose what works best for you. Skills come in four types- physical abilities which deplete HP, magic attacks which deplete MP, auto skills which provide resistances or trigger automatically under the right circumstances and shield skills which let you void, repel or drain certain types of attack. There’s a wide variety on offer, and you’re going to have become familiar with pretty much all of them in order to survive.

When it comes to actually learning these skills, you’ll be relying on the Mantra Grid; the game’s equivalent of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid. Mantra are laid out in rows according to type, with nodes adjacent to mastered Mantra available for download at save points. Downloading a mantra costs money, but you then have to accumulate AP from battle to master that Mantra and use its corresponding skills. What you end up with, therefore, is great freedom of choice in customising your characters- which can be both a blessing and a curse depending on how decisive you are.

With all that in mind, the time has finally come to discuss battle itself, and it is here where the need for strategy will become apparent. Digital Devil Saga uses what it calls the “Press Turn” system, in which your party receives one full turn per living party member (you can have one to three members at any time). The party will act in the order you set in the menu, and generally the same conditions apply to the enemy- although certain bosses do get extra turns.

In the normal run of things, every action you take will consume one turn, but- and here’s where skill really kicks in- there are some important exceptions. If your attack corresponds to an enemy’s weakness, then you’ll only consume half a turn, whilst if your attack fails or is something the enemy is strong against, you’ll consume two turns (you can also pass to only use up half a turn). If you have a spare half turn left over (represented by a flashing hexagon in the top right rather than a solid one), then the next character to go will use this as if it were a complete turn rather than a half. That last specific may not make much sense until you actually come to play, but suffice to say that targeting enemy weaknesses will result in more turns and higher damage done before the enemy gets a chance to counterattack.

Of course, attacks and skills aren’t the only options you have in battle; as well as the obvious choice of using an item, you can also switch party members in and out of battle, revert to human form (more on this in a moment) or perform a combo ability involving two or three party members. Combos are unlocked by the right combination of individual skills between characters, and whilst they take up multiple turns, they can also be useful for dealing more damage than the component skills would be able to do on their own.

When it comes to reverting to human form, you might naturally wonder why you would want to do such a thing- after all, a puny gun-wielding human is far less impressive than a demon with special skills. It’s important to be aware of the ability to transform and revert, however, for not only does it help when you get ambushed and have to begin the battle in human form, but there are also attacks that humans are immune to, enemies that are weak against guns and combos that need at least one human character in order to perform. All in all, it isn’t something you’ll be using all the time, but it’s a useful option to have.

Another aspect of the game you’ll want to be aware of is the ability to hunt your enemy- since the mastery of Mantra is depending on collecting AP, you’ll want to enhance the amount you get at the end of each battle by literally consuming your enemy. In order to achieve this, you’ll first need to frighten the enemy by attacking their weaknesses or successfully nullifying the attacks, before finishing them off with a Hunt skill that will see your characters devour an enemy demon. The reward for pulling this off is a nice big chunk of AP, but beware- the greedier you are, the more likely you’ll end up with the stomach ache status effect, which prevents you from earning any AP at all!

Quick tip: If your HP/MP are low and there’s no restore point or item vendor in sight, save your ‘Noise’ items for this situation- not only do they permanently increase your stats, but they also completely heal you. It’s also worth noting that there’s a chance of healing HP, MP or both when a character levels up.

Playable characters

Serph (Varna): As Varna, Serph is an ice element demon with a natural weakness to fire, and with the unique feature that you can customise his stat growth (as any RPG player will know, strength, vitality and magic should be prioritised over agility and luck). Serph tends to become a worthy physical attacker and mage quite naturally over the course of the game; my focus was on enhancing his natural ice abilities with earth and healing as backups, alongside boosting abilities.

Heat (Agni): A strong physical attacker at the expense of magic, in Agni form Heat is a fire element demon who is weak against ice (like you can’t guess from the name). Unfortunately, whilst he is useful early in the game, the increasing importance of magic later on forces him to take a backseat, as both Gale and Argilla are capable of becoming better with fire element magic than he is. By the end of the game, I mainly used Heat for abilities I wanted but no one else had room for, but if you wish to develop his physical and ailment inducing skills, then that would probably be the best path for him.

Argilla (Prithivi): A natural mage and earth element demon (her weakness is force, the game’s equivalent of wind), Argilla is able to become skilled in both healing and elemental magic, which is exactly what I used her for. Her physical strength may be low, but with her outstanding magic ability, she’s just what you need later in the game.

Gale (Vayu): A force element demon with a weakness to electricity, Gale doesn’t join up until partway through the game, but he does come prepared with some handy force element magic that will probably be stronger than anything you’ve taught your party up to that point. I like to use him as a backup mage with a focus on force and fire element, as well as a revival ability for when Argilla is knocked out. His stat growth tends to be reasonably balanced.

Cielo (Dyaus): The final Embryon member to join the party, Cielo is an electrical element demon with an annoying weakness against ailments (i.e. negative status effects). Although he likes to boost his luck and agility to the detriment of other stats, Cielo’s electrical attacks are second to none, and once you level him up enough to withstand enemy attacks (for a while his relatively low HP makes him a risk in high stakes battles), he can make a good secondary healer as well.

Story

Since Digital Devil Saga and its sequel are two halves of the same whole, don’t expect the story to be completed in this game- instead, it will leave you on a frustrating cliff-hanger that can only be resolved by getting to the second game as soon as possible. As far as we actually see in this game is concerned, on the largest of scales it’s another battle royale, but there’s a lot more going on in the details- just don’t expect it to make any sense just yet.

Audiovisual

As a world filled with warring tribes and hideous demons, the Junkyard isn’t really the most attractive of places- you won’t find any brightly coloured girls and so forth here. Even so, the character and location designs are well thought out, technically accomplished and brought to life through cel-shaded models. The in-game music opts for an industrial theme overall, but is surprisingly worthy as a stand-alone soundtrack, with the battle theme “Hunting” proving immensely catchy.

Final Thoughts

An unexpectedly enjoyable and addictive game, Digital Devil Saga proves that RPGs don’t have to be all about level grinding and spamming the attack button- there’s still room to create a title where skill is necessary but the learning curve isn’t too steep. Just be warned- once you start playing, you won’t ever want to stop.

To be continued…in the Digital Devil Saga 2 review