The world is coming to an end. Dark rings called Schwarzwelt is formed and expanding from the south pole on the Earth's surface, and eat away every single thing it encountered during its expansion. The world set out a team of elites to find out the true nature behind this phenomenon.
Being a Shin Megami Tensei game, you would expect tonnes of demons that referenced from myths and legends from various parts of the world, and this game didn't disappoint in that regard. You can have up to 3 minions by your side during the battle, while having at least 8 in your party (the number increases after each stage). There's also a function to fuse demons into stronger ones. However since you are the only human in the team, you are the only one (at the early stages anyway) that can use items and summon backups. It can be quite a hassle when all of your team members suffers from status ailments.
Each demon has it's own basic attributes, but can have up to 6 bonus/skills. Some are offensive like the basic spells, while some are passive ones that ups the basic HP. You can't change those on a whim. You do get a chance for a change once in a while when that demon leveled up, but the new one is always random. It's up to you to decide whether to keep the one they are replacing or gamble on a new one because you don't use that skill much anyway. Fair to say I had more disappointments than joy.
Like the previous game I played, Devil Survivor. The required exp for leveling up the demon goes up quite in an exponential fashion. Each demon has its own basic level, and the curve goes up from that basic level. I can see it so that you would have to refresh your lineup in a new dungeon just because the previous team level up too slow, as in the newer, higher leveled ones, requires less exp to go up to the next level than the ones you convinced in the previous dungeons.
One interesting mechanism in this game is the ability to talk to demons. Akin to lots of so-called "dating sims", the demon will say a couple of sentences and you will have to please them by choosing the correct reply to their question. If you failed to do so they will either stay angry (refuse to talk to you again), leave the battle, or just suddenly jump on you. They usually requires you to do it at least twice before the demon is friendly with you, and you will then be able to negotiate and gain benefits from them, whether it be obtaining mecca, getting items, or even convincing them to join you. Some demon don't like to talk to you, and you can't have conversation with them when it's during the full moon(unless you install a sub-app). Convincing them to join you also requires you to give up some life, some mana, some mecca and a couple of items, base on their request. You can sometimes deny their request and they will change it to the ones that you think suits you. For several times I had a demon even requesting getting 50k+ mecca from me, which i reasonably refused to do so, and the demon just change to other ones. What can be annoying is that sometimes when you fulfilled their demands they just leave....
The first time you encounter demons they will be in complete fuzzy state, as in you can't tell their strength, their HP, their weaknesses. It's like stabbing in the dark and hoping that it won't 1-hit-kill your party by some bullshit skills. Most of the time you will be underleveled anyway, so each time you goes into a new area it's always quite frightening to encounter the unknowns.
Through the whole story you also get apps that can be customised into your suit to suit the course of the action. There are ones that regen health for a certain steps you walk, ones that allow you to make one mistake in the conversation with demons, and ones that avoids battles in general, and several other one with various abilities. You can't carry them all, so you would have to choose wisely before your departure what you want to do in this expedition. You can, however, change them whenever you are at a save point inside the dungeon though.
The upper screen is your main screen, while the bottom screen shows the map that auto completes once you walk on that grid of the dungeon. You control like one of the first 3D shooters out there, up being going forward, sides being turning, and down meaning turning 180 degrees. Sometimes can be confusing if you just walk while staring intensely at the map.
In term of gameplay you use the d-pad and the buttons. I don't remember the stylus being used at all.
The save points are quite spread out throughout the dungeon, so are healing points. The healing points do cost you mecca, but it's always better to be prepared than to die and had to start your exploration all over again from the last save. You can also jump back to the beginning of the dungeon from the save points as well, so most of the time it's always the top priority to look for save and heal points on the map. The layout also means that it won't take more than 20min each time between places that you can save.
At the moment I'm quite enjoying it, really enjoying the dungeon design, the demons(though quite a number of them looks to be reusage from the older SMT games), their personalties, the skills, and the exploration in general.
This world is a parody of man kind's sins. I also suspect that at the end of the day you would have to make a decision, like in Devil Survivor, to be either on the gods side or on the chaos' side, or just staying neutral like a rogue. Right now I just want to finish the game and know what exactly the game has in term of the ending.
Highly recommended, especially to people that like the traditional JRPG grind-fest. Like Etrian Odyssey, you do have to take each step carefully, and that's what makes the experience so rewarding near the end of the dungeon when you can just pawn the ones that scared you previously.
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