Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked

604,800 Seconds Over Tokyo

From its humble beginnings in the 1980s, Atlus’s (first Namco’s) Megami Tensei series, whose earliest installments remained in Japan, would encompass several subseries and the main Shin Megami Tensei sequel series. Among the later gaiden games the franchise would spawn was the strategy RPG Devil Survivor, originally releasing on the Nintendo DS. Tactics games were nothing new for MegaTen, as the Majin Tensei spinoffs featured mechanics similar to the Fire Emblem franchise, albeit with their own unique twist. An updated rerelease would come out for the Nintendo 3DS, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked, for the most part a good port.

Overclocked, like the game’s original version, occurs on contemporary Tokyo, Japan, following a seventeen-year-old student and his companions, who experience an outbreak of demons, some of them becoming their allies. The protagonist whom the player names is able to see the remaining lifespans of other Tokyoites, and thus works to deter as many deaths as possible. The plotline is well-developed for the most part, with the potential for different events in each playthrough, and variant endings based on decisions made throughout the game. Some of the twists derive from other Megami Tensei titles, but otherwise, the narrative is one of the game’s high points.

Fortunately, the port doesn’t mask the fact it occurs in Japan, Atlus mostly doing a good job with the localization, with legible, realistic dialogue free of spelling and grammar errors. Unlike the Persona subseries, moreover, the localization team didn’t leave Japanese honorifics in the game text, for the most part a good thing, and there are occasional genuinely-funny moments where Atsuro, one of the main characters, calls Yuzu “Yoohoo.” Not all is flawless, however, as some of the skill descriptions can be misleading, and there is occasional Engrish such as “Immobilized (demon/character name)” when a character or demon is frozen or paralyzed, but otherwise, the translation is definitely above par.

The core gameplay of Overclocked is structured across seven days, with the protagonist and his companions able to visit different parts of Tokyo via a list of locales for story scenes, and, necessary to advance the plot, fight story battles; mercifully, there are no random encounters of which to speak in the game. For supplemental grinding, there are “free battles” where the player, if they find the tide of combat turned against them, can retreat back to the map of Tokyo, with experience retained (a feature unavailable in story battles).

At the outset of free or storyline battles, the player sets up their party of up to four characters on designated locations on the battlefield, with starting positions rarely, if ever, critical to triumph in combat. Outside battle, the player can set skills on the human team leaders, and give each two demons to form their respective squadrons, each character sprite indicating different teams on the battlefield, the same going for enemy demons and their occasional human leaders. When battle commences, the player can track their characters and the enemy’s turns via a turn order meter.

When one of the player’s characters reaches their turn, they can move around, with team leaders and their demons each able to execute one skill, some of which can actually be useful, such as one ability that recovers magic points for a cost of hit points, which was central to my endgame strategy. Whenever a player and enemy team are adjacent to one another (unless one has an ability allowing for ranged attacks), they can engage in a skirmish, with players able to input commands for their team, with each side executing their commands likely depending upon agility, although turn order isn’t always consistent, and sometimes a great deal of foresight is necessary.

If one side exploits another opponent’s weakness, they may gain an extra turn (or not if a ranged attacking team engages in a skirmish with a team only able to attack adjacent squares), where, after an initial round, the obtainer(s) of the extra turn(s) can execute an additional command. If the player’s team leader and demons have killed one or more opponents, all survivors of the skirmish gain experience for occasional level-ups, not to mention money to purchase demons at the demon auction or summon them from a demon compendium, players able to register demons with their current skill sets so they don’t have to re-grind them to unlock grayed-out skills.

At the offset of battle, the player can set their team leaders to “crack” new skills from enemies, where the assigned leader’s team must kill the demon having the prospective skill in order to acquire it for assignment among the acquirer or other team leaders, although some of these learnable abilities can be missable. One particularly-useful bonus is that depending upon how well certain team leaders and their demons fight, they may gain a skill set bonus where they can assign one HP or MP-consuming skill to one of their demons, provided they’re still alive during the acquisition of this initiative.

Fulfilling the objectives of the battle naturally wins it for the player, with living team members and demons during story battles receiving bonus experience (which free battles don’t yield). Players can ultimately fuse demons to create more powerful ones, with the protagonist’s level indicative of the maximum level for which he can combine them. Devil Survivor, moreover, was the first entry of the Megami Tensei series to allow players to select skills manually for fused demons to inherit from their precursors in contract to the randomization of skill sets posed by prior titles such as Nocturne.

The battle system has some good ideas, and works well provided the player regularly grinds, which is also the main detriment of the game mechanics, especially towards the end, and the typical Japanese strategy RPG trope of wasted time in story battles plays part. There are also some missions where the player has to defend weak, defenseless NPCs from dying at the hands of demons lest the player receives a Mission Failure and has to reload their previous save. There’s further the potential for the game to freeze when analyzing datapads on the battlefield that can provide new skills, money, or let a demon learn a grayed-out skill, and ultimately, these issues prevent the gameplay from truly shining.

Devil Survivor, however, is surprisingly user-friendly, with a linear structure preventing players from ever getting lost of wondering how to advance the central storyline, and the chief game interface is easy, along with a suspend save present in the middle of combat should real-life interruptions arise. There are a few issues such as the unskippable cutscenes (although players luckily can scroll through text to cut voiced dialogue short if they’d rather read than listen), and the aforementioned bug in battle involving datapads, but otherwise, the game interfaces well with players.

The soundtrack contains plenty of rocking themes such as one of the overworld tracks, with battle music and that within skirmishes being enjoyable, although some of the pieces can become fairly repetitive. Overclocked also brings voice acting into the mix, although it’s largely hit-or-miss, with characters such as Midori being among the weakest performances, and while performers who obviously don’t have Asian blood voice the Japanese cast, the lack of honorifics in the dialogue make it sound convincing. Mercifully, if the player doesn’t find the voicework their cup of tea, they can turn them off completely. All in all, a decent-sounding game.

Aside from the introductory sequence before the title screen, the port doesn’t really utilize the 3DS’s three-dimensional capabilities, although the graphics do have nice colors, prerendered environments in battle, solid character art narrating cutscenes, and great demon designs, although demons during skirmishes are inanimate, with every skirmish having a first-person perspective where the player doesn’t see their team leaders or own demons in action at all, aside from some good ability animations, and there is the rare bit of pixilation during the dramatic camera pans that sometimes accompany skill sequences. The game is far from an eyesore, but could have definitely looked better.

Finally, the port is a little on the long side, two to three days total, although there are plenty of things to keep players coming back for more such as the titles serving as achievements (and I achieved a grand total of zero during my singular playthrough), and various new game plus modes allowing the potential for seeing different endings and making different choices in subsequent playthroughs.

In the end, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overlocked is definitely a solid strategy RPG in many aspects, such as the general good ideas behind its battle system, the tight control, the engaging narrative with potential variations aided by a polished localization, the good soundtrack, and plentiful lasting appeal. Granted, it does have issues of which players need to be aware before investing their money and especially their time in it, such as the grindy nature especially towards the end and lack of graphical improvement over the original. As physical copies have become expensive, interested parties would save themselves money with a digital version of the game.

The Good:
+Battle system has plenty of variety and strategy.
+Great control.
+Excellent narrative with potential variations.
+Good localization.
+Sounds nice.
+Plenty reasons to come back for more.

The Bad:
-A little grindy.
-Can crash.
-Some translation incongruities.
-Little graphical improvement.

The Bottom Line:
An enjoyable strategy RPG.

Score Breakdown:
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Mechanics: 6.0/10
Controls: 8.0/10
Story: 9.5/10
Localization: 7.0/10
Music/Sound: 8.0/10
Graphics: 6.0/10
Lasting Appeal: 9.5/10
Difficulty: Hard
Playing Time: 2-3 Days

Overall: 7.5/10