Finished it.
Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner – PS2
Grade: Fail
(1.0)
As a disclosure note to all of those Mega Ten fans out there, this is my first game beat by the team. I’ve had experience with Persona 2, but I’m leaving that foggy creature behind. It appears that these games pride themselves in gameplay as the battle system and customization is much more engaging than the storylines. However, what DDS distastefully presented was game with little to no storyline, exhausting and useless battling along with trudging through some of the most frustrating dungeons I could think of off the top of my head. Let’s start with Digital Devil Saga’s story. What story? No story. Your undeveloped, shadowed characters spend the majority of their time trying to achieve Nirvana while growing a “familiar” attachment with a horrible female lead named Sera. Absolutely nothing is certain in the storyline as Sera has no clue of her purpose, yet her ability to sate the demons’ hunger becomes vital in achieving their goals. Too many intimations with little grounding for gamers reduce the chances of making any logical conclusions. Perhaps if the writers took less of an interest in making a bullshit storyline for the sake of making an RPG, and focused less on what is to come in the sequel, perhaps DDS’ story would have a fighting chance. But no. There’s absolutely no incentive to acknowledge the piss poor lines in this game, because even with the shoddy ass ending of the game, many important things are left in the air. Though I hear good things about DDS2, why do I want to play a game where it appears that the writers fucking suck? Do I really want to sequel-myself into something like that?
As for the battling. I can appreciate the fact that this game does not warrant instant button mashing without any consequences. The fact that surviving boss battles or random encounters relies on your attention to enemy weaknesses and your vulnerabilities certainly adds another element to its battling. Even the Mantra system which is extremely simply and inadequate influences your engagement in battles. The system is inadequate because of the invested amount of Atma points you put into learning skills doesn’t necessarily reflect strongly in battles. I did fine in Coordinate 136 without having any high level elemental skills. It was also easy for the system to appear at a standstill in regards to the amount of atma points you would get at the end of battles around that dungeon. Dyne skills really are the maker and breakers, but if you’re investing two teammates in attack elemental skills, how would you have the foresight to discover many of the latter bosses having moves that require Null Nerve/Panic or Void Null/Panic (granted, the Nulls are very easy to get). The encounter rate is extremely high which only emphasizes the repetitiveness of battles. Once you discover the enemy weaknesses, there really isn’t anything else to battling. Also, what is the purpose of transforming back into a human? Absolutely nothing !! Even being a high level though I didn’t tweak my Mag stat as I’m told I should have, some random battles left me either dead or hanging on a thin line because of hackiness on the enemy’s AI part (such as the enemies in Sahasrara who will sleep you, then kill all who sleep. What the FUCK, especially after having moved around the crappy linear dungeon — but no so linear because of its poorly implemented and completely useless blue walls and floors that only made you succumb to more of the game’s encounter rate and stupid battles – and not having saved? Yeah, frustrating).
Despite the shitty and constantly forced down your throat gameplay, the music and design looks very well. At least for the characters. . . come to think of it, the design wasn’t that great. Especially for the dungeons. Too many times did I feel like I was in the same area. The music is fantastic and very engaging, and loud. Perhaps this loudness kept me more attentive to the utter bull I was trying to trudge through, and I appreciate that. The art direction has a very good feel to it. The colors seemed to go well with the mundane surroundings. But a game can only be stared at for its attractiveness for so long ’til it starts blending into the backgrounds. I don’t think I’ll ever, ever, ever play this game again. And after baking on how I feel for this game, I equate its bullshit to the same level of frustration as Summoner’s battle system.
I clocked 40 hours with the game. A good 15 hours were wasted by letting the game idle because it was hard to concentrate on it.
Now onto Shadow Hearts: From the New World.
