Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 is a tactical role-playing game developed by Atlus for the Nintendo DS. It is a spin-off of the Megami Tensei series, and a standalone sequel to Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor. It was published by Atlus in Japan in 2011, North America in 2012, and in Europe by Ghostlight in 2013. The story follow a group in Tokyo after a series of natural disasters heralds the arrival of divine forces which threaten to destroy humanity in seven days. Gameplay is similar to the first Devil Survivor, combining grid-based combat with turn-based battle sequences, with a character relationship system unlocking new gameplay elements and different endings.
Devil Survivor 2 was developed over two years by many of the same staff as Devil Survivor, including producer and director Shinjirō Takata, and character designer Suzuhito Yasuda. The team's goal was to expand and refine their work from Devil Survivor. The music was co-composed by Kenji Ito and members of Atlus's sound team, while manga artist Mohiro Kitoh contributed enemy designs. Journalists praised the storyline and refined gameplay, while criticising the high difficulty and lack of new features. The game saw media expansions including a 2013 anime adaptation.
An expanded version subtitled Record Breaker was developed for the Nintendo 3DS and released worldwide in 2015: Atlus published the game in Japan and North America, while NIS America published it in Europe. Record Breaker was produced to both address fan criticism of the 3DS versions of Devil Survivor, and restore cut content. New music was composed by Shoji Meguro, and both Yasuda and Kitoh returned to create new character and enemy designs.
Gameplay
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 is a tactical role-playing game in which players take on the role of a silent protagonist after a catastrophic event causes turmoil across Japan. Much of the gameplay is carried over from the game's predecessor Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor and is split into two parts: story sequences which take up half an hour of in-game time, and combat in grid-based field areas. Combat begins when two units meet, transitioning to a first-person turn-based combat where two parties of three get a single round of combat to act: actions include standard attacks, offensive and support skills. Hitting an enemy's weakness rewarding an extra round to the character who landed the attack.The protagonist and player characters use demons as allies: demons can either be bought at the Demon Auction, or two demons can be used to create a new demon which can be further enhanced using items as part of the fusion. During combat, the party can use Skill Crack to learn abilities from enemies provided the party assigned that skill defeats the marked enemy.
A new feature is the Fate system, in which talking with party members will improve their relationship with the protagonist and raise Fate rank, starting at 0 and capping at 5. Raising the Fate rank allows access to new skill exchange options, combat abilities, and new demon fusion options. Some characters can die permanently in battle, removing them from the story, and the choices made during the story and who the protagonist interacts with leads into one of the multiple endings.
Synopsis
Setting and characters
Devil Survivor 2 takes place across multiple cities in contemporary Japan, including Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka: the premise is that a series of disasters strikes the country, causing devastation and heralding the arrival of supernatural forces which threaten to wipe out the world within seven days. Shortly before the game's events, a website dubbed Nicaea becomes popular, showing the deaths of people close to the user. Nicaea also includes a portal to the Demon Summoning App, allowing someone to control and attack with demons after making a contract.The silent protagonist is a high school student who ends up caught up in the game's events and gaining access to the Demon Summoning App alongside many others. His three immediate allies are childhood friend Daichi Shijima, classmate Io Nitta, and the airheaded Yuzuru "Joe" Akie. They end up being recruited into JP's, an organization which protects Japan from supernatural threats. Key characters within JP's are its leader Yamato Hotsuin, his second-in-command Makoto Sako, Osaka-based doctor Otome Yanagiya, and lead scientist Fumi Kanno. Other survivors who end up allying with JP's are the dancer Hinako Kujou, young boxer Keita Wakui, former pianist Airi Ban, and chef Jungo Torii. JP's is opposed by a faction led by detective Ronaldo Kuriki, and the protagonist is often accosted by a figure dubbed the Anguished One. The expanded release Record Breaker adds Miyako Hotsuin, a woman who takes Yamato's place as the leader of JP's.
Plot
After downloading a death prediction app dubbed Nicaea onto their phones, the protagonist, Daichi and Io are nearly killed in a predicted train crash, then must fight past demons who can be recruited using Nicaea. A series of natural disasters has struck Earth, and soon after a being not recognised as a demon begins killing Tokyo's residents. The group are taken in by JP's, with Yamato seeking their aid in fighting the non-demonic beings: they are eventually revealed as the Septentriones, celestial beings from outside reality. The protagonist meets other summoners, including a group opposing JP's led by Ronaldo Kuriki, saving them from their predicted deaths. The protagonist is also regularly contacted by the Anguished One, who is observing events and gave humanity a fighting chance by distributing the Nicaea app. As the Septentriones destroy magical barriers protecting Japan from the Void, an expanse that is swallowing the planet, Yamato reveals the Septentriones were sent to test humanity by Polaris, their leader and current Administrator of Earth.After defeating the sixth Septentrione, the party splinters into different factions who want to restore the world in different ways: Yamato seeks a meritocracy, Ronaldo seeks an egalitarian society, and Daichi hopes for a resolution the entire group can agree on and can eventually be convinced to either assassinate Polaris and survive in the ruined world or restore the old world as it was. The protagonist can side with any of these factions, or with the Anguished One who reveals defeating Polaris can allow him to become Administrator and create a new world for humanity. The winning party opens a path to the Akashic Record, the Administrator's realm overseeing Earth. In routes where the protagonist does not side with him, they must fight the Anguished One−revealed to be Alcor, the eighth Septentrione. In other routes, Ronaldo and Yamato die rather than join. In the Akashic Record, the party fight Polaris, either winning their wish by showing their strength or killing her to fulfill their desired plan. In each ending, a final message is received through Nicaea.
In the "Triangulum Arc", which follows a scenario where the entire party decided to rewind history and restore the world with Alcor's aid, the protagonist gradually reunites with his initially-amnesiac companions after a new force dubbed the Triangulum begin attacking humanity. They find Yamato has vanished, replaced with Miyako, who insists on both preventing the party from getting into danger and captures rather than destroys the Triangulum. They also suffer from visions of being killed by the Triangulum's leader Arcturus. During the campaign, the current world is revealed to be the third: after the initial rewind, the Akashic Record's controller Canopus destroyed the protagonist while attacking Alcor for his unauthorized actions, then created the Triangulum who killed everyone but Alcor and Yamato before their defeat. Since the second rewind, Yamato has been in the Akashic Record preserving the protagonist's data from the Triangulum's attacks, while Alcor was captured by Miyako.
The party rescue Yamato from the Akashic Record and defeat the final Triangulum and confronting Miyako−she is revealed as Cor Caroli, an agent of Canopus who inherited Yamato's role in history. Miyako wants to sacrifice the party, who share the administrative authority to use the Akashic Record, and herself to turn Alcor into a new Administrator and prevent further actions from Canopus and other Administrators, who see humanity as a threat. If the protagonist refuses Miyako's plan, he persuades her to join their side after fighting her. While Canopus is supposedly invulnerable, an error created by Yamato and Miyako existing at the same time exposes a weakness that can be used to destroy it. Depending on character relationships, three endings can be chosen. Ronaldo seeks to continually roll back history and defeat each Administrator when they attack; Alcor suggests turning the protagonist into a new permanent Administrator; and Yamato proposes using the wishes of all humanity to create a new world freed from the Akashic Record. In Yamato's route, depending on the strength of the protagonist's relationships with them, Alcor and Miyako are reborn in the new world as humans.
Development
Development of Devil Survivor 2 began at series developer Atlus after the original Devil Survivor released in 2008. Shinjirō Takata returned as director and producer, and Fūma Yatō as art director. Tanaka described their aim as creating a "culmination" of the Devil Survivor series and the final "masterpiece" for the Nintendo DS. The team decided to focus on improving the original game's elements, while expanding the scale of its story to cover multiple cities across Japan: locations were chosen based on how good they would look from the game's angled top-down view. The basic gameplay was not changed much, although more demons and social elements were added. The death videos showing characters' fates was a direct evolution of the Fate system in Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time.The scenario was written by Shinji Yamamoto. Takada insisted that the game's story be unrelated to the original Devil Survivor so new players could enjoy it, even refusing requests to include older characters as cameos. He also described the scenario's size, along with keeping character emotions relatively consistent between interactions. Another difficulty was guiding players through the story, as none of the characters around the protagonist had the same driven nature as Atsuno from the original game.
Suzuhito Yasuda returned to design the game's characters. Comparing his work on the two Devil Survivor titles, Yasuda said he had become more aware of art limitations within the game. The characters' outfits were designed based on their backstories and zodiac sign, the latter an element that was cut from the final game. The Septentrione enemies were designed by manga artist Mohiro Kitoh. Kitoh was given instructions to make them look "lively" on the DS, so he designed forms that were easy to understand. He was given minimal story information to work with, and created a few rough drafts to send into Atlus before getting the go-ahead. His guideline for their appearances was inorganic divine messengers. Kitoh was asked to design the Septentriones without referencing the established series designs of Kazuma Kaneko, which gave him a lot of creative freedom. Some of the Septentrione designs were difficult to design, as they needed to work in both 2D sprite renders and the 3D sequences.