Naoya's apartment building is still swarming with police officers but the man himself is no longer around. Atsuro notes that his mailbox is stuffed full of newspapers, indicating that he hasn't been home for quite a while – we were lucky to run into him earlier, he says. Our COMPs beep to indicate that we've got some email. Our inbox is now divided up into three different folders: a main folder, one for “Laplace Mail”, the prophetic emails, and one labeled “System Mail.” We've got two new pieces, one in the system folder from the “DS Admin” that cheerfully welcomes us into our new roles as “demon tamers” and one from Naoya in the main folder. He writes that he gave us these altered COMPs because we'll be needing the power of demons to survive, and that we should make for the Aoyama Cemetery, for he writes that someone who will influence our future actions is there waiting.
After the group decides to head over to the cemetery like the email said, the new “Team” option is added to the main menu, allowing us to view our team's and demons' stats. There are slots for four leaders with two demons each, though there are only three demons at the moment, as well as room for three more in our reserve stock. Assign them however you wish. Aside from Speed, there are four stats: Strength, Magic, Vitality, and Agility.
- Strength determines the attack power of all Physical moves.
- Magic determines the attack power of all magical moves, as well as a character's magical defense and amount of MP.
- Vitality determines a character's defense against Physical moves as well as their amount of HP.
- Agility determines a character's turn order in battle. A member with higher Agility will have an easier time gaining extra turns.
As you can see, Magic is pretty much the One Stat to Rule Them All. Magic is by far the most versatile method of attack in the game as it can hit multiple weaknesses and there aren't all that many Physical skills to go around by comparison. Next in importance is Vitality, because there are situations where a Squishy Wizard can be a liability and due to the way the battle system is balanced Agility's really not that important. You want to have some, obviously, but it's nothing to stress out about. Each stat caps at 40.
Since Akira is the only character whose stats are manually assigned thanks to his Hero-ness you probably want to put a big emphasis on Magic and Vitality. Who, after all, can say no to a magic-nuker that can take a punch right to the face (or, this being an Atlus game, the nuts) and simply shrug it right off?
Atsuro, despite being a scrawny computer nerd, is actually a Physical-oriented character, and a pretty well-balanced one at that. As he levels up he'll have a respectable amount of Vitality and even Magic to go along with his muscle so he won't be caught with his pants down versus magic users. And while Physical attacks may only be able to hit one weakness, they can really hurt by endgame, making him a mainstay on any team.
Yuzu, meanwhile, is predictably more of a mage character, centering around Magic, which she'll eventually max out if you get her all the way up to Lv. 99. Unfortunately she puts a bit too high of an emphasis on Agility, leaving her Vitality a little lower than ideal while her Strength is a little higher than needed. Outside of battle she's a bit hamstrung by her movement being restricted to three panels rather than the standard four, though her Speed is a bit above average (52 compared to the standard 50) so she'll generally get more chances to act to compensate somewhat.
Aside from looking at stats and arranging our party we can also see and equip skills of which there are four main varieties:
The first, Command Skills, are our special attacks that we can use during battle. Everyone, humans and demons alike, has three slots designated for them.
Next are Passive Skills, which mainly provide offensive and defensive buffs and like the above everyone has three slots for them. Unlike demons, human characters have no innate elemental resistances, so they'll have to use Passive Skills to compensate. The Devil Survivor series uses the following system of elements: Physical, Fire, Ice, Elec, Force (mostly overlaps with wind), Mystic (mostly status effects and the like), and Almighty (Non-Elemental and impossible to defend against). The Light and Dark instant-kill Hama and Mudo series are absent in the Devil Survivor verse. Physical attacks cost HP to use instead of MP, so that's another reason why it's important for a Physical specialist to have decent Vitality. Unless you're a boss. Then you get to cheat and use them for free.
Next are Racial Skills and Auto Skills. Racial Skills are unique to demons and depend on which “race” they're grouped under. Pixie, for example, is a Fairy, and thus has the Charm Racial Skill that allows it to restore some HP to either its own team or one that's on an adjacent panel (this goes for regular healing skill too) and possibly provide an additional bonus like a full heal or boosted critical rate RNG permitting. Kobold, meanwhile, is of the Touki race and thus has the Aggravate skill that sacrifices some HP to guarantee a critical hit. Finally, Kabuso has a Beast's Animal Leg, a passive skill that allows the team to move again after engaging an enemy in battle. Humans, on the other hand, have equippable Auto Skills that activate at the start of every skirmish, either buffing them or debuffing the enemy, usually.
There's actually a fifth category of skills that's unique to a few bosses that don't fit into any of the above. I call them Field Skills because they can only be used on the field. They're more of a Devil Survivor 2 thing though.
We're given three Command Skills to start out with: Agi, Zio, and Dia, the basic Fire, Elec, and healing spells. Each Command and Passive skill has a stat requirement – so you can't equip something that requires say, 15 Magic on someone that only has 10 in that stat, no matter what their other stats or level may be. Demons' skill sets cannot be edited like humans', but if there's a skill in one of their slots that's grayed out it means that it has to level up some until before they can use it.
Eyes glazed over yet? Well there're still more mechanics to explain, but we're through the worst of it. It's 7:30 when the crew reaches the cemetery and night is starting to fall. They wonder if whoever they're supposed to meet will even be human, then Atsuro says that this rings a bell and Akira “mentions” the second prediction in the Laplace Mail: the explosion at Aoyama Cemetery. As soon as he “says” this there is indeed the sound of an explosion from over yonder and the demon Wendigo stomps out of the forest, grumbling that he didn't expect “that woman” to have so much power. A member of the Shomonkai dashes over to confront the beast, but the fact that he, like all generic Shomonkai members, has his eyes obscured by his hood tells you how well he's gonna fare. He's knocked to the ground, the number above his head (0) disappears, and he dies. Only, he doesn't just fade away like most dead video game characters do. Oh no, in Devil Survivor you get to see their little 2D sprites bleed out and then fade. Yuzu tries to run upon seeing the man's death, but more demons wander into the graveyard, trapping us.
Mission 2
- All demons must be defeated
- Akira, Atsuro, and Yuzu cannot die
- Atsuro and Yuzu must be dispatched
So from this point on we'll be getting various objectives to follow at the start of each mission. Fail the “this character cannot die” bit and it's an instant game over. At the start of battle we can now place each of our characters on a series of blue starting tiles. Required characters will have a little padlock icon next to their mugshots on the team edit screen, and Akira will always be one of them.
For this battle though, we actually have a de facto fourth team member in the form of another member of the Shomonkai who appears in the pursuit of Wendigo. She's different from the others in that she's wearing a, mini-robe is the best way I can think of describing it, and a feathery headdress that resembles a flower. She's identified as a priestess, and upon seeing that Akira's group has COMPs too she agrees to help us out, and we can control her just like the others.
Again, nothing really that special going on with this mission. The Aoyama Cemetery map has a central pathway and a bunch of smaller side paths in between the headstones, so it's best to let the demons come to you instead of chasing them into the side paths. Our own three demons should level up some and learn some spells of their own to make whittling the enemy down and gaining extra turns go faster. Yuzu's default partner, the Pixie, makes her team a little squishy, but they do have healing to make up for it.
Now, the enemy teams will start consisting of more than one demon, introducing another wrinkle to the battle system. As long as a team has more than one member, and this goes for us as well, the leader will take reduced damage until it's the only one left. However, if the leader is defeated, the whole team goes with it. While you will get a reduced amount of macca and experience, gunning for the leader and taking out the whole team quickly is something that should definitely be exploited if the situation calls for it.
Wendigo's our first boss (well, mini-boss), so let's take a look at what he's got:
Wendigo (Lv. 19)
HP/MP:
- 246/48
- Weak to Fire; Reflects Ice; Nulls Mystic
- None
- Anti-Ice – Grants resistance to Ice attacks.
- Bind – Targets a team within a three-panel-range, sacrificing some HP to reduce their movement range to 1 for one turn.
As you can see from his level, we're not meant to fight this guy yet. Luckily though, the priestess is Lv. 31 and the only skill she has, the Fire spell Maragi, will instantly take his HP down to 1. Wendigo flees, but promises to get his revenge now that he knows our scents, and the priestess follows, leaving us to mop up the rest of the demons. Atsuro amusingly complains about how unfair it is that defeating another demon doesn't make it join up with us unlike the ones from our own COMPs.
Completing the mission nets us 50 EXP and 150 macca.
Afterward the group tries to process everything that's happened, as well as the come to the realization that it really must have been a demon that killed the person in the apartment. Finally, they wonder about the Shomonkai, how they seem to use COMPs as well and know about the demons. They figure that the priestess must have been the person that Naoya was talking about.
Then the third prediction from the email comes true – all the lights in the cemetery go out, plunging it into darkness. Yuzu exclaims that her cellphone's no longer getting a signal, despite the fact that phone centers shouldn't normally be affected by blackouts. The priestess comes back at this point, introducing herself as Amane Kuzuryu, maiden of the Shomonkai. She explains that she's set up a sort of mystical barrier around the area to keep Wendigo's minions for entering, and that we should spend the night here and make for the local train station tomorrow. She departs, leaving Akira and his friends with the indelible prospect of spending a night sleeping outside in a graveyard.
That's the end of the first day of what will be a very long, transforming week. At the end of each day we're brought to the COMP's email screen to read emails sent by other characters. We've got three; another system email reviewing the Extra Turn system and two from Atsuro and Naoya. Atsuro's says that the COMPs seem to have a function where they automatically add email addresses from other nearby COMPs (that sounds like it would be really annoying), while Naoya's talks about the Laplace Mail. He says it's not perfect, as he waxes about the possibility of an entity that could simultaneously analyze and record every event being able to solve the mystery of the future, but we can still use it to plan out our future actions. Some of these emails let us send a very brief, laconic reply but for the most part they don't have much affect at this stage. Later responding in certain ways can unlock new viewable events.
After closing out the emails we're given a prompt to save the game, and it's on to the next day and the challenges ahead.
Compendium
- Wendigo
◊
- A Wendigo is an Algonquian Indian beast, said to be the twisted transformation of people who have consumed human flesh. As a result they have a bony and skeletal appearance and smell of decay. Also a very annoying boss from Final Fantasy V.
- Ogre◊
- Ogres are a common staple of many cultures' myths and fairy tales. Their common portrayal is that of a hulkingly strong but dull-witted brute that has a craving for human flesh in particular.
Soundtrack
- Pinch Battle
- This is the standard map music for most story missions. That build-up at the beginning sadly doesn't appear in the game itself.
- Mystery - Jingle
- This is essentially the Law theme for the game.
- Sunset
- Well, one day's survived. Only forty-two more to go...
There's also a victory jingle, but apparently it's not on the soundtrack for some reason.
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