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Peaceful days are over.note  Let's survive.

Devil Survivor is a Strategy RPG game in the Shin Megami Tensei Spinoff series Megami Ibunroku / "Alternate Tales of the Goddess", developed by Atlus and released in 2009.

Devil Survivor entails the story of three Ordinary High School Students: an eleventh grader (the protagonist) and his friends, Naive Every Girl Yuzu Tanikawa and computer geek Atsuro Kihara. One summer day, the protagonist's cousin Naoya calls them over to his place and gives them three popular hand-held computers (Communication Players, or COMPs) with his own custom firmware installed. Tinkering with the firmware, Atsuro unlocks a hidden Demon Summoning Program that releases demons right in front of the three startled friends.

Just when they are recovering from this shock, their COMPs receive emails that seemingly predict the future. Sure enough, the events predicted in the "Laplace Mail" come true and demons are unleashed upon Tokyo, causing the government to impose an immediate military lockdown on the entire Yamanote Circle region of the city.

The Protagonist and his friends must now use their custom COMPs to survive the lockdown between the increasingly-panicked citizens, the invading demonic armies and those who would seek to use the power of the COMPs for their own ends. In addition to the COMP's ability to summon and control demons, our heroes have two main tools to help them survive: the Laplace Mail, which comes every morning and predicts disasters that will occur that day, and the Death Clock (not to be confused with Dethklok,) which displays how many days a person has left to live. Unfortunately, according to the Death Clock it seems that a terrible incident will take place on the seventh day of the lockdown, killing everyone within the Yamanote Circle... if the various dangers within the Yamanote Circle don't kill them first.

Devil Survivor has a very similar scenario and first-person battle system as that of Shin Megami Tensei, but with the modern style and character-driven gameplay of Persona 3 and Persona 4. Devil Survivor is also the most player-friendly Shin Megami Tensei game yet: players can not only see a list of the demons that they can fuse and how to fuse them, but they can choose exactly what skills they inherit and even teach them new abilities. For all that, it is still as Nintendo Hard as the other games. The character design is done by Suzuhito Yasuda, known for illustrating Durarara!! and Yozakura Quartet.

An Updated Re-release on the 3DS, Devil Survivor Overclocked, was released on August 23rd, 2011. The port features more demons (approximately 150, 21 more than the original), full voice acting, the ability to select difficulty, and "8th Day" Playable Epilogues for certain endings.

A thematic sequel, Devil Survivor 2 was also released for the DSnote .


This videogame provides examples of:

  • 11th-Hour Ranger: Out of the 12 playable characters in the game, 7 of them don't join you until the 7th and (in the initial release) final day. Justified because you don't seriously begin efforts to solve the lockdown crisis until then, and spend most of your time just trying to survive with a handful of your close friends. In Naoya's route, just about your entire party is made of Eleventh Hour Rangers... because most of your regular party (except Atsuro) has decided that your plan is too extreme and ditched you.
  • Adaptational Heroism: Metatron and God are normally portrayed as holier-than-thou Knight Templars, but in this game they are at least willing to give humanity a week's reprieve before coming down and taking away free will. Metatron even lets you off with nothing more than a stern warning not to abuse your new power in the Neutral endings.
  • Adaptational Villainy: Baldr/Beldr in Norse mythology was very much a benevolent being, epitomizing light, wisdom, affability, and nobility. Here, he's an asshole who is perfectly fine with murdering innocent people whenever.
  • Adaptive Ability: Kudlak's ability, and the justification as to why the second fight against him is such a Scrappy Level. And if you kill him during the first fight, he ends up being even stronger the next fight. Naturally, once you can fuse him on your own, he has no such magical abilities.
  • Adults Are Useless: Well, most of them, given how the ones who aren't Demon Tamers are just running away and how some of them are plain dangerous for not thinking right about their situation. The trio will always end up saving adults. Makes one wonder why they bothered to have kid NPCs in the first place.
  • Affably Evil: Kudlak is curiously cheery and prone to making strange, stream-of-conscious-esque comments. Lampshaded by Kresnik.
    Kresnik: Does his chatter ever cease...?
  • After-Combat Recovery: Your party is fully healed after battles. There's also skills that let them automatically heal hp and/or mp after every fight.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: The angels operate on this idea.
  • All for Nothing: On Yuzu's route, you break out of the lockdown only for the demons to escape with you, angels to respond by stripping humanity of its self-determination, and your party to be branded as terrorists. On her Day 8, it isn't even a full day before you're trying to break back in to the lockdown.
  • Anti-Frustration Features:
    • The player can skip the entire bidding process at the Devil Auction by picking the "Buy Now" option and get the demon for a relatively high price instead — great if they have the macca to burn and don't want to go through the bidding process.
    • The game has an option to skip ahead in time. This seems like a "why would you do this when you can do meaningful events to pass the time" mechanic, but it is possible to end up in a situation where there are no events that advance the In-Universe Game Clock; without such a feature, you'd be in an Unintentionally Unwinnable situation. In fact, the first time you end up in such a situation, the game will point out how to advance time.
    • During the second battle with Kudlak, if Kaido is in the battle, his attacks will never outright kill Kudlak (they will always leave at least 1 HP left), leaving Mari to kill Kudlak properly by way of Cherry Tapping.
    • Overclocked re-introduces the Demonic Compendium to make fusion planning easier. It also adds more demons to minimize the level disparity between different races.
    • After years of skill inheritance being randomized during demon fusion, leading to annoyed gamers having to save scum or repeatedly cancel and reroll to get the exact skills they want, this game finally allows the player to choose exactly what skills they want to pass on from the "parent" demons to the "child" demon. Nearly all subsequent games in the franchisenote  include this feature, including the rereleases of Persona 4 and Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, neither of which had this feature in their original releases.
  • Anti-Grinding:
    • The game imposes a penalty on experience points gained from lower-level enemies, usually making grinding any higher than five levels above the highest-leveled enemy not worth your time. This penalty is removed in a New Game Plus.
    • Also, as demons get further from their starting level, they start requiring rather ridiculous amounts of XP to level up. This and the above mechanic both serve to encourage the use of Shin Megami Tensei's trademark demon fusion system.
  • Anyone Can Die: And will if the main characters don't intervene.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Did you get a bunch of new allies for the final day? Good for you! You get to pick four of them. (Actually three, since your protagonist is locked into your first party slot.) Especially egregious given that allies who don't get sent into battle will still pop up in cutscenes and talk as though they've been fighting with you the entire time.
  • Artificial Stupidity: The AI doesn't even look at your resistances when choosing which attack to use. It's not unheard of for enemy demons to kill themselves by having their spells reflected at them, or player's lives being saved by an enemy demon casting a spell that was absorbed.
  • Artistic License – Physics: The government's solution for the demon outbreak is as follows: under PSE Law, every electronic device in Japan, aside from following the safety standards, has a secret remotely-controlled chip that sets its output to maximum, and the overlapping EM waves would create an Ultra Electromagnetic Field, effectively turning Tokyo into a giant microwave. Not only is that improbable to implementnote , it's also not possible physically except for specially-designed military weaponsnote .
  • Asshole Victim: In Amane's Day 8, you encounter a Dirty Cop about to shoot an innocent bystander for no reason. You can choose to either summon the angels, who kill him, kill him with your own Demons, or try to reason with him, which fails and the angels block his bullet and kill him. In any case, the party doesn't mourn his death, only that it brings the angels one step closer to judging all humanity.
  • As You Know: At the end of every day, the protagonist, Yuzu and Atsuro have a "campfire talk" in which Yuzu and Atsuro basically repeat everything you've learned that day, with both in their usual roles as The Watson and Mr. Exposition.
  • The Atoner: The Shomonkai Founder in Yuzu's 8th Day. Happy that God has abandoned humanity, he turns himself in after the defeat of Belberith as penance for the crimes he committed in order to make his wish a reality.
  • Auction of Evil: The Devil Auction, which is basically, well, an eBay for powerful demons to sell themselves. However, the institution itself seems neutral and humane. The buyers of these demons may or may not be another story.
  • Badass Adorable: Most Fanart that shows the MC in the cloak from the Naoya ending have him far too young to pull off the badass factor the cloak would otherwise grant (getting his powers from a Nintendo DS doesn't help either). Given what you have to do to get the ending however, he is not someone you want to mess with.
  • Badass Boast: The narration during the opening sequence. Although never stated, it is fairly obvious that it is God's, or rather Metatron's (as he also gives the speeches at the end sequences.
  • Barrier Maiden:
    • The four Devas, whose very existence is what keeps demons from entering the human world. One was already defeated by Jezebel!Amane, allowing for demons to be summoned easily; in every route bar Yuzu's, you have to defeat the others to reach Babel (and thus risk causing Hell on Earth if you screw up).
    • In Yuzu's 8th Day, Take-Mikazuchi, the demon Gin / Eiji made a contract with, can become Jikoku's (the Deva Amane defeated with Jezebel's power) replacement as Guardian of the East. It opens up an Escort Mission to hold the line until the ritual to restore the Tokyo Barrier is complete, so, even if not for long, Gin / Eiji himself kind-of becomes one too.
  • Beauty Equals Goodness: Invoked by Amane and the Shomonkai when defending Shibuya Park against demons. They know that the locals are going to be scared of independent Demon Tamers, so they use goddesses and other demons that don't look like demons.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For: If you go along with Yuzu's wishes to escape the blockade and succeed, you quickly learn it was a very bad idea...
  • Beyond the Impossible:
    • According to Naoya, the theoretical limits of Abel's power aren't enough to beat him. Yet the MC is stronger than that, defeating him and causing him to exclaim that This Cannot Be!.
    • You can Screw Destiny despite a system that can make causal predictions based on knowing everything in the universe. Exercising your power as a human and Abel causes the entire system to break down and eventually crash.
  • Biblical Bad Guy:
    • Naoya is Cain.
    • Played straight with many bosses from Christian mythology (Belial, Jezebel, Belzaboul/Beelzebub, Lucifer) Also played with in that God himself is responsible for ordering the lockdown, and may become your enemy depending on the route you choose.
  • Big Bad: Due to the multiple endings, this can actually vary. The ultimate causes of the lockdown are three people: Belberith, Metatron, and Naoya. You can side with Naoya in his route and Metatron in Amane's route (though he never shows up in that route), but Belberith remains a villain in all routes and becomes the final Big Bad in Yuzu's Eighth Day. Overclocked also adds Okuninushi as the sole Big Bad in Amane's Eighth Day.
  • Big Damn Heroes:
    • Thanks to the Laplace Mail, you can pull this off several times. Midori is also addicted to the idea of being a Big Damn Hero, and teaches those same values to Black Frost. And if you bail him out with a Big Damn Heroes moment, he returns the favor later on.
    • Naoya as well, who shows up in the final battle of Amane's route to set up a barrier to prevent the boss from resurrecting and gaining power.
  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The Shomonkai, being worshippers of Belberith.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • None of the endings are 100% positive, but Gin and Haru's ending is the one that comes the closest to being unambiguously happy. And even this ending comes with a disclaimer from Heaven courtesy of Metatron you still have the power of Bel, and they WILL kill you if you ever try to misuse it, otherwise, you are congratulated for your willingness to forsake said power.
    • Law and Chaos are two of the darker endings in the main game, but in Overclocked, you have the ability to make them into happier endings. The only time Chaos remains a Bittersweet Ending is when you decide to kill humans instead of helping them on the eighth day.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Some of the text (particularly for abilities and battle) aren't translated right in the original DS version:
    • The description for Battle Aura says it blocks damage that's "> 50", instead of "< 50" damage like it actually does.
    • Force skills descriptions read: "Effect:STONE", but it doesn't turn the enemy into stone, it insta-kills an opponent who is already stone.
    • Watchful says you gain 75% exp with it equipped, which sounds like you'd be missing out on exp, when what it actually does is give you Leaked Experience.
    • Overclocked corrects the above errors, but brings a new one to the table: Cursed Dance's description indicates it does damage equal to "caster's HP/4", but it actually does damage equal to "target's (current) HP/4".
  • Bolt of Divine Retribution:
    • Non-Standard Game Over that wipes all life within the Yamanote Loop, except in Yuzu's 8th Day as Belberith absorbs it.
    • At one point on the 6th day, two people are killed by lightning for trying to make their way past the blockade.
  • Boss Bonanza: On the 7th day, unless you choose to escape with Yuzu, you have to fight your way through successive boss battles against Amane (only on Naoya's route), Jezebel (or Naoya on Atsuro's route), Bishamon, Zouchou and Koumoku, Belzaboul, Sariel and Anael (only on Naoya's route), Belberith, Naoya (only on Amane's route), and finally Babel.
  • Book Ends: Yuzu's route ends on the same Shibuya crosswalk where you had your very first battle.
  • Boss Rush: The Messiah/Law Ending and Overlord/Chaos Ending both have the party facing off with ALL the previous Bels. Even the one you defeated moments earlier. And the one that can only be harmed by being punched with a cell-phone strap (luckily you keep it handy and need to dispatch the party member who has it, but sucks for you if he's dead by now).
  • Break the Cutie:
    • Midori goes through this during the Fourth Day, when she is attacked by a group of people she had been trying to save for being a demon tamer, and Keisuke attempts to respond to their actions with lethal force, both of which shake her sense of justice to the core.
    • Yuzu experiences this throughout the entire game, until, by the last days, she's so desperate for everything to just stop that she argues that you should all just escape despite knowing the consequences by that point.
  • Broken Aesop:
    • As the title states, the main theme of the game is survival, and yet taking the path that many would consider having the best chance for survival (namely, choosing to run from impossible odds rather than throwing your life away for a seemingly hopeless cause) nets you the worst ending... although since this is a SMT game, the aesop still makes sense in a twisted way when you realize survival means sticking around until the situation is resolved, which actually works.
    • Yuzu's 8th Day has a very explicit focus on how the decision to run away had several consequences that we had been warned about many times but chose to ignore by running away. Then it changes its focus to another Aesop that is what powers the Earn Your Happy Ending of the full route: taking responsiblity for one's actions. Although it could be argued, however, that this shows how even if you screw up, you can still make the best out of a bad situation.
    • Atsuro's route. Much of Atsuro's arc and Character Development is spent uncovering the truth about the government's Final Solution and how you can't trust authorities to do the right thing (not helped by the vast amounts of Police Brutality the party is directly confronted with). In the end though, Atsuro's solution to the crisis is to hand over control of all demons everywhere to the government, undermining the lessons learned from uncovering the Government Conspiracy.
  • Broken Bird: Haru. Unfortunately, suicidal depression is the least of her problems...
  • Bullying a Dragon: Let's all form an angry mob and go after people who can summon demons! That's certainly a smart idea.
  • But Thou Must!: Dialogue Trees aside, the game will force several events on you each day. And no, you can't "accidentally" miss those. Rule of thumb: If it's a battle, advances time, and it's not a Free Battle, 99% of the time it's required to advance the plot.
  • Cain: Naoya, the protagonist's cousin turns out to be a reincarnation of Cain. He claims that his killing Abel was a plot orchestrated by God, and his motivations revolve largely around getting revenge on God for this.
  • Cain and Abel: With Naoya and the protagonist, even though they're cousins, but it's subverted in that Naoya doesn't actually want to kill the protagonist unless you take a certain route. And then it turns out that it's actually quite literal, with Naoya being Cain incarnate and the protagonist having the essence of Abel.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: Amane does this to her father, the founder of the Shomonkai, before the Belberith fight in her route.
  • The Call Knows Where You Live: The Main Character's destiny seems to follow him at every corner but you can subvert it by running away, however, this nets you the worst ending in the game, though Overclocked adds an 8th Day for Yuzu's route that makes you Earn Your Happy Ending.
  • Cassandra Did It: When the player and Yuzu head to Aoyama and first meet Naoya and talk to him about the Laplace mail, Naoya discusses this trope and is either amazed that his cousin immediately deduces that it predicts the future or waves off an accusation towards him.
  • Cast from Hit Points:
    • Physical Skills.
    • Divine demons, like Angels, can also recharge the MP of the squad they're part of by sacrificing their own Health via Blood Wine... handy for those Mages.
  • Censor Shadow: Astaroth is depicted as a nude man riding a giant snake; there is a shadow concealing his crotch.
  • Chronic Hero Syndrome: Like it or not, you're going to end up saving at least dozens of civilians several times a day, to the point where some people actually realise it's you when you arrive to help them.
  • Closed Circle: The Yamanote Loop is forcibly cut off from the rest of Japan, lest demons or demon-users get out.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: All of the characters have a specific colored marker on the world map.
    • The Player Character is blue.
    • Atsuro is light green.
    • Yuzu is pink.
    • Keisuke is yellow.
    • Midori is red.
    • Amane is light purple.
    • Naoya is purple.
    • Gin is dark green.
    • Kaido is cyan.
    • Mari is light pink.
    • Izuna is orange.
    • Non Player Characters and Black Frost are white.
  • The Complainer Is Always Wrong: Yuzu will always say that you should all run away and escape the quarantine area. This is the exact opposite of what you should do, as it leads to the Bad Ending. Though with Overlocked's 8th Day option, you can pull out something resembling a happy ending.
  • Console Cameo: The COMPs look exactly like Nintendo DS's. In Overclocked they get upgraded to the 3DS.
  • Cosplay Otaku Girl: Midori, who got caught in the lockdown wearing a cosplay outfit. Her imagination goes off the gauge once she gains a COMP.
  • Council of Angels: The primary function of angels in this game, in fact it seems they're the ones in charge of the lockdown, not God. Though the fact that humanity has the chance to redeem itself at all was His idea.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Several, although you can prevent some of them. You can't keep the crooked cops from executing a helpless man before your eyes, however. Among others.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Most of the cast. One notable exception is Naoya.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Izuna, Midori.
  • Cut Lex Luthor a Check: Atsuro's ending makes it possible to control the demons for the progress of humanity while also evading all the supernatural mumbo jumbo.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: While there is no canon ending like in a lot of Megaten games, the manga more or less follows the events of Gin's/Haru's route. Significant differences exist, however, but the fate of humanity is the same in both instances.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Possibly the demons the characters can summon. Notably Black Frost ("Jaaku Frost" or "Evil Frost" in Japan).
  • Deconstruction:
    • One of the main levels on which the game works is as an absolutely horrific deconstruction of the entire concept of Mons (far beyond even what other titles in the SMT franchise do; we're talking Shadow Star levels of disturbing) in that it demonstrates exactly how people running around with monsters capable of lethal force in an urban setting would actually work. This is most obvious in the event where Kaido and Keisuke confront one another, which is almost narmy in how it's set up exactly like some twisted demonic Pokémon battle (facing each other across a street with the two "mons" in between, shouting commands, etc)... and then one side loses and the other's demon graphically murders the opponent at its master's urging. Enjoy your Pikachus now, kids!
    • Depending on dialogue choices, several characters can also remark on the fact that even without the lockdown making law and order worse, law enforcement would basically be impossible against demon tamers; how is a cop supposed to face down someone who can summon an Eldritch Abomination at will? And when the police get their own demon summoning abilities, many of them can't resist the urge to use it for personal gain.
    • The game deconstructs the Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World formula than several other Shin Megami Tensei entries and spinoffs follow, as Yuzu and Midori show how high-schoolers with no combat training suddenly being given supernatural powers and thrust into an apocalypse would actually work. Yuzu spends most of the game terrified and just wants to return to her normal life. Following her advice will lead to the worst ending. Midori thinks she's Genre Savvy and tries to help people as a "hero of justice"... which only serves to make her a colossal idiot who would have died multiple times were it not for the party's intervention. She does get better, but only after several rescues and a harsh reality check.
  • Defeat Means Friendship:
    • Though you don't get the demons you beat; slaying new demons just makes them start appearing on the Auction, or in the case of more powerful demons, allows you to fuse other demons to create them.
    • Most notable with Kresnik and Kudlak, ferocious rivals, which both become available for you to fuse and summon should you succeed in a certain mission.
    • Any demons that YOU summon can be recruited by beating them. However, the only time that you get to summon your own demons is at the start of the game, for the tutorial level. (This happens to several other characters along the way the first time they get their own COMP)
  • Defector from Decadence: Amane chooses to leave the Shomonkai cult when Remiel shows her a way to end God's ordeal with less suffering than summoning Belberith.
  • Demonic Possession: Mari's quest to defeat the bloodless murderer leads her to willing possession. Also, you find out that Amane is possessed twice over, by a demon and an angel.
  • Devil Complex: The Player (Abel) becomes the King of Bel after killing every last Bel demon during the lockdown. Naoya congratulates Abel as demons in the lockdown zone come to greet their new overlord. If the player continues in Overclocked he may choose to perform a war against God.
  • Dialogue Tree: Every time the Silent Protagonist gets to say anything, it's this.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
    • The Main Character defeating Beldr, who was completely invincible to everything but the devil's fuge (i.e., a cellphone strap with faux-mistletoe leaves on it.) Interestingly, this occurs on Day 3.
    • Not to mention the Bonus Boss, Lucifer.
    • During Naoya's 8th Day, you get to punch out Metatron, the one known as the 'lesser YHVH.'
  • Diegetic Interface: The characters use COMP devices that resemble the Nintendo DS. This is a DS game. When you open the COMP menu outside of battle or look at the top screen during battles where character data is shown, this trope is in full effect.
  • Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: Haru apparently only sings the game's theme song.
  • Dissonant Serenity: The Laplace Mails you receive predict murders, explosions, mass slaughters etc. in an almost cheerful manner, even as they start to get more and more glitched out. Hv3 a n1cE DEaT!
  • Doppelgänger Attack: Loki. The real one has a shadow and slightly more speed.
  • The Dragon:
    • Belzaboul is the major servant to Lucifer. He's also Belberith's dragon (as is Jezebel), but only because Lucifer said so.
    • On a smaller scale, Yama is the dragon for Keisuke, Pazuzu the dragon for Kaido.
  • Dual Boss: Two of the Devas are fought this way.
  • Dungeon Bypass: In the boss battle against Belberith, you first need to activate two switches to bring up the platforms that will allow you to reach him, and they're far enough apart that you'll want to split your teams across the map. That is, unless you have a party member that can fly, in which case you can just cross the gap and directly fight Belberith.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: The only way to Screw Destiny without breaking anything is to actively fight it; simply running away makes things even worse as you learn first-hand in Yuzu's ending. And even then Yuzu's ending can be a happy one in Overclocked depending on your choices, where, upon being faced with this horrific world, the characters decide to atone, and fight anyway... turning it into a happy ending. If you don't/can't do what's needed on her 8th Day though will lead straight to a Downer Ending.
  • The End... Or Is It?: In The Stinger for Gin's ending, Metatron compliments you on your accomplishments, but warns that you still hold the power of Bel within you, and any misuse of that power will result in "severe consequences".
  • Escort Mission: Quite a few. These are not well loved by the fans.
    • Even with Wilders and Avatar Demons, they can be crazy even with a plan, and often are the reason why "Quick Save" exists in the first place. Made worse by the fact that for a good two days, there is no decent Wilder to use. They're either around level 10 (Waira), have a crippling weakness to magic and ice (Garm), and the next one you get is at level 26 (Afanc). Yes.
    • In Atsuro and Gin's endings, the final battle starts off by having you escort Atsuro and an NPC (in the former case, you get Naoya, who can at least defend himself if necessary; in the latter case, you get Haru, who is completely helpless, but clears the field when the Final Boss goes One-Winged Angel) to a control console in the center of the arena so they can upload their mojo to the demon server.
    • Gin / Eiji's in Yuzu's 8th Day is rather hectic. It's not because the NPC in question can't defend themselves; they can, the thing is they're stationary and will literally NEVER get a turn until Gin finishes the ritual to restore the Tokyo Barrier. No, the reason it's hectic is because of the seemingly never-ending horde of demons trying to get them.
  • Event-Driven Clock: It makes this about as explicit as you can get—in the main navigation menu, options that take up time have a clock symbol next to them. You can run around Tokyo to your heart's content, and it still won't take any time, but stop to chat with someone along the way, and you lose another half-hour.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep":
    • The Shomonkai's leader. His name is only mentioned in a small number of optional events; the game, and all the characters, call him "Founder". For the curious, it's Kuzuryu. (And that is only his last name, shared with Amane, his daughter.)
    • And then there's Gin, whose real name is Eiji. It's also the name of his bar, but everyone calls him Gin.
  • Evolving Title Screen: The game adds characters' portraits to the title screen after the player beats the game to see corresponding characters' endings.
  • Expy:
  • The Extremist Was Right: Subverted. In Yuzu's 8th day, it's explained that without your interference, the Shomonkai founder's plan to summon and empower Belberith enough to deflect God's Judgement worked, thus explaining why God didn't just wipe out Tokyo Himself once the lockdown failed like they said He would. However, now the world has a new problem that's shaping up to be even worse than The Tokyo Fireball.
  • Fake Difficulty: The first battle with Naoya has you up against demons that would be reasonably easy to beat at that point in the game. However, Naoya makes you beat all six demons in three turns...and they don't move...and they're really spread out. Granted, it's not required to beat all six; failing to do so will just result in a very unentertained Naoya leaving and telling you the info he was going to tell you via e-mail later on, and the battle is mediated by the fact that it only counts the protagonist's turns; the other characters can move as much as they want and it won't count towards the three.
  • Fate Worse than Death: On Amane's 8th Day, after speaking to both Honda and Azuma, Amane relates the biblical Book of Job to the party. Midori describes Job's fate, to have everything he cared about destroyed as a test of his piety, as a fate worse than death.
  • Flunky Boss: Beldr's battle. Many people have trouble with those goddamn Cait Siths and their goddamn Vidofnir buddies with Petra Eyes and their goddamn Mazan spell that will kill anyone with petrification. Oh, and don't forget the goddamn healing capabilities that they often use on Beldr if you don't kill them. Did we mention the boss just turns around and resurrects them at full health and mana if you do kill them?
  • Foil:
    • Midori and Keisuke seem to be this for each other. While both seem to be attracted to the idea of justice, Midori is a bit too optimistic about it, while Keisuke... is a little more cynical. Okay, really cynical. This could also be reflected by their movesets. When Keisuke first appears as an NPC, his moves are Ice Dance, Bufu and Dia. And he keeps these moves (though upgrading Bufu to Mabufu and Dia to Media) when you battle against him. When Midori first appears as an NPC that can fight, her moves are Fire Dance, Maragi and Media. Opposites attract?
    • Amane and Naoya could also be foils for each other; Amane believes in God, but Naoya wants to kill Him. Amane wants to follow the angels' wishes and make the MC a Messiah so that he can be God's judge (though she will also join you in Haru's route) and Naoya wants to make the MC an Overlord so he can rebel against God. Hell, the Messiah cape and Overlord cape are white and black respectively.
  • Forced Level-Grinding: Want to beat the Superboss? Be prepared to grind thirty or more levels to just stand a chance. What makes it worse is that encounters (even hard ones) don't scale with you.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • Some of the shadier characters in the game refer to the protagonist and Naoya as siblings rather than cousins, including Naoya himself. They're the Reincarnations of Abel and Cain respectively.
    • While Shomonkai refer to the being they worship as "His Majesty," other characters simply refer to God as simply "God," indicating that the Shomonkai aren't quite what they initially seem.
    • Early on the 4th Day, Amane will give you a lecture on the different paths that will present themselves to you, how the people you meet represent those paths and that you should pick and stick to the path you think is best. This is a clear reference to the Multiple Endings of the game and how each 7th Day (and 8th Day in Overclocked) is associated with one or two characters.
  • For the Evulz:
    • The only reason Loki seems to bother showing up is to send Beldr back to Hel. Of course, it was necessary to save the world... but that doesn't change the fact that he was totally lul'ing about it the entire time.
    • There's also Lucifer, who explains that he has no interest in winning the Throne of Bel and lent Belzaboul to Belberith because, basically, he wanted to see what would happen. Could be considered For Teh Lulz.
  • Freak Out: Keisuke goes through one when he realizes that most of the normal people in the Loop hate the demon tamers who try to help them, and this drives him to protect tamers from them, Knight Templar style.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: During the period the COMP boots the Demon Summoning Program, the following text note  zips by too fast to read:
    God's Righteousness Upheld
    3:1 Then what advantage has the Jew?
    Or what is the value of circumcision?
    2 Much in every way.
    To begin with.
    the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.
    3 What if some were unfaithful?
    Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?
    4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar.
    as it is written.

    "That you may be justified in your words,
    and prevail when you are judged."

    5 But if our unrighteousness serves to show
    the righteousness of God, what shall we say?
    That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us?
    (I speak in a human way.)
    6 By no means! For then how could God judge the world?
    7 But if through my lie God's truth abounds to his glory,
    why am I still being condemned as a sinner?
    8 And why not do evil that good may come?- as some people
    slanderously charge us with saying,
    Their condemnation is just.

    No one is Righteous.
    9 What then?
    Are we Jews [1] any better off? [2]
    No. Not at all. For we have already charged that all,
    both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.
    10 As it is written:
  • From Bad to Worse: Progressively.
    • Day 2: Demon attacks become much more frequent, supplies are dwindling, and the first hints of the Government Conspiracy begin to be dropped.
    • Day 3: COMPs begin to fall into the hands of groups of thugs and criminals, which goes about as well as you'd expect. Also, Beldr makes his appearance.
    • Day 4: Many of the remaining survivors finally snap and begin to form lynch mobs to hunt down Tokyo's Demon Tamers. This in turn causes Keisuke himself to snap and become a murderous Knight Templar. Dirty Cops get their own COMPs and immediately resort to murdering civilians with their demons.
  • Fusion Dance: As with virtually every other SMT title, you can fuse demons to create new ones, but this time there are a number of Anti-Frustration Features. First off, you can use a search function that explicitly tells you all possible demons you can create and how to create them, and secondly, you can finally pick and choose which abilities are inherited instead of having to let the RNG decide.
  • Game-Breaking Bug: There's an AI glitch that allows enemy teams to take advantage of some abilities they don't have when attacking a team that does. Double Up (attack twice in one turn) is the primary offender. It's not game breaking per se, but it's one of the more annoying ways the game can send you on a one-way trip to Game Over.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Each time you defeat one of the contenders for the Throne of Bel, the game will give you a message stating your main character has absorbed their power. Alas, you only gain small benefits from this (for example, Beldr gives you +3 to speed), not the overpowered special abilities of the boss. Sorry, I know you were looking forward to trying out Beldr's invulnerability.
  • Gas Leak Cover-Up: Played totally straight, and swallowed by the protagonists about as well as an Undead Horse Trope could be.
  • Genre Savvy: As Atsuro puts it at the end of Day 1, "It's like those games. Start the player off easy, and then..."
  • "Get Back Here!" Boss:
    • Kudlak. The guy has a fairy decent move range on a relatively small map, and he'll make a beeline for escape panels. It gets to the point where the only methods of keeping him still are petrification, or characters to forcibly bar his way, no easy feat. It's not mandatory to beat him, but if he escapes you'll miss out on two fusions and a party member.
    • Naoya in some routes will spend the fight running away from you with Devil Speed. If you don't also have a demon with it (as well as a demon with either Flight or Phantasma) you probably won't be able to win.
  • Glass Cannon:
    • Any demon with a high attack stat and significantly low magic stat (as it covers magic resistance) qualifies. The inverse holds true for demons with high magic but low vitality, which is what factors in physical defense. Find a way to subvert that weakness, and...
    • Short of mucking with stat gains through Mitama fusions, this covers roughly fifty percent of the demons available in the game. Another 40 percent are the Jack of All Stats, and the remaining ten actually see tactical use throughout the game.
    • There's a couple of demon races with a racial ability that lets you target distant units (though they also slow down your party by quite a bit), effectively turning you into artillery. And, like artillery, they have numerous weaknesses and no real defense against close-range attackers.
    • On the humans' side, we have Izuna. Pretty decent physical attack, vitality and agility, but her magic parameter is 5 when she joins you, meaning that any demon's magic can knock her out instantly. And even at Level 99, her magic parameter barely reaches the double digits.
  • God Is Evil:
    • Subverted, contrary to expectations for the franchise. At first you'll probably think God is behind everything given how the Shomonkai act mysteriously and the COMPs seem to come from them... but then you find out they're worshipping a demon, not God, that it's the equivalent of a Corrupt Corporate Executive handing out the COMPs, and to top it all off, you find out that an archangel hitched a ride in their Maiden's mind in order to save her and to help you out, on orders from God himself, who actually doesn't want to see humanity get hurt and will only resort to extreme measures if the demons gain a permanent foothold on the Earth. You proceed to get some help from the Big Man on most of the routes where you don't choose blatantly selfish/evil options.
    • Overclocked reveals that Cain was set up by God to be the first murderer and Abel to be a martyr. Even then he is far more morally ambiguous than in past games. The Four Seraphs that represent a "hardline" God - Uriel, Raphael, Michael, and Gabriel - were also nearly summoned by Metatron in the Overlord 8th Day as well.
    • God finally takes this position in the Overlord 8th Day, after the player character forces His hand. The Lockdown during the main game was understandable: the demons spread like wildfire, and containment was paramount. In the Overlord 8th Day, God has pretty much taken all of Tokyo hostage, and has made it quite plain he'll wipe it off the face of the earth with everyone inside it unless the people bring him the MC's head. What follows is the people trapped inside going nuts, begging you to die so that they can be free. As Naoya said, God is playing on your human weakness. Though this also downplayed as at this point the player has basically become a Villain Protagonist who has rejected all of God's good will, making God come across more as A Lighter Shade of Grey instead of a full on villain.
  • God Is Good: Amazingly for this franchise, God isn't the one behind all the bad stuff and is overall trying to fix everything, only bringing in the heavy artillery when things really go awry. He is also remarkably lenient, with him and his angels lending a hand even if you go down a Neutral path. He will definitely still go after you if you go down a path of Chaos, but with how rotten and dangerous the Chaos factions in the game are you can't really blame him. Becomes downplayed if you go down the Overlord path; to be fair at this point the player has pulled a Face–Heel Turn and is now endangering the world himself, but nonetheless God's actions become way more extreme in this path by basically holding Tokyo hostage until the player dies.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Works for both the forces of heaven and hell. The more people believe in them, the stronger they become. It's why the lockdown might be backfiring on the government and angels, as they only drive more people into the hands of the Shomonkai, which in turn makes Belberith stronger.
  • Gone Horribly Right: In Yuzu's 8th Day, the Shomonkai successfully make Belberith strong enough to defend Tokyo from God's Thunder. Belberith is a far greater threat to humanity than God ever was.
  • Good Colors, Evil Colors: The battle UI changes colors depending on the affiliation of the character in question. Blue is for your party, red is for enemies, and purple is for NPC allies.
  • Good Is Dumb:
    • When someone joins, he/she doesn't bring the demons he/she used in the proceeding battles. Characters do minimal damage when they are your CPU allies (except when attacking an enemy with a skill you set to crack, then they kill it fairly well), but are able to one shot groups of monsters consistently when you are racing to obtain the highest kill count or need to keep them from escaping.
    • Surprisingly, Izuna and her superior officer can actually seal their demon contract on their own without issues... provided you stop every other demon from getting close to them (and kindly inform them of the information they need).
    • An egregious case with Naoya in Atsuro's route. When you fight him in the boss battle, he has high-leveled (at least at that point in time) demons, one of which you wouldn't even be able to get unless you've subjected yourself to serious level-grinding or are playing in New Game Plus. Plus, he has a Speed of 75 (note that Speed determines who moves first on the map, unlike Agility which is an actual stat), allowing him to immediately move halfway across the map, which just leads to a potentially long and drawn-out battle. And when you get him as an NPC in the final battle? He has no demons with him, has 3 movement and a Speed of 50. Thankfully, he won't go down easily since comes with Anti-All, but still, he's clearly not exerting himself to help you out.
  • Government Conspiracy: Why did they blockade the city? And everybody's Death Clock has the same low number...something's not gonna happen to annihilate everything in the Yamanote loop, will it...?
  • Grandfather Clause: Shiva is still fused with his classic components in a game otherwise lacking in special fusions like that.
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality:
    • The four successful endings, as usual for a MegaTen game, all have their pros and cons. Yuzu's ending is more Black, but it's also not portrayed as the protagonist's agenda but as an unforeseen consequence of it. At least in Overclocked, you're given a chance to undo the damage you caused with your flight.
    • God wants to test humanity and make sure that they are capable of responsibly handling their growing power, and is willing to nuke Tokyo and abolish free will if the answer's "no." Which it is, barring your interference. The Shomonkai are trying to stop God's Judgment, but they don't realize that the demon they've allied with is worse than God could ever be. Naoya is fighting against God, but really doesn't care about humanity - he's in it for revenge. A Naoya-allied Overlord, like the Shomonkai, battles against God's Judgment, just with less collateral damage - how much less depends on your methods.
  • Guide Dang It!: Getting all the endings without a guide is difficult due to all the specific choices that need to be made.
    • The trickiest part of unlocking any route except Yuzu's and Atsuro's, is making sure to save Haru on Day 4.
    • The fusions that need to be unlocked can be somewhat tricky. Unlike the other fusions, they don't show up unless you already have the component demons needed to create them. This makes Metatron a tricky one since Remiel, an unlockable fusion on a different route is needed to fuse it.
    • The path to saving both Keisuke and Mari is pretty counter-intuitive. Instead of giving Mari's bag back to her, you instead are supposed to give it to Kaido.
    • The opening shows a screenshot of Gin as an enemy, but picking a fight with him is rather difficult to intuit: you need to avoid starting his sidequest and pick Naoya's route. He will fight alongside Remiel-Amane in exchange for information from Azuma about Aya.
  • Hero Antagonist: Even ignoring Naoya's route, the big example on all routes (excepting the obvious) are the Devas, who are doing their jobs to keep Tokyo safe, and who are well aware that you're doing what you have to do, but they're still going to go down fighting.
  • Hide Your Children: The game gets away with showing no kids as young as or younger than the protagonist's group by having the Lockdown take place in the middle of August. That is, the reason why there's no children around despite the still important number of schools within the Yamanote circle is simply because is the middle of summer break.
  • Hilarity Ensues: Black Frost's debut scene. First, a human punches a Jack Frost in the face and Moh Shuvuu carries the hapless demon away. Then Black Frost appears, calling himself a Warrior of Love and Rage (but you can call him Frosty).
  • Humanity on Trial: Mentioned in the beginning of the game. Metatron states that humanity is now a species of some power, and thus must be tested to determine whether they can handle their power responsibly.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: As time wears on in the locked-down loop, people start to snap.
  • I Am Who?: The Main Character is a reincarnation of Abel and the only human qualified to become the King of Bel. Although according to Amane, there were many other reincarnations of Abel, and he qualifies himself in-game by defeating Beldr.
  • Idiot Ball: Bullying a Dragon happens multiple times throughout the game, until the point where pretty much everybody trapped in the Yamanote Circle has a COMP and demons of their own and just start attacking each other regardless of reason.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Yuzu didn't ask to be dragged into this chaos. And she reminds you of this at every opportunity. Not that this isn't Justified, mind you, but it doesn't stop most fans from complaining about it.
  • Immune to Bullets: Interestingly, the guns the military uses aren't totally ineffective against demons, but only do any more damage than standard attacks when used on people, making their use when on your side highly questionable.
  • Implied Love Interest: Yuzu to the protagonist. At various point in the game the nature of their relationship gets brought up and the romantic undertones are definitely there, but the story never outright confirms it. The protagonist himself does have the option of confirming or denying it, but it doesn't really change anything: confirming it leads to Yuzu disregarding it as a joke (while heavily blushing) while denying it leads to Kaido calling him dense since Yuzu is apparently staring at him all the time.
  • Inconsistent Dub: It's "Peaceful days are over" in the original, but "Peaceful days died" in Overclocked. A probable reason for the awkward change is to better fit the theme of "Let's survive" in English.
  • In Spite of a Nail: The four versions of Day 7, Yuzu excluded, have the same basic structure. First you go into Amane's soul to kill Jezebel and take her power, then you kill Bishamon and then Zouchou and Koumoku to bring down the wall between the demon and human worlds, then you fight your way through Belzaboul to get into the Roppongi Hills building, then you battle Belberith at the top of the Hills, then you battle Babel to save the world on the Hills rooftop. The only major differences are that Atsuro's route replaces Jezebel's battle with a battle against Naoya in order to convince him to aid you in your plan, Amane's route has you fight Naoya between Belberith and Babel because he's pissed off that you chose to side with God, and Naoya's route has you fight Amane before Jezebel in order to force her to cooperate with your plans in claiming Jezebel's head, and later defend yourself against a cohort of angels led by Sariel and Anael after defeating Belzaboul.
  • Instant-Win Condition: Non-boss battles often require you to defeat all enemies, but many major boss battles simply have the objective "Defeat <boss>". Once the boss is defeated, all other enemies on the map vanish and the battle ends in victory.
  • Intrepid Reporter: Shoji. Her mentor was this as well before he went missing while investigating Japan's PSE laws. For those who don't know, the PSE law applies to electrical devices. The COMPs are electrical. The SDF doesn't plan to lift the lockdown. Everyone's going to die at the same time. See where this is going?
  • Irony: As pointed out by Izuna. Man feared God's ordeal and started summoning demons to protect them from it. Turns out that summoning those demons is what made the forces of heaven decide to start the ordeal.
    Izuna: How's that for irony?
  • Jerkass Has a Point: During Amane's 8th Day, you are confronted by a psychopathic cop who is about to murder an innocent woman For the Evulz. At this point, you can summon the angels, kill him with demons, or try to talk some sense into him. If you do the latter, the cop with laugh you off before shooting the woman, at which the point the angels will swoop in, save the woman, and kill the cop, all while admonishing you for attempting to reason with such a monster and placing an innocent in danger through your altruism.
  • Justice Will Prevail: Central to Midori's Black-and-White Morality. Also, Keisuke takes a decidedly darker bent on this concept...
  • Kingmaker Scenario: Many of your allies have their own reasons for helping you win the Throne of Bel, even though they cannot acquire its power for themselves.
  • Knight Templar:
    • Keisuke becomes one during the fourth and fifth days, although you can talk him out of it.
    • True to MegaTen tradition, the angels also fall under this.
    • In Amane's 8th day, Okuninushi would rather destroy Japan himself than allow it to be controlled by a foreign power (in this case, the Angels).
  • Large Ham:
    • Beldr. GroOOOOOOOOOOOOarrRR!
    • The Shomonkai leader becomes this in Overclocked.
  • Leeroy Jenkins:
    • Midori when she first gets her COMP to the point that it takes meeting an invincible demon lord to make her consider retreating... and even after that, she doesn't actually give up these ways until her mentor goes Knight Templar and her life is threatened by the yakuza.
    • Black Frost, her unwitting protege, when you encounter him fighting hostile demon tamers on day 6. Good luck trying to save him while he spams his HP-lowering skill and tries to take on opponents who outnumber him three-to-one.
  • Lighter and Softer: Zigzagged. This is a continuity where God is not an ego-tripping megalomaniac and generally has humanity's best interest at heart, the cosmos is not doomed to endless war, and the Ordeal is intended to be a fair test of humanity's character. But it turns out that most humans are not worthy of handling the power of demons, and unless you can offer a better option, the Ordeal is a miserable failure. In the end, though, you can succeed in the ordeal and even make the world better using your power.
  • Light Is Not Good:
    • Once again, angels show up to be condescending Jerkasses in a MegaTen game. Not to mention Belberith, the demon lord of light. Surprisingly though, God Himself comes off as a pretty nice guy, just one surrounded by subordinates who take the Lawful part of His Lawful Goodness a bit too far.
    • The Lawful ending double subverts this; the King of Bel takes an extremely Old Testament approach to bringing order, with God's enthusiastic approval. Yuzu's fearful backward glance in the ending paints a very bleak side to justice and peace. This is then zigzagged in Overclocked, where Abel reminds the angels that maintaining order doesn't necessarily require mass murder.
  • Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards:
    • Double Subverted in the original version. While physical-based characters can match and exceed magic users in damage, the Skill Crack system effectively prohibits having more than one in the party, whereas there are fewer limitations on magic users. They also suffer from being effectively locked into one element, plus Status Effects games at your option (actually a good idea for anyone equipped with Weak Kill). However, Skills unlocked during late game will turn your physical-based characters into the boss killers. At enndgame your physical teams will be massively hampered by loads of units who possess Phys Repel (Pierce cannot bypass this), when magical-based teams will still be effective mob and boss killers with the right set-ups.
    • Subverted in Overclocked. A combination of new Phys skills and passives plus a vast reduction in units with Phys Repel at endgame allow physical-based teams to come on top of physical-based teams overall.
  • Louis Cypher: Kind of. The "unnamed" gigolo is actually Loki.
  • Luck-Based Mission:
    • Fighting Kudlak the second time, by virtue of being an Escort Mission of the worst kind. Mari herself is entirely useless, able to do single-digit damage and only heal herself seven times, but the real lynchpin is Kaido. He shows up closer to the middle of the map, and almost every demon is attracted to him. Unless you've got your entire team set up for rapid movement, there's a good chance that by the second turn when you can reach him he'll be dead or dying. Then more demons spawn in after a few are defeated, and of course they also home in on him. It might not be as bad if he had any sort of healing prowess, but his only healer is most of the time killed off in the first or second sortie, leaving him completely reliant on your healing. To top all this off, Mari must be the one to strike the killing blow on Kudlak if you want the best conclusion for Mari, never mind that he can destroy her by sneezing on her practice. On the other hand, the Kudlak situation can easily be rectified with Petra Eyes as he's not immune or resistant to status ailments.
    • You know the last fight is rigged when every enemy team is equipped with Diarahan and Samarecarm, there's not one but two powerful enemies with a full-field, uncrackable skill that drains your MP, and after a couple of turns two of the last people you'd expect to show up arrive with insanely strong demons, and are all equipped with outrageously broken skills that, again, are uncrackable. And that's the final battle of the easiest route.
  • Made of Iron: Handwaved using a computer program. The COMPs come with a "harmonizer" program which, without getting technical, allows the user to fight on equal terms with demons. It even manages to justify why the normal citizens in the Escort Mission can survive an attack from demons. The harmonizer program affects all humans within its range.
  • Magic from Technology: Demon summoning and casting of magic spells is handled through portable electronic devices, which automate the rituals involved (somehow) and draw on the willpower of the human race through the Internet itself.
  • Magnetic Hero: The hero can develop into this, especially on certain paths; it's possible to end up with several more human allies than you have team slots. Some potential recruits, mind you, are better at resisting his pull than others. Lampshaded by Kaido during one conversation.
    Kaido: You seem kinda like a player. No offense.
  • Matrix Raining Code: Naoya's haori, though the numbers don't actually move.
  • Meaningful Name: The Laplace Mail, named after Laplace's demon. Doubles as a Shown Their Work when you realize that the later degradation of said mails is literally the universe starting to fall apart on itself from the battle of angels and demons, along with your party screwing destiny. Thus, it's no surprise that the mails stop right before The End of the World as We Know It.
  • Mega Manning: The Skill Crack system allows to you learn some skills that your opponents know when you defeat them.
  • Mega Neko: One of the demons, the Cait Sith, is actually a human-sized cat wearing boots and brandishing a Three Musketeers-esque sword, highly reminiscent of Puss in Boots.
  • Mêlée à Trois:
    • The fight between demons and angels on Day 6 can be turned into this. In fact, this may well be the best way to handle the situation if you wish to avoid an early bad end. Becomes more like a "Melee a Quatre" once the human fugitives try to sneak past the Summoners, Angels and Demons altogether while they battle, and have to be stopped and beaten.
    • And at the near-end of the day before that, you have a Mêlée à Trois between Office Worker tamers, Yakuza tamers, and your team of tamers.
  • Mons: The demons, of course. Many of the common tropes associated with other Mons games are Deconstructed, though, as detailed above.
  • Multiple Endings: Though the endings play out somewhat differently from the mainline Shin Megami Tensei games, in keeping with the slightly less cynical nature of the game. The Kingdom of Saints directly corresponds to the classic Law, but the Social Darwinist Chaos from the main games is represented by the Bad Ending, the King of Demons ending plays like Nocturne's True Demon ending, and the Neutral endings are unique to Devil Survivor. There's also an early bad ending that functions as a Non-Standard Game Over. They are as follows:
    • Bad Endings:
      • Yuzu's Route: Rather than fight for the Throne of Bel, you go with Yuzu's plan and break through the JSDF blockade, even steamrolling over Amane and Izumi to do it. You succeed, but as you quickly learn from Honda, both demons and demon tamers have escaped the lockdown and chaos is about to envelop the world. While Metatron tells you in an e-mail that not all hope is lost, he makes it blatantly clear you are responsible and will never be forgiven. Worse still, Belberith has killed Jezebel and is now the King of Bel, absorbing God's Thunder and planning to begin his war against God.
      • Honda's Route: The early bad ending and Non-Standard Game Over. You side with Honda and help him break through the angel's blockade. In response, Remiel enacts God's Thunder and Tokyo is destroyed as a result.
    • Neutral Endings:
      • Atsuro's Route: You go with Atsuro's plan for humanity to wield the power of demons for the sake of advancement. After the War of Bel is over, Japan is quickly on its way to becoming the top global superpower thanks to the power of demons.
      • Gin/Haru's Route: You side with Gin and Haru to bring an end to the lockdown and forcibly return all demons back to their world using Aya's song. You succeed in doing so, but Metatron warns you that the power you gained as the King of Bel has not faded and will watch you intently to see what you will do with your powers.
    • Alignment Endings:
      • Amane's Route: The Law Ending. You follow Remiel and Amane's plan to become the King of Bel, but use your power as God's follower and the Messiah. This puts you in direct conflict with Naoya, who is none too pleased to hear this, and neither is Belberith, who is likewise infuriated. Ultimately you succeed and become the Messiah, now with the purpose of bringing order to the world.
      • Naoya/Kaido's Route: The Chaos Ending. You side with Naoya and intend to become the King of Bel and wage war against god, alienating everyone in your party aside from Atsuro. You succeed in becoming the King of Bel, much to Naoya's joy while other characters who know you wonder what will happen now.
    • In Overclocked, three of the five endings received an expanded in the form of the 8th Day, two of which also have different endings depending on your choices.
      • Yuzu's 8th Day Bad Ending: The party succeeds in defeating Belberith, but the spiritual barrier remains broken, meaning demons will continue to pour into the human world without end. God's abandonment of humanity also means the angels will no longer intervene in human's affairs.
      • Yuzu's 8th Day Good Ending: With Gin's help, the barrier is restored thanks to the Devas and Take-Mikazuchi. The party goes on to defeat Belberith, thus ending the demonic threat in the Lockdown. While God has abandoned humanity, all that's left for them is to wipe out the remaining demons infesting the world.
      • Naoya/Kaido's 8th Day Evil Route: The protagonist chooses to slaughter any human who gets in his way, and Kaido forces Mari out of the party so she won't have blood on her hands. Yuzu and Midori stand in opposition against the protagonist, with the former even gaining Metatron's help. It does no good, and the heavenly voice is driven back. The protagonist and Naoya continue their plans to defeat God and his angels, while the protagonist's bond with Yuzu has been effectively broken.
      • Naoya/Kaido's 8th Day Good Route: You refuse to kill any humans and instead focus on fighting the angels, as well as protecting any human who is being attacked by them. Yuzu and Izumi eventually rally the people of Tokyo to your side and go on for a final confrontation with Metatron. After the fact, you and Naoya take the fight to the demon world rather than involve humanity any further.
  • Mutually Exclusive Party Members:
    • If you bungle events on day 4, you are placed in a situation on day 5 where you only have time to save Keisuke or Mari from their impending deaths — not both. To save them both, you have to give Mari's bag to Kaido, saving Mari and distracting Kaido long enough for you to talk some sense into Keisuke.
    • In the original release, Naoya and Kaido only join you on their route, making them mutually exclusive with every other party member save Atsuro, Mari, and Black Frost. In Overclocked, everyone except Gin and Keisuke can be convinced to rejoin you on Naoya's good day 8 while Kaido joins you on Yuzu's day 8; this means that the only pairs of characters who can never team up are Kaido/Gin, Gin/Naoya, and Naoya/Keisuke.
  • Mythology Gag:
    • Depending on the scenes you unlock, the characters will wonder if they can try talking to demons, a major gameplay element in most Shin Megami Tensei games.
    • The names of the competing bidders in the Demon Auction are characters from previous Shin Megami Tensei games. Surprisingly, a lot of the names come from Soul Hackers, which wasn't even localised at the time! In addition, the Occult level users are all previous Heroes/Protagonists.
    • Another random conversation with Atsuro has him wonder what would happen if humans were used in fusion. Shin Megami Tensei I allows you to recruit and fuse various humans from the Gaian and Messiah cults as though they were demons and the Chaos Hero fuses himself to a demon as a plot event.
    • It may be unintentional, but this is the second time a MegaTen ever elaborated on how the Demon Summoning Program works by using programming code to replicate a summoning ritual. The other title that used this explanation was Digital Devil Story, from nearly 20 years ago!
    • The fight for the title of King of Bel is similar to the battle between the Fiends.
  • New Game Plus:
    • Depends on what ending you get. Some give the MC an extra panel to move in missions and/or extra speed. All endings remove the Fusion Level Limit, remove the XP penalty for killing weaker foes, and carry over your cracked skills, current demons, Macca, and auction level.
    • Overclocked's New Game Plus works more like Devil Survivor 2's: You only carry over your Demon Compendium and the ability to summon the special demons that have restrictions on them that you have lifted, and bonuses to the MC's attributes. For any other form of bonus that was present in the original Devil Survivor (plus a few more), you have to earn Titles based on what you have accomplished during a playthrough, which give you Title Points that you then spend on the bonuses you want for your next playthrough. The titles and the points they give you are carried over playthroughs, meaning you can eventually buy out all bonuses by exploring more and more of the many possible options presented to you during the game. It also makes the game have more replay value by not limiting its difficulty from the start with your now super-powerful endgame demons. Finally, the secret battles in days 3 through 6 are unlocked for play.
  • New Media Are Evil:
    • It turns out that the Internet is the perfect place to get emotions to fuel the summoning of demons. It also serves as a repository for them.
    • This is also what the Founder of the Shomonkai believes: That mankind has become so dependent on technology that, when God's ordeal occurs, they will be too weak to stand up to it.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • Escaping the lockdown breaks a lot more than the blockade...
    • On the same route, and for a given definition of "hero," the Founder was trying to free humankind from God's Judgment. He succeeded, but it wasn't worth giving Belberith the throne and releasing demonkind on the world.
  • Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant: Atsuro. He frequently points out scary ideas and concepts, or worse, uncovers them.
  • Nintendo Hard: Often considered one of the hardest Megaten games, which is quite a feat in the series already known for its brutal difficulty. Among other reasons, the game has more complex combat mechanics, makes you manage more demons at once (6-8 per party instead of usual 2-4), and ditches the "negotiate-to-recruit" system in favor of demon auctions, making it harder to buff up your squad without constantly grinding for more money.
  • Noble Demon: Kresnik is literally just the spirit of a vampire hunter, so he's definitely a lot more benign than any other demon in town.
  • No FEMA Response: The Yamanote Circle, a vast swathe of Tokyo's shopping district, is cordoned off by military forces ordered to kill anyone trying to escape the blackout zone.
  • No Man Should Have This Power: In Gin's ending, the Protagonist destroys the power of Bel and banishes demonkind, instead of taking the throne.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: Occurs if you join Honda when he tries to run the barricade.
  • Not Quite the Right Thing: Some of the path branches involve this. The solutions you settle on can have unintended consequences... Day 5 can be a major offender here.
  • "Not So Different" Remark:
    • Keisuke almost goes into a Heroic BSoD upon realizing that the way he uses Yama's powers to lash out at people makes him no different than them. Likewise, this is the logic Kaido uses if you let him kill Keisuke.
    • In a heroic version, in Atsuro's route you can point out that Naoya, for all his talking about not depending on others, his entire plan is dependent on the MC. It really pisses him off.
    • Fallen Gagyson will call you on this when using him as a fusion material:
      Gagyson: USE DEMONS TO MAKE MORE DEMONS? THOU ART MORE DEMON THAN I. SUCH IS HUMANITY.
  • Olympus Mons: At the endgame, you will be able to summon the Voice of God, the Shinto sun goddess, the Norse trickster god, three of the Four Heavenly Kings of Buddhism, the Hindu lord of all nagas, and even the Devil himself. And also Nyarlathotep.
  • One-Hit Kill: Skills that instantly kill the target are less prevelant in this game than in other SMT games, but they still exist:
  • One Password Attempt Ever: Atsuro's friend 10-Bit has important information on his COMP, but dies before he can tell him the password. The COMP is set to lock up if the wrong password is entered, and the only thing you know is it's a four-digit number. The password turns out to be based on 10-Bit's name, being the value of the tenth bit in a binary number, 1023.
  • Only I Can Kill Him: Two bosses have to be killed by specific characters:
  • Outliving One's Offspring: For a more specific example, salaryman Honda wants to see his critically-wounded son undergo surgery, but said son is on the other side of the Yamanote loop, leaving Honda unable to stand by his son's side for the operation. In almost every ending, Honda's son dies, plunging him past the Despair Event Horizon. It gets even worse if you consider that a simple Dia or Amrita spell might well have actually prevented that...
  • Paper Talisman: The pieces of cloth attached to the zippers on the Shomonkai's robes are evocative of one. Makes sense, given that they want to be seen as defenders against the demonic forces overrunning Tokyo.
  • Path of Inspiration: The Shomonkai Cult, which exists to power a demon named Belberith.
  • Phlebotinum Breakdown: The Laplace Mail that predicts the future begins to glitch out with each successive day, either because you're successfully screwing destiny or because more and more demons are being summoned to Earth.
  • Playable Epilogue: Overclocked's 8th day scenarios.
    • Yuzu: With the world a literal living hell, and all Demon Tamers hunted as traitors by the Angels and as terrorists by the SDF, you and Yuzu decide to make up for your monumental screwup by trying to banish Demons from the world forever.
    • Amane: With Tokyo under the control of Law, the Angels begin demanding that any human shown to be marked with a "death brand" be executed, claiming that these humans are corrupt beyond salvation. Seeing this as too extreme, you and Amane convince the Angels to let you try and save these "irredeemable" souls. Things get complicated by the sudden appearance of Okuninushi, who is not happy that his nation has fallen under Angel control.
    • Naoya: As Naoya helps the PC awaken his new demonic powers, God slips back into his early SMT-mindset and has Metatron incite a civil war between you and many of the remaining humans. You are presented with the choice to either slaughter both the Angels and the human rebels with impunity, or to spare the humans and concentrate solely on the Angels. Either way, Metatron ultimately challenges the PC and Naoya to one final duel.
  • Player Nudge: If you pick Yuzu's Route you end up fighting Loki, who chastises you for picking the "easy route" and not taking into account Naoya's suggestions to open up to the other people inside the lockdown. This is done so that lazier players realise that to open up the other Multiple Endings, they need to stop and talk to the other characters instead of simply zooming through the game.
  • Plotline Death: Nearly everyone WILL actually die unless you prevent it, hence the term Devil Survivor.
  • Police Brutality: At the end of day 4, some corrupt cops find a few COMPs and decide to use it to unleash demons on civilians for shits and giggles.
  • Psychotic Smirk: The police character portrait features this, representing their abuse of their authority now that there isn't a higher power to keep them in check.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Two big examples, though it should be noted that both of them will be satisfied with God simply abandoning humanity, as a result of humanity renouncing the angel's control and severing their ties with them.
    • Naoya wants the Main Character to aid him in this. It turns out that he killed the MC out of jealousy back when they were Cain and Abel and wants to see Abel, God's beloved son, lead a rebellion against Him and end the ordeal.
    • Kuzuryu founded the Shomonkai for this purpose. He believes that the only way to save humanity from sequential ordeals is to help Belberith destroy the source, God. Too bad Belberith has no plans to stop there...
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Metatron delivers a searing one to the party and by extension all of humanity on Yuzu's 8th day, calling them out on unleashing demons on the world, refusing to take responsibility for it and killing the angels sent to punish them. Ultimately he reveals that as far as God is concerned, we have passed the Moral Event Horizon. Humanity is beyond saving, and so He will leave us to our well-deserved fate at the hands of the demons.
  • Redemption Demotion: Pretty much every character who you see fight before joining the party has access to a bunch of amazing skills. As soon as they join, the only skills they can use are the ones you've cracked. Justified in the sense that they make their COMPs a client to your MC's host COMP, which could limit their skill choice to the one's your COMP has cracked in order to for them to be a part of your group. On the plus side, it also explains how your other characters cracking skills adds them to your list.
  • Redemption Equals Life: Keisuke.
  • Red Sky, Take Warning: As time goes on, the sky becomes more and more red. This is a very bad thing.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: Averted in Atsuro's ending. The game clearly mentions that demon-based technology is as much of a leap forward as the Industrial and Information Revolutions, and turns Japan into a leading world power.
  • Rescue Romance: Kaido invokes this (on your advice) in an attempt to win Mari's heart. Play your cards right, and it can end up saving several lives...
  • Retcon: The end of the original game in Yuzu's route made it clear that demons and demon tamers had spilled out, inflicted severe defeats on the SDF and because of your actions there weren't enough angels to stop this leading to a world where civilization is breaking down with only a faint hope of recovering it. In the Eighth Day of Yuzu's route in the remake the angels have taken over Japan outside the lockdown area and nearly all the demons and demon tamers are still inside it.
  • Revenge Is Not Justice: This is the party's, especially Midori's, argument to Keisuke going on a murderous rampage with Yama because the public treated demon tamers with prejudice and scorn.
  • Sadistic Choice: If you're not careful in the early part of Day 5, you may find that you'll only be able to save either Mari or Keisuke. That'll teach you for doing Not Quite the Right Thing...
  • The Scapegoat: In Yuzu's Day 8, the Japanese government elects to scapegoat the demon tamers for the loss of humanity's self-determination after your party breaks out of the lockdown.
  • Screw Destiny: The Death Clock simply counts to the extremely likely day of death. The trio is able to bump up their initial 0 by beating the demon that would've killed them. The narrator in the beginning, Metatron, explicitly tells you to fight against your destiny as a human.
  • Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
    • Escaping the lockdown leads to a Bad Ending, though Overclocked adds an 8th Day to it that turns it into what's potentially the best ending ironically. Though only if the requirements are met.
    • God and his Angels abandon the earth in Yuzu's 8th Day.
    • Midori does this if you BS your way out of fighting Keisuke, and Keisuke, Midori and Yuzu do this if you go for the Naoya/Kaido route. Naturally, Atsuro sticks with you through anything and everything.
  • Sealed Evil in a Six Pack: A variant: Bel, the ruler of the demons, was sundered by God, but not technically "sealed" as such. Instead, the individual demons he was broken up into — all easily recognized by the syllable "Bel" in their names — have been fighting each other for supremacy, consuming each other in the process in the hopes of reconstituting the original Bel's power and ascending to the Throne of Bel. The Shomonkai exists to help Belberith, who they worship as "His Majesty," complete this goal so that he can destroy God and spare the world from His ordeal, not realizing that Belberith plans to slaughter humankind once he's done. The protagonist himself ends up a contender for the Throne of Bel when he defeats Beldr and inadvertently absorbs his powers — but then, it only makes sense, as he turns out to be the reincarnation of Abel.
  • Secret Test of Character: The demon invasion and lockdown was actually planned by God as humanity's Last-Second Chance. If they fail, then they will lose control of their own destinies and be ruled by the Kingdom of Heaven forever. Then if you follow the Lawful path they lose the control to the Kingdom of Heavens anyway, just with you as the middleman. Such is Shin Megami Tensei.
  • Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: In Amane's case at least. What better way to show that her clones, created by Jezebel, are evil than giving them a naughty grin and zipping open the robe Amane wears, revealing some impressive cleavage.
  • Serial Escalation: Atlus claims that Overclocked is the largest game to have been voiced. In fact, it was so large, they thought it wouldn't fit inside the 3DS' cartridge. According to this post, Devil Survivor has approximately 20,000 words voiced, 5,000 of that for 8th Day alone. Even these statistics are surprising, because games like Catherine and Persona 4 have large chunks of voice-over, the former of which has a full voice-over. On another note, this justifies why a few lines got overlooked.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • Yuzu's ending, but you really do bring it upon yourself. This can then be subverted or being played even straighter by the 8th Day of the same route, which shows the repercussions of your acts, and involves taking responsibility for them or if you failed to save Gin or do the barrier events, ends badly for everyone.
    • Also, several of the mini-plot lines sprayed over the whole week are this unless you intervene. For example, Gin / Eiji wants to find Aya, his lover. When you give him the information that points him towards the person who could give him his answers, he'll be promptly and hopelessly killed unless you save him. The kicker is that if you had never given him the information to begin with, he would have spent his days in the lockdown perfectly fine and dandy. However, Gin / Eiji does admit after the event that he knew anyway and was just fooling himself, and that he prefers that things went this way... Plus, you can't do his route if you don't give him the info.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: Inverted in Yuzu's 8th Day. The SDF arrest the party's parents in order to get the party to surrender for breaking out of the lockdown and causing all of the problems that ensued.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Where the scale falls is completely dependent on how many cast members survive as well as which ending you get.
  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: Inverted. When someone joins your party, they lose both the demons and the skills they had equipped. From a meta standpoint, this is probably to prevent the player from getting access to strong skills and demons easily; from an in-game standpoint, it seems to be a side effect of the new party member's COMP joining your "network" and thus only having access to the demons and skills registered in your COMP. Conversely, this also means that when someone leaves the party, the demons and skills they had equipped will simply return to your collection and you're free to redistribute them.
  • Sorcerer's Apprentice Plot:
    • All those COMPs getting distributed through various means (both through the Shomonkai, the black market and random chance) are not consistently used for good and end up causing much mayhem and destruction in the hands of corrupt or inexperienced users. The sorcerer, of course, is Naoya, creator of the Demon Summoning Program.
    • If Keisuke is killed, Atsuro comes to think of his plan to take over the Demon Summoning Server as this, and abandons it rather than giving humanity even more potential to misuse their power over demons. This is unfortunate, because his plan really can save the world even if all other methods are blocked off.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted with the Devas. One is already gone before the game even starts because it was defeated by Jezebel-possessed Amane, and you fight the strongest one first. The fight against the last two Devas is still challenging because they double team you and bring along a crapload of reinforcements. The aversion was lampshaded by Atsuro.
  • Spiteful A.I.: Most of the late game enemies are given physical repel or a skill that reflects the next physical attack against them for little practical purpose other than to make physical attackers suck.
  • Spoiler Opening: For the eagle-eyed, the opening flashes up plenty of spoilery shots.
  • Stars Are Souls: Loki explains that after losing the battle against YHVH and being broken apart, the King of Bels broken soul became shooting stars that eventually turned into local deities.
  • Stealth Pun:
    • The main character is the reincarnation of Abel. He is a Bel.
    • In Overclocked, the COMPs get upgraded to 3DSs. Now there's more of a reason to say that looking at the top 3D screen feels like the demons are coming out! ...Oh wait, they're coming out actually. Oops!
  • Stepford Smiler: Haru
  • The Stinger: At the end of the game, the PC receives a message from Metatron. Depending on what ending you got, he'll either congratulate you or give you a stern warning.
  • Story Branch Favoritism:
    • In Overclocked, only three paths get 8th Days, because in the other two paths, Tokyo's problems are completely solved on the 7th.
    • Averted in the original, except that there was one path that the game clearly designated as the wrong one. Law, Chaos, and two brands of neutral were all shown to have their pros and cons.
  • Sudden Lack of Signal: One of the first signs that something has gone horribly wrong is that every person's cellphone begins showing no signal. In this case, the government is trying to hide the existence of demons from everyone not trapped in Tokyo.
  • Suddenly Voiced: Everyone in the remake, which is said to have over 20,000 spoken lines of dialogue, more than any other Atlus game to date.
  • Suicide by Cop: One of the many ways Haru can die.
  • Superboss: In the original version of the game, clearing at least one playthrough gives you the chance to face Lucifer, the strongest boss in the entire game, on all subsequent playthroughs. In Overclocked, the fight has to be unlocked with points earned from in-game achievements.
  • Supernatural Phone: Played with. In the first game, the protagonists receive COMPs — "Communications Players" that look like DS systems — which have been hacked to use the Demon Summoning Program; not quite cellphones, but in much the same spirit. The second game does use cellphones, but there's nothing inherently unusual about them: they only become unusual once the Demon Summoning App is force-installed on them.
  • Super Title 64 Advance: Devil Survivor, on Nintendo DS
  • Take Over the World: What the Protagonist does on Naoya's Inhuman 8th Day. Supported by the masses he conquers all the nations of the world and eventually the borders between nations will be meaningless.
  • Take Your Time: Free battles and moving around won't consume time so you can literally level grind for a few hours and run a few laps around the entire city and still make it to that critical plot point event in half an hour.
  • Technical Pacifist:
    • Oh sure, you'll never have an issue with beating people to within an inch of their lives with demons. But actually killing them? Forget it.
    • Overclocked allows the player to avert this in Naoya's "Inhuman" path, where the PC decides to murder anyone that stands in his way.
  • Theme Naming: There's a recurring theme with demons (or other entities) with a name that contains "Bel" in it (Belzaboul, Belial, etc.), though some have been fudged a bit to make it work (for example, Beldr is supposed to be Balder, the Norse god who is invulnerable to everything). It's mentioned that they're all fragments of an entity called "Bel" which is probably "Baal," which means "Master" in Akkadian and is one of the oldest and most obscure gods in known anthropology.
  • There Can Be Only One: The Bels.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In New Game Plus, you can do damage of the high thousands to those wimpy Kobolds and Pixies on Day 1, provided that you use your overpowered demons.
  • Thou Shalt Not Kill: The party refuses to use lethal force on human adversaries, instead destroying their COMPs or guns. This goes right out the window on Naoya's evil 8th day, and Kaido actually ejects Mari from the party so she won't have to become a murderer for them.
  • Token Evil Teammate: Naoya as if the evil smile 99% of his portraits have wasn't enough of a clue...
  • Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe: The game takes place entirely in Tokyo. However, the demons only started to appear because of the Shomonkai, who just happen to be based in Tokyo. If anything, the game shows that the well being of Tokyo (and all those who inhabit it) is almost negligable in the grand scheme of things. Also, the reincarnation of Cain just happened to be a programmer in Aoyama...
  • Took a Level in Badass: In the middle of the week, Midori enlightens a lowly Jack Frost (level 14 Fairy) of the virtues of fighting for love and justice. Near the end of the week, he shows up to defend a bunch of low level demons as Black Frost, a level 47 team leader Demon. And you get to use him in a few routes.
  • Too Long; Didn't Dub: In the US version, there is some untranslated Japanese text, most likely by accident:
    • One particular line involving Gin fleeing from battle on Naoya's route was left in Japanese.
    • At one point on Day 4 you can speak with Haru, and regardless of your responses, she'll leave, and either way, the last line of text before the fade out is some untranslated japanese kanji.
    • While some of the untranslated text has been fixed in Overclocked, they overlooked another in Yuzu's 8th Day. Some of the last in-mission lines spoken by Belberith are untranslated Kanji, but strangely, his defeat quote IS translated.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: In the "save Midori" mission on day 4, a few turns in, the mission suddenly changes from "Scare off attackers" to "Escort attackers to escape points." But they're "attackers," so you still can't heal them. Hope you didn't beat them up too much...
  • True Final Boss: Overclocked has the Eighth Day bosses: Okuninushi, Belberith and Honda, and Metatron.
  • Understatement: Naoya's profile in Amane's route. "The human reincarnation of Cain. Has a few issues as a result."
  • Unreadably Fast Text: Seems to show part of the actual code for the game (or maybe just the fictional code for the demon summoning program, but still!). Part of it is from Paul's Letter to the Romans which hints at some the game.
  • Unusual Ears: The design of the Protagonist's headphones gives the appearance of this, of the cat-ears variety. This led to a fair amount of amusing head-scratching early in the game's promotional cycle as the promo art didn't make it clear that they were not his actual ears (it only gets really obvious from the side or in a complex background where you can see that the "ears" are hollow), thus leaving people wondering if we were going to get a franchise-first Furry protagonist.
  • Unwinnable by Design: The initial battle with Beldr can play this straight. The lead is the only character who can hurt him, and if he goes down, the fight continues, but unless you have an ally with Recarm, this battle is unwinnable. Also played straight in the rematch, though by then you should definitely have Recarm or Samrecarm available. If not, it's time to hit L + R + Select + Start.
  • Useless Useful Spell: The Mystic (Curse in Overclocked) element is mainly used for inflicting ailments, and even though there are a few damage spells associated with it, they are Percent Damage Attacks and not very good for killing things with. Contractual Boss Immunity also mandates that a lot of important enemies are immune to Mystic, and eventually you can even start encountering normal mobs that are immune to that as well.
  • Utopia Justifies the Means: By the end of the game, you'll be hearing this a lot — though everyone seems to have a different idea of just how to achieve Utopia...
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The top of the Hills Building, which is the point closest to a hole to the Demon World where the server that powers the demon summoning program can be fought.
  • Villainous Breakdown: The MC can cause Naoya to have one of these in a couple routes, depending on dialogue choices. In Atsuro's route, pointing out that Naoya depended on the MC for all of his plans to work makes him lose it. And in Amane's route, the MC telling Naoya that he doesn't hate him even after learning that Naoya/Cain killed him in his past life as Abel makes him really lose it.
  • Villain with Good Publicity:
    • The Protagonist is supported by the citizens across the world in Naoya's Evil 8th Day. The Governments across the world on the other hand opposed him and lost the battle, ensuring his dominance.
    • The Shomonkai also count as they protect civilians across the lockdown and give aid and protection to them. They're also the reason the entire lockdown began.
  • Visual Initiative Queue
  • Voice Grunting: All of the demons in Overclocked. The sound clips range from simple grunts, to Evil Laughter, angelic choirs, and, in the case of Jezebel, a Noblewoman's Laugh.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: The Wendigo on the 1st Day. In your first fight against him, the night before, you had Amane around who made short work of him. Now, you'll have to fight him with just the three of you and he has several other demons around to help him out. He is about ten levels higher than you and your demons at that point and the game employs Anti-Grinding to make sure it stays that way. If you didn't give general strategy and skill/demon allocation much thought before, this fight makes sure you will from then on.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: Beldr is completely invincible except for one thing: a certain plant called the Devil's Fuge or, by demon logic, any representative of it, including a cell-phone strap.
  • We Cannot Go On Without You:
    • In micro, if any team's leader is defeated, the entire team is removed from the map.
    • In macro, occurs only once — if the main character goes down in the fight against Beldr, you lose. Logical enough, since he has the one and only thing capable of even damaging the guy, but it's very possible to have Recarm by then if you know what you're doing. The Boss Rush rematch assumes you do have Recarm, and lets you keep going, making this all the more glaring, especially on subsequent playthroughs.
  • Wham Line:
    • You get this bombshell midway through day 1.
      Keisuke: As of now, no one within the Yamanote circle has more than 6 days to live.
    • After defeating Beldr on Day 3, the Gigolo drops a line that throws the protagonist's relationship with Naoya (then thought to be his cousin) into question.
      Gigolo: I admire that resolve. It suits Naoya's younger brother well.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Due to the way the branching paths work by the end of the game, some plot threads built up over the course of the game will inevitably get shunted to the side and left unresolved. Though with Overclocked's 8th day epilogue scenarios, that may no longer be the case with some of them. For example: What was Honda doing with the Gigolo during the last hours of the 6th day? Though the deal they made is left rather unresolved, Honda gets a new COMP from him, which he uses to bust out of the lockdown with other demon tamers in Yuzu's ending when you escape. It's the same COMP he uses up until Belberith offs him in the 8th Day of the same route.
  • What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
    • Openly asked by Midori, when deciding to pull a Big Damn Heroes to Jack Frost. It's clear from the scene that the Humans are the agressors, and the demons care about the survival of each other. With what you may have seen from humans turning on each other, it can speak volumes.
    • Also used in combat where you can murder demons all you like, but if a human reaches zero HP? Game over. Atsuro even makes a comment that he would beat the crap out of a yakuza if said yakuza were a demon.
  • Where It All Began: The last battle in Yuzu's ending takes place where you first summon the demons.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: To Digital Devil Story. It would mark the first time in a while since a title went into full detail about the Devil Summoning Program, involved reincarnation and even Loki is in this game (fortunately, he's not here to screw with you). Might be unintentional but the coincidences are really uncanny.
  • World of Buxom: Nearly all the female characters are incredibly stacked, with Yuzu and Mari standing out in particular. While the only exceptions are Haru and Midori, the former's A-Cups are offset by her dangerously low-hanging dress, and the latter's outfit accentuates her medium-sized breasts.
  • Wrong Genre Savvy: Once Dolly gets a COMP to call her own, she assumes she's in some kind of screwed-up Magical Girl anime. It ain't nearly half that happy and idealistic, hon, and you're gonna learn that the hard way.
  • You Bastard!:
    • Yuzu's ending has this in spades, with freakin' Metatron chewing you out for what you did.
    • Try doing Amane's route, then on your next playthrough do Naoya's route. Seeing your allies from your previous playthrough leave or oppose you is quite jarring.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: Literally, due to the Death Clock. "Fear the numbers you will see. Fear the time left..."

Conquer Your Demon.
Break Your Barricade.

Let's Survive.

Alternative Title(s): Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor, Devil Survivor Overclocked

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