The story begins with one of the most memorable scenes in RPG history. You’re immediately treated to the original art style that you can expect to see throughout the game as two sets of characters are shown at a stand off in some desolate land. A firefight breaks out between the teams until some strange pod with tentacles distracts them, pulsating in the middle of the field. Light from the sky explodes the pod, and bright beams shoot out and pierce the bodies of everyone around. Then like some tripped out scene from Event Horizon, they are becoming mutated monstrosities that are dismembering and devouring anyone within reach. All the while, some subliminal message is filling the screen, “Eat them all Eat them all Eat them all.”

This is the hook for one hell of a ride, and a much needed, mature change of pace from the mélange of fantasy RPGs that dominate the genre. Those two tribes were fighting over a junkyard and are among the six clans that live in this world, all struggling to survive and all trying to reach nirvana. Digital Devil Saga is a part of the Shin Megami Tensei universe, and anyone who has played SMT: Nocturne will be accustomed to Saga’s play style. Battles are turn-based with your party of three taking on one to many enemies at a time. Instead of Nocturne’s idea of collecting demons for your party, everyone on your team is consumed by their own inner demon. I don’t mean the psychological type of inner demons either. I mean the kind that take over your body and need to eat flesh to survive type of inner demon.

We welcome back the press turn system where you can earn extra turns by exploiting the enemies’ weaknesses. I’m a big fan of this system because it urges you to use different skills to succeed instead of mashing auto attack through every random encounter. This is particularly important against bosses and sub-bosses where hitting their weak spots may be the only way to kill them fast enough to stay alive.

Another reason to focus on your battle strategy is because of the character development system. New skills are now available in tree form, with each branch focusing on a specific style like healing or physical attacks. Points that you use to buy skills from the tree are earned little by little from fights, just like experience points, but that number can be significantly increased if you devour one or more of your enemies instead of just killing them. It’s a natural instinct, story-wise, that you give into to feed your demon self. Devouring an opponent takes a lot of battle skill on the player’s part because without higher skills, they need to be low on health when the attempt is made. You can also get a stomachache from devouring too much. Hey, who said being a demon was easy?

During the fight you have some standard options like skip turn or use item, but you also have the ability to transform into your human form. As a human, you use some form of ranged weapon, and it can be upgraded separately from your demon skills. Some enemy weaknesses are guns, and many combos are based around guns, so it’s important to release the demon every once in a while. The combos I mentioned are very powerful and require that certain skills and number of turns be available for them before they’re unlocked. Once you’ve encountered a combo, it will explain what triggered it, and you’ll be able to do it on command given the correct resources.

I touched on the uniquely stylized graphics during the intro, but I want to put emphasis on just how cool this game looks. It’s not just the great artwork either. The direction of the cut scenes is worthy of real cinema. Things that can obviously be overlooked like camera placement and special effects are apparent here. Plus, the use of disturbing images, ghostly machines, and a desolate world is right up my alley. It’s the kind of stuff you pay to see in a good anime.

The other important part, that seals the deal on the story telling, is the fantastic voice acting. These actors are real pros. The dialog is moody and fits right in with the people who are struggling to survive. The music is as hard as the land they live on, and it meshes well with the whole scene too.

The dungeons tend to be a little too long for my taste, and it makes an otherwise engaging battle system wear a little thin. Thankfully many sub-bosses help break up the repetitive enemies from random battles, and when you do reach new levels they bring new enemies with different weaknesses to learn.

As you can see, there’s not much to complain about. I love the action, the character development, and the mature themes that help separate it from the pack. At the same, the battle system is different yet comfortable in its turn-based approach. RPG fans can’t miss with Digital Devil Saga.