Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga is a duology of role-playing video games developed by Atlus for the PlayStation 2. They are a spin-off of the Megami Tensei series. The first Digital Devil Saga was released in Japan in 2004, North America in 2005, and Europe in 2006. Its direct sequel, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2, released in 2005 in Japan and North America, and 2007 in Europe and Australasia. The games were published in Europe and Australasia by Ghostlight and in other regions by Atlus and its North American subsidiary Atlus USA.
Digital Devil Saga follows the Embryon, a tribe who fights against five other tribes in a digital world called the Junkyard. After being infected with a demon virus that grants them demonic powers, the Embryon must fight with and devour the other tribes to ascend to "Nirvana". During the conflict, they shelter a woman named Sera, who has the power to calm their demonic powers. In Digital Devil Saga 2, having escaped into the devastated real world, the Embryon are caught up in the fight against the Karma Society, who are intimately linked to the source of the disaster. The gameplay of both titles feature third-person navigation of playable characters around to-scale environments, and turn-based gameplay against demonic monsters and human enemies.
Digital Devil Saga began development pre-2002 under the working title New Goddess. The game's concept and original draft were written by Japanese author Yu Godai, who collaborated with Atlus scriptwriter Tadashi Satomi until withdrawing from the project for health issues. The gameplay concept of characters transforming into demons was based on an unused idea for Shin Megami Tensei. The second game began development immediately after the first, with the main development effort going into refining and improving the gameplay. While their commercial performances varied, both games were heavily praised by critics for their story, graphics and gameplay. Since release, the game has inspired a mobile prequel, and Godai wrote a series of novels based on her original premise for the story.
Gameplay
thumb|left|A battle in Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2, during the player's turn against the demon Hecatoncheires and displaying the main protagonist's unlocked combo abilities.
In the Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga role-playing games, players take control of the characters Serph, Heat, Argilla, Gale and Cielo, with the characters Sera and Roland becoming playable in Digital Devil Saga 2. These characters are able to transform into a demon form, which is their main form in battle.
The main protagonists of the Digital Devil Saga duology are silent protagonist , leader of the Embryon; and , a woman who can commune with God. The other Embryon are the kind ; the hot-tempered the light-hearted ; and the highly logical . The main antagonist is , who is Sera's intersexual biological parent. In Digital Devil Saga 2, two new main characters are introduced: Roland, the alcoholic leader of the Lokapala resistance group; and Madame Margot Cuvier, head of the Karma Society. All the main characters barring Cuvier become infected with the demon virus, a condition that causes them to turn into demonic beings and lust after human flesh.
Plot
During a border skirmish between the Embryon and the Vanguards, a demon virus is introduced that infects everyone in the Junkyard: branded with a mark representing their "Atma" and gradually awakening to basic emotions, the people of the Junkyard must devour their foes to satiate their demonic hunger or risk going berserk. Sera, a so-called cyber shaman, arrives suffering from amnesia and is taken in by the Embryon, revealing herself capable of calming their hunger with her singing. The Embryon first become conscious of their new powers when they meet the surviving Vanguards: during their time there, they are forced to kill the Vanguards' leader Harley. Serph is then summoned to the Karma Temple along with the surviving tribe leaders. Once they are assembled there, a female being calling itself Angel orders the tribes to conquer their neighbors and ascend the Temple's tower to "Nirvana", bringing Sera as proof of their achievements. The Embryon decide to ally with the Maribel as a means of defeating the stronger tribes.
After gaining the trust of the Maribel's leader Jinana, they are betrayed by her second-in-command Bat, who allies with the Brutes along with the Solids' leader Mick. Jinana, having refused to eat as she needed to, goes berserk and must be killed. The Solids then capture Sera, leading the Embryon into a fight to the death against Mick. They also successfully trick the Brutes' forces and Bat into a booby-trapped ship, killing them. During this time, the Wolves are subdued by the Brutes, whose leader Varin has awakened memories of a former life where he was known as "Colonel Beck", and unsuccessfully attempted to persuade Angel to release him from the Junkyard. With help from the Wolves' deposed leader Lupa, the Embryon infiltrate the Brutes' castle, but Lupa is killed after going berserk. Later, the Embryon end up fighting Varin, who accuses Sera of being a monster before he dies. Sera regains her memories and runs to the Karma Temple with the Embryon in pursuit. There, Sera faces the human form of Angel, who threatens to delete the Junkyard with a computer virus if Sera does not return to the real world with her. The Embryon arrive and successfully fight Angel, but in the process release the computer virus. The Embryon, Sera and Angel only just escape as the Junkyard is destroyed.
The Karma Society was founded to study God, who was losing faith in humans due to their behavior. Sera was the only survivor of a group of children with the ability to communicate with God. To hide from the pain of the experiments, Sera created an artificial environment populated by benign versions of Karma Society staff: this environment was redesigned to become the Junkyard and the artificial beings would become its five tribes. The original Serph manipulated Sera and his team for his own ends while the original Heat attempted to protect her. When Sera saw Serph killing Heat while linked to the EGG, God felt her pain and attacked Earth. The original Serph was overwhelmed by a flood of data and became a demon before being killed. Now knowing the truth, Serph escapes from the EGG, killing Heat in the process. Sera then decides to head for a secondary Karma facility to communicate with God: on the way, Gale dies while killing Angel, and Cielo sacrifices himself so Sera and Serph can reach the transmission site. As Sera begins transmission, the base is destroyed, killing her and Serph. Their data travels to the sun—the physical manifestation of God—and merges into a new being called Seraph. Aided by the data avatars of the Embryon, Seraph fights God's avatar to prove humanity's worth. Upon victory, Seraph achieves enlightenment and travels with Schrödinger to new worlds, while God restores the sun and Earth. At the game's end, it is shown that the Embryon, Angel, and aspects of Sera and Serph have reincarnated, with a grown Fred acting as their caretaker. The project was formed in part to make the Megami Tensei series accessible to a broader audience while staying true to its roots. The games were directed by Katsura Hashino, a new director who had worked in lesser roles in previous Megami Tensei titles. The design director was Makoto Kitano, while the movie director was Ichiroh Itano, a noted anime director. Itano was responsible for storyboarding and character movement choreography. The battle system was taken from that used in Nocturne, but with elements added to both differentiate it from other Megami Tensei games and incorporate the game's themes. During development of Digital Devil Saga, the team were faced with repeated problems with fitting the entire experience on a single DVD: the amount of data was estimated to be two times that of Nocturne. During her time on the project, she collaborated with Tadashi Satomi, who had previously written scripts for the first three Persona games. Godai wrote her outline on the basis that both books and video games had stories broken into chapters, writing up the story up to the first boss battle in short story form to get a sense of the narrative and lore. Ultimately, due to a number of factors including health problems and disliking living in Tokyo, Godai left the project.
Production of Digital Devil Saga 2 began immediately after the release of the first game. To tease it prior to its official announcement, a large number of unfinished plot threads and vague hints relating to the main characters' previous lives were incorporated into the first game. For Digital Devil Saga 2, the team expanded upon the systems implemented in the first game. Due to extra features added, the team sometimes felt that they could not fit it all on a single disc. The main priority was to ensure smooth motion and a quick transfer into battles and cutscenes. The game's setting was inspired in Satomi's mind by the frequent reporting of natural disasters and outbreaks of diseases around the world. Another theme he incorporated was the inherent contradiction of wanting to avoid violence while being forced to fight others in order to survive. According to Satomi, while the first game's motif was "rain", the second game's was "sun".
Character design
The character and demon designs were done by regular series artist Kazuma Kaneko. Serph, as the player character and silent protagonist, was given few personality traits and designed with a stern expression. The aspect that separated him from other silent protagonist within the Megami Tensei series was that his name was spoken by the other characters rather than chosen by the player. The game's character models were created based on development knowledge from Nocturne. Creating the models proved difficult due to the need to extensively use level of detail while staying true to Kaneko's distinctive designs. While Nocturne was defined by its "static" feel, the team wanted Digital Devil Saga to have a feeling of motion to contrast Nocturne. One of the additional challenges was that it was the first Megami Tensei title to feature extensive voice acting, inspired by the need to fully express the game's themes and story. Before the official voice actors were cast, Atlus staff provided the characters' voices. Due to the wish to appeal to a wider audience than previous Megami Tensei games, the proposed amount of violence and graphic imagery was cut down. Using the software, Meguro was able to fit in high-quality music alongside the sound effects and voice track.
For the first game, Meguro made heavy use of guitar-based rock music, taking his inspiration from music of the 1960s and 70s. It was meant to represent the vicious new nature of the environment, and of how the main protagonists gradually awoke to their humanity. Tsuchiya was in charge of environmental tracks that deviated from the normal layout and feel of the Junkyard. For the North American version, the opening theme was changed to "Danger", composed by electronic band Etro Anime. The soundtracks for both games were released in 2005 as "Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner 1 & 2 Original Sound Track: Integral", a streaming version of the same was released on 20th anniversary of the game series in July 2024.
Release
Digital Devil Saga was first announced in the Japanese director's cut version of Nocturne in February 2004. The game's formal title had only been decided upon shortly before its reveal. An eight-megabyte PlayStation 2 memory card was sold that featured artwork of Serph and his demon form. Digital Devil Saga 2 was officially announced at the 2004 Tokyo Game Show. To promote Digital Devil Saga 2, a special DVD containing selected music tracks and movie material was created as an over-the-counter giveaway for the initial print of the game. Both Digital Devil Saga games were re-released by Atlus in 2006 as part of their "Atlus Best Collection" budget release series.
Digital Devil Saga was officially announced for the west at the 2004 Electronic Entertainment Expo for release in the winter of that year. It was subsequently delayed into 2005, and a deluxe edition which would include a box for containing both Digital Devil Saga games was announced as a consolation. The second game's release window was officially announced at the 2005 Electronic Entertainment Expo, to be published in North America by Atlus USA. The game arrived in stores in North America a week earlier than originally scheduled. Both Digital Devil Saga games were published in Europe by Ghostlight.
As the original version featured a cast of well-known anime voice actors, the Atlus USA localization team sought out well-known English voice actors for the dub, and took extra care with syncing the English dialogue with the original characters' lip movements. One of the main concerns was to keep the characters' personalities intact when shifting from Japanese to English dialogue: a cited example of how this change was accomplished was Cielo, who was given a Jamaican accent to express the character's easy-going and friendly personality. After the release of Nocturne, the "Shin Megami Tensei" moniker was attached to the Digital Devil Saga games to help with marketing.
Reception
By the end of 2004, the first game sold 153,421 units in Japan, coming in at the 81st best-selling title in Japan for that year. The second game sold 90,812 units in Japan by the end of 2005, becoming the 144th best-selling game for 2005. Digital Devil Saga did not manage to meet its projected sales targets in Japan, and contributed to the company's console division posting a substantial loss for the 2004/2005 financial year, resulting in several staff members being laid off. According to a representative of Atlus USA, the games' sales performances in 2005 were "absolutely fabulous". In Europe, it was stated by its publisher that the first game had sold above expectations in the region. Upon their re-release on PlayStation Network, the games appeared in the top ten rankings in North America and Europe.
Digital Devil Saga received positive critical reception: aggregate sites GameRankings and Metacritic show ratings of 80% and 78/100 respectively. 1UP.coms Shane Bettenhausen said that while the game shared many similarities with its predecessor, it was not as repetitive as other games such as the .hack series, and was still a good game. Kurt Kalata, writing for 1UP.com in an article concerning the controversial content of the Megami Tensei series, made mention of Digital Devil Saga due to its examination of the ethics of eating others to survive.
A manga spin-off of Digital Devil Saga titled Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner - Shinen no Matou was published in Japan in 2005 by Jive. The manga revolves around a separate group of characters within the Junkyard. A five-volume light novels series titled have been authored by Yu Godai in 2011. While she had left the project early, her contract with Atlus enabled her to write her own work based on the premise. The novels are Yu's alternate take on her own story, redone without any of the restrictions involved with a video game narrative.
, a mobile role-playing game, was developed by Interactive Brains for mobile phones and published by Atlus and Bbmf through the Megaten α service. Using gameplay systems similar to the console games, the story is an original narrative set within the Digital Devil Saga universe: when Serph awakens in an enormous tower with no memories, he and the other Embryon must explore the towers with Sera's help to recover his memories.