#kaido devil survivor

[storminaviavertical]

Desu ships in a nutshell

[neotoxin-x]

Kadio from SMT Devil Survivor

[mjrtaurus]

I just thought of a fantastic potential Mythical Zoan for Dragodile Baby 2.0! The Ryu Ryu no Mi Model: Cipactli 🐊

The "Divine Crocodile" of Aztec Mythology, perportedly Teocipactli was the survivor of a great flood and the crocodile's dedicated day in the Mixtec Vienna Codex is related to dynastic beginnings, like say a baby born to a yonko commander and the leader of the Revolutionary Army whose love blossomed once more in the aftermath of an apocalyptic flood?😏

Cipactli has the traits of a crocodile, a fish, and a toad, but its main deal is being a beast of chaos who is always hungry and has extra mouths all over its body, mostly the joints and the stomach. And if it doesn't get blood sacrifices, it'll stomp about to cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Some Mayan cultures believed crocodiles could breathe wind and rain clouds (both a nod to Dragon and the inverse of Kaido's Devil Fruit), which might be another ability.

So imagine one day Dragon going to feed his little princess, only to find her gnawing on a Devil Fruit she dug out of a bush, then as he's processing what just happened she starts crawling towards the couch as a crocodile to stuff every little crumb she can find in her multiple tiny mouths. Even her little wings sprout pointy teefers!

Oh god the growth spurts with the bottomless pit stomach are gonna be WILD.

Dragon and Crocodile are losing their shit at first because their baby's life just got a whole lot more complicated but. Mythical zoan fruit with a will of its own. A brand new Monkey D. It was bound to happen sooner or later, honestly.

[xrd]

Devil Survivor spoilers for the like two oomfs I have that might play it

I was so taken aback by Kaido just fucking emailing you after all that shit where he summons Pazuzu because I genuinely thought that he 1. Had beef with my party and 2. Had been whisked away for the foreseeable future.

But he just emails you and is like: yo wanna take over the world with me and like dude give me a minute I thought you got taken away by lions

[everydaydg]

43. Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor (DS, 2009)

Devil Survivor is amazing.

I will admit that I was pretty darn scheptical at first with the main artist being Suzuhito Yasuda and it being a tactical rpg

Something about the cybersleuth artist working on it seemed off to me, it made me expect alot of anime tropes.

I am not speaking badly of Yasuda mind you.

The man is a great artist and his works are great! (Love most of the designs here and his work on cybersleuth is lovely!)

Its just that my brain just associates him with cybersleuth and that game goes for a wayyy different tone.

I am also incredibly bad at tactical rpgs which didnt help

I dont play them often due to me being an absolute pussy and I dont want my favorite units dying forever.

Considering that, It was a bit of a shock hearing that this was one of the best entries in the entire series.

I heard it from multiple people which had me curious.

And at the start of last month, I decided to give it a go and my god im I glad I did. (well its not last month by the time im posting this, this review got left cooking too long)

SMT:DeSu (Can't call it DS, theres like 3 games that start with DS) is one of most deceiptfully amazing entries in the series.

Alot of things that should be bad are done so well that it goes back arround to being amazing

Alot of things are limited and simple (like the exploration) but in a good way. The game focuses on the best aspects of its simple gameplay loop.

Yeah thats the word to describe this game. Focused.

but I will elaborate on that later when talking about the usual gameplay. Lets start with the characters.

Okay, I thought I was walking into another landmine like Persona 4 but my god im so glad that wasnt the case

(might as well rip the bandaid in case I mention P4 again- I dont like Persona 4, it shows alot of potencial on the gameplay dept. with the "one more" system, the randomly generated dungeons and the calendar system. so much so that I am exited to play P3FES later this december but the writting and characters in 4 really... REALLY sucked dick. it was terrible.)

A huge chunk of the characters are fantastic and present such unique perspective of the usual law, chaos neutral allignments.

For Example:

Atsuro!

Atsuro is a loveable dork, every scene he is in is a joy, he is a really likeable character that has alot of chemistry with the rest of the cast

and he presents one of favorite representations of chaos in the entire series. A middle point between chaos and neutral, a world where demons are used for the benefit of humanity.

Yuzu, is a character that I was expecting to hate but she grew on me as the game went on! She is lovely! While yes her ending is kinda just... leaving but its an interesting take on neutral, refusing the influence of demons and the messages of angels to escape and live for another day even if it is cowardly and is ultimately forsaking humanity.

Keisuke is a character im not too much of a fan of after him being a fucking idiot with Yama but I like the overly extreme aproach to law and judgement he shows.

DeSu strays away from extremes like SMT4 to provide the upsides and downsides of every allignment, the beautiful middle points. This is one of the only games where all allignments are equal and that is an insane achievement.

On the topic of characters and allignements

Alot of characters go so damm well together and present such interesting scenarios like Keisuke and Kaido.

Polar oposites clashing, one seeking extreme judgement and the other seeking true power and nothing else.

I absolutely love it man. Gin, Haru, Shoji, Amane... NAOYA... N A O Y A MAN... I FUCKING LOVE HIM...

Okok enought screaming. So the characters are good, so much so that they drive the story and the way the game handles allignments seems sublime. what about the story these characters are in

So Kazuya (The Protagonist), Atsuro and Yuzu, three friends, all meet up one day in the Yamanote circle, unfortunately for them, a strange series of events involving demons suddenly starts a lockdown in the whole area locking them in.

Using the power of some strange portable computers that your cousin gave to you; you and your friends have to figure out how to end the lockdown, deal with the demons and evoid as many casualties as possible.

Its simple really simple but its executed well!

Thanks to the great character writing and other aspects like the protagonist being able to see how much time anyone has untill their death, it creates a story that makes you want to see more. How do you save these characters from dying, how will things escalate on the following days and so on. Its so much fun seeing where everything goes.

The setting of a lockdown is also the perfect excuse to limit exploration too!

I did mention previously that the exploration is really limited and simple and I feel its a good time to start elaborating on that and start talking about the general gameplay loop.

So, you have a limited number areas to go to and they are all laid out for you on a simple menu on the bottom screen. The main appeal is choosing where you want to go and who you spend time with, every interaction and conversation takes time (arround 30 in game minutes) and naturally you cant do everything in one go.

The loop consists of deciding who to hang out with as to get more information on the lockdown or just to form strong bond with them (which leads to the different endings), after a certain amount of time a combat scenario is triggered, after overcoming the challenge you can go back to checking arround town.

I like this aproach! Its extremely simple but efective.

While it does completely erase the idea of exploring the yamanote circle, I dont think a 3D hub would add much to begin with and it would only pad out time by having to walk from place to place and having to deal with random encounters often... oh yeah! the combat scenarios!

Hooo boy the combat. Ive been waiting to talk about this for a while. if there is one thing I like as much as the writing in this game is the combat scenarios.

So the combat scenarios are presented in a isometric perspective, utilizing a grid system like most tactical rpgs (Yknow like Front Mission and Final Fantasy Tactics).

Maps usually tend to be very big, which is a small gripe that I have with the game, not a big enought problem to make the game bad but still an issue. It takes a while to get everywhere without Devil Speed (A move that increases your move range) and your atack range is also pretty bad without Chaos Wave (everything has to be right in front of you to hit it which kinda sucks)

for the units that dont have either of those two skills, catching up can take a few more turns than it should.

you could argue this adds to the planing for each battle and that is true! it can be fun to mess arround with the huge map with some magic, like swap and animal leg. That is why I dont see this as a big issue but when you have to switch your teams quite often through the story due to having to to adapt to every fight... there will be those few times where you just dont have any skills to make things to faster which will drag things down a fair bit.

Ok so what about teams/units?

You usually have 3-4 teams on the field at all times. Those being composed of a friend/comp user (Atsuro, Yuzu, Keisuke, Midori, Naoya, etc) and two demons

You cant have one team with more than one comp user nor a team with three demons

It needs a singular comp user in the middle, having the role of the leader. Thats enought to register it as a team.

(img for reference)

Enemies work the same way.

You might ask why im explaining how units are formed and that is because its an integral part of combat

The actual combat! so this game uses another variation of press turn... because it woudnt be shin megami tensei without another variation on press turn.

(I say that but I love variations of press turn lmao)

as mentioned previously. three units, middle one is a leader

The main thing that makes that set up unique is that you can choose to make fights easier or harder on the fly.

Fights end instantly as soon as you kill the middle unit/leader but that will give you less exp compared to if you did kill every unit on that team.

So its a balancing act of knowing when to kill everything and when to not do so to maximize exp per characters.

Combat encounters are RUTHLESS in DeSu, they can dish out as much damage as you do and MAN is it tense. Sometimes going for every demon is a death sentence, sometimes its best to just end things fast and survive.

The skill crack system goes along with this great! what is a skill crack you might ask, the skill crack system is the main way you get new spells through the game. You select a stealable skill at the start of the combat scenario and have to kill a specific demon with a specific team you assigned for that demon. Once the specified unit kills the demon with the skill, you obtain that skill permanently and can switch it arround with your other skills.

Having to kill a very specific demon... which is often a demon on the side and not a leader.

sometimes stealing a skill is not worth it as the demon with said skill is way too strong, its best to cut your loses at times and just hope you can steal that skill some other time.

Its a small extra layer to the combat that I apreciate.

So what about that press turn variation huh. Extra Turn.

Extra Turn is simple, you get one more turn after using your turn, you get this by hitting the weakness of the demon or landing a critical hit.

As simple as that is, it helps a ton! several encounters can be ended in one turn if you are well prepared.

You can get your extra turn stolen by any demon with just a critical hit or them hitting your weakness. Its a good variation of press turn! maybe not as good as "One More" from Persona 3-5 or just regular press turn but its still good!

Its really fun! and its nice seeing all your planning pay off after a while

Planning fights is as fun as ever too, made even easier due to the demon auction.

You cant recruit demons mid combat scenario, just buy them at the auction.

Save up some cash, buy some demons, fuse those demons to create a really strong demon. normal megaten things. its as fun as ever, just you need to buy every demon

I would like to aknowledge the lack of a compendium... that was added in overclocked (I played the original version if that wasnt clear)

It wasnt unmanageable or anything mind you, I have beaten SMT1 so its not like im not used to this but its omision is strange.

So what about skills? the amount of magic skills here is smaller than the usual lineup. Light Magic and Dark magic has been completely omited

(there are a few instant kill spells but they are based arround if your character has a certain status effect like paralisis and so on)

Leaving only Fire, Wind, Ice, Thunder, Curse (for status effects) and Neutral as the only types of damage arround.

even then the amount of skills those types have is way smaller than usual which most likely was for balance.

Considering the freedom you have when building your leaders, I dont mind the smaller amount of spells, its less overwhelming.

Due to how flexible are the tools the game gives you in order to create your team, overcoming hard fight with better planing is so satisfying, I found myself frustrated several times only to be hit with so much bliss as soon as I beat a boss with a revamped team, its so damm satisfying.

Man I could keep going and going and going on about this game in more detail, I could go on with the magnetite system, how certain spells can break the late game and so on... but I feel its best you try it out for yourself.

I am trying my best to evoid mayor spoilers, there is... alot in this game for as simple as it is. Its fantastic

My only suggestion to ends things off is to turn on the ability to skip text by holding L + R, it makes retrying scenarios much faster (you will get your ass kicked).

The art is good, the CG backgrounds have held up really nicely, the gameplay is fun, the characters are great, the story is great, the soundtrack is good! (even if it gets tiresome by the end... yknow its the SMT1 problem where the music gets repeated often)

Devil Survivor is one hell of an RPG and trully one of the best in the entire series. I am glad I went ahead and played it

10/10

Hah... pretty bad review that I left in the drafts for a while huh... im glad its done. never forget that all my reviews are ramblings and that im no writter. have a good day

[furryprovocateur]

honestly on paper devil survivor 1 really does have some big failings that should bug me more (amane is a boring and (relatively) unsympathetic law rep meanwhile naoya is far more interesting and has a far more sympathetic backstory; characters like kaido, mari, and izuna feel really one-note; midori could very easily be excised from the whole game and it honestly might be better for it) but it has this coalescence that makes it work. like i really fail to put it into words like on paper i don't care about a lot of these characters but i still think the narrative really works and it has a sterling pace to it.

[legofanguy1999]

This is a entry for day 12 of @inuvember event Inuvember 2023 featuring the Band of Seven. The story is actually set in my One Piece fan fiction series that I uploaded on DeviantArt called One Piece Voyages, which is a retelling of the One Piece manga, which mostly followed the same story with some changes. I planned to feature One Piece AU version of some Inuyasha characters in my telling of the Wano arc, so I made the Band of Seven appear as members of the Blackbeard Pirates as a sneak peek. This story covered the Band of Seven origins and leaving Wano.

We were each simple warriors with great bloodlust in a land that was dying because our shogun don’t give a damn about us. It can be hard to control our desire for battle in our island home of Wano, and we often leave very few survivors. Of course, I rarely attack the Animal Kingdom Pirates that worked with Orochi. Over time, I hear bout the others and decide to investigate, and most of us have the same idea when they hear about each other and me.

Near the ruins of a old castle, we meet other and we see each of us men is a bit odd but deadly in their own rights. Renkotu is a master of pyrotechnics, but he let his greed get to him having a gambling habit that lead him to be a freelance murderer. Jakobson is a cross dresser and a bit dumb while he can be deadly with his sword Jakotstuo. The horrors of what happening to our home cause Suikotsu have two different personalities with one of them being a doctor whose is useless in battle and the other is a complete mad man with a desire for blood. Ginkotsu have lost many limbs in battles that we were surprised that he is still alive somehow when he look more like a zombie. Renkotu would later replace those missing limbs with metal. Mukotsu is very old and wanted a wife but he show to be skilled with poisons. Kyokotsu is unbelievable huge due to eating one of those cursed fruits but it made him unable to swim. Finally, there is me, Bankotsu, the younger of us, and I was a good planner which the others clearly lack.

We decided to band together to form a group of merchants with me as the leader, and we called ourselves the Shichinitai, or Band of Seven. We were quite a terror in Wano that the shogun call on the aid of Kaido to stop us. We have to flee from that dragon, and we took a ship to get far away from Kaido, even leave Wano behind. The winds took us to a Marine base, where he attack just because they dare try to take away our weapons. At least we managed to get something to eat there. However, one of their admirals come and defeat us, arresting us. With a quick trial because they were more focused on revolutions and pirates, they set us to the bottom floor of that hellhole until you break us out.

Bankotsu finish his story to Blackbeard as the Blackbeard Pirates and the Band of Seven rest in a volcanic island, with Blackbeard said, “Yes, our ship almost break, but it look like I made the right choice of recruiting all seven of you. We need warriors of Wano if I’m going to be King of the Pirates.” One of the Blackbeard Pirates ask his captain, “Do we have to teach how to be sailors if they going to joined our crew? Beside, we need a better ship.” Blackbeard said, “Yeah, you are right. That is why I’m hoping that this trade goes off with a hutch.” He then ask the tired up woman and his pirate crew whose the Band of Seven deal with, “Am I right, Jewelry Bonney? I hope that trading a infamous pirate like you will make the Marines give us one of their ships. Beside, you are not fit in the New World like I have.” Blackbeard then think and said, “Come to think of you, all of us need to be ready for the New World. I’m thinking of finding devil fruits for all of you.”

[kbt-expressway]

hello DeSu fandom made shitposts instead of doing classwork today. might make more later idk.

[yourfavedrinkspilk]

Tadashi “Kaido” Nikaido from Devil Survivor definitely drinks pilk!

[storminaviavertical]

Favorite Devil survivor ships in different categories

[mementomoriarity]

ah yes, my ideology

[queen-of-bel]

the fact that there isn't a timeline where (mostly) everyone is in a happy post-game reunion AND where midori and kaido get a special sibling type bond where she calls him "kaidomon" is a hate crime against me specifically

[has-gilgamesh-doneanythingwrong]

I just realized something. The Amane ending in Devil Survivor is very similar to the Millennial and Premillennial Christian theory of The Rapture?!!!

HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS SOONER?

erm religious theories and spoilers below

This route may be analogous to the bible, however I am not an expert. Please do bear with me here.

If I'm correct, in the Amane ending, Kazuya (mc) uses his powers of the King of Bel to become the Messiah. In the process of doing this, his cloak becomes white; and he condemns all demons. In other words, he is like Christ during the Rapture, who is either resurrected or brought back to Earth, to castigate the Antichrist once and for all.

And just like the events of the Tribulations, in which all non-believers are purged; in the Amane route- Earth becomes a place that only saves the lives of believers in the Shomonkai.

That is terrifying. I never knew that the m/c of Devil Survivor was that monumental in deciding the fate of the future. He more or less is akin to Biblical prophecy, in terms of power. Now I see why other demons and angels watch so intently over him. If the mc wanted to, he could literally destroy the entire world.

wow ... devil survivor is such a good game. it honestly is such a brilliant game.

[incorrectdevilsurvivorquotes]

Keisuke: I was raised right; I talk about people behind their back. It’s called manners.

[desu-shitpost]

[shinydmoon]

-Bell raises his hand- Um technically I am Belberith and thus STILL YOUR MASTER!