Digital Devil Saga

I Do Not Comprehend.

Digital Devil Saga is a game for the PLAYSTATION 2.

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DISCLAIMER: This summary is not paced the same way the game is. The game has a lot of battle and dungeon segments that have little or merely implied story, so if you play the game, do not expect things to move quite this fast. Thanks!

SMT: Digital Devil Saga (stylized as Digital Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner in Japan) is a JRPG created by ATLUS that was released in Japan on July 15, 2004. It came out in the west on April 5, 2005. This game’s second part, Digital Devil Saga 2, was released in Japan on January 27, 2005. It came out in the west on October 3, 2005.

The game was written by Tadashi Satomi and Yu Godai, directed by Katsura Hashino, and had artwork done by Kazuma Kaneko. Yu Godai was commissioned to write the entire story but left due to a combination of health issues and hating living in Tokyo. Satomi finished the story based on her notes, but Godai still had her own vision for the story several years later. She was granted permission from ATLUS to write her own version of the DDS story, published in a series of five novels called Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner. The story was tweaked in several ways and heavily diverges at about the halfway mark, with certain new characters being written and established characters being heavily altered.

The story takes place in a sci-fi wasteland warzone known as the Junkyard, a place where rain is falling constantly and nobody understands when or why the war began. There are six Tribes all fighting for control of the entire Junkyard and their right to ascend the tower in the center of the land to a place known as Nirvana. The story follows the five highest-ranking members of the smallest tribe, the Embryon, known as Serph, Heat, Argilla, Gale, and Cielo.

During a routine combat situation, a large egg-shaped object appears in the center of the battlefield. It explodes and sends shards of light through every person in the Junkyard, turning them into demons who cannot control their insatiable need to kill and eat each other. The main five black out, wake up, and then find a girl in the center of the crater where the egg used to be. They take her back to their base and let her rest, going to an adjacent Tribe’s territory, the Vanguard’s Svadhisthana. They re-awaken to their demon powers and Argilla gains color in her eyes at the thought of having eaten people alive, a development that each member of the Embryon eventually experiences. They find the leader of the Vanguards, Harley Q, who provides a tutorial boss fight and confronts them all about their new… diet. Heat gains color in his eyes before throwing Harley directly into a wall, remarking that he seems to find the black-haired girl familiar and that he can’t get her out of his mind.

The Embryon head back to their own base and find that the black haired girl, Sera, has woken up. Gale is currently going berserk and trying to eat Cielo, but Sera sings to quell his hunger and he reverts back to his human state. Argilla, who is currently refusing to eat people, also finds her hunger being somewhat quieted for now. Sera explains that she has amnesia and the power to calm the Atma virus. She doesn’t know why she is in the Junkyard, but she knows that she is there to help.

All of the tribe leaders get summoned to Sahasrara, a land in the center of the Junkyard that is a combat-free zone. Serph travels to the tower, with Heat and Argilla accompanying him and sticking around outside while he’s in the meeting. Argilla finds a cat that becomes a recurring character, being confused as to why it’s there and why she finds it familiar. Heat begins showing his own personality as somebody who is accepting of their new situation by mentioning that he sees everybody around them as food.

Serph’s meeting in the Karma Temple (the tower in the center) is hijacked by a being known as Angel. They appear as a floating eye with a nailed circle floating around it. They mention that their new powers are called Atma, and to survive, they must consume others. The other tribe leaders react in their own ways, with the leader of the Brutes, Varin Omega, having his eyes turn blue with anger at the sight of Serph entering the meeting room. Angel states that in order to reach Nirvana, one tribe must defeat all the others and take Sera to the top of the Karma Tower.

When Serph, Heat, and Argilla return to the base, Gale thinks that they should fake an alliance with either the Solids or the Maribel to defeat the other and then overtake their ally. They decide on working with the Maribel, but Argilla is against betraying them. Heat finds the idea of genuinely allying with Jinana and her group to be foolish and cowardly, which is pretty much the same way he views Argilla as a person. He’s not afraid to openly state how bad of an idea it is to refuse to adapt to their new situation.

Serph can either decide to actually betray Jinana or honor their alliance, but it doesn’t have much of an effect on the story. The main three meet her at the entrance of Manipura, but she doesn’t immediately love the idea. She decides that if they can make their way through her base and defeat a high-ranking officer named Bat, she will ally with the Embryon.

Serph, Argilla, and Heat travel through Manipura, which has a very unique design and looks like a large city. After making their way to Bat and defeating him in battle, Serph has to stop Heat from murdering him. Jinana honors their agreement and they form an alliance. Argilla and Jinana form some sort of companionship due to them sharing similar ideals about cannibalism and avoiding it.

After their time in Manipura, their next course of action is to travel to the Citadel at Anahata. This base is the home of the Solids, led by Mick the Slug. Mick is very reclusive and rarely shows his face in battle in order to preserve his own life. While the current three party members sneak into the base, they find that the inside is a maze with many traps and dangerous enemies throughout. They eventually discover that this was a trap in order for the Solids to storm Muladhara and kidnap Sera, who they discovered was in Muladhara due to Bat betraying Jinana and working with Mick.

They make it out of the base, only to find that Mick has been beating the living daylights out of Jinana. She has also been refusing to devour her enemies, leading her to lose control of her Atma and go berserk. After a long fight with Jinana, Mick and Bat have deserted the area and gone to Muladhara to help kidnap Sera.

Jinana dies in Argilla’s arms, awakening to her emotions right before her death and leaving Argilla heartbroken. Their relationship is implied to have some homosexual elements in the games, but it’s nearly outright canon in the books.

Right after Jinana dies, Heat tells Argilla to devour her corpse. She slaps him. The Embryon return to Manipura and Gale joins the party. The base has become incredibly hostile, filled with members of the Solids and Bat (again). They fight for a second time, and Bat has a more difficult skill set and backup enemies this time. After defeating him, they head to a castle that has suddenly appeared out of nowhere called Coordinate 136.

Coordinate 136 is clearly an homage to Disneyland. The Embryon (minus Cielo) enter and find that it’s full of traps and weird puzzles, ascending while being told the story of a princess, a good prince, and an evil prince. They’re clearly supposed to be Sera, Serph, and Heat in this game. The princess is drawn almost exactly like Sera, though the princes look like generic dudes. Keep this in mind because it sets up a plot point in the second game.

The story becomes more distorted over the speakers the higher they climb, ending with something about the Princess destroying the world. Eventually they reach the top floor, Sera being held captive by Bat and Mick. Bat stabs Heat in the side while trying to convince him to turn against his tribe by promising that he can have Sera after all is said and done. Heat pretends to turn to their side, whispering to Serph in the middle of their fight that he’s doing this to keep their guard down and that he has a plan.

They break apart and rescue Sera for a moment, but Mick captures her again. She makes him let her go by sending out some sort of psychic wave, which makes her eyes glow and emits a loud and horrible noise. She’s dropped and rescued by Cielo, who has awakened to his emotions and found the cat that’s been seen around base, Schroedinger. Bat eventually admits that his plan has been to join the Brutes all along and flies away as fast as he can, leaving Mick alone to fight the Embryon. After they defeat him, they leave with Sera to find another spot to hide. Muladhara has been abandoned at this point.

They head to an abandoned ship Cielo saw on the way there, planning to create a distraction by dressing Argilla up as Sera. The real Sera is being protected somewhere else by Heat. Cielo joins the party.

Serph, Cielo, and Gale go around the ship placing bombs in order to blow up whoever they can lure there. Argilla works in a different wing of the ship, distracting Bat. After Serph places all the bombs, they return to the center in order to fight Bat. Bat is overpowering Argilla and telling her that he ate Jinana, causing her to lose control and attempt to murder him herself. The other three show up just in time to keep him away, fighting him one final time and emerging victorious. They exit the ship as soon as possible and set off the bombs, finally ending things with Bat and killing him.

They all travel to a new base, a small and abandoned city with tall buildings and loudspeakers. They play Sera’s control song over the speakers. After the new base is shown, Heat forcibly kisses Sera and she is extremely upset and uncomfortable because of this.

(I’m trying to just recount the plot here, but honestly this part is really disgusting and this game’s forced love triangle makes no sense and isn’t in Godai’s original plot. Sera is (SPOILERS) a 7 year old artificially aged up to be 18 and Heat is 24. I cannot stress enough how uncomfortable she is after this. She goes out of her way to stand away from him in rooms and constantly says things like “I’m fine..” or “No, it’s nothing…” I could go on a rant about how Tadashi Satomi does weird stuff like this in his games a lot but… I won’t.)

The rest of the Embryon walk in and discuss their next move. They find out that the leader of the Wolves, Lupa, has asked to meet with Serph and talk to him. They return to Svadhisthana and exit towards the back to the underground waterways. Lupa says that his tribe has been slaughtered by an invisible Atma that can drive people mad with hunger, and that he needs help. They travel through the waterways to a water pump even further underground, a maze that you need an oxygen tank to navigate. Once they reach the end of the waterways, Lupa has been forced into starvation at a highly accelerated rate and the Embryon must fight him.

Gale awakens to his emotions at this, having found Lupa to be honorable and seeming to care deeply for him. After they battle Lupa and he dies in front of them, Gale takes his tag ring and promises to find a child Lupa wanted to speak to. This child is implied to be Lupa’s own, and resides in either Nirvana or a different state of being. Even before Gale’s emotions were activated, he had been having strange visions of a woman crying in a flash of white light. Everybody has been remembering things they shouldn’t, recognizing concepts that don’t exist in the Junkyard, and knowing about things only Sera is supposed to.

After they exit the waterways to the Brute’s base in Ajna, they find that a large mansion has appeared out of nowhere. Varin Omega has been driven somewhat mad with memories that aren’t his own, insisting his tribe call him Colonel Beck and that he knows the secret of their existence. When the Embryon go throughout his base and defeat the bosses in three shifting, illusory wings of the mansion, they encounter Varin. Varin says some cryptic things about Sera’s involvement in all of this, stating that they’ve all previously died either at the hands of Serph or for Sera. He tells Argilla that she’s been devoured by Serph before. Obviously, the Embryon have no idea what he’s talking about.

Varin forces Heat into a hunger-based madness before Sera calms him down, and the group defeat him in battle. He repeats that they’re all ghosts or have died and dies himself. After he dies, the rain in the Junkyard stops.

Serph, having control of the entire Junkyard, leads his group to Sahasrara. They’re stopped by the robotic Warrior Priests at the entrance. Sera has run off on her own due to the fact that she’s started remembering things that happen, and the Warrior Priests listen to her and call her mother. She instructs them to stop the Embryon from leaving but not to hurt them. They fight and defeat the Warrior Priests, continuing up the tower. When they reach an elevator, it drops them all the way down into the basement of the Karma Tower, back to the Sea of Milk where the cycle of reincarnation takes place. A demon called Vasuki emerges from the water and they fight it. After this, they’re forced to start all the way from the bottom and ascend to the top. On the way up, the main cast encounters more traps Sera has set with her cybershaman powers. You don’t really find out about Sera being called the Cybershaman until really late in the game, but it gets explained a lot more in Digital Devil Saga 2. After reaching the top and defeating a giant snake called Ananta, another guardian set by Sera, they have reached the top of the tower. Gale gives the option to leave, but Serph decides to finish their journey.

On the roof of the Karma Tower, Sera is talking to a black-haired woman wearing white clothing, Angel’s human form. Gale recognizes her as the woman from his visions. She says that Sera needs to leave and rejoin the human world, as they need her outside again. Sera is hesitant, as Angel has a computer virus she plans to use to destroy the Junkyard. Sera freezes the Embryon in place with her cybershaman powers, but it doesn’t entirely work on Serph and Heat. They both struggle to move toward Angel in a visually tense scene, before Angel harms Sera physically and causes her to lose her grip on her powers. Serph rushes towards Angel and attacks her, the rest of the Embryon following suit and triggering a final boss sequence.

In all honesty, the boss fight is quite disappointingly easy. This is a side tangent that sort of diverges from a straight summary, but essentially Angel’s atma, Harihara, has 3 phases. You fight the first two twice each, and at this point I was doing enough damage to get through each phase in one or two player turns when I was 20 levels below Harihara herself. For some reason, her third phase doubles your damage. I went from doing 200 per boosted-amped -dyne spell to 500. The whole fight took about 10 to 15 minutes. Disappointing for a final boss that I wasn’t even trying to speedrun.

The Junkyard ends up being destroyed anyway. While the tower is crumbling apart and everybody is being separated, Gale reaches out to grab Angel’s hand. She suddenly sees a blonde man with glasses and the same face as Gale, staring in disbelief before being pulled forward to escape. Serph can’t reach everybody else in time, and the world explodes in a burst of white light. Everybody falls into nothingness, and the credits play.

Now, onto my review and Digital Devil Saga 2! DDS2 is really a part 2, so don’t worry about the story or characters being unconnected.