Then there is the game’s other flaw: its poor pacing. The game takes place over seven days, with each day broken up into 30-minute chunks. When you’re not in battle, you navigate through the world using a menu screen. Any area that has an event, either a battle or a dialogue cutscene between characters, is highlighted on your menu. Selecting that event will advance the in-game time 30 minutes with certain events only occurring at certain times.
This leads to the somewhat minor problem that the game isn’t really able to convey the setting very well. One of the game’s primary themes is the progressive breakdown of society within the lockdown as it drags on. Because you never really see the city up close, you can only take the characters’ words for it that this is happening. It would have been far more effective if you could explore around Tokyo like in Shin Megami Tensei IV or The World Ends With You. That way, you could actually see the effects the lockdown is having on the populace. It’s a minor thing, but it’s a good example of how a game’s interface can affect how it conveys its messages.
This is somewhat exacerbated by the inconsistent difficulty curve. Often you’ll spend about 10 minutes going through three or four separate dialogue sequences with different characters, followed by one or two fights that can last anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the difficulty of the fight and how many times you have to retry it. This becomes even worse during the late game, as the frequency of boss fights gradually increases to the point where it simply becomes a gauntlet of bosses, most of whom have infuriatingly annoying abilities. This leads to an odd ratio and distribution of action to dialogue in the game.
Another thing that doesn’t help the game’s pacing — something I touched on earlier — is that you have to buy your demon allies. You can go to the auction in-between cutscenes and battles using the in-game auction app. Unfortunately, to auction, you need money, and, to get money, you need to grind. Hell, even one of the NPCs you meet in the game has a part of their story that involves grinding for money so they can buy stronger demons.
Not everyone likes grinding in an RPG, but it’s even more annoying in this one since it’s menu driven. Since there’s no exploration, and the sidequests are initiated via the cutscenes, you don’t get to do any leveling naturally outside of the story. Any time you need money or to get stronger before a big fight, you have to do a free battle. While they don’t take up any of your time in game, these battles still tend to be tedious and the rewards are only average. This means that, if you want more than just one new demon, you’ll probably have to do more than a few free battles, unless you’ve been saving the rewards you’ve been getting from the story missions. This really slows down the game’s pacing as you have to go far out of your way to grind.
Despite all that, I really enjoyed Overclocked. While it had poor pacing and could get frustratingly difficult at times, the characters and story were enough to keep me engaged. Plus, despite being infuriatingly difficult, the gameplay was solid, and, at times, just challenging enough to be interesting. It took me about 40 hours to beat the game once. The game even has a port of the sequel coming out, which I’m really excited about, as well. So, all in all, at $29.99 (or less, considering how often Atlus puts their games on sale) this game is certainly worth the money, assuming you don’t mind the challenge.
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Review copy supplied by author.
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked is available on Amazon:
