Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor - Gameplay

Gameplay

Devil Survivor is a tactical role-playing game. In combat situations, the player takes turns with the computer opponents to defeat enemies and satisfy certain mission objects such as helping innocent characters to escape the field safely, while avoiding conditions that will end the mission in failure. Both the player and computer control a number of squads composed of one leader and two supporting characters. In each turn, a squad can move and attack an enemy, and its individual members can perform one additional action such as healing the squad, buffing their attack, disabling an opposing squad, or for human characters, summoning a new demon to replace an unconscious one. When attacking an enemy, the game presents a more traditional role-playing game-style menu, allowing the player to select one action for each squad member, and the computer doing the same for its squad; combat is then resolved after this selection. Certain actions in combat can gain a specific squad member the ability to perform one additional combat round action after combat resolution, such as striking at an opponent's weakness. While any three members of the opposing squad can be targeted by combat actions, the leader remains strong while either of the two supporting units still retain health. However, if the leader is taken down to zero health, the entire squad becomes disabled even if the two supporting units remain healthy. For the player, they can earn more experience by first removing the supporting squad members before attacking the leader, but can also extend the length of battle and present more of a risk for surviving it. Defeating individual foes in battle gains experience points for the player and their units, and "macca", a form of currency used for the game. Completing a battle can earn additional experience and macca for all of the player's units, and completely revives any fallen units.

The player controls up to four squads, each led by one of the major human characters in the game with summoned demons as their supporting units; most of the enemies faced in the game are either squads of demons or a demon tamer with their own summoned demons. Each unit has up to seven abilities—three active ones that lead to combat actions, three passive ones that affect unit statistics, strengths, and weaknesses, and a final slot for a race-specific behaviors for demons, or for the human characters a means of buffing their squad at the start of a combat round. For demons, new abilities are learned either through leveling up, being trained a new ability by the player after defeating a certain number of enemies, or as a result of "fusion", inheriting the ability from one of the two demons used in the fusion. The player's human characters gain these by "skill cracking" abilities from the demons or other opponents they face; to crack a skill, the player must target a specific skill from a specific unit on the field for each human character before battle, and then defeat that unit with that character's squad. Once cracked, the player can assign these skills across all of their parties' human characters. In addition to demon fusion, the player can acquire new demons, up to 24 in total, by attempting to win demon auctions using the macca collected in battle.

Between combat, the player can explore several districts in Tokyo to either advance the plot by speaking to specific characters, discover new information, or take part in "free battles" that are not story-driven but can be used to improve the party's skills and experience. Certain story-based activities will advance the game's clock by a set amount of time, and may lead to other activities becoming no longer available or creating a new activity. The game's overall story is non-linear, and choices made earlier in the game may affect which characters and battles are available in the latter part of the game.

The enhanced version of Devil Survivor for the 3DS features an eighth day, which continues on from four of the six endings.