Review: Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner 2 Raidou Kuzunoha Versus King Abbadon

Is this within the bounds of your conjecture?

Overview
Shin Megami Tensei Devil Summoner 2 Raidou Kuzunoha Versus King Abbadon
A PS2 Action RPG Game

Review

SMT: DS2RKVKA(who even thought of the name of this game? its too long, even in acronyms), is an action rpg under the SMT label made by Atlus to fill in the void of actioners in their rpg lineups. It is also the 1st PS2 RPG game I spent lots of hours just to finish. Is it any good?

Let us first discuss the gameplay. The gameplay is a huge pot of many established rpg mainstays, such as sword creation, devil summoning, action elements(from any action games of the past), and the collecting quests you've come to know and love(or not). What separates this game from the others is the "Luck System", where in your Luck plays a major part in the way the game will dictate what you will be facing. Now the Luck stat determines almost all the rules of the battle, for example,"Wind demons are effective", "Gain extra experience", or on the later part of the game, the dreadful "All your demons will die". Filling yourself with Luck is something you need to do to breeze through this game. Not that this game is hard.

Who is King Abbadon?

This is probably one of the easiest RPGs I played, I don't know if its because it incorporates action elements so its up to you if you want to be hit with that instant death spell or not, so if you are good in action games, this one is fairly easy. The "Weak" status here also makes the game so much easier, since when a demon is hit by a spell or skill which makes em weak, not only do they become stunned, you can then mine them again for magic power, then you can hit them again with your spell that makes em weak. I even have demons in this game which finished the game even after I can so much as hit the enemy with just one skill. The only hard part of this game is the annoying "Illusion" dungeons which will make you scratch your head as you run in circles and the 1st time you'll encounter the Pale Rider Fiend.

Other elements of this game is the talk to demons system, which came from the 1st two Personas, which is sometimes really amusing(Persona now uses a card shuffling system to determine what you'll get).Then this game also has a bunch of side quests, many of them are genuinely enjoyable(especially the funny ones).

Now, on with the story. The story is not that bad, its just that the lack of proper cutscenes and no voice acting at all minimizes the emotional impact of this game. Still, who cares when you have and addicting demon collection system?

Here is where the game shines. The Demon collection and fusion system is one of the most engrossing rpg element in any rpg games out there right now, since you won't notice that you are grinding at all because you really want to max the loyalty of the demon and their skills to get extra incentives(such as rare items and passives). The sword creation is also good(but not addicting) since all the swords have attributes such as void this and add power to that, but you will barely notice it since when you are maxing out your demons all the items needed for sword creation will be given to you so whats the challenge in that?

I finished the game in 65 hours, with my highest level demon being level 80(a Metatron which has the skill Megidolaonn, spam it). This is just a testament on how addicting this game is.

If you love rpgs, play this today.

Score: 8.5 out of 10.