[Digital Devil Saga 2] Playthrough

[yamz]

>> DDS1 playthrough

Occupied Sector - Underground City (Up to reuniting with Cielo)

• Yaaay, they made the intro go just as hard in its own way as the DDS1 one. Serph grabbing the gun out of the petrified person's hands to shoot the Karma Society goons is so good!!
• The cutscene with Fred and the kids is super weird because the kids have these big ol' eyes and happy faces, and that's just a weird expression to see on Kaneko's designs lol sorry they should all be dead-eyed and emotionless
• Like four minutes into this game, you get your first cryptic line about God and can check that off your SMT bingo card
• Why does Fred dress and pose like a Y2K cyber girlie
• Love seeing Serph, Argilla and Gale look cool as hell in their Embryon getups compared to everyone else. There's just something so good about them moving and reacting as a united front here, and being so confident in their ability to fight and survive after making it out of the Junkyard. It's a different vibe than Embryon vesus the other Tribes. That early moment where they encounter the Karma Society cops in the alleyway and transform into their Atma forms for the first time?? HELLO.
• "New Portland" really knocked me out for a hot minute. Atlus confirming that their post-apocalyptic demon cannibalism game takes place in the PNW is an unspeakably funny choice.
• Berserk mode is so sexy!! Perfect body horror perfect faces!! "Hunger overcomes reason" sickos voice yes
• JENNA ANGEL [crowd goes wild] (i'm the crowd)

Internment Facility (The Jailer)

• I love that they made the cannibalism even worse in the real world than in the metaverse 😌
• The narrative journey from "he's a fucked up horse who loves eating poorly made human salami" to "you gotta give the fucked up horse food poisoning so he's working so hard to not violently shit himself all over the floor that he can't oneshot you" ... this, to me, is gaming.
• Gale remembering that he wanted to go to Nirvana with Lupa while in a state of disillusionment (awoo)
• Argilla remembering that she wanted to go to Nirvana with Jinana while in a state of disillusionment (awoo x2)
• Realizing 12 hours in that I really have nothing to say about Roland thus far on account of his glasses

Karma Society Tower (Looking for Sera & fighting Heat)

• One of the funniest details of these games is how the elevators always move in real time. If you're going up 10 floors you will have to pass every single floor from 1 to 9, and idk why but it just cracks me up every time I hit one of these dungeons.
• Oh, I just noticed Johnny's left leg is always bouncing up and down, that's a nice little touch. The portable and inexplicable Mad Marts kind of give me RE4 weapons merchant vibes, I think they're extremely funny and I really like being able to talk with Kathy or Johnny and getting their completely nonsequitur hot life tips each time. Also I didn't realize they had a kid who's one of Fred's friends?? There's def more of a humanized touch to DDS2 compared to the first one (I mean, which makes sense lol)
• Wow, matching Cu Sith to Tribhvana Air worked so well I actually thought it was a custom boss design until I looked it up.
• Bless Heat's tormented little heart.
• Madame Cuvier in her amazing fit: I want fascism, I straight up just want fascism. Like, I want an even later stage of it than what I already have in place right now
• *still has nothing to say about Roland* megane

EGG Installation (Finding Sera (in the egg), losing Serph (in the egg))

• Wow, the Y2K futurism aesthetic of this dungeon looks great
• "Karma's simplest form is natural selection" I love this game because it just says whatever it wants with absolute confidence
• The shot of Tribhvana Earth with his teeth all covered with blood is great
• Ok sooo ... I'm glad they're trying to give Cielo something to do because he hasn't gotten a lot so far but I also dunno how effective the moment was BECAUSE he really hasn't done much for 1.5 games other than develop an inexplicable Jamaican accent. It's not that I don't buy that he'd have these convictions about friendship but that he just sort of says this dramatic bit out of the blue and you're kinda like ... where did this come from exactly? Ultimately I just wish they gave him as much dev as Argilla and Gale from the start, but I guess it's still good that he had his serious moment here.
• Wait also I forgot that he did get in one of the funniest lines so far, when you first encounter the Tribhvana and he says something like "damn, we have to deal with another set of freaks??" you're the most normal guy here, Cielo 💗 
• Aside from finding Heat hilarious I can't say I've been really into him so far, but this confrontation at the EGG was the one time I've been like wow this man wants Serph to rail him so bad and he's willing to kill Serph to get that. Seems a little backwards but I applaud the spirit
• But also my other reaction was "HEY SERPH'S STILL GOT MANTRAS HE HASN'T LEARNED YET. HE CAN'T TIP BACK INTO THE EGG HOLE AND DIE NOW. I SPENT MONEY ON THOSE?"
• "Upload rate is ... (voice cracking) 945.56 zettabytes per second?!" hahahaha "God's consuming data from the planet itself...!!" HAHAHAHA
• Yooo the scene where Angel shoots Cuvier and she falls into the water. I love that bitch. 

Power Plant (Roland and Argilla dying)

• ...When they say that escalated quickly, they were talking about the ending to this dungeon.
• Okay so backtracking, Roland suddenly getting to do stuff and banter with Argilla made me think something is definitely going to happen to this dude who is a totally fine but basically unremarkable stand-in for Heat (the problem is that Heat up to this point is one of the funniest fucking guys in the game, and Roland is just ... there). So when he decided to leave I was like yeah alright, kinda saw this coming, bye. But then ARGILLA DECIDED TO BE NOBLE AND AND LEAVE TOO............. the biggest fucking tragedy of them all. Come back, no one else in my party knows Diarahan right now.
• Argilla's raspy voice in her Atma form is sooo cute ... Argilla ... (strong affection)
• I do really enjoy that here on Earth, the violence of demonic cannibalism is consistently made even more visceral. These kinds of "it was the real world all along!" plot twists can be hit or miss for me if leaving the fantasy world results in lower stakes and less interesting worldbuilding when it becomes more "grounded" in the real world (or it's just a copout to avoid exploring any real consequences). DDS doesn't do any of that, and the way they depict cannibalism between games feels purposefully different. In the AI Junkyard world, Embryon was coping with the fact that they had to eat others to stay sane and survive, but for the most part it felt more like an abstract action and I don't think I remember scenes or dialogue showing the process of feeding itself – plus at the end of the day, it was all demons eating other demons. In DDS2, the difference is all over the deranged way NPCs talk to you; the fact that not only does the Processing Facility exist to hold prisoners until it's their turn to become canned food, but that it was made specifically because Karma Society demons couldn't stomach eating raw human flesh; showing Tribhvana Earth with his bloodied mouth in his human form after he feeds on his compatriots; the shots of Meganada gnawing on Roland's body and snapping Argilla's arm in two. The violence itself becomes a part of the stakes.
• On a much more serious note: Sera doesn't even know Diarama? Or Bufudyne, which Serph definitely had learned before he fell into the egg? Bro 😔 I took like a two week break from the game after this entire bit tbh cuz I was just like (calmly absorbs new information) (turns PS2 off) lol

EGG Installation Redux (Fighting Heat, Serph and Heat's past)

• adasdad ok i actually spent the majority of this dungeon kinda tilted cuz it's a pain to grind in here and Sera starts off with like no useful skills
• (And I also thought maybe the boss was gonna be like some mutated form of Madame Cuvier lol)
• Anyway, the plot reveal made me yell on my couch at 2 in the morning. Recontextualizing literally everything you thought you knew about these characters up to this point through Sera's perspective all while staying consistent with the game's themes is such a power move. Thinking about how everything about Serph is a construct that the real Sheffield would have loathed, how his kindness towards Sera was born out of her desire for a Serph who truly loved her when Sheffield was always a monster, and how this changes the nature of his dynamic with Heat, is sooo crazy-making. Serph wracked with agony as he's forced to understand this fundamental truth about his self (and the fact he's only agonized because Sera made him like this)! The quiet way O'Brien tells him, "You are different now"!! False Serph appearing naked and vulnerable and almost childlike!!! Fighting against multiple iterations of yourself, when you are also considered a "fake" Varna and you have to kill the real you!!!! Insane to me.
• Beach volleyball paradise being an escapist fantasy of Sera's all along just feels like the final nail in the coffin re: Embryon's disillusionment of everything they were fighting for in the Junkyard ... huhu .... huhuhu ... hoho hah ha hah!
• The entire cutscene looks great. I love the cut to Madame Cuvier's corpse floating above Serph, the way Schroedinger's scale in relation to Serph changes so seamlessly, and the flash of the real Varna in the sea of corpses. I think it's also such a good meta use of Serph as a protagonist who's been unvoiced up until now. When you actually get to hear Sheffield talk I did feel shocked for a second lol.
• Me at Heat's death scene: oh yeah um I did slash right through his boss body to get out didn't I teehee. Also now that I'm adding to this thread after the fact, Heat telling Serph "Don't let go of [Sera] now" here and then later being like "well that wasn't quite what I meant :\" when he sees Seraph continues his undefeated streak as the funniest guy in the game.
• Some other random things ... 1) Cielo telling Vritra/Heat, "We wanna talk with you, bro ... just the way you like it" is kinda horny! Honestly, Cielo gets some good lines! 2) Vritra's lines to Sera retroactively become even sadder once you understand Heat's obsession with her is in part because she created him out of her misplaced fear of O'Brien. Heh. 3) I didn't fully understand why the EGG became like that when you returned tbh. Was it because Heat and Serph fell into the big egg, or because Sera was released, making the HAARP go crazy? Or was it bc the four archangels were released??
• WHY DID THEY MAKE SERPH FORGET MOVES I KNOW HE LEARNED BEFORE HE DIED?

 

Archangel Sidequest

• Gale's conversation here with the scientist is sooo cute wtf. They make Gale so moe in this game
• I don't think most of it was too bad until you get to the end with Michael. I did wipe two or three times, the first time because I didn't fully understand how his moveset worked even with a guide and the other times it was me missing my timings with Raphael and paying for it later lol.

 

Airport & HAARP Facility (everyone dies)

• "I heard you guys are going to the sun. That's incredibly brave. Won't it be hot?"
• Grinding... (kermit putting paw up at the window)
• Somehow I've never really noticed Chernobog as a demon or persona too much until this mini boss fight where it runs its own sword through its chest to curse you. Extremely cute
• Gale letting Angel stab him in the stomach so he can then stab her in the stomach and then they topple over and die in each other's arms is somehow still only like the fifth craziest scene in this game.
• There is intentionally so little tenderness in this game that Serph kneeling down and putting his hands over Sera's as she tries to talk to God in this burning building really sticks out to me. All the cutscenes at this point are at the top of their game tbh.

The Sun (the sun)

• I told my friends about Serph and Sera and they immediately went, "Oh! Like 'seraph'?" whereas I, the cheerful and empty headed gamer, had not even considered that for the past 160 hours until the exact moment they fused on their way to the sun. 👍
• Love Seraph's terrible babygay haircut.