That said, Devil Survivor has a few issues. The foremost of these is that while most battles are a fair challenge, some are designed in such a way as to be nearly impossible to beat unless you bring the exact set of demons and abilities necessary to handle the goal, or do a lot of level-grinding. This means that a few stages aren’t tactical exercises, so much as they are puzzles. This is compounded by a very erratic AI for allied NPCs; sometimes they fight very intelligently, other times they do things that make absolutely no sense and lead to them getting killed when one of your mission goals was to keep them alive. Second and far less severe is that a few of the protagonists - characters you’re ostensibly meant to cheer for - are too stupid to live. Perhaps I’m overreacting, but as an example of this, it’s hard to like a protagonist whose in-game emails consist of nothing but spelling errors, grammar mistakes, and emoticon abuse on par with a stereotypical AOL user.

Fortunately, the complaints I’ve highlighted are the exceptions rather than the norm. Most stages are fair and interesting, and most of the plot is reasonably engaging. Combined with the wide variety of creatures and abilities you get to use, Devil Survivor comes highly recommended.