Digital Devil Saga

Rend...
Slaughter...
Devour your enemies!
There is no other way to survive. You cannot escape your hunger, Warriors of Purgatory!

A Spin-Off of the Shin Megami Tensei JRPG series, divided into two parts. Developed by Atlus, the first game was released in Japan in 2004 with the second following in 2005.

All is not well in the realm of the Junkyard, a wartorn land living under blackened skies and perpetual rain. An endless war is being fought between six Tribes struggling for dominance over the Junkyard. The Karma Temple, a neutral party that moderates the war, has decreed that the Tribe who defeats all the others to control every sector of the Junkyard shall be awarded the ultimate prize: the right to ascend to Nirvana, a mythical paradise free of war or strife.

The Embryon Tribe, led by the calm and silent Serph, is locked in a stalemate with the nearby Vanguards Tribe. During one of their skirmishes, they encounter a mysterious egg-shaped relic that neither side can identify. A transmission from the Karma Temple orders both sides to destroy it. Before they can act, the relic explodes, sending out beams of light that pierce the bodies of the combatants and transform them into bloodthirsty demons. Regaining their senses and awakening to a bloodbath, Serph and the Embryon investigate the crater left by the relic and discover a young girl with black hair and no identifying Tag Ring.

Soon afterwards, the Karma Temple issue a new decree: that the Tribes must use their new-found demonic power-known as "Atma"-to break the stalemate of the Junkyard and devour their competition. They also add a new condition: that the winning Tribe must capture and present the black-haired girl to the Karma Temple in order to be allowed into Nirvana. But demonic strength was not the only thing granted to the inhabitants of the Junkyard: they have also awakened a new power called "emotion".

The members of the Embryon are:

The second game follows directly from the events of the first. The Embryon have triumphed and ascended to Nirvana. However, what they find there is not paradise, but a new hell in which the rays of a blackened sun have turned the entire population of the world into stone statues. The only survivors are those who live underground or under the thumb of the Karma Society. To make things worse, Sera is their prisoner and Heat has turned Sixth Ranger Traitor on you. Fortunately, two new members join the Embryon:

The two games are mostly dungeon crawlers with bits of plot driving the action in-between. The combat system marks the return of the Press Turn system from Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Each character can set up to eight skills, and unlike Nocturne, any skill that has been learned is retained permanently. Skills are learned by buying "Mantra" from Karma Terminals and earning enough Atma Points to complete them. By learning one Mantra, advanced Mantra of that type are unlocked. Hunt skills can be used to greatly increase the amount of Atma Points harvested from an enemy at the risk of developing a stomachache and gaining none.

A save game from Digital Devil Saga can be carried over to Digital Devil Saga 2 to gain additional bonuses.

The character sheet can be found here.

Tropes used in Digital Devil Saga include:
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Admittedly, Digital Devil Saga 1 at least doesn't need to give any reasons as to why they shouldn't be huge, since the entire world is a virtual reality, but the ones in Digital Devil Saga 2 make no sense.
  • After the End: In Digital Devil Saga 2, we find out that most of humanity was killed off five years ago, when God started turning everyone human who was touched by the sun into stone. The Junkyard also seems to be built on the ruins of a dead civilization, although that turns out to be false.
  • Amnesiac Dissonance: Serph, when he discovers that his prior incarnation was an asshole.
  • Apocalypse How: The events of the series are kicked into motion by a Planetary-scale Civilization Disruption. Brahma attempts a Planetary/Physical Annihilation Apocalypse in Digital Devil Saga 2.
  • Apotheosis: Seraph (the fusion of Sera and Serph) becomes one with Brahman, where they achieve Nirvana. However, Sera and Serph don't achieve enlightenment and thus are reincarnated.
  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: No, we never get any rationale for why you can only have three people in your party. Presumably, the remaining two plus whatever hang-ons you currently have are hanging in the back, scarfing the leftovers.
  • Arc Words: In the first game, "I am Colonel Beck." Pretty much explains exactly what the hell is going on.
  • Artificial Human: Everyone in the Junkyard.
  • Awesome but Impractical:
    • Berserk Mode in the second game. You get double the experience from clearing an encounter, but the accuracy and defense drop in a game where missing can already be fatal and being locked out of magic entirely makes these too random to be reliable.
      • After defeating a certain Bonus Boss, you can learn Chaturbhuja, which is a Physical skill with 100% accuracy, meaning it skips accuracy calculations and always hits no matter what, on top of being simply powerful. By abusing it and the fact that the party always goes first, these go from unreliable to extremely consistent sources of experience... that are only really viable on New Game+ since the party will certainly be powerful enough to beat the final boss by the time they can start using it.
    • Seraph's unique skill, Reincarnate is the strongest Almighty non-Combo skill in the game in terms of raw power, but only if Seraph has high Magic to begin with. This, combined with the longer-than-average animation, hefty cost and lack of Boost and Amp passives for Almighty makes it difficult to use in the extremely long dungeon you learn it in.
  • Bag of Spilling: Between the first and second games. Justified in that the Embryon are transformed from computer data into real, flesh and bone bodies.
  • Barrier Change Boss:
    • Huang Long in the first game switches between one of seven sets of resistances, each with its own set of skills, which the player effectively has to guess; guess wrong, and he might heal for ten times the damage of the attack. One of these sets is even the only thing in the game that nullifies Almighty, five of the others have the rare Almighty resistance, and the last one receives over double damage from everything.
    • In the second game:
      • Abaddon switches between the resistances of Ubelluris, Ganga and Cu Sith, who Earth had devoured to gain strength.
      • Shiva switches between six sets of resistances every turn, with no indication that he is doing so, though it is entirely predictable.
      • Vishnu switches his resistances and skills to counter whichever element he was first hit with on your turn.
      • Satan switches his resistances every turn, much like Shiva.
  • Betty and Veronica: Deconstructed horribly in the backstory. Sera saw Serph as a sweet and caring man while being scared of Heat's intimidating behavior. Unfortunately, Serph was a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who only saw her as a tool for his experiments, while Heat was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who was pissed at how the facility treated her.
  • Bi the Way: Some players interpret Heat this way because of how he calls Seraph "cute" when you talk to him at The Sun.
  • Blessed with Suck: The Atma virus grants one the power to morph into a powerful demon, capable of using magic and physical feats. The price one pays is that one must devour other people and demons, but one can never be fully satiated. If a person goes for a prolonged period of time without feeding, he/she becomes a demon permanently, insane and attacks anything and anyone.
  • Bonus Boss: Several. Killing the ones in the first game nets you a bonus in the sequel. The first game's strongest enemy, the Demi-fiend (from Nocturne), is probably the hardest Bonus Boss ever to appear in a RPG, although a GameFAQs poster called Red Star found a weakness that makes the fight easier. "Easier", in this case, means that after you've managed to do enough Level Grinding and farming of randomly dropped stat boosting items to hit the statistic caps, you might actually be able to win the fight on your third try instead of your thirtieth. Satan, in the second game, manages to be almost as difficult.
    • To add insult to injury on an extremely hard fight, the battle music is the regular Nocturne battle theme, meaning you are nothing more than a random encounter to him.
      • This is further exemplified by the set of demons he uses and his attacks. Javelin Rain, Heat Wave, Xeros Beat and the absolute overkill that is Gaea Rage are actually MEDIOCRE attacks in Nocturne. If he WAS actually concerned about you, he'd be using high-level demons like Metatron, Shiva, Daisoujou and Beelzebub, as well as whipping out attacks like Spiral Viper, Deadly Fury and Freikugel. Even with maxed out stats, he would have wiped the floor with you if he actually WAS trying, even without Death Flies.
      • The one sure thing we can take away from all this is that in Mega Ten, Anyone Can Die.
  • Boring but Practical: Hunt skills. They do double damage (quad if you land a critical hit) on frightened enemies and are not affected by null/repel physical.
  • Boss Rush: One sidequest pits you against the 4 archangels in an abandoned research facility. The last fight in the quest has you fight Uriel, Raphael and Gabriel again before you face Michael.
  • Cannibalism Superpower: The party restores a small amount of HP and gains Atma Points at the end of every successful battle because they eat the corpses of their fallen enemy demons. Enemy humans don't even drop Atma Points unless they transform into a demon.
    • Story-wise, this happens with Tribhvana: Earth, after devouring Air and Water, mutating his Atma into Abaddon and gaining their abilities.
  • Character Development: Quite visible throughout both games, but most especially in the first. The characters start off emotional blank slates, awaken to a single powerful emotion, and develop from there. Argilla goes from initial horror and disgust about her situation to grudging acceptance to eventually being quite at peace with herself. Gale takes the longest to emotionally awaken since he's a calm tactician, but by the end, he's grown far beyond what he once was.

Cielo: What happened to "I do not comprehend?" [Gale's Spock catchphrase]
Gale: Some things cannot be comprehended, only felt.

  • Chest Monster: Besides the regular kind, there is also one door in the second game that looks like a Save Room, but is actually a trap set by the enemies. Instead of a save point, you find an unavoidable battle against 2 waves of baddies... Did I mention that you were probably half dead at this point to begin with?
    • It's not as deceptive as you think... it's the only other door in the room it's found in.
  • Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Bat, who manages to be a major Jerkass while constantly changing loyalties. He eventually gets what he deserves though.
  • Combination Attack: One of the distinguishing mechanics of the duology: characters equipped with specific skills can combine them to create new attacks; sometimes they're variants of normal skills with slightly modified stats, other times they're entirely unique skills. Some enemies are capable of using these as well.
  • Curtains Match the Window: Everyone in the junkyard. Actually a plot point, as their eyes only start matching their brightly-coloured hair after their emotions awaken. Before that, they're all a uniform flat gray.
    • Which leads to fridge brilliance. Serph's eyes AND hair are both grey. He has no real emotions since Sera didn't know his personality.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: Cielo's "plot lasers", which never actually appear as a useable move outside of cutscenes. He even Lampshades it during the Very Definitely Final Dungeon of the second game.
  • Dark Reprise: The music when fighting Heat and some other bosses in Digital Devil Saga 2 is called "Hunting - Betrayal", which is a reprise of the regular battle theme from the first game.
  • Demonic Possession: This happens when the personality of the Atma Avatar overpowers the personality of the human. Examples include Beelzebub, Metatron, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel and Michael. Especially heart-wrenching in the case of Metatron because the human who transforms into Metatron was desperately searching for his girlfriend and tried to fight Metatron's influence unsuccessfully.
  • Did Not Get the Girl: Heat. The real Heat O'Brien even gets shot in the back and dies due to this.
  • Disc One Nuke: All of your party members in the second game if you load in with data from the first game that had mastered every Mantra with every character, as each character will start the second game with +5 in every stat.
  • Do Androids Dream?: In the second game.
  • Domed Hometown: The entire world in the first game.
    • Most of the second game takes place in a complex under a dome. They need the dome because something happened to the Sun and its light now turns people to stone.
  • The Dragon: Varin Omega in the first game, Meganada in the second.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending
  • Eleventh-Hour Ranger: Heat.
  • Eleventh-Hour Superpower: In the sequel, Serph and Sera merge on their journey to the Sun, becoming the androgynous being Seraph. Keeping with Hindu overtones, Seraph's demon form is Ardhanarishvara, or Ardha for short.
  • The End of the World as We Know It: The Junkyard ends in the first one, and they end up in the half-dead real world and have to save it once Sera accidentally convinces God to end that too.
  • Evil Feels Good: Somewhat. Heat's expression when he transforms the first time.
  • False Memories: A horrific part of the Demonic Possession above. A lot of Shout Outs to Shin Megami Tensei II confirm it.
  • Five-Man Band: Zig Zagged. Serph and Argilla are definite, but the rest switch between the other three positions.
  • Foreshadowing: The story of the two princes and princess in the amusement park in the first game, particularly the scrambled parts that call into doubt the real motivations of the "Good Prince" and "Evil Prince." In their previous lives, Heat was the only one who genuinely cared about Sera, while Serph and the others were just manipulating her.
  • The Four Gods: Bonus Bosses in the first game, along with Huang Long.
  • Funetik Aksent: Cielo, whenever he says anything too Rastafarian.
    • Justified because the person he was based off of was a child from the Caribbean that Sera met during the initial experiments.
  • Gainax Ending: Both games, although the beginning of the second game explains what happened in the ending of first one.
  • God: Technically, Brahman.
  • A God Am I: Serph Sheffield's master plan was to gain God's power, but hoo boy, did that backfire. Horribly.
  • God Is Evil: Subverted. Brahman isn't evil, he's just really, really pissed off at humanity, all thanks to Serph Sheffield. Once the protagonists calm him down, he relents.
  • Goldfish Poop Gang: The Tribhvana.

Cielo: Sheesh, where do they find dese guys?

  • Green Lantern Ring: Sera's very vaguely-defined psychic powers.
  • Guide Dang It: To get Heat and a handful of unique skills in Digital Devil Saga 2, you have to make specific dialogue choices over both games. Coincidentally, all of the dialogue choices happen to be the first ones the cursor highlights, so you can unlock them by accident if you happened to be really impatient.
    • This applies to most Bonus Bosses as well. The amount of information the designers expect the player to divine and track borders on sadistic. Just to defeat Satan, the player has to know that they need a character with 3 stacks of every buff every 4th turn (something you can only accomplish by learning of a Combo which - of course - you'd have to stumble upon, otherwise the fight is Unwinnable by Design), then know that his resistances change every turn (which has no indication, and bosses cannot be Enemy Scanned), then know that he has an attack that is guaranteed to inflict Charm once he loses half of his HP and has to be prevented with a Shield, but also know that Magic Repel (a catch-all Shield that also gives Ailment immunity) will press his Berserk Button to start spamming a skill that guaranteed instakills a character, which you have to learn that it targets the character with the lowest Magic stat since he will start using it anyways when he drops to below 25% HP. And the cherry on top: he can heal himself back to full if he isn't dead by the time he hits 5% HP.
  • Half-Human Hybrid: "Berserk Form" in Digital Devil Saga 2. Characters are also seen willingly partially transforming their arms to attack.
  • Hate Sink: For the most part, the duology has no real antagonist, as all of them have legitimate reasons for their actions. The closest we have is Serph Sheffield, Serph's human template. Between his callous experiments on Sera just to become God, him being the main reason of all the conflicts in the story and his Bitch in Sheep's Clothing Smug Snake attitude, it's made evidently clear he's the one character the player could truly root against.
  • Healing Checkpoint: Large Karma Terminals do this. Small ones normally don't, but some Small Terminals might have a Life Terminal next to them to do the same job (Small Terminals can also transport you to a large one if you need healing enough that you're willing to walk back).
  • Hermaphrodite: You know what Sera's mother and father have in common? They're both Jenna Angel.
    • Sera and Serph also become one towards the end of the second game. Like mother/father, like daughter/son?
  • Heroic Mime: Serph. Lampshaded by Heat, who criticizes him for not speaking up enough.
    • Not only is it Lampshaded by Heat "You know this wouldn't happen if you'd just speak up more", it's also done by Gale in the second game "It's ok, you don't have to say anything" (funny because Digital Devil Saga 2 is the game where we actually do get to hear Serph talk).
  • Heroic Sacrifice: All main characters die in the most badass and heart crushing way. By the end of the game, you won't have any tears anymore.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Bat.
    • The real Serph Sheffield, too.
    • Margot Cuvier in regards to how she treats Sera and Heat.
  • Horror Hunger: A side-effect of the Atma Virus. Infected have the choice between indulging in cannibalism on a regular basis or turning into mindless raving monsters.
  • Human Resources: The Meat factories in the sequel produce food for the demonised inhabitants of the world by grinding up the people who aren't deemed worthy enough to live there.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: You devour your opponents alive.
  • Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: This happens to a lot of characters: Heat gets stabbed by Bat, Serph gets stabbed by Heat, Gale and Angel impale each other, Cielo getting impaled by a piece of air plane wreckage... and then there's Chernobog who impales himself during certain attacks.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: The skeletons in the theme park dungeon of Coordinate 136 are quite fond of these.

Skeleton: I'm sure you've already figured out that you're boned...
Skeleton: Tired of falling yet? Aww, I'm just ribbin' ya.

  • I Need You Stronger: Roland reveals in the first game that the tribes of the Junkyard were forced to kill each other and ascend to Nirvana because the winning tribe's data would be copied and programmed into microchips.
  • Infinity+1 Sword: Black Sun is the most powerful player-usable skill in both games, boasting 666 base power; over double the next highest, and pretty much guaranteed to wipe any random encounter. In the first game, it is practically learnable as soon as the final dungeon starts (though given how the Mantra system works, one could theoretically grind for it in the second dungeon). In the second game, it instead requires defeating three Bonus Bosses, two of which are only one room behind the final boss, and in both games, just learning the component skills requires a pretty significant money investment and grinding.
  • Kill'Em All: Twice! Nothing is left of the Junkyard at the end of the first game, and, by the end of the second, every last member of the Embryon is dead... the last dungeon is inside the sun, after everyone's been killed! Good thing reincarnation is a very real thing in this particular series...
  • La Résistance: The Underground City residents in the sequel. They call themselves the "Lokapala" (Guardians of the Gods).
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: The fact that the first game is in a computer is pretty blatant by the name of the upcoming cellphone prequel Test Server.
    • The mysterious "Angel" that kicks off the plot of the first game is actually a woman named Jenna Angel. She only appears as a disembodied voice until the last boss fight, but she's shown as herself from the beginning of the second game, and the game assumes you know who she is.
  • Lethal Joke Character: Cielo and Null Sleep. In the first game, Cielo's absymal stats and weakness to ailment attacks make him The Load. Null Sleep is a skill that causes you to automatically dodge any attack, but only if you're under the Sleep ailment: a skill so conditional that it's a waste of a skill slot. The two intersect if you choose to fight Bonus Boss Demi-Fiend, where Null Sleep is required to avoid defeat, and Cielo's weakness makes him the best candidate to use it.
  • Level Grinding: Has a minor form, Skill Grinding. Certain dungeons are made easier if the party has the right skills equipped, and you may have to grind to get them. The Karma Temple at the end of the first Digital Devil Saga requires certain skills to avoid the combination death the random encounters throw at you.
  • Lip Lock: Even though the voice actors are very experienced in voicing foreign animation, the dialogue has as much awkward pauses and speed variations as other examples in this page; the care put into the lip matching with the Japanese dialogue certainly doesn't help. It's less noticeable when the characters are in their demon forms, but the rest of the time.... yeah.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Beating each game's ultimate Bonus Boss takes a good deal of luck, even at level 99 and maxed stats. Ironically, the Bonus Boss in the first game is easier if you have a low Luck stat in one character (Cielo).
  • Magical Native American: The Wolves Tribe.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Serph Sheffield from the second game is the epitome of this trope.
  • Meaningful Name: Pretty much everyone, though some are more obvious (Angel, Gale, Heat, Serph) than others (Argilla is Italian for "clay", and Cielo is Spanish for "sky").
    • Doubly so for Serph. Not only is his name pronounced like "surf" (his affinity is with water/ice), see the spoiler for The Messiah below for a second meaning.
    • "Bat" in the first game is the name of the human whose demon form is Camazotz, a giant bat. This probably sounded a little cooler and less literal to the developers since English wasn't their primary language.
    • Subverted for Seraph who isn't associated with Expel-type attacks.
  • The Messiah: Sera. Even more so after she fuses with Serph to become the not-so-subtly-named Seraph.
  • Mysterious Waif: Sera.
  • Mythology Gag: In the second game, the four angel bonus bosses talk about building a thousand year old kingdom, and think that their God was the one who turned humans into stone statues... just like in Shin Megami Tensei II.
  • Naked on Arrival: Sera... twice.
  • Nerf: A few Combo Skills were nerfed between the first and second game. The Mega-tier elemental skills took a hit to their base power, Angelic Grace became significantly more expensive to cast, and the elemental magic combos no longer have 100% accuracy.
  • New Game+: In the first game, you only get to keep your Mantras, but you also have the opportunity to fight the Demi-Fiend. In the second game, you also keep your Karma Rings and unlock Hard Mode if it wasn't already unlocked, but you also get the Berserk Ring, which works wonders with Chaturbhuja to let you Level Grind twice as fast.
  • Nintendo Hard: Although the games are relatively easy compared to many other Megaten games, they're still harder than most JRPGs (on the other hand, the two Bonus Bosses noted above are insane even by Megaten standards).
  • Oh Crap: Mick the Slug.
    • Might happen for the player when the Security sytem core activates the apply named genocide mode.
    • An in-universe example: the scientists' and Madame's reactions to God absorbing the Earth's data.
  • The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Karma Temple in the original game, and the Karma Society in the sequel.
  • One Game for the Price of Two: The two games each contain only half the story, and are not intended to stand alone. Fortunately, each volume contains enough content and the thematic division is strong enough that it doesn't seem like a mere Revenue Enhancing Device. Taken together, you're pretty sure to get some 140+ hours out of the games.
    • There are also a significant number of changes to the gameplay system: a new character advancement system and the ability to equip Rings, to name two. Oh, and Cielo is no longer The Load.
  • One Stat to Rule Them All: Downplayed with Magic. Physical attackers need Strength for physical damage, Vitality for physical defense and max HP and Agility for physical accuracy. In contrast, Magic handles magical damage, magical defense, max MP, magical accuracy and healing. The downsides of dumping everything into Magic is that you will be very vulnerable to Physical attacks and damage-based Hunt skills won't be as effective, but the former can be remedied with a Physical shield and the latter can be substituted with the instakill-based Hunt skills.
  • Optional Party Member: Heat can be recruited for the final dungeon in Digital Devil Saga 2 if you have fulfilled certain prerequisites over both games.
  • Order Versus Chaos: Margot Cuvier versus Jenna Angel, respectively.
  • Painful Transformation: When the Junkyard inhabitants go berserk after being infected with Atma at the beginning.
  • Personality Powers: Most notably between Serph (ice) and Heat (fire). The fact that they oppose each other on Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors is not coincidental. Most important in-game relationships play with Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors at least a little.
    • Half-subverted in that teaching a character mantras from his opposing element is actually more effective, as attack spells and resist spells tend to come bundled.
  • Petal Power: The physical special ability "Sakura Rage".
  • Pigeonholed Voice Actor: Crispin Freeman provides the voice of Heat, and Steve Blum is the voice of Gale in the games' US release.
    • Also, Yuri Lowenthal is Serph and Schrodinger, Dave Wittenberg is Cielo, Amanda Winn-Lee is Argilla and Wendee Lee is Sera. Pretty much all of them are seasoned Mega Ten voices, most notably Yuri and Dave.
  • Played for Drama: A lot of the things you take for granted because Digital Devil Saga is a video game; for instance, the Junkyard's complete lack of backstory form plot elements.
  • Pop Quiz: Hosted by Jack Frost in Digital Devil Saga 2; there's a Bragging Rights Reward in it for you if you answer all one hundred questions correctly and beat a Bonus Boss.
  • Power Tattoo: The ability to transform into a demon is marked through a tattoo on the user's skin. In the picture above, Serph's is on his left cheek, Argilla's is above her breasts. These glow when the user transforms.
    • Pity the woman who has her tattoo on her butt cheek.
  • Pre-Ass-Kicking One-Liner: Heat has a few of this. "I'll tear you apart, you fat freak!"
    • Occasionally, your party members will get one before taking on some enemies.
    • Angel gets an epic one when some Karma Society soldiers attempt to arrest her for treason.
  • Previous Player Character Cameo: See Bonus Boss above.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: Subverted. You fight the Tribhvana a few times, and each time, they run off. Then you run into one of them alone... with blood dripping out of his mouth, patting his stomach ominously. Turns out he killed and ate the other two members to gain their powers.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: Heat and Serph respectively, although Serph being a Heroic Mime makes his personality mostly implied. Their Personality Powers support this.
  • Reincarnation: Almost every member of the Junkyard was once a person in the real world. It's arguable as to whether most of your main party members are reincarnations, or newly created souls modeled after formerly living people in the real world. Made even more confusing by Lupa, whose real-life analogue was Fred's dad and the former leader of Lokapala, who died after the Junkyard was apparently created. How would Sera have even known about him, anyway?
    • What happens to the Embryon at the end, though the game leaves it deliberately unclear as to why. It could be that Seraph's enlightenment was incomplete because he still wished to be with his comrades. It could be that Seraph's enlightenment encompasses reincarnating back onto Earth in the tradition of the bodhisatvas, who renounce enlightenment until they have managed to assist everyone else in achieving enlightenment as well. It could be that Sera and Serph had to return, since they never managed to reach Enlightenment as individuals; only their composite Seraph does.
  • Ridiculously Cute Critter: Nasty effects aside, it's hard not to admit that the bat form looks really cute, especially when compared to the rest of the game.
  • Schrödinger's Cat: Literally: there's a cat named Schrodinger who is apparently Seraph from the future, helping guide his past self to enlightenment. Or something.
  • Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Averted. If you know your metric prefixes, you know that 945.56 zettabytes per second is a huge amount of data transferred per unit time. For comparison, Wikipedia says that the rate of data generation worldwide is about one zettabyte per year. In Digital Devil Saga, everything is made of data, so when that much data from Earth is uploaded to the Sun, the results are... not good.
  • Science Is Bad
  • Sentai: The Embryon are often seen as this. Particularly, Power Rangers RPM, with Serph to Scott, Heat to Dillon, Gale to Flynn, Cielo to Ziggy, and Argilla to Summer.
  • Shoot the Dog: Quite a few, but most notably Jinana and literally Lupa.
  • Shout-Out: If you talk to the prisoners in the Human Resources prison/factory, one of them says "If you devour me I'll become more powerful than your digestive system can ever imagine."
  • Skirt Over Slacks: Both Argilla and Sera wear shorts under their skirts. They are soldiers, after all.
  • Smug Snake: Bat in the first game.
  • Social Darwinist: Jenna Angel.
  • So Long and Thanks For All the Gear: Inverted: characters who leave will master their currently equipped skills if they leave the party, no matter how long it would normally take.
  • Something Completely Different: Most of the Shin Megami Tensei series is about collecting demons (or in the case of the Persona series, collecting Personas). Digital Devil Saga bucks the trend by having your protagonists be demons themselves, and instead of collecting enemies to get new abilities, you simply destroy them to level up. It's oddly much more like a conventional console RPG in this manner (though the subject matter is anything but conventional).
  • Statistically Speaking: Heat leans to higher strength, and is able to throw around people single handedly and break stone walls in a single punch (while untransformed) in cutscenes.
    • The Worf Effect: One boss shrugs off a blow to the face from Heat and then grabs his fist.
    • Though in one scene, he claims he is stronger than Serph, even if Serph's Strength stat is higher.
  • Squishy Wizard: Zig-zagged. Magic increases both magical attack and magical defense, but physical defense and max HP are both under Vitality.
  • Superpower Lottery: The Atma Virus grants you the ability to turn into a demon, but you have no control over what demon form you get. Results range from gigantic nigh-invulnerable golden dragons to pathetic amorphous blobs.
  • Taken for Granite: Sunlight turns every normal human to stone in the sequel. Very few humans escaped petrification and those so affected are irreversibly dead, due to them being turned into extremely crumbly statues. Yes, it's just as creepy as it sounds.
  • Terrible Trio: The Tribhvana in Digital Devil Saga 2.
  • There Will Be Cake: Nirvana.
    • The Cake Is a Lie: Nirvana exists, but it's far from the paradise the Embryon imagined.
  • Tomato in the Mirror
  • Took a Level in Badass: Cielo in the second game. His weakness to ailments was toned down, making him much more useful, and he gets some pretty great scenes such as taking down three fighter jets with his body. Of course, it's a Heroic Sacrifice.
    • Sera too. When Serph is presumed dead, she literally becomes his Distaff Counterpart and assumes leadership of the Embryon, until Serph returns.
  • True Companions
  • Unexpected Shmup Level: In the second game, there is a bonus minigame where one can play through 3 shmup levels with Cielo featuring Beelzebub as the final boss.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: In the first game, the Karma Temple. In the second, The Sun. Both of these are absurdly long and easily dwarf the final dungeon of these game's direct predecessors, Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne. Hell, they may even be longer than the entire rest of their respective games.
  • Villainous Breakdown: Jenna has one when Gale accuses her of betraying David's ideals.
    • Madame when she finds out her actions were responsible for endangering the world.
  • Waif Prophet: Sera.
  • Wasted Song: "Madness" in the sequel plays when your party go into Berserk Mode. Because it's so easy to get critical attacks and mow down enemies, these battles tend to be over in a flash, along with the song.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Presumably, Jinana and Lupa are reincarnated, but it's left pretty uncertain as to just exactly what happened.
  • What Is This Thing You Call Love?: The members of the Embryon (particularly Heat) struggle to make sense of why they feel anger, remorse and affection towards themselves and each other after gaining their Atma.
  • What The Hell Villain: Close to the end of Digital Devil Saga 2, Gale, who is created from the solar data of Jenna's former lover David, calls Jenna on her actions, reminding Jenna of the promises Jenna made to David to help mankind. Jenna does not take this well.
  • Whip It Good: Argilla's avatar Prithivi.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: The Demon Virus tends to have this effect on people.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Sera. Accidentally.
  • White-Haired Pretty Boy: Serph qualifies only for hair and looks... the human from whom he was created on the other hand...
  • You Gotta Have Blue Hair: In an interesting take on this trope, everyone in the Junkyard has an improbable hair colour except for Sera, whose black hair is utterly alien to the inhabitants... it's even Lampshaded near the start of the first game, when the various Tribes are ordered to locate "the black-haired girl". Those who are living in the real world, such as Roland and Fred, have more realistic hair colours.
  • Younger Than They Look: Sera suffers from Rapid Aging as a result of the repeated use of her "Cyber Shaman" powers. This gets to the point she cannot survive for too long without the sustaining fluids from the EGG.
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