Among all the different approaches Atlus has had to Megami Tensei since 1987, Digital Devil Saga has to be the most interesting one, it already differentiates itself from the mainline games heavily and builds its own identity by focusing the teological themes and references on Hinduism, everything from the architecture, names to even in-game systems draw heavy inspirations from those beliefs, and the more well-versed you are on that, the more meaning Digital Devil Saga will have, the game makes really intelligent parallels and references to Hindu religions.

But a game can't live on just symbolism, and it's in the gameplay part that Digital Devil Saga starts to show its flaws, they tried a different take on levelling and demon summoning, here, you no longer fuse and summon different demons, but instead, each party member has a set entity they can transform into, which in and off itself is a interesting idea, but the effect it had on levelling up is massively negative, because you no longer change demons (or magatamas) they had to implement a new system for skill learning, or the game would become very staple and with little variety if you could only learn pre-set skills to those entities, and this system comes in the form of Mantras, which is kinda like the magatama system from Nocturne, as in both revolve around different "equipment" that you can equip on the human characters and each one will have a type of skills for the player to learn while they level up, the problem is: in DDS, it becomes very grindy, especially if you want to defeat the optional bosses, in Nocturne, you still needed to grind if you wanted a specific skill, but as long as you had a general idea of how you wanted to build the Demi-Fiend you could just equip Magatamas that teach the types of skills you needed and have almost no need to grind, but in this game, if you want to make every party member you use somewhat decently strong, you must grind different mantras for each skill you want, and it quickly becomes tiresome.

The other major gameplay factor in Megami Tensei games are the dungeons, and i like the ones present here, they aren't as complex as the ones in Strange Journey or as trap-filled as the ones in Nocturne, instead, they have a more puzzley approach, and are pretty well thought out, i understand the criticisms some have towards them, but i personally like it.

It's hard to write about only DDS1's story without taking the second game into consideration, since everything seen here is just build up and character development for the REAL events that take place in the sequel, but for what it does, the world building is quite interesting, you get to see a bit of each faction of the Junkyard and how they operate, and the characters, both main and side, are very good and don't take long to capture your interest, it's a good story as it is, but i don't like the idea of making a whole game just to build up the sequel.

The soundtrack here (as usual in Atlus games) is amazing, super atmosferic and distinct, i think this duology's OST might be my favorite works from Shoji Meguro, and that's saying a lot, considering i really like most of his music, the visuals are also very good for the PS2 and the art direction is one of the best in gaming.

Overall, Digital Devil Saga is a solid game and a respectable attempt at a new take on Megami Tensei, even if it has major flaws, it's still an experience i enjoyed a lot, my rating is a 4/5 for the reasons i mentioned above, but i can easily see it being a 4.5 or even a 5.