YMMV / Devil Survivor 2

Please note that, as discrete works, the Video Game and Anime adaptations are on separate pages. Kindly add any new entries for the anime to its own page.

The Devil Survivor 2 videogame:

• Awesome Music: See here.
• Base-Breaking Character: Some people see Daichi as annoying, clueless and whiny, while others find him relatable, reliable, and reasonable. Record Breaker mitigates this with the Triangulum arc, where Daichi's already undergone his Character Development. Gameplay-wise, even having him on your team is divisive: he's among the best Physical hitters in the game, but would be near-useless if you choose to make your character Physical attack-based.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Remember Ghost Q from the original Devil Survivor? He's back and just as plot-irrelevant as ever!
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The Liberator Ending. You decide to kill Polaris. The only problem is that you've removed all supernatural influence from the world, even the good ones. The void isn't undone, leaving only Tokyo and a sea of undrinkable water. You pretty much doomed what's left of humanity to slowly starve to death, and yet the game treats this ending as a good thing. On the bright side, the disaster is finally bringing out the best in people. At least until Record Breaker reveals what will inevitably happen with Polaris' death.
• Even Better Sequel: Opinions vary on the lighter story and large cast, but from a gameplay standpoint Devil Survivor 2 is a step above its predecessor in every way, with a greater variety of races and larger roster of demons allowing for hundreds of combinations, creatively designed, multi-tiered environments, and best of all, the escort missions are far less annoying.
• Fan Nickname: Bunny for the Protagonist thanks to his bunny styled hood.
  • Dessert Overlords for the Septentriones as a whole. Though Dubhe gets called Alien Ice Cream the most.
  • The art style has been lovingly coined as "anti-gravity tits".
  • Anguished One gets called Kaworu because of his similar appearance, his love of humans, and him being the second to last alien faced in the story.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Hero/Yamato and Jungo/Airi are very popular pairings.
  • As the pairing is popular in Japan, the anime decides to push what little interaction that the game failed to give Jungo and Airi (since the game states they ARE partners) and make it their main point.
  • Protagonist/Nitta also became popular following the anime's release.
• Fridge Brilliance: On the first day of the game, you can run into Joe (before he needs your help fighting off demons), and respond with "Long time, no see" when he remarks that you look familiar. This boosts your relationship with him, but it's never explained who he mistook you for. After Polaris has restored the world of the past for a New Game Plus, it's easy to see this as the two of you holding on to your memories of each other. There are similar dialog choices scattered throughout the game, such as telling Daichi that you and Io already know each other, and they tend to be the right ones.
• Game-Breaker: Listed here.
• Genius Bonus: Applies to all the Septentriones, the characters names, and more astrology-themed bits that one will not notice at first glance.
  • Phecda's initial form fast spinning is due to the star having a very fast rotation.
  • Alioth's appearance as a Giant Flyer (whose size dwarves the rest of the Septentriones) may refer to the fact that the star Alioth is the brightest in Big Dipper.
  • Mizar's Self-Duplication ability may refer to the fact that the Mizar star is actually a quadruplet star system.
  • Polaris b having infinite range is based on the star being further away from Polaris than Ab, who is close enough to be considered a shield.
• Goddamned Bats: Only applies to the extreme earlygame, but Knockers are frustrating to fight. They have high HP and Endurance for that point, and if they aren't killed in one turn they'll spam Glamour to heal themselves. Some show up accompanied by Tam Lin, which can take fatal blows for them with Knight Soul.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The battle against Mizar, who is clinging on for dear life onto the roof of a building. The party needs to attack the arms, so that Mizar will let go and get eaten by the Dragon Stream. And Mizar spits up miniature copies, if the arms are attacked. And Mizar will cling on three separate times, each space wider, until it finally lets go and gets eaten.
  • If you didn't side with Daichi on the Sixth Day, your first battle will be against Hinako and Jungo (if he's alive for that playthrough). While Hinako's poor choice of skills makes her a pushover, Jungo is a lot more threatening. He uses Assassinate, which hits the team leader extremely hard due to his sky-high Strength stat and Phys Amp and Ares Aid passives. He can easily one-shot your team leaders if they're not protected against physical attacks, ruining a player's attempts for the Unkillable achievement in the process. Your saving grace is that he lacks Pierce, meaning a Null Phys can render him harmless.
  • The battle against Benetnasch. The human characters and Anguished One, if one is on his route cannot harm it at all, so all damage must be done by demons. And when Benetnasch's HP is lowered enough, the second phase begins, in which it separates itself into four pieces, each modeled after one of the previously beaten Septentriones. Oh, and you better take care of Trumpeter. If he dies, mission failed.
  • In the Triangulum Arc, Spica and its separate bodies. Absolutely not a difficult boss, but it has the annoying ability that, whatever element or type of attack killed one of the small bodies, the others and the main body will become completely immune to. This means it will repel physical, which cannot be by-passed through Pierce, and it can become immune to Almighty.
  • In the Triangulum Arc, the battle against Arcturus. Similar to the Beldr battle in the previous game, Arcuturus can only be damaged through the normal attack of one character. Said character's attack does such pitiful damage, though, and several rounds go by, until another character arrives and assists. Arcuturus also has the ability to make everyone in your party weak to four Elements, but that can be countered by the protagonist using 'Soul Bind', to take the other party members' damage onto him. And the protagonist may not die during that battle, so keeping him safe is also a priority.
• Ho Yay: One could make a serious case for Yamato having a severe crush on the Hero (albeit due to his stunted emotional understanding he doesn't view it in those terms). To wit, not only does he make it quite clear he regards the Hero as his most reliable subordinate and has many moments where he drops his Jerkass manner (as much as he's capable of at least) and acts relatively decent to said Hero. In fact he will flip his shit if you don't pick the Chaos route, even trying to murder the other good guys for "corrupting" the Hero, who he is convinced would join his side again if only the meddling secondary influences were removed. The telling part about this behavior is that he really wouldn't NEED your Hero's help explicitly by this point, he just wants him by his side no matter what. And, if you get him to rejoin you, he phrases the way he felt for you as "yearning".
  • Lampshaded by Hinako if you tell her Yamato called to tell you he likes you:
    Hinako: ...You know, you shouldn't joke like that or people will take it seriously.
  • At one point he smiles 'teasingly' at you. At another, he says "That's my [character name]."
  • There's also a part where Joe thinks Daichi is confessing his love to him. He says that he hasn't done anything like that before... but he thinks Daichi is adorable and is willing to make an effort.
  • Also a large amount of Les Yay between Airi and Hinako, where Airi starts off snarky (tsun) towards Hinako, and eventually seriously warms up to her beginning with complimenting her dancing.
    • Taken even further in the Triangulum arc, where Airi seems sad when Hinako confesses her fears to the protagonist and not her. And the revelation that, during the second cycle of the world, Hinako took the bullet for Airi in the fight against Arcturus, and Airi was too distraught after to really do much, before dying herself.
  • In the Triangulum arc, whoever you choose to help you release Aramisaki, she'll assume that they and the Protagonist are young lovers who want to taunt her with their lovey-dovey P.D.A.s, even the guys. She'll ask the other party if they're in love with the Protagonist. Keita and Jungo will misinterpret it as just that they love being friends with him, and Joe says something snarky but Daichi talks about how close they've been since they were kids and starts to act extremely jealous when Aramisaki decides the Protagonist is her soulmate...
  • Also from the Triangulum arc, Io is quite determined to win Miyako's friendship. She even grabs her hand in one event, and in that same event, it almost looks like a lover's spat.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Io and Makoto to an extent. Because they're Magic Knights that lean toward attack and magic trying to balance it out, one stat will be better than the other but in exchange will leave the vitality and agility at a horrible pace. As a result Yamato is the best choice of the Magic Knight because instead of balancing all of his stats out, he maxes attack and magic while sacrificing vitality and agility, making him a Glass Cannon instead of a Magic Knight that favors either attack or magic. His innate resistance to physical (and almighty!) makes him the ideal user of Anti-Most as well, giving him resistance to everything and offsetting his poor Vitality stat.
  • Joe suffers from being a Fragile Speedster with a focus on Magic. While this can make him good at moving before most other characters, it means he is incredibly fragile, and lacks the damage output of other magical characters like Yamato or Fumi. He also has to compete with Airi and Hinako, who are similarly fast but don't neglect Vitality as much as Joe does.
• Magnificent Bastard: Yamato Hotsuin is the young and determined leader of JPs. Trained since his childhood, Yamato develops a merit-based Social Darwinist worldview which he applies to his own life. When Polaris's trial begins and Japan is invaded for the Septentrione, Yamato leads JPs and ensures its survival, recruiting useful civilians while ignoring most of them. Willing to sacrifice and risk his allies if needed, Yamato eventually reveals his goal: to survive Polaris's trial and ask her to rebuild the world into his ideal meritocracy, where class, race and gender would be ignored in favor of merit. Yamato also tries to convince the Player Character to follow him while allowing him to choose otherwise. Sacrificing himself to save the protagonists—including his ideological rival Ronaldo—after acknowledging their merit in Ronaldo's route and committing suicide after losing in Anguished One's, Yamato always fights until the very end except on Daichi's route, where his friendship with the protagonist makes him accept his defeat. If the protagonist joins him, Yamato successfully leads his team to victory, creating a world where merit rules, the so-called useless ones are discriminated against and Yamato and his retinue rule over all.
• Memetic Loser: As a result of becoming laughably easy after a mid-battle cutscene, Dubhe in general has become a complete joke on GameFAQs, to the point that anything that relates to the sentence "i can't beat Dubhe help?" is most likely going to be answered with the word "pirate".
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Dubhe's Fan Nickname, "Alien ice cream".
  • The special operation Io performs to rescue Daichi in Nagoya.
• Moe:
  • Io's quiet demure and nice figure makes her quite Moe.
  • Airi is the smallest girl in the game, and an adorably little tsundere.
  • Miyako to some people. Her reincarnated form as a young girl screams this trope when she's shown with a picture of her flashing a smile.
• Player Punch: If you fail to take actions to avert a character's fated death, you are forced to watch a cutscene where it happens. And boy oh boy, you will feel like garbage for it.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • In Devil Survivor, the Dragon race was quite poor, with a nearly useless racial skill and generally having lackluster stats, leading them to be ditched for the superior Vile race. In Devil Survivor 2, the Dragons are far improved, with stronger demons and a Game-Breaker racial that allows them to attack from great distances and throw out heals and revives from long range. Combined with the Vile's enhanced racial skill, and you can practically snipe enemies from across the map.
  • On the character side, Keita gains a bevy of Character Development in the Triangulum arc of Record Breaker, going from an unlikeable Jerkass to a much more well-rounded Tsundere with a strong code of honor, who clearly values his friends even if he won't show it. While he still shows disdain for the weak, he's altered his definition of the term to encompass bullies who pick on those who can't defend themselves, and those who won't stand up for themselves, rather than something so superficial as people who can't handle themselves in a fight.
  • Ronaldo also manages to do it, saving the protagonist party at some point and genuinely working with them to find Yamato. This won't stop fans from bringing up how he almost (and succeeded depending on the playthrough) in killing Makoto.
  • Daichi earned himself a lot of fans, both in part to Record Breaker showing off his Character Development from the Septentrione arc and toning down his Cowardly Lion traits and thanks to his voice actor making him come off as funny, likable, and complex as opposed to simply obnoxious and cowardly as he did in the original game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Fate System, where nearly everything you say and do impacts your relationships with characters. While people love the character development it offers, the execution itself is terrible. Characters and stories (particularly in the Triangulum Arc) often hinge so much on it, but the game offers no real indication how you're doing. It forces you to either make mistakes and lock yourself out of an ending you might want, or only play the game when you have a guide nearby. Being able to have so many options for your character's personality is near-meaningless when most of your options require you to act in certain ways depending on the plot or characters. Further, some answers you can give characters are considered "wrong," even when they logically should be - the Anguished One usually appreciates your kindness to him, but sometimes he'd rather have you say something harsh or ignore the chance to be nice. The system becomes even worse in the Triangulum Arc; while you don't need to have good relations with you friends in order to keep them alive/on your side, you have even less time to develop the relations and hang out with everyone.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Those who see Ronaldo as The Scrappy find it very satisfying to see him killed during Yamato and Alcor's route.
• That One Boss: See here for a list.
• That One Level: If you chose to go with the Anguished One for Saturday, you basically start the day severely understaffed with only two team leaders. Your first fight is against Hinako and Jungo, and Jungo is a very intimidating physical threat who can one-shot a team leader between his colossal Strength, Assassinate, Phys Amp, and Ares Aid. Also, Shiva's come to cash in on the favour he owes Hinako, and while you don't have to fight him, he's a powerful threat at level 76 with high-end skills.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The JPs vs rioters conflict around mid-game is supposed to be a case of Both Sides Have a Point, and the dialogue responses that lead to siding with JPs in missions make the protagonist look like a Jerkass Social Darwinist... but the normal JPs agents tend to come across as disaster relief workers genuinely trying to help civilians as much as they can, with the rioters acting like Ungrateful Bastards in return.
• The Woobie: It seems one of the requirements of being a Devil Messenger is being in a lot of pain. Naturally, the job requires being the recipient of even more pain, with the Nicaea System helpfully showing you the gruesome demise of everyone you fail. Since you can't be in five places at once, you will fail without careful planning (or waste all your time socializing). Often. Oh yeah, did I mention if you don't get the very tough aliens dead, they'll kill the world? No pressure, folks!