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That thing Cleve was talking about - Let's Play SMT!
- Thread starter Black Cat
- Start date
Black Cat
Magister
Chapter the eighth, two old men and a little girl.
In which our heroine feels lazy and unimaginative, so nothing to write here.
Last time we met Koneko, Bardon, and Helena where in Shinjuku, preparing for the journey that would take them into Roppongi and beyond. As we now rejoin them they are wandering the wasteland, eastward and a bit south. They face many demons and Gaians along the way, the only new one being Youjuu Atsuyu, some weird thingie.
After several moons and all that they finally find themselves close to Roppongi, but just as they had heard the way forward is blocked by some kind of energy field that leaves beyond their reach also the underground passage leading to Ginza and the rest of Tokyo. After some looking around, though, they find an underground entrance leading inside the field.
Neo-Roppongi is a safe area, just as Shinjuku was before our heroes came, and as such no demon will jump you while in here. We register the local Terminal in our COMP and, as we start exploring, we come across some strangeness. First, the stores are always empty and look like pre-war stores.
Second, everyone in Roppongi looks like the Great Destruction never happened and the post-apocaliptic wasteland we just crossed was something distant and having nothing to do with them. We chat the time away with some random people on the corridors and rooms near the entrance. Some guy tells us how great Roppongi really is...
... a girl tells us about Roppongi's rulers, the Red Count and the Black Baron...
... and a guy who explains a bit about the forcefield to us.
Near the entrance is also the Disco. Like everything in Roppongi, everything and everyone in it looks like the Great Destruction never came: we are received by a man in a black suit instead of some random guy who looks like a beggar, and then we continue interviewing the locals. First we meet a girl who ran away from Shinjuku to try luck in Roppongi...
... a guy that tells us about how they do nothing but party 27/7 here...
... a Barman that sounds like he also is part of the Roppongi's Tourism Board...
... and finally a woman that tells us about a possessed girl by the name of Helena they have locked in the back.
Nobody gives a shit about us going to her and having a chat, so we just do. And inside a cell in the back of the bar we find exactly who we thought we would find: Helena, Koneko's neighbour and Bardon's girlfriend. Most surprising that she being alive, though, is that she hasn't aged a single day since last time we saw her, thirty years ago.
It's only a miracle when God's involved, dear friend.
Are you sure you want to know?
Koneko
Koneko!
I do not know if Zombies and the like, the Shiki demons in general, get reborn in the Abyss or not. I'm betting they don't, since they are reanimated corpses kept alive by magic and stuff. Or maybe she can die because she still has a soul, instead of being just a mindless corpse or something. In any case, Soul Incense is some pretty hardcore loot: The only item that can revive fallen characters with full HP and MP. It can get pretty life-saving on the first couple of playthroughs since otherwise is pretty hard to revive someone in battle, and you can only get them by trading Diamonds at RAG's. Since i forgot to do so i take the Terminal back to Shinjuku and trade my one Diamond for a Soul Incense.
Then I Transmit back to Roppongi. I have tried several times to not do this quest and keep the Soul Incense, but i always feel like a jerk. So there, i'm really not up to the task of doing a Chaos playthrough other than by accident: I use the Soul Incense on the girl. Goodbye, pretty diamond. I liked you a whole lot, sob sob.
Feeling is useless to try and get my alignment back to neutral is totally useless if i am being to be a bleeding heart i go back to explore Roppongi. Soon afterwards we meet a small girl by the name of Alice.
And off she goes to tell the Red Count to meet us. Were Aquino still in the team he would act like a jerk with her and then this wouldn't happen until after he has gone his own way. For now, though, we keep exploring, find an empty treasure chest, and after waiting for the Full Moon to come we go down into the basement as soon as it goes away. In the basement and in some areas of the upper floors there are traps, and the only way to not be damaged by them is using a Core Shield or similar thingie. Core Shields protect the party from tile-based damage until the next Full Moon, so it is usually in your best interest to just wait for the next Full Moon and activate them first thing after.
Exploring the basement we come across a series of trapped rooms at the end of which a treasure chest lies. Inside of it we find the Gushing Jar, the infamous pot we have been hearing about since we first came to post-apocaliptic Tokyo. Timing is very important in this: If you have not defeated Takeminakata and killed Ozawa then next time you go face them Ozawa will take your Gushing Jar so you can't use it on his master. The only way to then get another one is, i believe, to find a Ruby while killing monsters to trade it in RAG's for a new Gushing Jar. Rubies are not normal drops by a long shot, so you are better just restarting if you mess the right order of things so very badly.
In the basement we also find a room where the Black Baron is.
A black man in post-apocaliptic Tokyo? This smells of sulfur to me... For now, though, we go back exploring and find several treasure chests, but many of them are traped and the Core Shield does not protect against those. Since this is the first time we do find chest traps they are not really all that dangerous. There are two kinds: The ones that eat your MP but give you HP, and the ones which do it the other way around. Both can take your over your max, so getting a couple of the ones that down your HP but raise your MP before a bossfight and then using a bit of that MP to heal yourself is a good, if somewhat metagamy, tactic. If you do not have a couple of ZIO casters, though, that may be the only way you are going to survive this level's boss.
Once we explore the entirety of the basement we take the elevator to the second floor. There is not a lot to do in this floor: There are a couple of chests and a guy who tells us about the Gushing Jar in case we missed all other mentions of it. There is also a gate sealed by powerful magic. Then we go to the third floor, and after some snooping around we find Alice being all spoiled princess with the Red Count's secretary.
I search some of the doors behind the secretary, finding a couple of chests and all that. Then i finally come across the room where the Red Count and Alice are. He welcomes us.
I answer that yes, i can. She goes all happy-happy.
I already have one, but i take this chance to finish exploring and looting the third floor and stuff, heal, and stuff. Then I go back in.
This time i pick No. She starts crying.
The Red Count then shows us his true face, that of Maou Belial. Maou i believe means something along the lines of Devil King, and in Shin Megami Tensei is the family composed by most of the old gods that were turned into devils by YHVH ascencion into power, and also the higher echelons of the Fallen Angels. The first among the Maou is Lucifer itself, and just like the Datenshi they include some of the most characterful (and powerfull) recurrent characters in the series.
And it's Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! time, yessir! And this will not be short, since Belial gets around a whole lot. To begin with he is one of the most powerful demons and devils, like, ever: Second to only Lucifer by some accounts, both in power and in order of creation, he governs the Northern reaches of Hell and, depending on who you ask, he is closer to the element of Earth, Air, or Fire. His name is said to mean both without worth and without lord or, more precisely, without yoke. Some accounts regard him as the one by whose pride the spirits of the Ars Goetia where bound in Covenant to human sorcerers, but i am not going to be the one who'll summon him to ask him about that one story, no way: I like my soul inside my body and not being eaten or, like, stuff. Other accounts regard him as a dark idol by whose temptations and manipulations mortals learned of the summoning of infernal spirits and by whose will the Covenant was made, but as you will later see as far as tradition goes you can't trust in a whole lot of what Belial says so there.
As i said he gets around a whole lot: Not only does he appears in most lists of infernal spirits and the usual sacred texts, but also in a good deal of Apocrypha and stuff. In the Dead Sea Scrolls he is the spirit of wickedness and guilt, Lord over the corrupted angels of destruction and overlord of the forces servant of evil and darkness, etc. In the Damascus Documents, meanwhile, he is said to be the one who will destroy the people of Israel after casting their souls into corruption, so he is my friend and i like him a whole lot. Go, Belial! Kill them damn jews! And all that, etc.
Depending on who you ask he rules over Eighty or Fifty legions of infernal spirits, the former being how he is listed in Johann Wier's Pseudomonarchia and the later being as he is listed in most modern, post-Mathers editions of the Ars Goetia. He is usually seen as caring for his subjects and legions, and his main office is to give unto the Sorceress loyal and very powerful familiar spirits, and also to give her the favour of friend and foe alike. Meanwhile, it is said to be pretty difficult to make him say any truth at all: Offerings, sacrifices, and all manner of gifts must be presented before he talks any truth, and even then just for one hour, at most, can he do so if not thus forced by divine intervention, and poor you if you are the whole reason Divine Intervention binded him thus.
Being a King he likes the Sun and Gold. He is most powerful during the nights of the second decane of Aquarius, in the dates from January 30 to February 8, and his card is the Six of Swords, as he is related to Air. Other traditions, though, relate him to the element of Earth, though his offices are not compatible with such element, in truth. He is usually represented as taking the shape of a beautiful angel, or a couple of beautiful angels, in a fiery charriot. He usually introduces himself as being the first who fell of those more powerfull and beautifull and worthy, but we already discused his general problems with the concept of truth. He is also said to be very, very nice and correct and gentlemanly with the Summoner, and more so with those who have some kind of understanding or pact with him.
The following one is his sigil, as usual.
In the Shin Megami Tensei universe he has changed a lot from his beginings as the gentle, caring, and loyal, if amoral, Red Count to the wild, angry, nyahahaha-like Belial of Devil Survivor who casts a fire storm over the entire map when you make him angry that damages all your parties every single turn until you manage to defeat him. In this present game, though, you can only defeat him by having the Jar on you when you make Alice angry: He is totally immune to all your attacks, otherwise. Since we already got it, though, the battle is short and painless: He is sucked into the jar and sealed inside.
This way to defeat him is a small reference to some of the myths of how the Demons in the Ars Goetia were binded by Covenant to the will of mortal sorcerers, etc. In any case, Alice is pretty shocked by all that has happened.
And then she vanishes into thin air. Before long, though, Yuriko is here with us. She hasn't changed a whole lot since last time we saw her, and she came to us for the bottled Belial: We can choose to give it to her or to keep it ourselves, but if we choose the later she will just bind all the party and take it. Since we have defeated the Red Count Roppongi is no longer safe area. Now lots of Datenshi are lurking in the corridors, and i do not want to have to face them all while being unable to move so i am a good cat and give it to her without a second thought, when given the option.
Once it is revealed who Yuriko really is this will make more sense. For now she disapears and we are free to go, but the Black Baron is waiting for us, and he isn't happy.
The Black Baron reaches for us, but Bardon jumps in between or something and saves us. He, though, is not as lucky and the evil black man claims his life and soul for hell or, like, something. They disappear, and we leave the room. Outside, as i already explained, demons are now wandering the corridors: Diferent kinds of Datenshi and also Yama Lilims, Akuryou Larvae, and Shiki Corpses. We go bang-bang on their butts and reach the stairs, then descending to the second floor. The door we found before, sealed, is now open. Inside there is a room with two souls: Bardon's and one from a random guy. We talk with them...
The souls blink in and out of existance, so again half the images were crap. After that little thingie we get to the elevator, go to the basement, and face the Black Baron.
He then turns into Datenshi Nebiros, so today we have two Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! segments instead of just one! Way to go, me!
Since we already talked about how Japanese people can't write, this guy i believe to be Naberius, Infernal Marquis and Twenty-fourth spirit of those listed in the Ars Goetia. He is the Seventeenth in the Pseudomonarchia, though, now that i finally found my copy. The internet tells me he also appears in Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, but go find a copy of that one, today.
As a Marquis he likes the moon and silver. His card is the Seven of Cups, relating him to the element of Water and, more precisely, with Venus in Scorpio. He is more powerful during the days of the third decane of Scorpio, being from november 13 to november 22. His office is to bestow pure understanding of all arts and sciences, but in particular of Rhetoric. In some accounts he also procures dignities and honours, or takes them away. He rules over 19 legions.
An interesting note is that while Naberius is the correct spelling of his name other two accepted names for him are given in the Pseumonarchia: Naberus and Cerberus. In the Pseudomonarchia he prefers the shape of a raven, while in the Ars Goetia that of a Black Crane. This time i will put the sigils from both Lon Milo Duquette's edition and the original MacGregor Mathers' 1904 edition, since i had forgotten how diferent they really were.
This is his sigil as in Lon Milo Duquette's edition...
... and this is the sigil as in S.L.MacGregor Mathers' edition.
In the game the only power i remember him having is a variant of Mudo, the instant death spell. And don't ask me what that has to do with his office or, like, anything else. We totally anhilated him this time so he got no choice of casting anything for me to write about: Helena and Elf shocked him, Hobgoblin casted Maka-Kaja so the ZIO attacks dealt more damage, Dwarf used critical every single turn and Koneko shot the monster, sleeping him for several turns every now and then. He left around three thousand EXP for each, 2208 MAKKA, and 920MAG.
And then he is gone. Bardon spirit appears and thanks us, telling us we freed his soul and now he can continue to the afterlife, and then leaving with a farewell. Finally, a Messenger of God appears before us.
Good for him, i guess. We leave and return to the first floor, no longer a safe area: All known varieties of Shiki can be found here. Also, all the people we meet before are now turned into Shiki demons, even if they still are saying the very same words they said before. Creepy. As we leave we come across a newcomer.
Then we Transmit back to Shinjuku so we can heal and recover and stuff, and then we Transmit back to Roppongi. We save and leave the building and, once outside, find the shield is no more, so no we can finally resume our Journey towards Ginza, the Cathedral, and stuff.
Next time we will be going to Ginza, where we will meet several old friends, receive a quest from Heaven itself, destroy an army of evil robots, get lost in lower Ginza, and fight our first Pokemon Trainer duel! Stay tuned, etc.
@ Betamin
Sorry, sorry. Busy weekend and since no one had posted last time i checked i thought there was no hurry in posting the next update.
In which our heroine feels lazy and unimaginative, so nothing to write here.
Last time we met Koneko, Bardon, and Helena where in Shinjuku, preparing for the journey that would take them into Roppongi and beyond. As we now rejoin them they are wandering the wasteland, eastward and a bit south. They face many demons and Gaians along the way, the only new one being Youjuu Atsuyu, some weird thingie.
After several moons and all that they finally find themselves close to Roppongi, but just as they had heard the way forward is blocked by some kind of energy field that leaves beyond their reach also the underground passage leading to Ginza and the rest of Tokyo. After some looking around, though, they find an underground entrance leading inside the field.
Neo-Roppongi is a safe area, just as Shinjuku was before our heroes came, and as such no demon will jump you while in here. We register the local Terminal in our COMP and, as we start exploring, we come across some strangeness. First, the stores are always empty and look like pre-war stores.
Second, everyone in Roppongi looks like the Great Destruction never happened and the post-apocaliptic wasteland we just crossed was something distant and having nothing to do with them. We chat the time away with some random people on the corridors and rooms near the entrance. Some guy tells us how great Roppongi really is...
... a girl tells us about Roppongi's rulers, the Red Count and the Black Baron...
... and a guy who explains a bit about the forcefield to us.
Near the entrance is also the Disco. Like everything in Roppongi, everything and everyone in it looks like the Great Destruction never came: we are received by a man in a black suit instead of some random guy who looks like a beggar, and then we continue interviewing the locals. First we meet a girl who ran away from Shinjuku to try luck in Roppongi...
... a guy that tells us about how they do nothing but party 27/7 here...
... a Barman that sounds like he also is part of the Roppongi's Tourism Board...
... and finally a woman that tells us about a possessed girl by the name of Helena they have locked in the back.
Nobody gives a shit about us going to her and having a chat, so we just do. And inside a cell in the back of the bar we find exactly who we thought we would find: Helena, Koneko's neighbour and Bardon's girlfriend. Most surprising that she being alive, though, is that she hasn't aged a single day since last time we saw her, thirty years ago.
It's only a miracle when God's involved, dear friend. Are you sure you want to know?Koneko
Koneko!
I do not know if Zombies and the like, the Shiki demons in general, get reborn in the Abyss or not. I'm betting they don't, since they are reanimated corpses kept alive by magic and stuff. Or maybe she can die because she still has a soul, instead of being just a mindless corpse or something. In any case, Soul Incense is some pretty hardcore loot: The only item that can revive fallen characters with full HP and MP. It can get pretty life-saving on the first couple of playthroughs since otherwise is pretty hard to revive someone in battle, and you can only get them by trading Diamonds at RAG's. Since i forgot to do so i take the Terminal back to Shinjuku and trade my one Diamond for a Soul Incense.
Then I Transmit back to Roppongi. I have tried several times to not do this quest and keep the Soul Incense, but i always feel like a jerk. So there, i'm really not up to the task of doing a Chaos playthrough other than by accident: I use the Soul Incense on the girl. Goodbye, pretty diamond. I liked you a whole lot, sob sob.
Feeling is useless to try and get my alignment back to neutral is totally useless if i am being to be a bleeding heart i go back to explore Roppongi. Soon afterwards we meet a small girl by the name of Alice.
And off she goes to tell the Red Count to meet us. Were Aquino still in the team he would act like a jerk with her and then this wouldn't happen until after he has gone his own way. For now, though, we keep exploring, find an empty treasure chest, and after waiting for the Full Moon to come we go down into the basement as soon as it goes away. In the basement and in some areas of the upper floors there are traps, and the only way to not be damaged by them is using a Core Shield or similar thingie. Core Shields protect the party from tile-based damage until the next Full Moon, so it is usually in your best interest to just wait for the next Full Moon and activate them first thing after.
Exploring the basement we come across a series of trapped rooms at the end of which a treasure chest lies. Inside of it we find the Gushing Jar, the infamous pot we have been hearing about since we first came to post-apocaliptic Tokyo. Timing is very important in this: If you have not defeated Takeminakata and killed Ozawa then next time you go face them Ozawa will take your Gushing Jar so you can't use it on his master. The only way to then get another one is, i believe, to find a Ruby while killing monsters to trade it in RAG's for a new Gushing Jar. Rubies are not normal drops by a long shot, so you are better just restarting if you mess the right order of things so very badly.
In the basement we also find a room where the Black Baron is.
A black man in post-apocaliptic Tokyo? This smells of sulfur to me... For now, though, we go back exploring and find several treasure chests, but many of them are traped and the Core Shield does not protect against those. Since this is the first time we do find chest traps they are not really all that dangerous. There are two kinds: The ones that eat your MP but give you HP, and the ones which do it the other way around. Both can take your over your max, so getting a couple of the ones that down your HP but raise your MP before a bossfight and then using a bit of that MP to heal yourself is a good, if somewhat metagamy, tactic. If you do not have a couple of ZIO casters, though, that may be the only way you are going to survive this level's boss.
Once we explore the entirety of the basement we take the elevator to the second floor. There is not a lot to do in this floor: There are a couple of chests and a guy who tells us about the Gushing Jar in case we missed all other mentions of it. There is also a gate sealed by powerful magic. Then we go to the third floor, and after some snooping around we find Alice being all spoiled princess with the Red Count's secretary.
I search some of the doors behind the secretary, finding a couple of chests and all that. Then i finally come across the room where the Red Count and Alice are. He welcomes us.
I answer that yes, i can. She goes all happy-happy.
I already have one, but i take this chance to finish exploring and looting the third floor and stuff, heal, and stuff. Then I go back in.
This time i pick No. She starts crying.
The Red Count then shows us his true face, that of Maou Belial. Maou i believe means something along the lines of Devil King, and in Shin Megami Tensei is the family composed by most of the old gods that were turned into devils by YHVH ascencion into power, and also the higher echelons of the Fallen Angels. The first among the Maou is Lucifer itself, and just like the Datenshi they include some of the most characterful (and powerfull) recurrent characters in the series.
And it's Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! time, yessir! And this will not be short, since Belial gets around a whole lot. To begin with he is one of the most powerful demons and devils, like, ever: Second to only Lucifer by some accounts, both in power and in order of creation, he governs the Northern reaches of Hell and, depending on who you ask, he is closer to the element of Earth, Air, or Fire. His name is said to mean both without worth and without lord or, more precisely, without yoke. Some accounts regard him as the one by whose pride the spirits of the Ars Goetia where bound in Covenant to human sorcerers, but i am not going to be the one who'll summon him to ask him about that one story, no way: I like my soul inside my body and not being eaten or, like, stuff. Other accounts regard him as a dark idol by whose temptations and manipulations mortals learned of the summoning of infernal spirits and by whose will the Covenant was made, but as you will later see as far as tradition goes you can't trust in a whole lot of what Belial says so there.
As i said he gets around a whole lot: Not only does he appears in most lists of infernal spirits and the usual sacred texts, but also in a good deal of Apocrypha and stuff. In the Dead Sea Scrolls he is the spirit of wickedness and guilt, Lord over the corrupted angels of destruction and overlord of the forces servant of evil and darkness, etc. In the Damascus Documents, meanwhile, he is said to be the one who will destroy the people of Israel after casting their souls into corruption, so he is my friend and i like him a whole lot. Go, Belial! Kill them damn jews! And all that, etc.
Depending on who you ask he rules over Eighty or Fifty legions of infernal spirits, the former being how he is listed in Johann Wier's Pseudomonarchia and the later being as he is listed in most modern, post-Mathers editions of the Ars Goetia. He is usually seen as caring for his subjects and legions, and his main office is to give unto the Sorceress loyal and very powerful familiar spirits, and also to give her the favour of friend and foe alike. Meanwhile, it is said to be pretty difficult to make him say any truth at all: Offerings, sacrifices, and all manner of gifts must be presented before he talks any truth, and even then just for one hour, at most, can he do so if not thus forced by divine intervention, and poor you if you are the whole reason Divine Intervention binded him thus.
Being a King he likes the Sun and Gold. He is most powerful during the nights of the second decane of Aquarius, in the dates from January 30 to February 8, and his card is the Six of Swords, as he is related to Air. Other traditions, though, relate him to the element of Earth, though his offices are not compatible with such element, in truth. He is usually represented as taking the shape of a beautiful angel, or a couple of beautiful angels, in a fiery charriot. He usually introduces himself as being the first who fell of those more powerfull and beautifull and worthy, but we already discused his general problems with the concept of truth. He is also said to be very, very nice and correct and gentlemanly with the Summoner, and more so with those who have some kind of understanding or pact with him.
The following one is his sigil, as usual.
In the Shin Megami Tensei universe he has changed a lot from his beginings as the gentle, caring, and loyal, if amoral, Red Count to the wild, angry, nyahahaha-like Belial of Devil Survivor who casts a fire storm over the entire map when you make him angry that damages all your parties every single turn until you manage to defeat him. In this present game, though, you can only defeat him by having the Jar on you when you make Alice angry: He is totally immune to all your attacks, otherwise. Since we already got it, though, the battle is short and painless: He is sucked into the jar and sealed inside.
This way to defeat him is a small reference to some of the myths of how the Demons in the Ars Goetia were binded by Covenant to the will of mortal sorcerers, etc. In any case, Alice is pretty shocked by all that has happened.
And then she vanishes into thin air. Before long, though, Yuriko is here with us. She hasn't changed a whole lot since last time we saw her, and she came to us for the bottled Belial: We can choose to give it to her or to keep it ourselves, but if we choose the later she will just bind all the party and take it. Since we have defeated the Red Count Roppongi is no longer safe area. Now lots of Datenshi are lurking in the corridors, and i do not want to have to face them all while being unable to move so i am a good cat and give it to her without a second thought, when given the option.
Once it is revealed who Yuriko really is this will make more sense. For now she disapears and we are free to go, but the Black Baron is waiting for us, and he isn't happy.
The Black Baron reaches for us, but Bardon jumps in between or something and saves us. He, though, is not as lucky and the evil black man claims his life and soul for hell or, like, something. They disappear, and we leave the room. Outside, as i already explained, demons are now wandering the corridors: Diferent kinds of Datenshi and also Yama Lilims, Akuryou Larvae, and Shiki Corpses. We go bang-bang on their butts and reach the stairs, then descending to the second floor. The door we found before, sealed, is now open. Inside there is a room with two souls: Bardon's and one from a random guy. We talk with them...
The souls blink in and out of existance, so again half the images were crap. After that little thingie we get to the elevator, go to the basement, and face the Black Baron.
He then turns into Datenshi Nebiros, so today we have two Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! segments instead of just one! Way to go, me!
Since we already talked about how Japanese people can't write, this guy i believe to be Naberius, Infernal Marquis and Twenty-fourth spirit of those listed in the Ars Goetia. He is the Seventeenth in the Pseudomonarchia, though, now that i finally found my copy. The internet tells me he also appears in Collin de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, but go find a copy of that one, today.
As a Marquis he likes the moon and silver. His card is the Seven of Cups, relating him to the element of Water and, more precisely, with Venus in Scorpio. He is more powerful during the days of the third decane of Scorpio, being from november 13 to november 22. His office is to bestow pure understanding of all arts and sciences, but in particular of Rhetoric. In some accounts he also procures dignities and honours, or takes them away. He rules over 19 legions.
An interesting note is that while Naberius is the correct spelling of his name other two accepted names for him are given in the Pseumonarchia: Naberus and Cerberus. In the Pseudomonarchia he prefers the shape of a raven, while in the Ars Goetia that of a Black Crane. This time i will put the sigils from both Lon Milo Duquette's edition and the original MacGregor Mathers' 1904 edition, since i had forgotten how diferent they really were.
This is his sigil as in Lon Milo Duquette's edition...
... and this is the sigil as in S.L.MacGregor Mathers' edition.
In the game the only power i remember him having is a variant of Mudo, the instant death spell. And don't ask me what that has to do with his office or, like, anything else. We totally anhilated him this time so he got no choice of casting anything for me to write about: Helena and Elf shocked him, Hobgoblin casted Maka-Kaja so the ZIO attacks dealt more damage, Dwarf used critical every single turn and Koneko shot the monster, sleeping him for several turns every now and then. He left around three thousand EXP for each, 2208 MAKKA, and 920MAG.
And then he is gone. Bardon spirit appears and thanks us, telling us we freed his soul and now he can continue to the afterlife, and then leaving with a farewell. Finally, a Messenger of God appears before us.
Good for him, i guess. We leave and return to the first floor, no longer a safe area: All known varieties of Shiki can be found here. Also, all the people we meet before are now turned into Shiki demons, even if they still are saying the very same words they said before. Creepy. As we leave we come across a newcomer.
Then we Transmit back to Shinjuku so we can heal and recover and stuff, and then we Transmit back to Roppongi. We save and leave the building and, once outside, find the shield is no more, so no we can finally resume our Journey towards Ginza, the Cathedral, and stuff.
Next time we will be going to Ginza, where we will meet several old friends, receive a quest from Heaven itself, destroy an army of evil robots, get lost in lower Ginza, and fight our first Pokemon Trainer duel! Stay tuned, etc.
@ Betamin
Sorry, sorry. Busy weekend and since no one had posted last time i checked i thought there was no hurry in posting the next update.
SerratedBiz
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 4, 2009
- Messages
- 4,143
The interest is there, I'd like to see what the endgame looks like in one of these older SMT games. I never had the willpower to finish any of them, unfortunately. It may have had something to do with the random encounters every time you blink, I don't know.
Felix
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2009
- Messages
- 3,356
I'm not from the west though
they try new stuffs but I dislike the Social Link in new Persona games, it's basically cruise control and you just hear people BAW about their life and choose the best answer, it could be better if it has some kind of branching situation instead of just choose this answer +1 slower to up rank or this answer +3.Oh, and in my country many people consider JRPG is the best evar and make me dislike them even more, SMT is the only exception I find interesting but I don't know how long it will last
betamin
Learned
- Joined
- Mar 28, 2009
- Messages
- 626
Black Cat said:
BETTAR NOT HAPPEN AGAIN.
jk, actually inspired by this I dl'ed persona revelations, its pretty interesting but its kinda easy (I read in a forum that its because the USA version had a lot of content cut so they gave more experience through the game); what I don't know is how could you play the game without an emulator, battle animations are slooooow and can't be turn off, thanks to the emulator this isn't a problem.
Almost forgot, am I the only one that thought about asking you about why do you know the demon's bio?
lightbane
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2008
- Messages
- 10,208
Let's see: First, one of your companions is one-hit-killed by the evil guy, and you not only you cannot save him but he dares to say that he can die now and leave you in a hellish Earth filled with demons while he goes to Heaven and has fun, thus making God even "dickier".
Second, it seems that Pinocho's evil twin is a demon here (hmm, a souless evil child? a possible Changeling the Lost reference)?, as with the cat with boots? Odd.
PS: Also, great choices and consequences, to die or not die (/sarcasm). What happens if you choose yes? You got insta-owned, or you fight the bad dude anyways?
Second, it seems that Pinocho's evil twin is a demon here (hmm, a souless evil child? a possible Changeling the Lost reference)?, as with the cat with boots? Odd.
PS: Also, great choices and consequences, to die or not die (/sarcasm). What happens if you choose yes? You got insta-owned, or you fight the bad dude anyways?
Black Cat
Magister
@ SerratedBiz
The part about "random encounter every time you blink" had me LOLing, it was the best description of how ugly and frustrating can the random encounters on the Megami Tensei games get i heard on a loooong time. And don't worry, since the interest is here i will be finishing this one and then the sequel, at least.
@ Felix
Sorry about the west thingie, my bad. And yes, i was talking about the social link thingie with that about the dating sim stuff, even if i got a laught out of it while trying to mess the main character's life as much as possible instead of making him into honour student stuff and the like.
The thing with the newer Megami Tensei games is that they went losing most of the charm and the feeling and the atmosphere as they became more and more current-gen or stuff, i think. The one that reawakened the Megami Tensei fan in me was Devil Survivor, since being in the DS it went back to being pretty old school and hard as hell with that mixture of inocent charm and complex mechanics i love of the setting. I am waiting for the next DS Megami Tensei game, something-or-another Journey i think it was called, to see if the feeling and charm is coming back or not. Nocturne went too serious business for my liking, the Personas we already mentioned, the Raidou games are fun and quite charming but very simple from a mechanical perspective, etc.
@ betamin
Yes, the USA version is quite butchered. There is, i believe, a DS remake comming soon that should solve that problem. And i feel your pain, as i said before i do not know how people could play those games before the emulator age came around, you get to fight around every other step and the battles are sloooooooow. Now keep in mind that the original Persona had a much greater rate of random encounters, and the demons gave a couple orders of magnitud less EXP. Yeah.
And on the other question, it is like this: When i reached the age in which every Koneko-Chan decides it wants to be a princess, a witch, or something else I went with Witch inspired by some weird familiar tales and myths and legends and stuffy stuff. So i went to my dad and my bro and said "Hey, i want to be witch!" or something, trying to look serious and expecting them to laugh their assess off. Now, in a normal family that would have happened, or they would have said "I SMELL SIN AND SULFUR!" or they would have gone, bought me some cheap Llewellyn book on those Wicca creeps or something, and call it a day. But that would be too normal for my family, yessir: So they went and got me a couple of Grimoires from the twelft century and stuff, some infernal catalogues from the renaisance, some treatises on occult lore and alchemical texts, all of John Dee's diaries, and, like, thingies. Then they gave a couple of general pointers on how to separate the worthy stuff from the crap and where to look to study the symbolical systems used in the riddle-like explanations and the poetic explanations and some other authors and topics and traditions i could use as a reference when starting to look for more stuff and thingies on my own and then sent me my way with a "Here you go, Kuroi Neko-Chan! Now go and make us proud summoning your own pet Belial or something!" and stuff. The rest, as they say, is history. And now Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! just like the science nerds among the citizens of fair Codexia would go on and on about a pseudo-hard science fiction game or the literary snobs would end in the I.C.U were someone to make a Dante's Inferno game, nyahahaha. I love the topic so i thought puting my knowledge of it to a fun, lighthearted use would be cool, just like with a couple references i explained on The Legacy's LP and stuff. Every cat needs a hobby, as they say.
My friends always invite to play Witchcraft and Mage and Call of Cthulhu and that kind of thing with them because of that, too. They say is pretty amusing to see me playing that kind of thing and discusing in-character with an NPC two or three hours because the gamemaster didn't do his homework and got everything wrong or mixed up. I always max lore
ccult or the local equivalent on character creation just so the gamemasters can't tell me my character doesn't know that so i should just shut up and let him continue doing it wrong, nya.
@ Lightbane
He will be coming back before long to give us a quest, and then he will become reincarnated as the new Messiah. The last leg of the game always remind me of old anime like X-1999 and stuff where they are all childhood friends, and then everyone ends in diferent factions for the last battle between heaven and hell and in the end they all kill each other and stuff, the public going sob-sob like a choir of banshees or something.
And don't worry about the Cat With Boots: That's from Shin Megami Tensei II, where we will get to fight Christine the evil car, a Beetlejuice reference, flying Iron Maidens, knight templars with jetpacks, a horny Aleister Crowley in his demonic Master Therion form, a stampede of demonic cows, a Budha, and many other, but not precisely saner, things. I always loved how the craziest Shin Megami Tensei stuff would feel right at home in The Dreaming or something.
The games are too old to have The Lost references, though, being from '92 and '94 if I'm not mistaken. Was there even The Dreaming back then? In any case Alice will return in the sequel as a very hard to get secret encounter. Or at least it would if i remember how to get her, sob sob.
And if i don't remember it wrong you go face Belial all the same. Most choices are there just to mess with your Alignment, the main diference with modern uses of that system being that in the old Shin Megami Tensei games Alignment changes the way you play and what demons you can use and what demons will attack you and all that. In the newer ones Alignment is no longer important: You can contract any demons you manage to convince, and now you choose between philosophies and ideologies or things like that instead of sides like before. If later i do a Devil Survivor LP you will see how it works now. I like it more this way, really, since with the old alignment system i always end as Lawful and never manage to use the Goetic Demons, so i just cry and sob and stuff.
@ all
I already wrote most of the update so i will post it later today. You will get a lot of links to arrangements of the Shin Megami Tensei games music as a bonus, because we are now in Ginza and the Ginza Song is THE Shin Megami Tensei song, yay!
The part about "random encounter every time you blink" had me LOLing, it was the best description of how ugly and frustrating can the random encounters on the Megami Tensei games get i heard on a loooong time. And don't worry, since the interest is here i will be finishing this one and then the sequel, at least.
@ Felix
Sorry about the west thingie, my bad. And yes, i was talking about the social link thingie with that about the dating sim stuff, even if i got a laught out of it while trying to mess the main character's life as much as possible instead of making him into honour student stuff and the like.
The thing with the newer Megami Tensei games is that they went losing most of the charm and the feeling and the atmosphere as they became more and more current-gen or stuff, i think. The one that reawakened the Megami Tensei fan in me was Devil Survivor, since being in the DS it went back to being pretty old school and hard as hell with that mixture of inocent charm and complex mechanics i love of the setting. I am waiting for the next DS Megami Tensei game, something-or-another Journey i think it was called, to see if the feeling and charm is coming back or not. Nocturne went too serious business for my liking, the Personas we already mentioned, the Raidou games are fun and quite charming but very simple from a mechanical perspective, etc.
@ betamin
Yes, the USA version is quite butchered. There is, i believe, a DS remake comming soon that should solve that problem. And i feel your pain, as i said before i do not know how people could play those games before the emulator age came around, you get to fight around every other step and the battles are sloooooooow. Now keep in mind that the original Persona had a much greater rate of random encounters, and the demons gave a couple orders of magnitud less EXP. Yeah.
And on the other question, it is like this: When i reached the age in which every Koneko-Chan decides it wants to be a princess, a witch, or something else I went with Witch inspired by some weird familiar tales and myths and legends and stuffy stuff. So i went to my dad and my bro and said "Hey, i want to be witch!" or something, trying to look serious and expecting them to laugh their assess off. Now, in a normal family that would have happened, or they would have said "I SMELL SIN AND SULFUR!" or they would have gone, bought me some cheap Llewellyn book on those Wicca creeps or something, and call it a day. But that would be too normal for my family, yessir: So they went and got me a couple of Grimoires from the twelft century and stuff, some infernal catalogues from the renaisance, some treatises on occult lore and alchemical texts, all of John Dee's diaries, and, like, thingies. Then they gave a couple of general pointers on how to separate the worthy stuff from the crap and where to look to study the symbolical systems used in the riddle-like explanations and the poetic explanations and some other authors and topics and traditions i could use as a reference when starting to look for more stuff and thingies on my own and then sent me my way with a "Here you go, Kuroi Neko-Chan! Now go and make us proud summoning your own pet Belial or something!" and stuff. The rest, as they say, is history. And now Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! just like the science nerds among the citizens of fair Codexia would go on and on about a pseudo-hard science fiction game or the literary snobs would end in the I.C.U were someone to make a Dante's Inferno game, nyahahaha. I love the topic so i thought puting my knowledge of it to a fun, lighthearted use would be cool, just like with a couple references i explained on The Legacy's LP and stuff. Every cat needs a hobby, as they say.
My friends always invite to play Witchcraft and Mage and Call of Cthulhu and that kind of thing with them because of that, too. They say is pretty amusing to see me playing that kind of thing and discusing in-character with an NPC two or three hours because the gamemaster didn't do his homework and got everything wrong or mixed up. I always max lore
ccult or the local equivalent on character creation just so the gamemasters can't tell me my character doesn't know that so i should just shut up and let him continue doing it wrong, nya.@ Lightbane
He will be coming back before long to give us a quest, and then he will become reincarnated as the new Messiah. The last leg of the game always remind me of old anime like X-1999 and stuff where they are all childhood friends, and then everyone ends in diferent factions for the last battle between heaven and hell and in the end they all kill each other and stuff, the public going sob-sob like a choir of banshees or something.
And don't worry about the Cat With Boots: That's from Shin Megami Tensei II, where we will get to fight Christine the evil car, a Beetlejuice reference, flying Iron Maidens, knight templars with jetpacks, a horny Aleister Crowley in his demonic Master Therion form, a stampede of demonic cows, a Budha, and many other, but not precisely saner, things. I always loved how the craziest Shin Megami Tensei stuff would feel right at home in The Dreaming or something.
The games are too old to have The Lost references, though, being from '92 and '94 if I'm not mistaken. Was there even The Dreaming back then? In any case Alice will return in the sequel as a very hard to get secret encounter. Or at least it would if i remember how to get her, sob sob.
And if i don't remember it wrong you go face Belial all the same. Most choices are there just to mess with your Alignment, the main diference with modern uses of that system being that in the old Shin Megami Tensei games Alignment changes the way you play and what demons you can use and what demons will attack you and all that. In the newer ones Alignment is no longer important: You can contract any demons you manage to convince, and now you choose between philosophies and ideologies or things like that instead of sides like before. If later i do a Devil Survivor LP you will see how it works now. I like it more this way, really, since with the old alignment system i always end as Lawful and never manage to use the Goetic Demons, so i just cry and sob and stuff.
@ all
I already wrote most of the update so i will post it later today. You will get a lot of links to arrangements of the Shin Megami Tensei games music as a bonus, because we are now in Ginza and the Ginza Song is THE Shin Megami Tensei song, yay!
Black Cat
Magister
WTF did i say something wrong or, like, stuff?
did i say something wrong or, like, stuff?
Black Cat
Magister
I wasn't expecting that.But now i am unsure if he... it... that... doesn't show up in Shin Megami Tensei at least as a secret demon or something, because i just found an image on the first game's artbook that looks like him.
Note: Since we are talking of the evil penis monster with a little mouth and tentacles, the image could be considered very, very unsafe for work and school.
Clicky Click!
Black Cat
Magister
Chapter the ninth, best music ever.
In which our heroine explores Ginza, meets several of her friends again, accomplishes a quest defeating robot armies for God, and interviews lots of talkative people. While doing so she will frustrate some random mad scientist plans, defeat the hardest hitting computer ever, get her first memory board, and spend a total of around three hours just standing in her place while listening the Ginza Song, yay!
Last chapter one of our heroes died as they defeated a high level demon lord and a high-level Datenshi, messed with a poor nice girl, and destroyed the land of happy zombies. This new chapter begins with the party finding the underground passage that will lead them to Ginza and beyond in an area they couldn't before reach due to the shield's presence.
After a bunch of very small dungeons without anything fun or new in them they reach a long corridor. As they journey through it, though, a voice is heard! "Koneko," it calls. Our heroes stop in their tracks and find Bardon's spirit waiting for them, meaning heaven needs a hitman or, like, something.
Why not ask of Jesus or, like, God or stuff? You are in heaven after all, guy, sit at God's feet and all that, and the boss already showed he doesn't mind going biblical on Tokyo's butt. But, yes, whatever: It is good experience, and since we are dealing with heaven here the EXP and loot is its own reward.
Once we the reach the crossroad we first go left until we find a door at the side of the corridor. Beyond is a room were Steven is waiting for us, and i am not going to ask the chances a guy in a wheelchair has to survive a post-apocaliptic wasteland with bloody demons on a rampage and stuff. Since he doesn't seem a lot older than last time we saw it i decide he is a Nocker and has spent the last thirty years in the local Seelie feud. And since the game never explains us his presence and survival, at least not that i remind of, i am standing by my theory.
Hi, Koneko! Since from now on your party will only include two humans, do you want to be able to fill the last spot with a fourth demon? Oh, and don't mind my survival and stuff. I am a servant of Plot, and thus no demons will try and eat me.
We go back to the corridor and keep following it until we come across another acquitance...
Didn't I tell you already I dislike Shounen by principle?
And then he is gone. As it is natural in this kind of thing, sooner or later we will have to go through Ikebukuro. If by then we aren't made of solid Chaos we will have to face an extra dungeon and two extra bosses, so i will try to keep us as far away of Chaos as possible until then. And when that happens Aquino has one of his few "I'm a retard, a moron, and a jerk... But we are friends so i'll lend you a hand anyway!" moments, if not his only one, so it is kind of cute when it happens. It is kind of amazing how much you can get to care about those guys the first few times through the game, even when the game has very few in the way of characterization and plot development.
For now we return to the intersection and this time go in the direction Bardon told us Ginza was. We fight some demons, traverse a couple of staircases, and then we come across the titular best music, like, ever! There are other parts of the game where you can listen to it, but since it officially belongs to Ginza i waited until we reached this place to link it and stuff. Every single time i play this game i leave the party standing in the same place for tens of minutes just to hear the damn thingie, and every now and then use a Fuma Bell when traversing Ginza + Lower Ginza so i can do it without random encounters cutting the song. I love it that much, and it is usually the song most fans relate to Shin Megami Tensei.
The first link is my favorite arrangement of the song, made a group by the name Sword of Justice for its Chaos & Order album, made completely of arranged Shin Megami Tensei tracks. This phenomenon is pretty common in Japan: There is a vewy, vewy big number of doujin circles that go around arranging music from games or series and stuff and selling records on related conventions. Naturally, most of it all is very, very crap but a couple of such circles (especially a good number of those related to the Touhou scene) are very, very good and at times it is actually a shame they are not making their own music since they have both the skills and the inspiration to do really amazing and original things with videogame or anime music. If you follow the related links you can get to arranges of the common songs, like the battle music or the boss battle music and, like, stuff.
Sword of Justice - "Ginza" [Shin Megami Tensei]
The other two links are of a couple of videos put on youtube by some Shin Megami Tensei fan. They have all oficial versions of the Ginza song as shown in the games, along with the best known arranges. Be warned, though: The second one has some spoilerific images about the fate of Law Hero. The first, though, has mostly covers from the diferent versions of the game. Do not miss the haircuts in the SEGACD version!
Shin Megami Tensei "Ginza through the ages"
Shin Megami Tensei "Ginza through the ages" Part 2
If you know where to download the last arrange from the first Ginza through the ages video thingie please share. And just because i can there goes another of my favorite Shin Megami Tensei songs, this one from the sequel...
Shin Megami Tensei II - Disco
Back to Ginza, now. We enter the Terminal, just in front of the entrance, and save the game. Located just between Mesian and Gaian territory it stands to reason Ginza is not a safe area, and we will be having random encounters by the thousands, even if most in Ginza's main level are enemies we already met before. We start interviewing the locals while killing lots of thingies. Like this kid...
... and this man.
We then come across the local armour shop and buy a set of Dark Crown, Tetrajammer, Kishin Gauntlets, and Metal Boots for Koneko and a set of Demoneater Helm, Tetrajammer, and Kishin Gauntlets for Helena. Both weapons and armors are gender based in this game, so while there are pieces both have in common each character will end with a diferent kind of armor, giving diferent bonuses and stuff. We also buy Koneko a Browning something or another, a real gun but this is not my topic so whatever. It is a better gun than he already has but with a bothersome quirk: If it misses the first hit in a row the others aren't even rolled. So while you may do a lot of damage against a party it can get stupid if you miss the first monster in the party twice or thrice. Helena keeps the SPAS12.
We go on killing Gaian Oni-Joro, Kijo Lamias, and Mesian Magi while interviewing more people. Like this guy...
... and this other guy.
Every now and then i have to transmit back to Shinjuku or Shibuya for healing and MP recovery, and i take the chance to save. We also meet our first Phurski, a new kind of chaos demon in the likeness of an angry yellow elephant. They are easy to defeat, though. We also get to meet yet another guy, this one with information about the, i believe, Shin Megami Tensei version of the four heavenly kings.
Those appear in several Megami Tensei games located in Tokyo, and usually each of them guards one of the cardinal directions. Remember the shrine we passed by when going from Shinjuku to Shibuya? That's the first of the four shrines. To face the gods inside, though, you need four gems in posesion by a Demon Summoner in Shinagawa, the main base of the Mesian Church in post-apocaliptic Tokyo. Before i said it was Holytown but i was mixing it up with the church district of SMT2's Tokyo Millenium. Sorry about that.
As i keep exploring i come across the first Chirei Kwanca and recruit itself after several turns of fighting in between three failed attemps at making him join my party. He isn't a bad demon with Hanma, Diarama, and the anti-paralysis thingie, but i prefer my demons cute so he will pass time mostly sleeping on my COMP.
We also come across our first, like, black jelly or something. Those aren't weak against fire but still resist a lot of damage, so i mostly just evade them if they are a group or sleep them and kick them until they fall if they are alone.
And then we go back meeting talkative people. Some guy telling the news...
... a woman willing to explain to us how to reach the Gaian main base given Tokyo's new geography...
... an old man telling us about the police station...
... the local Gaian preacher...
... and the local Mesian one.
While doing this we also go to the local Junk Store to buy nine Golden Pills and nine Magic Bottles, which recover a bit of MP when used. Not a whole lot, you are not going to defeat bosses by them alone, but they can be useful in a pinch or when you have not enough MP remaining to cast a Toraport and go back to the last town you visited for healing and stuff.
We also visit the local Jakyo Mannor, Gaian Temple, Mesian Temple, and Healer's Dojo. I also invest a lot of Makka in bribes to the Gaian Priest, trying to go back to neutral so i can recruit a bunch of chaos demons, but no luck. That thingie works in the sequel but it seems it doesn't work on this one, sob sob. As a side note, those for places of importance are in four diferent areas of the upper floor: To go from one to the next you either go back to the main Ginza level and run to another staircase or go outside to the worldmap and cross the street.
Then we Transmit back to Shibuya to heal, recover, and stuff. Upon returning i use some of the incenses i have been finding to raise Helena's speed and magic power. Her sheet looks like this when i am finished:
Next stop: The police station! We use the elevator Bardon indicated to reach it, and find it is pitch black so we need the Mapper Spell to see were are we going and trial and error to diferentiate obstructed corridors of those traversable, in the dark areas. Here we also face all the robots we already met an a new one, the only one that manages to be dangerous for the party we are now sporting: The T9SD. All the others you can just auto, but those ones you need to Maha-Zio (if they are several) or Zionga (if there is only one) to be on the safe side and not lose more health and time than the EXP is worth. All robots are weak to ZIO, naturally.
I love its Art. In all but the first floor there is a tile in the dark area where you fall to the floor directly below if you enter, so it can get bothersome if you are like me and do not feel a dungeon level is mapped until all tiles are recorded in the automap. If you want you can just find the first elevator and go straight up, but you will lose a couple of incenses and several levels worth of EXP so i go there the old way: exploring each level wholly and then using the staircase to go to the next one. When Helena's MP is low we Toraport back to Shibuya (i saved in the Shibuya terminal instead of the Ginza one before coming here) since the Healer's Dojo is the closest one to the local terminal of all towns we visited so far. Then we Transmit back to Ginza, go to the police station basement with the first elevator, then go to the floor we were in with the second one and keep killing robots. It is slower than it sounds, and it does sounds slow enough already.
We also come across our first Youma Watcher while in there. They are aligned with Law and have the Knight-like personality pattern, so if they try to intimdate just act unfazed and they will give you what you ask, MAG usually. If they act (very strangely) in an agresive way keep calming them down and then they will hear you and give you what you ask, just like before.
After several hundred robots sent to the scrapyard and more than a couple Toraports to Shibuya for healing and recovery we finish exploring the fifth floor, finding a broken security door that asks for an ID Card but allows passage all the same. Beyond we find the computer room, with both the mainframe and the lunatic guy who awakened the robot army.
His robot sentinels die in a blink, and then I am offered the option of destroying the Control System or leaving. I choose to destroy it because what i receive after the boss fight is well worth it, and he gives a whole lot of EXP.
Machine Defense System kicks like a bloody mule on speed or, like, something. Also, she isn't weak to ZIO as all other Machine types so the battle is slow and tense, since when there is a turn where you miss the ZIO pain comes your way. The basic strategy i used all turns is this: Hobgoblin casts Maka-Kaja every turn until he can no more do so, then he will start casting Maha-Agion. From the very begining Tammuz and Dwarf use their EXTRA. Meanwhile, Elf uses Zionga against the boss while Koneko and Helena shoot it dead, stoping only to ORB or DIA one of the party members if the enemy gets a turn. If the enemy survives long enough for Hobgoblin to finish raising our Magic Power then Helena will go cast Zionga along with Elf.
It goes smoothly until Elf misses a Zionga, giving the enemy a turn for itself. That one turn defense system does 70 damage to Helena, 70 damage to Dwarf, 165 damage to Elf and 120 damage to Hobgoblin. Elf goes back to the COMP and half the remaining party is not going to resist another one like that. I put Helena in Zionga duty and pray she doesn't miss. Since i need to kill evil thingie before another ZIO misses i stop Hobgoblin from keep casting Maka-Kaja and instead put him casting Maha-Agion. Evil computer thingie does not get any more turns before dying, yay!
Among the rubble we find a Memory Board. Once we explore lower Ginza we can ask Steven to add this one, as well as others like it, to our COMP to raise its memory and thus the amount of minions we can have stored in it at a time by two, so this was like best loot ever or something. Once outside we Toraport before doing anything else, then we heal and save and everything. Then we go the Jakyo Mannor and fuse our Tammuz and our Yakshini into a Juujin Werewolf, a pretty amazing melee fighter.
Well, and that ends today update. Next time we will do lower Ginza, Kuroi Neko will teach some more darke magick, and then we will go to either Shinagawa or Ikebukuro to kick more butt. Also, sorry if those last updates were a bit shorter but i am having a bunch of troubled days and this size is more manageable as to keep updating every two days instead of being late. Once things go back to normal i will return to the big ones.
@ Ghostdog
I always took Mara and similar demons like Shin Megami Tensei's own and original Made-in-Japan label. Who else would put characters like those in a game?
In which our heroine explores Ginza, meets several of her friends again, accomplishes a quest defeating robot armies for God, and interviews lots of talkative people. While doing so she will frustrate some random mad scientist plans, defeat the hardest hitting computer ever, get her first memory board, and spend a total of around three hours just standing in her place while listening the Ginza Song, yay!
Last chapter one of our heroes died as they defeated a high level demon lord and a high-level Datenshi, messed with a poor nice girl, and destroyed the land of happy zombies. This new chapter begins with the party finding the underground passage that will lead them to Ginza and beyond in an area they couldn't before reach due to the shield's presence.
After a bunch of very small dungeons without anything fun or new in them they reach a long corridor. As they journey through it, though, a voice is heard! "Koneko," it calls. Our heroes stop in their tracks and find Bardon's spirit waiting for them, meaning heaven needs a hitman or, like, something.
Why not ask of Jesus or, like, God or stuff? You are in heaven after all, guy, sit at God's feet and all that, and the boss already showed he doesn't mind going biblical on Tokyo's butt. But, yes, whatever: It is good experience, and since we are dealing with heaven here the EXP and loot is its own reward.
Once we the reach the crossroad we first go left until we find a door at the side of the corridor. Beyond is a room were Steven is waiting for us, and i am not going to ask the chances a guy in a wheelchair has to survive a post-apocaliptic wasteland with bloody demons on a rampage and stuff. Since he doesn't seem a lot older than last time we saw it i decide he is a Nocker and has spent the last thirty years in the local Seelie feud. And since the game never explains us his presence and survival, at least not that i remind of, i am standing by my theory.
Hi, Koneko! Since from now on your party will only include two humans, do you want to be able to fill the last spot with a fourth demon? Oh, and don't mind my survival and stuff. I am a servant of Plot, and thus no demons will try and eat me.We go back to the corridor and keep following it until we come across another acquitance...
Didn't I tell you already I dislike Shounen by principle?
And then he is gone. As it is natural in this kind of thing, sooner or later we will have to go through Ikebukuro. If by then we aren't made of solid Chaos we will have to face an extra dungeon and two extra bosses, so i will try to keep us as far away of Chaos as possible until then. And when that happens Aquino has one of his few "I'm a retard, a moron, and a jerk... But we are friends so i'll lend you a hand anyway!" moments, if not his only one, so it is kind of cute when it happens. It is kind of amazing how much you can get to care about those guys the first few times through the game, even when the game has very few in the way of characterization and plot development.
For now we return to the intersection and this time go in the direction Bardon told us Ginza was. We fight some demons, traverse a couple of staircases, and then we come across the titular best music, like, ever! There are other parts of the game where you can listen to it, but since it officially belongs to Ginza i waited until we reached this place to link it and stuff. Every single time i play this game i leave the party standing in the same place for tens of minutes just to hear the damn thingie, and every now and then use a Fuma Bell when traversing Ginza + Lower Ginza so i can do it without random encounters cutting the song. I love it that much, and it is usually the song most fans relate to Shin Megami Tensei.
The first link is my favorite arrangement of the song, made a group by the name Sword of Justice for its Chaos & Order album, made completely of arranged Shin Megami Tensei tracks. This phenomenon is pretty common in Japan: There is a vewy, vewy big number of doujin circles that go around arranging music from games or series and stuff and selling records on related conventions. Naturally, most of it all is very, very crap but a couple of such circles (especially a good number of those related to the Touhou scene) are very, very good and at times it is actually a shame they are not making their own music since they have both the skills and the inspiration to do really amazing and original things with videogame or anime music. If you follow the related links you can get to arranges of the common songs, like the battle music or the boss battle music and, like, stuff.
Sword of Justice - "Ginza" [Shin Megami Tensei]
The other two links are of a couple of videos put on youtube by some Shin Megami Tensei fan. They have all oficial versions of the Ginza song as shown in the games, along with the best known arranges. Be warned, though: The second one has some spoilerific images about the fate of Law Hero. The first, though, has mostly covers from the diferent versions of the game. Do not miss the haircuts in the SEGACD version!
Shin Megami Tensei "Ginza through the ages"
Shin Megami Tensei "Ginza through the ages" Part 2
If you know where to download the last arrange from the first Ginza through the ages video thingie please share. And just because i can there goes another of my favorite Shin Megami Tensei songs, this one from the sequel...
Shin Megami Tensei II - Disco
Back to Ginza, now. We enter the Terminal, just in front of the entrance, and save the game. Located just between Mesian and Gaian territory it stands to reason Ginza is not a safe area, and we will be having random encounters by the thousands, even if most in Ginza's main level are enemies we already met before. We start interviewing the locals while killing lots of thingies. Like this kid...
... and this man.
We then come across the local armour shop and buy a set of Dark Crown, Tetrajammer, Kishin Gauntlets, and Metal Boots for Koneko and a set of Demoneater Helm, Tetrajammer, and Kishin Gauntlets for Helena. Both weapons and armors are gender based in this game, so while there are pieces both have in common each character will end with a diferent kind of armor, giving diferent bonuses and stuff. We also buy Koneko a Browning something or another, a real gun but this is not my topic so whatever. It is a better gun than he already has but with a bothersome quirk: If it misses the first hit in a row the others aren't even rolled. So while you may do a lot of damage against a party it can get stupid if you miss the first monster in the party twice or thrice. Helena keeps the SPAS12.
We go on killing Gaian Oni-Joro, Kijo Lamias, and Mesian Magi while interviewing more people. Like this guy...
... and this other guy.
Every now and then i have to transmit back to Shinjuku or Shibuya for healing and MP recovery, and i take the chance to save. We also meet our first Phurski, a new kind of chaos demon in the likeness of an angry yellow elephant. They are easy to defeat, though. We also get to meet yet another guy, this one with information about the, i believe, Shin Megami Tensei version of the four heavenly kings.
Those appear in several Megami Tensei games located in Tokyo, and usually each of them guards one of the cardinal directions. Remember the shrine we passed by when going from Shinjuku to Shibuya? That's the first of the four shrines. To face the gods inside, though, you need four gems in posesion by a Demon Summoner in Shinagawa, the main base of the Mesian Church in post-apocaliptic Tokyo. Before i said it was Holytown but i was mixing it up with the church district of SMT2's Tokyo Millenium. Sorry about that.
As i keep exploring i come across the first Chirei Kwanca and recruit itself after several turns of fighting in between three failed attemps at making him join my party. He isn't a bad demon with Hanma, Diarama, and the anti-paralysis thingie, but i prefer my demons cute so he will pass time mostly sleeping on my COMP.
We also come across our first, like, black jelly or something. Those aren't weak against fire but still resist a lot of damage, so i mostly just evade them if they are a group or sleep them and kick them until they fall if they are alone.
And then we go back meeting talkative people. Some guy telling the news...
... a woman willing to explain to us how to reach the Gaian main base given Tokyo's new geography...
... an old man telling us about the police station...
... the local Gaian preacher...
... and the local Mesian one.
While doing this we also go to the local Junk Store to buy nine Golden Pills and nine Magic Bottles, which recover a bit of MP when used. Not a whole lot, you are not going to defeat bosses by them alone, but they can be useful in a pinch or when you have not enough MP remaining to cast a Toraport and go back to the last town you visited for healing and stuff.
We also visit the local Jakyo Mannor, Gaian Temple, Mesian Temple, and Healer's Dojo. I also invest a lot of Makka in bribes to the Gaian Priest, trying to go back to neutral so i can recruit a bunch of chaos demons, but no luck. That thingie works in the sequel but it seems it doesn't work on this one, sob sob. As a side note, those for places of importance are in four diferent areas of the upper floor: To go from one to the next you either go back to the main Ginza level and run to another staircase or go outside to the worldmap and cross the street.
Then we Transmit back to Shibuya to heal, recover, and stuff. Upon returning i use some of the incenses i have been finding to raise Helena's speed and magic power. Her sheet looks like this when i am finished:
Next stop: The police station! We use the elevator Bardon indicated to reach it, and find it is pitch black so we need the Mapper Spell to see were are we going and trial and error to diferentiate obstructed corridors of those traversable, in the dark areas. Here we also face all the robots we already met an a new one, the only one that manages to be dangerous for the party we are now sporting: The T9SD. All the others you can just auto, but those ones you need to Maha-Zio (if they are several) or Zionga (if there is only one) to be on the safe side and not lose more health and time than the EXP is worth. All robots are weak to ZIO, naturally.
I love its Art. In all but the first floor there is a tile in the dark area where you fall to the floor directly below if you enter, so it can get bothersome if you are like me and do not feel a dungeon level is mapped until all tiles are recorded in the automap. If you want you can just find the first elevator and go straight up, but you will lose a couple of incenses and several levels worth of EXP so i go there the old way: exploring each level wholly and then using the staircase to go to the next one. When Helena's MP is low we Toraport back to Shibuya (i saved in the Shibuya terminal instead of the Ginza one before coming here) since the Healer's Dojo is the closest one to the local terminal of all towns we visited so far. Then we Transmit back to Ginza, go to the police station basement with the first elevator, then go to the floor we were in with the second one and keep killing robots. It is slower than it sounds, and it does sounds slow enough already.
We also come across our first Youma Watcher while in there. They are aligned with Law and have the Knight-like personality pattern, so if they try to intimdate just act unfazed and they will give you what you ask, MAG usually. If they act (very strangely) in an agresive way keep calming them down and then they will hear you and give you what you ask, just like before.
After several hundred robots sent to the scrapyard and more than a couple Toraports to Shibuya for healing and recovery we finish exploring the fifth floor, finding a broken security door that asks for an ID Card but allows passage all the same. Beyond we find the computer room, with both the mainframe and the lunatic guy who awakened the robot army.
His robot sentinels die in a blink, and then I am offered the option of destroying the Control System or leaving. I choose to destroy it because what i receive after the boss fight is well worth it, and he gives a whole lot of EXP.
Machine Defense System kicks like a bloody mule on speed or, like, something. Also, she isn't weak to ZIO as all other Machine types so the battle is slow and tense, since when there is a turn where you miss the ZIO pain comes your way. The basic strategy i used all turns is this: Hobgoblin casts Maka-Kaja every turn until he can no more do so, then he will start casting Maha-Agion. From the very begining Tammuz and Dwarf use their EXTRA. Meanwhile, Elf uses Zionga against the boss while Koneko and Helena shoot it dead, stoping only to ORB or DIA one of the party members if the enemy gets a turn. If the enemy survives long enough for Hobgoblin to finish raising our Magic Power then Helena will go cast Zionga along with Elf.
It goes smoothly until Elf misses a Zionga, giving the enemy a turn for itself. That one turn defense system does 70 damage to Helena, 70 damage to Dwarf, 165 damage to Elf and 120 damage to Hobgoblin. Elf goes back to the COMP and half the remaining party is not going to resist another one like that. I put Helena in Zionga duty and pray she doesn't miss. Since i need to kill evil thingie before another ZIO misses i stop Hobgoblin from keep casting Maka-Kaja and instead put him casting Maha-Agion. Evil computer thingie does not get any more turns before dying, yay!
Among the rubble we find a Memory Board. Once we explore lower Ginza we can ask Steven to add this one, as well as others like it, to our COMP to raise its memory and thus the amount of minions we can have stored in it at a time by two, so this was like best loot ever or something. Once outside we Toraport before doing anything else, then we heal and save and everything. Then we go the Jakyo Mannor and fuse our Tammuz and our Yakshini into a Juujin Werewolf, a pretty amazing melee fighter.
Well, and that ends today update. Next time we will do lower Ginza, Kuroi Neko will teach some more darke magick, and then we will go to either Shinagawa or Ikebukuro to kick more butt. Also, sorry if those last updates were a bit shorter but i am having a bunch of troubled days and this size is more manageable as to keep updating every two days instead of being late. Once things go back to normal i will return to the big ones.
@ Ghostdog
I always took Mara and similar demons like Shin Megami Tensei's own and original Made-in-Japan label. Who else would put characters like those in a game?
Clockwork Knight
Arcane
betamin said:
After a while, you'll get a cutscene showing towers appearing around the school. Then, nothing else related to it for the rest of the game.
It was originally a branching point, you could go inside and have a different route until the end of the game. Removed becuase it was "too hard" for american audience, or something (couldn't they just nerf the encounters, then?). "Ice Queen" route or something.
Btw, the loadings didn't bother me in an actual PS
Black Cat
Magister
Yes, the Snow Queen route. Not only was way harder, but also you get to build your own party for the most part, i believe only the main character and another one are forced down on you, while on the main route you only get to pick the last one from between the jerk, the lady-like girl, and the little-sis girl. A shame, since i abandoned western Persona three fourths through because i disliked the forced characters, other than the bow-girl, so bloody much i couldn't take another step.
One of the gamemasters at my pen & paper group always joke that they actually removed the Snow Queen quest because you could actually leave the black guy behind if you didn't like him for any reason and good citizens would never want to do that, so better to remove the temptation of sin and discrimination.
One of the gamemasters at my pen & paper group always joke that they actually removed the Snow Queen quest because you could actually leave the black guy behind if you didn't like him for any reason and good citizens would never want to do that, so better to remove the temptation of sin and discrimination.
Black Cat
Magister
I say, any plots that have you spining rumors to magically change reality so that you can buy hardcore military hardware on the local Burger King and then go fight the fourth reich and Hitler in the modern day while being possesed by Demons and Singing Snowmen gets two thumbs up from me.
But then, being a dungeon crawling cat and a bit of a weird person i may not the best critic when it comes to plots and thingies since i kind of believe any plot that goes surreal and Discordian-like weird is a one hundred percent amazing plot, so i guess we may both be right here. :wink:
But then, being a dungeon crawling cat and a bit of a weird person i may not the best critic when it comes to plots and thingies since i kind of believe any plot that goes surreal and Discordian-like weird is a one hundred percent amazing plot, so i guess we may both be right here. :wink:
deuxhero
Arcane
Who is fighting Metatron in the first "random art"?
Black Cat
Magister
Maou Belial, i think. I will repost here his artwork so you can compare:
And that amazing piece of artwork:
You have an amazing eye, i had not recognized Metatron but had recognized Belial. And i am supossed to be the Law cat
And that amazing piece of artwork:
You have an amazing eye, i had not recognized Metatron but had recognized Belial. And i am supossed to be the Law cat
deuxhero
Arcane
Oh, while reading though I noticed you don't recognize a few of the demons. There is a Mega Ten wiki you might want to check them on. For example
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Take-mikazuchi
http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Take-mikazuchi
Black Cat
Magister
Thanks for the link, i will go geek with it once i finish the next update.
I actually do not recognize a lot of the guys, really: I just know most of the yousei and the lower tiers of chirei because i like them and thus i researched, and then the Datenshi, the Maou, the Tenshi, and the Daitenshi because i am up to the neck in western occult thingies, so it was mostly hey, look, is that guy from the ars goetia! How's going, old chap? I also know some of the babylonian, assyrian, and akadian thingies, as well as those from other cultures who were adopted into the western occult, like the Lamia. Then i know a bit of the Hindi ones because my one-before-last ex was heavy into the Ma Kali and Neo-Shivaist thingies, being a, like, emo gothicmancer or something.
Most of the others just go over my head, give or take a couple of particular cases i know from some anime thingie or some book i read or stuff. Or i may recognize the name but be totally, like, lost as to whom he is: I spent half of Devil Survivor with bloody Odin in my party, and it wasn't until i fought Loki in one of the final battlegrounds that i noticed i was mixing them up! I am a witch, not a mythology buff.
So thanks again and, like, stuff.
I actually do not recognize a lot of the guys, really: I just know most of the yousei and the lower tiers of chirei because i like them and thus i researched, and then the Datenshi, the Maou, the Tenshi, and the Daitenshi because i am up to the neck in western occult thingies, so it was mostly hey, look, is that guy from the ars goetia! How's going, old chap? I also know some of the babylonian, assyrian, and akadian thingies, as well as those from other cultures who were adopted into the western occult, like the Lamia. Then i know a bit of the Hindi ones because my one-before-last ex was heavy into the Ma Kali and Neo-Shivaist thingies, being a, like, emo gothicmancer or something.
Most of the others just go over my head, give or take a couple of particular cases i know from some anime thingie or some book i read or stuff. Or i may recognize the name but be totally, like, lost as to whom he is: I spent half of Devil Survivor with bloody Odin in my party, and it wasn't until i fought Loki in one of the final battlegrounds that i noticed i was mixing them up! I am a witch, not a mythology buff.
So thanks again and, like, stuff.
Black Cat
Magister
Chapter the tenth, Who Yamas the Yama? (first part)
In which our heroine shows post-apocaliptic Tokyo why that saying about never meddling in the affairs of scorned witches came to be. She also kills a whole bunch of thingies, makes lots and lots of really bad jokes, and stuff.
Last time we met our heroes, guided by the eternal will of a heavenly Black Cat, defeated an army of evil robots, frustrated some generic Mad Scientist's plans, and explored Neo-Ginza while listening to the best music ever. And today they will face a long chain of new and amazing adventures because i'm back at singledom, population me, and need something to do with my free time until my mood is game for having a life, meeting with friends, go clubbing, or do evil occult thingies again. So be prepared for one long, big, amazingly cool update, and later you all better post how much you liked it or there will be HELL to pay, yessir.
As we rejoin our heroes, then, they are preparing to go into Lower Ginza. What's lower Ginza, you ask? It is a big dungeon under Neo-Ginza, with some very bothersome monsters and stuff. Mind you, it is dead easy if you are going Chaos since the very bothersome demons are all aligned with chaos, but we are, like, Law. Meh. In any case we will no longer be Law when this update is finished, so i will be able to cuddle fallen angels 'till they go back to the Abyss just to escape from me, yay!
We sure want, old chap. Once down we meet two new demons: The first is Yama Chulruk, the most messed up little fucker this side of Hell. I mean, he has Mudo and likes to be in groups of four, though in the screenshot below he is alone, and lower Ginza is crawling with the little creeps, so you can't AUTO them without risking a journey to the temple for recovery and resurrection, like the second screenshot shows. And that screenshot was taken after trying to AUTO the single *bleep* in the first screenshot, not some big group or anything.
The later one is Datenshi Leonard, and you already know what that means, right? Of course you do! It's Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! time, again! And i am happy they didn't mess up this one's name, because when you can't write Leonard as God wants it written not even final judgement will straight you up, i say! This one is a hard one, though: He is not from the Ars Goetia, nor from the Pseudomonarchia, nor from the Grimorium Verum, etc. He is from De Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, and i already told you finding a hard copy is really, really though. Lucky for you I'm the cutest grand master of Demon Lore, like, ever, so i need not those thingies to give you the short version.
Often called Le Grand Negre, Leonard is thought to be another version or form of the Goat of Mendes, also known as The Baphomet, since he also, like, presides over the witches' sabbath and has three horns, the upper body of a goat, and a face on his butt that the witches would kiss to pledge allegiance to the infernal forces. We no longer do that one, though, and i guess he doesn't care since as Demonic Lore has it he didn't like that part of his office in the least. Being the main agent of hell in all matters pertaining of sorcery and cute witches, though, the sabbath thingie came as a natural extention of his duties instead of being part of his office, i think. He is also said to be an amazing shapeshifter, being able to turn into almost anything without losing his sad, moody face: A tree trunk with a melancholic face carved on it, etc.
It is not that strange for a Demon to have an office, or an extension of his office, that he doesn't likes, though. A good number of Demons still have the souls of angels or are looking for redemption, and even those who doesn't still have strong and characterful personalities because, like, that was one of the things they fell to get. Or at least that's their version: It is a little hard to get a good, honest telling of the fall since as lore has it Angels do not answer to questions about the fallen nor the fall other than to say THINK NOT OF SIN, WITCH and the fallen aren't forced to always answer true like the angels do and also happen to have a reputation of being master manipulators to live up to... So yeah, so much for the hard experimental, hands on approach to demonology. There are so many diferent versions to the origin of demons, the fall, and other stuff that most witches and sorcerers end up going atheist, agnostic, or polytheist just to keep away from all the crap and the potential for messing up when choosing who to believe at face value.
That's Leonard in De Plancy's book, dancing with the crones. Lucky for us he always appears like a single demon in random encounters, and since he is a control caster we just go AUTO on his lower face and call it a day, or a night, or whatever. The third new variety of demon we find is an Ibaragi-Doji, an oni or ogre from Kyoto's own mythology if i am remembering it right.
We go around the maze opening treasures chests that either contain incenses or traps, and now the traps start hiting hard and there is a chance you will get a random encounter just after trigering the trap and before you can heal. After a while we again come across Steven, who is starting to get creepier than Yuriko. I mean, she is... well, SHE, so i can actually understand she being alive and still young and terse and pretty and stalky, but this guy is Stephen Hawkings demon-summoning alter-ego, so this isn't right at all.
Just as planned, eh? At this rate next time we meet you will take a potato chip... AND EAT IT!
Thank you, creepy stalker disabled guy. Now we can go back looting for incenses and stuff. After many battles and exploration we come across another Demon Summoner! It seems most people in this line of work aren't as nice as we, though, and that most of them are jerks through and through.
I could be a nice witch and pay, you know? And later it would take me around three and a half random encounters to recover the Makka, but i am in a bad mood and all so a bunch of dices is what i will be making out of your bones, guy. That and a new set of runes since the voices tell me the ones made out of human bone are better for divining fortunes than those made of wood, nya. I may even scribe the symbols on your blood if my demons leave some of it undrinked.
You are reading my mind, you wicked warlock! Magical Punishment Time!
This guy always reminds me of a Pokemon Trainer or, like, something. Jigglypuff, i choose you! Let's kick this bad boy's butt to high noon and beyond, i say! For love, justice, friendship, and cuddly things everywhere!
Okay, let's get back in line before we are banned or something. The guy summons three groups of pokemons to fight us: Pishashas, Baykoks, and Lakhes. Of those only Lakhes can as much as survive half a turn against my team: I could AUTO the battle with them and still win, but whatever. We go erradicating them as they come, then the guy whines a bit and summons the next team, etc.
Beyond we find a passage leading to Shinagawa, headquarters of the Mesian Church and base of the forces of Law. Since I don't want to go there yet i turn back, and that guy takes the chance to be gentlemanly and stuff. A hint: When they had to kick the gentleman into you it is already a bit late for that.
Leaving aside a bunch of chests with Incenses the only other interesting thing there is to do in Lower Ginza is a staircase leading us further into the depths of the Earth. After exploring the small complex of corridors and rooms down there we come across an old acquitance of us: Lao Tse! We are jet set like that.
Justice? I just, like, acted like a civilized, caring, kind-hearted person and the game decided I'm a bloody zealot! Screw this game's alignment system, i say. Did you ever heard of Chaotic Good, bloody Japan? Did you?
Now, he knowing all that stuff and, like, all that would be even more creepy than Steven were it not the goddamn Lao Tse. It is a shame i brought not my copy of the Tao Te Ching so i can get him to sign it up or, like, stuff. That would be a laught, i say. But anyways, we Toraport back to the civilized world, recover at Shibuya's Healer's Dojo, use two Speed Incenses we got while crawling dungeons to raise Helena's Speed, and then go to Shibuya's Jakyo Mannor to fuse Rusalka and Elf into a Seirei Aeros, and then Seirei Aeros and Hobgoblin into a Yousei Senri. We also fuse Kwanca and Werecat to get a new Hobgoblin.
As to who Senri is, well... I would go and make a joke about how he is this guy from Vampire Knight who is always following Rima around and, like, fights with blood tentacles coming out of his fingers and stuff but then you would get angry at me and i would go sob-sob and be pathetic, so instead i will just tell you of how the Senri are another type of Bakeneko, those japanese shapeshifting ghost kitty-cats i told you about before. They take the shape of girls to seduce men and then eat their souls, nya.
As you can see she is a control caster other than by a spell of the ZAN line, the weakest among all the offensive lines. So i will not use her for a while: I'll have her on my team for a while, then send her back to my COMP and keep her there until i fuse her into something else near the end of this quite long update. I then Transmit back to Ginza, recruit a new Kwanca, and then leave by one of the four upper floor areas and into the overworld map.
Neo-Ginza, i believe, is suposed to be one of Tokyo's busiest subway stations, Ginza Station, which serves the Ginza district, a very upper class shoping district counted among the most luxurious ones in the entire world. Everyone I know would give fifty babies' souls to one of the merry guys from the Ars Goetia to go have a shopping spree around Ginza, but I do not think even black magic can get us that. A fun fact from the Shin Megami Tensei games set in Tokyo, either modern or Post-Apoc, is that if you aren't allergic to researching around the internet as you go you will actually get to learn a bit about Tokyo and stuff, and it is pretty cool since you get a pretty particular and amazing feeling out playing some weird game in a well known, identificable location you can recognize and later read about and see how they went and thought it would be a cool place to turn into an underground town or something. Those guys of Hellgate London tried to do the same by setting the game in London but failed because the city felt more like a randomly generated maze than a city with famous landmarks and sets and stuff.
From there we go west, first, until we come across the already cleared Police Station. Then we go south until we reach Shiba Park and the Tokyo Tower, where the Mesian broadcast station is located. For those of you who don't know Tokyo Tower is like one huge broadcasting center for television, both analog and digital, and radio. It is currently used by lots of important television and radio stations, so if someone were to find functional broadcasting equipment in post-apoc Tokyo a good chance would be in, or around, Tokyo Tower, though i do not know if it would survive nuclear war and stuff.
Inside Tokyo Tower there are mostly low level Chirei demons and the entire list, up to now, of Mesian guys. In the ground floor there is not a lot to do, so once we finish exploring down there we take the elevator to Floor 30, the only one we can pick. Up there we find the Mesian broadcast station whose programing we came across in Shinjuku and Shibuya. You can also find TV sets in Ginza and Shinagawa, but they transmit the same message we saw in Shibuya so i forgot to screenshot it back in Ginza. There are two talky encounters in this floor: A Mesian girl who recognizes us...
... and a Mesian guy.
While leaving we also come across a very interesting group of Mesian Zealots. Two images are worth several thousands words, i heard, so there you go.
An unscripted random encounter becomes an amazing and very honest rendition of the western religious institutions and their many hundreds years of history , because fate loves to have a good laught at the expense of mankind's self-steem, sigh. I riddle them full of holes and go back to Ginza, then to lower Ginza, then leave by the exit leading to Shinagawa. I could try to reach it from Shiba Park, but the path would be blocked so i did the faster thingie. Before we can once more breath fresh air we need to run a small dungeon where we get another Incense and kill lots of things. Then we go outside.
Once we enter, like, Neo-Shinagawa we save and record the local Terminal in our COMP for later Transmision back to this place. In the main hall of Shinagawa are all the stores and stuff, but we already know how those work and there isn't anything new other than buying things from the local Armour Shop: Draupnir, Dragon Boots, Robe of Law, and Masquerade for Koneko and Crimson Gauntlets, Crimson Greaves, Masquerade, and Robe of Law for Helena. The Masquerade and the Robe of Law are both aligned with Law and thus can't be equiped by characters aligned with Chaos or Neutrality, but if you suffer an alignement change while wearing them you can keep them equiped. Once you remove them, though, there is no way to equip them again.
Once we finish with the main hall we go into the corridors. This is one of the main dungeons of this act, so easy this isn't going to be: First and foremost, the demon bunches on this dungeon are bloody screwed and you get the whole set with big groups of hard hitting and ZIO immune Nagas, mudo casting Loas and Chulruks, physical-attack reflecting Datenshi Decarabia, and some other things. Second, the levels have traps that hurt all party members not aligned with Law for what i think is a whole lot of damage since one took a bit over three fourths of Werewolf's life in one go. Third, i had forgoten i can't defeat this chapter's Law Boss until after defeating this chapter's Chaos Boss so whatever, let's get this party started.
As soon as we leave the main hall we come across new Demons in the form of Yuki Sawobaks and Raja Nagas, of whom the later are those hard hitting and ZIO immune Nagas i just mentioned. The Nagas are snake people from Hinduism and Budhism, who in the Mahabharata are enemies of the Garuda, who are bird people, and stuff. Some people believe they can represent Primal Chaos since reptiles and sea creatures are usually related to the forces of Chaos, The Subconsious, and Darkness, like with the Babylonian Tiamat and her lover Apsu, while birds and the like are usually related to the forces of Heavenly Law and, like, boring stuff. Since in the game the Raja Nagas are aligned with Chaos and stuff i guess either the Shin Megami Tensei guys traveled forward in time and plagiarized my friends or both groups happened to read the same books. I will be going with the former theory since it's way more fun and colorful than the later one. Sawobaks, meanwhile, i have not the slightest idea of what they are suposed to be and neither does the Megami Tensei wiki, so we will just shot them to pieces on sight and forget about them, nya.
In some chests around the initial area we find a Core Shield and an Intelligence Incense. Core Shields do protect against Shinagawa's traps, but i will not be wasting several of those just because of one or two characters in my party since it is cheaper to just heal them. We also come across our first Loa, a general term for the spirits and entities of Voodoo and related faiths. In this one case the Shin Megami Tensei guys were somewhat bigoted or misguided, since to just create one generic demon called Loa and be done with Voodoo and related faiths is no diferent to creating a generic Fallen Angel guy and considering it should cover the entirety of western Demonology or puting some generic Orisha guy and thinking that covers the entirety of Santeria and Yoruba spirit-thingies. The Loa's art, though, would make a really cool tatoo if you are a big biker guy or something like that.
When i identify myself he seems to go all fanboy and stuff. I ask him to join my party and after some Maka and a Magic Stone change hands he becomes my minion. As you can see in his sheet he has Mudo, Samaricarm, and Toraport, making him a pretty cool support caster to have for an emergency but not a permanent member of the main party.
In between the main hall and the begining of the long and winding trapped corridors leading to the ascending staircase there seems to be some kind of village where those of the Mesian faith live and wait for an adventurer to come and chat. That's us, now, so we go and while shooting things dead we go around and interview the locals. First we meet this guy who tells us more of the magic traps...
You really shouldn't be telling that to perfect strangers, you know?
... this old guy who tells me of a nearby dungeon or something...
I am getting some pretty intense anti-american vibes from this game.
... this other Mesian guy who tells me the location of another of those four Oni we heard mentioned already...
... a kid who tells us of an item we should get when we reach Ueno...
... a very long winded Mesian priest...
Where i broke the paragraphs the game asked me if i wanted to leave or keep listening to the sermon. I stayed because I'm a completist like that, but i do not know if to stay until the end or leave actually does something to your alignment. Given what will happen to my alignment once we go to that place Aquino told us to keep away from i doubt it.
... and finally we meet this woman who isn't precisely full of faith in the Lord.
While chatting the time away with all this people i also got to recruit a Mesian Temple Knight and a Youma Isora, who the Megami Tensei wiki tells me is a Shinto God of the seashore and stuff. He has Zionga, Diarama, and the Wall of Water skill, so he actually can get pretty useful. Once i finish with the interviewing i Toraport back to the main hall, fuse Dwarf and the Templar guy to get an Archangel, and then use two Luck Incenses on Koneko and four Inteligence Incenses on Helena, since Koneko has pretty much maxed it by now between Incenses, Level Ups, and Equipment.
Archangel is a pretty cool Tenshi with Agirao, Hanma, Diarama, and a fairly strong melee attack. In the original Hebrew cosmology, that of Archangel is not considered to be an oficial rank or order as much as a category into which all angelic beings with a developed, individual personality could be put. I would now make a joke about that including the boys and girls from the Ars Goetia since they are, in theory at least, also Angelic Beings but i do not wish to be burnt while still so young and kawaii, so i will just keep going with the explanation: On both the Catholic and Christian theologies, the one on which the Tenshi family i believe to remember was based upon, that of Archangels is the second order of the third sphere. Most traditions and denominations divide the Order of Archangels in two groups: The named Archangels, who would be very same thingies the jews had, and the unamed ones, that would be, like, a rank above your random generic angel but still below the Orders with the cool names and stuff. Islam also follows that division.
The named Archangels are also the most commonly mentioned, summoned, or call upon by western occultists that do not like to mess with things fallen and sinful, nor with things wild and primal like the Elemental Spirits or Fae and the like, nor with way too psychological thingies like Thought Forms or Larvae and other thingies along those lines, nor the weirder varieties of occult fauna like Egregores and Genius Loci and stuff like that, nor with pure crazy thingies like incarnated concepts and living symbols, etc. The most famous of the named Archangels (those being Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, and Michael) are for example called upon on several varieties of Banishing Rituals, including Aleister Crowley's very popular Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, and stuff like that. Since the Golden Dawn and other orders both Hermetic and Kabalistic in nature went around mixing occult paradigms and systems as they pleased it is not strange to get formal rituals and stuff written in a mixture of Enochian and Latin, calling upon the power of the four great Archangels to command the Elemental Forces, and then by the power of a Kabalistic symbol interpreted by means of John Dee's symbolism call the forces of hell, as described in the Ars Goetia, to comune with you... And they still don't understand why most modern witches and warlocks who dislike neopaganism and religion go either eclectic, Chaoist, or old-school Left Hand's Individualist, mixing and matching and making stuff up as they go and laughing their butts off every time the guys from the traditional orders tell them not to do that kind of thing because is disrespectful of the olde ways. Bloody hypocrites, all of them traditional types.
Back to gaming now we can finally venture into the winding corridors of doomity doom. Along the way we find a statue of the New Messiah, as well as another two talkative guys.
There is no coincidence, young padawan. There is only synchronicity and cosmic perversity. Though i smile at the thought of Bardon being turned into...
... as the statue seems to suggest, nyahahahahaha. Later i will post Neo-Bardon's artwork when we meet him at the head church, but i just needed to make the bad jokes now so they stay out of the way from now on and stuff. Now, let's see what the two talkative guys have to say: The first goes on and on about the Cathedral, while i must fight a panic attack as memories from the future start flowing through my mind...
... and the second one tells us about the Messiah, Bardon.
Whatever. We keep the looting going, get some more incenses and an Emerald, and after much going around, steping on trapped tiles, banishing thingies back to the Abyss by means of lead poisoning, and recruiting a Zealot who decided not to run with our money we finally get to the staircase that will lead us into the second floor, nya. First thing up there is a new datenshi! So it's that time again! The Kuroi Neko teaches Darke Magick, nya! super-duper-happy hour, yay!
Meet Datenshi Decarabia, known also as Carabia, floating star extraordinaire! This pretty weird guy is the Sixty-ninth spirit as listed in the Ars Goetia, and since he is a Marquis he likes the moon and silver. His card is the seven of swords and thus his element would be Air. He is most powerful during the nights of the Third Decane of Aquarius, from February 9 to February 18. His office in the Lemegeton is said to be revealing the virtues of birds and precious stones to the sorceress, as well as making all thingies with the shape of birds to act as they were living birds, singing and drinking and jumping and flying and stuff. That would be some pretty amazing and cool thingie, even if not the most useful one. He rules over thirty legions. In the Pseudomonarchia he also has the office of tamming all birdies for the sorceress and revealing to her the virtues and hidden powers of herbs, but there he only rules over twentynine legions, though.
Since he is a floating star i will not be, like, uploading pictures of him and stuff. I will, though, upload both his sigils... And was the plural of that Sigla or i'm mixing it up with something else? In any case you know what I mean. The first one from Duquette's, the second one from Mather's, even if in this particular case both aren't that diferent like the last one we did.
And also his sheet, though i will not be getting him until around this update's end. He has Tetraja, a spell that protects the party agains energy drain and maybe curses, and Tetra-karn, a spell that reflects all physical damage done to the party or the caster, i don't remember right now, back to the attacker. I mean, what the hell where they thinking! That's bloody evil, no punches pulled and no mercy given. You can't AUTO those creeps without running the risk of your party killing itself! And they are bloody everywhere in Shinagawa's upper floors, sob sob.
Leaving Decarabia aside, though, the second level will be a breeze to write about, even if i spent not a short time doing it. Look at the following image, for that's Shinagawa's second floor's floorplan. To get into the middle room with two outer doors and an inner one you need to find which of the rooms teleport you there, because the tiles in front of the outer doors teleport you to one of the side corridors you can see below. The other rooms either contain an Incense, a Trap, teleport you to one of the side corridors, or make you fall to the level below. If you are patient like this cat you will get some incenses and a Kusanagi-No-Tsurugi, whatever that is.
Once i did all that we go to the third floor. Look at the following image to make this one short. Each of the four rooms beyond which are two tiles i could not explore has a gate sealed by magic or, like, stuff in it. As you can also see, the corridors end in what is from one side a door and from the other a wall, so if you are attacked when going through those doors you can retreat, bloody sob. Right in the center of the level is the Mesian Head Church. Funny fact: Before entering i healed and prepared like i was going to fight one of the chapter's two main bosses. I didn't, because you can't fight Law Guy until you either defeat Chaos Lady or join her.
But let's keep going: The party kicks the door and run in the Head Church screaming bloody murder and preparing to go all the way back to a nice, warm, cuddly neutral alignment the hard way so the commanding Heavenly Cat can play with her Datenshi and stuffy stuff. They are being expected, though. Meet the Battle Pope, Bardon!
Yeah, Loa and some other guys can also do that one. It's great if you are a brawler, but if your main role is a caster you are screwed other than by saving you resurrection costs: You will need a priest or healer anyway because you revive without MP, though maybe God can get around that one with a Fiat Mana or something like that.
Aquino at least betrayed us to power and freedom, so it's all cool with him and we can keep being friends and, like, stuff. You are betraying us to the guy who went Global Thermonuclear War on our butts thirty years ago, pope guy. Really not smart of you.
Not being multikult is so totally not politically correct I'm almost tempted to join you just for the shock value, pope guy we used to be friends with.
Think of how many people went crispy when thirty years ago God went and decided to play Defcon with the real world and controling all players himself, and that includes your bloody girlfriend. Yeah, I thought so: Me being a silent protagonist is your only argument.
That's not really a problem since God will be sending us a bloody diluge to finish cleansing the world of all unbelievers by this act's end, maybe because he doesn't want those evil might-makes-right Gaians to have all the fun genocide for themselves. Oooops, yes, you are right. Sorry, my bad: Metagaming's against the rules and all. Keep telling me about how great this Thousand Year Kingom thingie really is and how big a bleeding heart, caring humanist this God dude really is.
There's a question for you: What would God offers to the amazing Kuroi Neko instead of the traditional dark eyed damsels? Incubi? Cats? Archangels? What if our heroine prefers clear eyed rewards, would that be heresy since they actually mention the rewards must be dark eyed and thus that is God's heavenly will? Okay, okay, I'll stop before they kick down the door and burn me, sob-sob.
We now go to the fourth, and last, floor. There is nothing interesting here: Some teleporters, some rooms with alignment based traps, etc. The usual thingie. Look at the following screenshot.
Every time you enter one of the rooms on the points of the middle cross you get ported to one of the two-tiles long corridors, where you are hit by an alignment trap as you leave. One of the small rooms on the north part of the level teleports you to the center corridor, where you get an incense and some stuff in the two side rooms and then get teleported to one of the small trap corridors. The other one of the rooms up there i don't remember what it had: Either an incense or a trap or a whole lot of nothing. In one of those two niches at the sides of the central northernmost room we find the only unique thing about this level: Remember that renowned Demon Summoner we heard about while in Ginza? There he is. And in true Pokemon Trainer fashion he wants to duel with me, sigh.
Boys and their bloody toys, as they say. He has a pack of Nues, a pack of Sawobaks, and a pack of Barbegazi, a new kind of demon and, just like before, the last one is only one who can as much as scratch the paint of my current party. Again we defeat each of the two groups packs before they can even go blinkity blink, he talks a bunch before pulling the next Pokeball, and stuff. The Barbegazi survive, like, two turns, mostly because they have Maha-Bufu or something and thus freeze half my guys before they get a turn. They are weak to fire, though, so Archangel and Hobgoblin had a bloody party on the second, and nyahahaha last, one.
Cry me a bloody river. It's not my fault you are a moron and a jerk who watches way too much shounen crap, i just wanted to chat and ask you about the four directional oni guys. In any case he leaves the Four-door gem behind, so now we can go to the four shrine thingies and meet the four directional oni guys. We'll do that either next update or the one right after, depending on how long i want to make the next one.
I now Toraport back to the main hall and go to the Jakyo Mannor. I fuse the Zealot i got and my Kwanca into a Seirei Sylph, and then i use her to upgrade Yousei Hobgoblin into Yousei Troll. I also fuse Senri and Loa into a Youma Ongkot. Let's see, first, Troll's sheet: He has Bufula, Maha-Bufu, and Diarahan. He also has a whole lot of HP and a pretty hurty punch. If you do not know what kind of creature a mythological Troll is you are a lost case and as such i don't really care. As an amusing but totally useless bit of trivia, though, those Trolls are blue brutes just like The Dreaming ones, yay! Does someone of you know if this is a coinc... synchronous event, i meant, or if there is some obscure piece of lore where Trolls are blue ugly brutes?
Then we have the Ongkot. According to the Megami Tensei wiki thingie he is an Ape Prince from some Thai Epic i not even knew existed before, so i should be gaining a free rank on Lore: Obscure Asian Mythology because of this one. Way to go, me! He has a force spell and a bunch of buffs, raising the party's Attack Power and Defense. And he is, as far as demons of his level go, a fast creep, so he would actually be pretty cool if having ZIO or BUFU spells, but he doesn't so meh. I mostly got him for the defense buff.
Before leaving Shinagawa, Helena uses incenses for both Magic and Speed while Koneko does so for Luck. Those are their sheets as they go to Transmit themselves back to Ginza:
As soon as we reach Ginza we leave back to the crossroads we came across when travelling from Roppongi to Ginza, and then follow the corridor to the exit Aquino told us not to go through. Again, before reaching the overworld map we must fight our ways through a small dungeon where we meet a demon that we should have crossed a long time ago, when between Shinjuku and Roppongi, but by random chance we didn't and thus as a encounter he is now awfully underleveled but at least gives me an excuse to show his art. While going through this mini-dungeon we recruit another Loa, too.
That's one really ugly creep, i say. Some random encounters afterwards we find the exit, leave, and come to the overworld map, yay! First step we take, though, we meet with Aquino-Kun, and he isn't happy to see us.
*fooosh*
*fooosh*
I do not cast my lot with anyone, redish hell-judge thingie who was way lovelier and funnier in its Phantasmagoria of Flower View incarnation. It's the bloody alignment system who does, i am just an inocent victim of bigotred pigeonholing and, like, chauvinistic labeling and automated prejudice built into the way the system works, hai hai. So now just lecture me as your other you always does and let me go my way, there are universes to save and, like, stuff to do.
So totally not cute in this incarnation. Are you just, like, compensating because Pazuzu kicked your ass without even trying in Devil Survivor? How much HP did you take from him with your judgement thingie? I think it was measured in zeroes, nya-nya.
*fooosh*
So there we are, thrown in jail and due to be executed by dawn and stuff. That bigotred red guy with a holier-than-thou attitude was Enma Yama, the judge of the budhist underworld. Since those Budhist guys have a whole lot of hells and purgatories and thingies he must be super-busy and that would kind of explain the attitude, i guess. He gets around a whole lot: Anime, Manga, Videogames, etc. He also appears in Devil Survivor, where he kills a whole lot of sinful defenseless civilians off-screen and then goes get his butt handed to him by Pazuzu in a scripted scene and without even scratching the paint off Assyria's finest, so yeah. Big though guy you are, Yama thingie.
The Yama is way cooler in the zuniverse, though. Here, have a look and learn how it is done from the very best, red guy thingie.
First, she is not red and she doesn't look like she has an itch she can't reach. Second, she does not sentence people to death because, like, thingie should judge you after you are dead and not before. Third, she gives long and funny lectures, written by a japanese hopeless drunkard so it can get really weird, about how you are a bloody sinner and then some time later she visits you to see if you have mended your ways and to keep lecturing you so you don't need to end in one of the three thousands and fifty budhist hells. Fourth, she does all that while throwing lots and lots and lots of thingies you have to dodge so Pazuzu would need to really get his act together to evade her attacks instead of just yawning and owning the guy without even trying. Fifth, she has a lazy shinigami as an underling who is so lazy and stuff that the every sixty years the dead, like, go on strike or something because they have been left to pile up on the world of the living, and who defeats people by throwing lots and lots of magical money at them. So yeah, you go girl! Show he red guy how it is done!
Yes, totally WTF moment. I fail at humor and i know it, just live with it. Let's go back to prison: There is not a lot of space to move around, and Toraport does not work if you try to just escape the easy way and LOL at the Yama guy. You can talk with Helena or try the bars, and the bars do not work so we go talk with the Girl. We need to talk several times with her to pass time.
*walks around*
*walks around*
*walks around*
You are the dashing prince with the worse fashion sense, like, ever, but it is kind of cute the way he tries to use the saving his butt thingie as an excuse to let us out and then goes to warn us about Ueno like the carebear emo ninja he really is, nya. Once outside we start meeting new demons straight away, and riddle them full of holes. The first one is Yuuki Sanni Yaka and not even the Megami Tensei wiki knows who he is suposed to be. He has some poison power and stuff, we just AUTO the bleeding crap out of them each time they appear and move out since Helena can heal the poison thingie and she has a load of MP by now.
Next in the new demon showcase comes Touki Mezuki, the angry horsie of doomity doom. I recruit him and stuff, then look around the Wikipedia and the Megamipedia and the Googlepedia for something to tell you about him but no luck so far other than he is chinese and has a Yugioh thingie so he must be pretty famous among Obscure Mythology Nerds or something. His sheet, meanwhile, shows me he has a mean right punch, Zionga, and the critical skill but too little MP to use him as a shocker other than in emergencies, so it's straight to the COMP with him until I need a brawler. He also has the accuracy buff i will never use until i get to fight the sequel's main bosses, meh.
Then we come across a Chirei Sarutahiko we also recruit. I will quote from the Megami Tensei wiki because what i know of this guy would be otherwise summed up in one word: Nothing.
As a footnote i will mention he is called square-square-square-square-square just by people who like me and, i am willing to bet, most of fair Codexia doesn't have the Japanese fonts installed or something. Also, if that bit I quoted is to be believed, Fivesquares is such a bloody ogling dirty macho jerk so I'm regreting looking up his name. Finally, he is mentioned as having a third-rate side-part on Nocturne but he is so, like, totally forgetable I didn't remember anything about that until I read it in there so it's straight to the COMP with him. He has three nice spells and is a fairly good brawler so it is a bloody shame, i say.
Next in line we come across across Touki Gozuki, the angry cow of doomity doom, whom Wikipedia tells me is from the same chinese thingie the angry horsie was and, you guessed it, Google tells me he also has a Yugioh thingie. Other than that your guess is as good as mine so let's see his art and his sheet: He has Sibabu, so he can bind enemy demons while the other guys in the party laught at them and do bad things to them, and both the Fireball and Rampage skills. He also kicks backside in melee and has both good HP and STM so i will be taking him in the party for a bit since his two extras are good for against the endless stream of Random Encounters we get.
Since it seems we are in Furrylandia or something we also get of those Ongkots we already got through fusion back at Shinagawa and a Blue Fox thingies whose name I totally forgot to write down because i was too busy trying to cry away the fact he reflects physical damage back at you as a natural, permanent hability so you can't AUTO him and by the end of the current area we will had come across him a couple hundred of times, screw you Atlus. There, have his art and a screenshot where he even laught at us while he is at it, sobity sob.
Around this one floor, as well as the next one, we will be comming across a bunch of cells containing other victims of the Yama's harsh and unreachable itchy thingie. In this floor we find two inhabit ones: One by this kid...
... and one by this guy.
And really, the game threw my lot with those bloody zealots because I, like, wanted to give money to some random poor guy and I used a soul incense to free a girl who just was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I dislike to kill defeated thingies in cold blood and, like, totally inocent stuff like that? Since i already explored all of this floor i go down to the next one, and the first cell I visit has the creepy disabled stalker guy on it: At least the Yama's justice got a true pervert, right on!
No way, creep! Keep your distance, thank you. He then offers me to save, heals the party to max, and then tell me that to escape this prison i need to defeat a guy called Nio or something. Ta-ta, and stuff. I'm gone. Next cell in line contains a, let's say, champion of moral relativism...
Next door i try has a big Nio behind. I will not be making a round by round telling of the battle because he is suposed to be quite strong if you are not building attack plans made of ZIO and BUFU and Nerve Bullets. Since we do he never got a turn of his own, and in return for totally anihilating his backside Koneko and Helena got three levels each.
But we do not leave just yet since there are still thingies to explore and stuff. Appart from some empty cells we get a Mesian praying the bit about seventy two virgins wasn't just Bardon pulling his leg...
... and a guy who went vigilante against the demons.
With me geting angrier and angrier because that Yama retard throw me in with a bunch of murderous weirdos we leave and start exploring the rooms and corridors outside the prison, where we come across a kid who more or less explains to us where we are now and stuff.
This means we are either in the Sunshine 60 building or in the Sunshine City complex built around it, all in Ikebukuro. I don't think the building would survive a nuclear war, being a very tall skyscraper and all, but since it is build to resist earthquakes and thingies who knows? Both the Sunshine 60 building and the Sunshine City complex around it are built were once stood Sugamo Prison, and include all the kind of thingies you would usually expect to do when playing one of those Sims games were you build big-big towers, and then some, including a Yama and some thousand furry demons, yay.
We keep exploring, then go to the second floor and kill and loot and charm until we reach a door the game informs us leads to the Yama's court! It's payback time, Hell Boy! We kick the door and barge in, doing the bang-bang thingie and the Zio-Zio thingie and stuff. As soon as we are inside, though, I, like, go pale and panic, for I remember two very, very important thingies, sob sob: Thingie the first is that I had forgoten to buy magical artifacts protecting the party from Mudo spells and Energy Drain attacks since thanks to ZIO and BUFU i never had to worry of those during a boss fight. Thingie the second is that the Yama is immune to ZIO and BUFU.
By now i was going to just give up and re-do everything from Shinagawa, now stoping along the way to buy nine or so Anti-Curse thingies and call it a day. But then i remembered that this guy got his butt kicked by a very bored Pazuzu back in Devil Survivor, and i will not be put to shame within earshot of my very fangirled Assyrian and Babylonian and Akkadian demons. Also, our heroine's heroine would never retreat in face of injustice nor forgive any evildoing creepy thingie regarless of how strong it were! Here, have an inspirational speech by the best Megami Tensei character, like, ever:
In which our heroine shows post-apocaliptic Tokyo why that saying about never meddling in the affairs of scorned witches came to be. She also kills a whole bunch of thingies, makes lots and lots of really bad jokes, and stuff.
Last time we met our heroes, guided by the eternal will of a heavenly Black Cat, defeated an army of evil robots, frustrated some generic Mad Scientist's plans, and explored Neo-Ginza while listening to the best music ever. And today they will face a long chain of new and amazing adventures because i'm back at singledom, population me, and need something to do with my free time until my mood is game for having a life, meeting with friends, go clubbing, or do evil occult thingies again. So be prepared for one long, big, amazingly cool update, and later you all better post how much you liked it or there will be HELL to pay, yessir.
As we rejoin our heroes, then, they are preparing to go into Lower Ginza. What's lower Ginza, you ask? It is a big dungeon under Neo-Ginza, with some very bothersome monsters and stuff. Mind you, it is dead easy if you are going Chaos since the very bothersome demons are all aligned with chaos, but we are, like, Law. Meh. In any case we will no longer be Law when this update is finished, so i will be able to cuddle fallen angels 'till they go back to the Abyss just to escape from me, yay!
We sure want, old chap. Once down we meet two new demons: The first is Yama Chulruk, the most messed up little fucker this side of Hell. I mean, he has Mudo and likes to be in groups of four, though in the screenshot below he is alone, and lower Ginza is crawling with the little creeps, so you can't AUTO them without risking a journey to the temple for recovery and resurrection, like the second screenshot shows. And that screenshot was taken after trying to AUTO the single *bleep* in the first screenshot, not some big group or anything.
The later one is Datenshi Leonard, and you already know what that means, right? Of course you do! It's Kuroi Neko teaches darke magick, nya! time, again! And i am happy they didn't mess up this one's name, because when you can't write Leonard as God wants it written not even final judgement will straight you up, i say! This one is a hard one, though: He is not from the Ars Goetia, nor from the Pseudomonarchia, nor from the Grimorium Verum, etc. He is from De Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal, and i already told you finding a hard copy is really, really though. Lucky for you I'm the cutest grand master of Demon Lore, like, ever, so i need not those thingies to give you the short version.
Often called Le Grand Negre, Leonard is thought to be another version or form of the Goat of Mendes, also known as The Baphomet, since he also, like, presides over the witches' sabbath and has three horns, the upper body of a goat, and a face on his butt that the witches would kiss to pledge allegiance to the infernal forces. We no longer do that one, though, and i guess he doesn't care since as Demonic Lore has it he didn't like that part of his office in the least. Being the main agent of hell in all matters pertaining of sorcery and cute witches, though, the sabbath thingie came as a natural extention of his duties instead of being part of his office, i think. He is also said to be an amazing shapeshifter, being able to turn into almost anything without losing his sad, moody face: A tree trunk with a melancholic face carved on it, etc.
It is not that strange for a Demon to have an office, or an extension of his office, that he doesn't likes, though. A good number of Demons still have the souls of angels or are looking for redemption, and even those who doesn't still have strong and characterful personalities because, like, that was one of the things they fell to get. Or at least that's their version: It is a little hard to get a good, honest telling of the fall since as lore has it Angels do not answer to questions about the fallen nor the fall other than to say THINK NOT OF SIN, WITCH and the fallen aren't forced to always answer true like the angels do and also happen to have a reputation of being master manipulators to live up to... So yeah, so much for the hard experimental, hands on approach to demonology. There are so many diferent versions to the origin of demons, the fall, and other stuff that most witches and sorcerers end up going atheist, agnostic, or polytheist just to keep away from all the crap and the potential for messing up when choosing who to believe at face value.
That's Leonard in De Plancy's book, dancing with the crones. Lucky for us he always appears like a single demon in random encounters, and since he is a control caster we just go AUTO on his lower face and call it a day, or a night, or whatever. The third new variety of demon we find is an Ibaragi-Doji, an oni or ogre from Kyoto's own mythology if i am remembering it right.
We go around the maze opening treasures chests that either contain incenses or traps, and now the traps start hiting hard and there is a chance you will get a random encounter just after trigering the trap and before you can heal. After a while we again come across Steven, who is starting to get creepier than Yuriko. I mean, she is... well, SHE, so i can actually understand she being alive and still young and terse and pretty and stalky, but this guy is Stephen Hawkings demon-summoning alter-ego, so this isn't right at all.
Just as planned, eh? At this rate next time we meet you will take a potato chip... AND EAT IT!
Thank you, creepy stalker disabled guy. Now we can go back looting for incenses and stuff. After many battles and exploration we come across another Demon Summoner! It seems most people in this line of work aren't as nice as we, though, and that most of them are jerks through and through.
I could be a nice witch and pay, you know? And later it would take me around three and a half random encounters to recover the Makka, but i am in a bad mood and all so a bunch of dices is what i will be making out of your bones, guy. That and a new set of runes since the voices tell me the ones made out of human bone are better for divining fortunes than those made of wood, nya. I may even scribe the symbols on your blood if my demons leave some of it undrinked.
You are reading my mind, you wicked warlock! Magical Punishment Time!
This guy always reminds me of a Pokemon Trainer or, like, something. Jigglypuff, i choose you! Let's kick this bad boy's butt to high noon and beyond, i say! For love, justice, friendship, and cuddly things everywhere!
Okay, let's get back in line before we are banned or something. The guy summons three groups of pokemons to fight us: Pishashas, Baykoks, and Lakhes. Of those only Lakhes can as much as survive half a turn against my team: I could AUTO the battle with them and still win, but whatever. We go erradicating them as they come, then the guy whines a bit and summons the next team, etc.
Beyond we find a passage leading to Shinagawa, headquarters of the Mesian Church and base of the forces of Law. Since I don't want to go there yet i turn back, and that guy takes the chance to be gentlemanly and stuff. A hint: When they had to kick the gentleman into you it is already a bit late for that.
Leaving aside a bunch of chests with Incenses the only other interesting thing there is to do in Lower Ginza is a staircase leading us further into the depths of the Earth. After exploring the small complex of corridors and rooms down there we come across an old acquitance of us: Lao Tse! We are jet set like that.
Justice? I just, like, acted like a civilized, caring, kind-hearted person and the game decided I'm a bloody zealot! Screw this game's alignment system, i say. Did you ever heard of Chaotic Good, bloody Japan? Did you?
Now, he knowing all that stuff and, like, all that would be even more creepy than Steven were it not the goddamn Lao Tse. It is a shame i brought not my copy of the Tao Te Ching so i can get him to sign it up or, like, stuff. That would be a laught, i say. But anyways, we Toraport back to the civilized world, recover at Shibuya's Healer's Dojo, use two Speed Incenses we got while crawling dungeons to raise Helena's Speed, and then go to Shibuya's Jakyo Mannor to fuse Rusalka and Elf into a Seirei Aeros, and then Seirei Aeros and Hobgoblin into a Yousei Senri. We also fuse Kwanca and Werecat to get a new Hobgoblin.
As to who Senri is, well... I would go and make a joke about how he is this guy from Vampire Knight who is always following Rima around and, like, fights with blood tentacles coming out of his fingers and stuff but then you would get angry at me and i would go sob-sob and be pathetic, so instead i will just tell you of how the Senri are another type of Bakeneko, those japanese shapeshifting ghost kitty-cats i told you about before. They take the shape of girls to seduce men and then eat their souls, nya.
As you can see she is a control caster other than by a spell of the ZAN line, the weakest among all the offensive lines. So i will not use her for a while: I'll have her on my team for a while, then send her back to my COMP and keep her there until i fuse her into something else near the end of this quite long update. I then Transmit back to Ginza, recruit a new Kwanca, and then leave by one of the four upper floor areas and into the overworld map.
Neo-Ginza, i believe, is suposed to be one of Tokyo's busiest subway stations, Ginza Station, which serves the Ginza district, a very upper class shoping district counted among the most luxurious ones in the entire world. Everyone I know would give fifty babies' souls to one of the merry guys from the Ars Goetia to go have a shopping spree around Ginza, but I do not think even black magic can get us that. A fun fact from the Shin Megami Tensei games set in Tokyo, either modern or Post-Apoc, is that if you aren't allergic to researching around the internet as you go you will actually get to learn a bit about Tokyo and stuff, and it is pretty cool since you get a pretty particular and amazing feeling out playing some weird game in a well known, identificable location you can recognize and later read about and see how they went and thought it would be a cool place to turn into an underground town or something. Those guys of Hellgate London tried to do the same by setting the game in London but failed because the city felt more like a randomly generated maze than a city with famous landmarks and sets and stuff.
From there we go west, first, until we come across the already cleared Police Station. Then we go south until we reach Shiba Park and the Tokyo Tower, where the Mesian broadcast station is located. For those of you who don't know Tokyo Tower is like one huge broadcasting center for television, both analog and digital, and radio. It is currently used by lots of important television and radio stations, so if someone were to find functional broadcasting equipment in post-apoc Tokyo a good chance would be in, or around, Tokyo Tower, though i do not know if it would survive nuclear war and stuff.
Inside Tokyo Tower there are mostly low level Chirei demons and the entire list, up to now, of Mesian guys. In the ground floor there is not a lot to do, so once we finish exploring down there we take the elevator to Floor 30, the only one we can pick. Up there we find the Mesian broadcast station whose programing we came across in Shinjuku and Shibuya. You can also find TV sets in Ginza and Shinagawa, but they transmit the same message we saw in Shibuya so i forgot to screenshot it back in Ginza. There are two talky encounters in this floor: A Mesian girl who recognizes us...
... and a Mesian guy.
While leaving we also come across a very interesting group of Mesian Zealots. Two images are worth several thousands words, i heard, so there you go.
An unscripted random encounter becomes an amazing and very honest rendition of the western religious institutions and their many hundreds years of history , because fate loves to have a good laught at the expense of mankind's self-steem, sigh. I riddle them full of holes and go back to Ginza, then to lower Ginza, then leave by the exit leading to Shinagawa. I could try to reach it from Shiba Park, but the path would be blocked so i did the faster thingie. Before we can once more breath fresh air we need to run a small dungeon where we get another Incense and kill lots of things. Then we go outside.
Once we enter, like, Neo-Shinagawa we save and record the local Terminal in our COMP for later Transmision back to this place. In the main hall of Shinagawa are all the stores and stuff, but we already know how those work and there isn't anything new other than buying things from the local Armour Shop: Draupnir, Dragon Boots, Robe of Law, and Masquerade for Koneko and Crimson Gauntlets, Crimson Greaves, Masquerade, and Robe of Law for Helena. The Masquerade and the Robe of Law are both aligned with Law and thus can't be equiped by characters aligned with Chaos or Neutrality, but if you suffer an alignement change while wearing them you can keep them equiped. Once you remove them, though, there is no way to equip them again.
Once we finish with the main hall we go into the corridors. This is one of the main dungeons of this act, so easy this isn't going to be: First and foremost, the demon bunches on this dungeon are bloody screwed and you get the whole set with big groups of hard hitting and ZIO immune Nagas, mudo casting Loas and Chulruks, physical-attack reflecting Datenshi Decarabia, and some other things. Second, the levels have traps that hurt all party members not aligned with Law for what i think is a whole lot of damage since one took a bit over three fourths of Werewolf's life in one go. Third, i had forgoten i can't defeat this chapter's Law Boss until after defeating this chapter's Chaos Boss so whatever, let's get this party started.
As soon as we leave the main hall we come across new Demons in the form of Yuki Sawobaks and Raja Nagas, of whom the later are those hard hitting and ZIO immune Nagas i just mentioned. The Nagas are snake people from Hinduism and Budhism, who in the Mahabharata are enemies of the Garuda, who are bird people, and stuff. Some people believe they can represent Primal Chaos since reptiles and sea creatures are usually related to the forces of Chaos, The Subconsious, and Darkness, like with the Babylonian Tiamat and her lover Apsu, while birds and the like are usually related to the forces of Heavenly Law and, like, boring stuff. Since in the game the Raja Nagas are aligned with Chaos and stuff i guess either the Shin Megami Tensei guys traveled forward in time and plagiarized my friends or both groups happened to read the same books. I will be going with the former theory since it's way more fun and colorful than the later one. Sawobaks, meanwhile, i have not the slightest idea of what they are suposed to be and neither does the Megami Tensei wiki, so we will just shot them to pieces on sight and forget about them, nya.
In some chests around the initial area we find a Core Shield and an Intelligence Incense. Core Shields do protect against Shinagawa's traps, but i will not be wasting several of those just because of one or two characters in my party since it is cheaper to just heal them. We also come across our first Loa, a general term for the spirits and entities of Voodoo and related faiths. In this one case the Shin Megami Tensei guys were somewhat bigoted or misguided, since to just create one generic demon called Loa and be done with Voodoo and related faiths is no diferent to creating a generic Fallen Angel guy and considering it should cover the entirety of western Demonology or puting some generic Orisha guy and thinking that covers the entirety of Santeria and Yoruba spirit-thingies. The Loa's art, though, would make a really cool tatoo if you are a big biker guy or something like that.
When i identify myself he seems to go all fanboy and stuff. I ask him to join my party and after some Maka and a Magic Stone change hands he becomes my minion. As you can see in his sheet he has Mudo, Samaricarm, and Toraport, making him a pretty cool support caster to have for an emergency but not a permanent member of the main party.
In between the main hall and the begining of the long and winding trapped corridors leading to the ascending staircase there seems to be some kind of village where those of the Mesian faith live and wait for an adventurer to come and chat. That's us, now, so we go and while shooting things dead we go around and interview the locals. First we meet this guy who tells us more of the magic traps...
You really shouldn't be telling that to perfect strangers, you know?
... this old guy who tells me of a nearby dungeon or something...
I am getting some pretty intense anti-american vibes from this game.
... this other Mesian guy who tells me the location of another of those four Oni we heard mentioned already...
... a kid who tells us of an item we should get when we reach Ueno...
... a very long winded Mesian priest...
Where i broke the paragraphs the game asked me if i wanted to leave or keep listening to the sermon. I stayed because I'm a completist like that, but i do not know if to stay until the end or leave actually does something to your alignment. Given what will happen to my alignment once we go to that place Aquino told us to keep away from i doubt it.
... and finally we meet this woman who isn't precisely full of faith in the Lord.
While chatting the time away with all this people i also got to recruit a Mesian Temple Knight and a Youma Isora, who the Megami Tensei wiki tells me is a Shinto God of the seashore and stuff. He has Zionga, Diarama, and the Wall of Water skill, so he actually can get pretty useful. Once i finish with the interviewing i Toraport back to the main hall, fuse Dwarf and the Templar guy to get an Archangel, and then use two Luck Incenses on Koneko and four Inteligence Incenses on Helena, since Koneko has pretty much maxed it by now between Incenses, Level Ups, and Equipment.
Archangel is a pretty cool Tenshi with Agirao, Hanma, Diarama, and a fairly strong melee attack. In the original Hebrew cosmology, that of Archangel is not considered to be an oficial rank or order as much as a category into which all angelic beings with a developed, individual personality could be put. I would now make a joke about that including the boys and girls from the Ars Goetia since they are, in theory at least, also Angelic Beings but i do not wish to be burnt while still so young and kawaii, so i will just keep going with the explanation: On both the Catholic and Christian theologies, the one on which the Tenshi family i believe to remember was based upon, that of Archangels is the second order of the third sphere. Most traditions and denominations divide the Order of Archangels in two groups: The named Archangels, who would be very same thingies the jews had, and the unamed ones, that would be, like, a rank above your random generic angel but still below the Orders with the cool names and stuff. Islam also follows that division.
The named Archangels are also the most commonly mentioned, summoned, or call upon by western occultists that do not like to mess with things fallen and sinful, nor with things wild and primal like the Elemental Spirits or Fae and the like, nor with way too psychological thingies like Thought Forms or Larvae and other thingies along those lines, nor the weirder varieties of occult fauna like Egregores and Genius Loci and stuff like that, nor with pure crazy thingies like incarnated concepts and living symbols, etc. The most famous of the named Archangels (those being Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, and Michael) are for example called upon on several varieties of Banishing Rituals, including Aleister Crowley's very popular Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram, and stuff like that. Since the Golden Dawn and other orders both Hermetic and Kabalistic in nature went around mixing occult paradigms and systems as they pleased it is not strange to get formal rituals and stuff written in a mixture of Enochian and Latin, calling upon the power of the four great Archangels to command the Elemental Forces, and then by the power of a Kabalistic symbol interpreted by means of John Dee's symbolism call the forces of hell, as described in the Ars Goetia, to comune with you... And they still don't understand why most modern witches and warlocks who dislike neopaganism and religion go either eclectic, Chaoist, or old-school Left Hand's Individualist, mixing and matching and making stuff up as they go and laughing their butts off every time the guys from the traditional orders tell them not to do that kind of thing because is disrespectful of the olde ways.
Bloody hypocrites, all of them traditional types.Back to gaming now we can finally venture into the winding corridors of doomity doom. Along the way we find a statue of the New Messiah, as well as another two talkative guys.
There is no coincidence, young padawan. There is only synchronicity and cosmic perversity. Though i smile at the thought of Bardon being turned into...
... as the statue seems to suggest, nyahahahahaha. Later i will post Neo-Bardon's artwork when we meet him at the head church, but i just needed to make the bad jokes now so they stay out of the way from now on and stuff. Now, let's see what the two talkative guys have to say: The first goes on and on about the Cathedral, while i must fight a panic attack as memories from the future start flowing through my mind...
... and the second one tells us about the Messiah, Bardon.
Whatever. We keep the looting going, get some more incenses and an Emerald, and after much going around, steping on trapped tiles, banishing thingies back to the Abyss by means of lead poisoning, and recruiting a Zealot who decided not to run with our money we finally get to the staircase that will lead us into the second floor, nya. First thing up there is a new datenshi! So it's that time again! The Kuroi Neko teaches Darke Magick, nya! super-duper-happy hour, yay!
Meet Datenshi Decarabia, known also as Carabia, floating star extraordinaire! This pretty weird guy is the Sixty-ninth spirit as listed in the Ars Goetia, and since he is a Marquis he likes the moon and silver. His card is the seven of swords and thus his element would be Air. He is most powerful during the nights of the Third Decane of Aquarius, from February 9 to February 18. His office in the Lemegeton is said to be revealing the virtues of birds and precious stones to the sorceress, as well as making all thingies with the shape of birds to act as they were living birds, singing and drinking and jumping and flying and stuff. That would be some pretty amazing and cool thingie, even if not the most useful one. He rules over thirty legions. In the Pseudomonarchia he also has the office of tamming all birdies for the sorceress and revealing to her the virtues and hidden powers of herbs, but there he only rules over twentynine legions, though.
Since he is a floating star i will not be, like, uploading pictures of him and stuff. I will, though, upload both his sigils... And was the plural of that Sigla or i'm mixing it up with something else? In any case you know what I mean. The first one from Duquette's, the second one from Mather's, even if in this particular case both aren't that diferent like the last one we did.
And also his sheet, though i will not be getting him until around this update's end. He has Tetraja, a spell that protects the party agains energy drain and maybe curses, and Tetra-karn, a spell that reflects all physical damage done to the party or the caster, i don't remember right now, back to the attacker. I mean, what the hell where they thinking! That's bloody evil, no punches pulled and no mercy given. You can't AUTO those creeps without running the risk of your party killing itself! And they are bloody everywhere in Shinagawa's upper floors, sob sob.
Leaving Decarabia aside, though, the second level will be a breeze to write about, even if i spent not a short time doing it. Look at the following image, for that's Shinagawa's second floor's floorplan. To get into the middle room with two outer doors and an inner one you need to find which of the rooms teleport you there, because the tiles in front of the outer doors teleport you to one of the side corridors you can see below. The other rooms either contain an Incense, a Trap, teleport you to one of the side corridors, or make you fall to the level below. If you are patient like this cat you will get some incenses and a Kusanagi-No-Tsurugi, whatever that is.
Once i did all that we go to the third floor. Look at the following image to make this one short. Each of the four rooms beyond which are two tiles i could not explore has a gate sealed by magic or, like, stuff in it. As you can also see, the corridors end in what is from one side a door and from the other a wall, so if you are attacked when going through those doors you can retreat, bloody sob. Right in the center of the level is the Mesian Head Church. Funny fact: Before entering i healed and prepared like i was going to fight one of the chapter's two main bosses. I didn't, because you can't fight Law Guy until you either defeat Chaos Lady or join her.
But let's keep going: The party kicks the door and run in the Head Church screaming bloody murder and preparing to go all the way back to a nice, warm, cuddly neutral alignment the hard way so the commanding Heavenly Cat can play with her Datenshi and stuffy stuff. They are being expected, though. Meet the Battle Pope, Bardon!
Yeah, Loa and some other guys can also do that one. It's great if you are a brawler, but if your main role is a caster you are screwed other than by saving you resurrection costs: You will need a priest or healer anyway because you revive without MP, though maybe God can get around that one with a Fiat Mana or something like that.
Aquino at least betrayed us to power and freedom, so it's all cool with him and we can keep being friends and, like, stuff. You are betraying us to the guy who went Global Thermonuclear War on our butts thirty years ago, pope guy. Really not smart of you.
Not being multikult is so totally not politically correct I'm almost tempted to join you just for the shock value, pope guy we used to be friends with.
Think of how many people went crispy when thirty years ago God went and decided to play Defcon with the real world and controling all players himself, and that includes your bloody girlfriend. Yeah, I thought so: Me being a silent protagonist is your only argument.That's not really a problem since God will be sending us a bloody diluge to finish cleansing the world of all unbelievers by this act's end, maybe because he doesn't want those evil might-makes-right Gaians to have all the fun genocide for themselves. Oooops, yes, you are right. Sorry, my bad: Metagaming's against the rules and all. Keep telling me about how great this Thousand Year Kingom thingie really is and how big a bleeding heart, caring humanist this God dude really is.
There's a question for you: What would God offers to the amazing Kuroi Neko instead of the traditional dark eyed damsels? Incubi? Cats? Archangels? What if our heroine prefers clear eyed rewards, would that be heresy since they actually mention the rewards must be dark eyed and thus that is God's heavenly will? Okay, okay, I'll stop before they kick down the door and burn me, sob-sob.
We now go to the fourth, and last, floor. There is nothing interesting here: Some teleporters, some rooms with alignment based traps, etc. The usual thingie. Look at the following screenshot.
Every time you enter one of the rooms on the points of the middle cross you get ported to one of the two-tiles long corridors, where you are hit by an alignment trap as you leave. One of the small rooms on the north part of the level teleports you to the center corridor, where you get an incense and some stuff in the two side rooms and then get teleported to one of the small trap corridors. The other one of the rooms up there i don't remember what it had: Either an incense or a trap or a whole lot of nothing. In one of those two niches at the sides of the central northernmost room we find the only unique thing about this level: Remember that renowned Demon Summoner we heard about while in Ginza? There he is. And in true Pokemon Trainer fashion he wants to duel with me, sigh.
Boys and their bloody toys, as they say. He has a pack of Nues, a pack of Sawobaks, and a pack of Barbegazi, a new kind of demon and, just like before, the last one is only one who can as much as scratch the paint of my current party. Again we defeat each of the two groups packs before they can even go blinkity blink, he talks a bunch before pulling the next Pokeball, and stuff. The Barbegazi survive, like, two turns, mostly because they have Maha-Bufu or something and thus freeze half my guys before they get a turn. They are weak to fire, though, so Archangel and Hobgoblin had a bloody party on the second, and nyahahaha last, one.
Cry me a bloody river. It's not my fault you are a moron and a jerk who watches way too much shounen crap, i just wanted to chat and ask you about the four directional oni guys. In any case he leaves the Four-door gem behind, so now we can go to the four shrine thingies and meet the four directional oni guys. We'll do that either next update or the one right after, depending on how long i want to make the next one.
I now Toraport back to the main hall and go to the Jakyo Mannor. I fuse the Zealot i got and my Kwanca into a Seirei Sylph, and then i use her to upgrade Yousei Hobgoblin into Yousei Troll. I also fuse Senri and Loa into a Youma Ongkot. Let's see, first, Troll's sheet: He has Bufula, Maha-Bufu, and Diarahan. He also has a whole lot of HP and a pretty hurty punch. If you do not know what kind of creature a mythological Troll is you are a lost case and as such i don't really care. As an amusing but totally useless bit of trivia, though, those Trolls are blue brutes just like The Dreaming ones, yay! Does someone of you know if this is a coinc... synchronous event, i meant, or if there is some obscure piece of lore where Trolls are blue ugly brutes?
Then we have the Ongkot. According to the Megami Tensei wiki thingie he is an Ape Prince from some Thai Epic i not even knew existed before, so i should be gaining a free rank on Lore: Obscure Asian Mythology because of this one. Way to go, me! He has a force spell and a bunch of buffs, raising the party's Attack Power and Defense. And he is, as far as demons of his level go, a fast creep, so he would actually be pretty cool if having ZIO or BUFU spells, but he doesn't so meh. I mostly got him for the defense buff.
Before leaving Shinagawa, Helena uses incenses for both Magic and Speed while Koneko does so for Luck. Those are their sheets as they go to Transmit themselves back to Ginza:
As soon as we reach Ginza we leave back to the crossroads we came across when travelling from Roppongi to Ginza, and then follow the corridor to the exit Aquino told us not to go through. Again, before reaching the overworld map we must fight our ways through a small dungeon where we meet a demon that we should have crossed a long time ago, when between Shinjuku and Roppongi, but by random chance we didn't and thus as a encounter he is now awfully underleveled but at least gives me an excuse to show his art. While going through this mini-dungeon we recruit another Loa, too.
That's one really ugly creep, i say. Some random encounters afterwards we find the exit, leave, and come to the overworld map, yay! First step we take, though, we meet with Aquino-Kun, and he isn't happy to see us.
*fooosh*
*fooosh*
I do not cast my lot with anyone, redish hell-judge thingie who was way lovelier and funnier in its Phantasmagoria of Flower View incarnation. It's the bloody alignment system who does, i am just an inocent victim of bigotred pigeonholing and, like, chauvinistic labeling and automated prejudice built into the way the system works, hai hai. So now just lecture me as your other you always does and let me go my way, there are universes to save and, like, stuff to do.
So totally not cute in this incarnation. Are you just, like, compensating because Pazuzu kicked your ass without even trying in Devil Survivor? How much HP did you take from him with your judgement thingie? I think it was measured in zeroes, nya-nya.
*fooosh*
So there we are, thrown in jail and due to be executed by dawn and stuff. That bigotred red guy with a holier-than-thou attitude was Enma Yama, the judge of the budhist underworld. Since those Budhist guys have a whole lot of hells and purgatories and thingies he must be super-busy and that would kind of explain the attitude, i guess. He gets around a whole lot: Anime, Manga, Videogames, etc. He also appears in Devil Survivor, where he kills a whole lot of sinful defenseless civilians off-screen and then goes get his butt handed to him by Pazuzu in a scripted scene and without even scratching the paint off Assyria's finest, so yeah.
Big though guy you are, Yama thingie.The Yama is way cooler in the zuniverse, though. Here, have a look and learn how it is done from the very best, red guy thingie.
First, she is not red and she doesn't look like she has an itch she can't reach. Second, she does not sentence people to death because, like, thingie should judge you after you are dead and not before. Third, she gives long and funny lectures, written by a japanese hopeless drunkard so it can get really weird, about how you are a bloody sinner and then some time later she visits you to see if you have mended your ways and to keep lecturing you so you don't need to end in one of the three thousands and fifty budhist hells. Fourth, she does all that while throwing lots and lots and lots of thingies you have to dodge so Pazuzu would need to really get his act together to evade her attacks instead of just yawning and owning the guy without even trying. Fifth, she has a lazy shinigami as an underling who is so lazy and stuff that the every sixty years the dead, like, go on strike or something because they have been left to pile up on the world of the living, and who defeats people by throwing lots and lots of magical money at them. So yeah, you go girl! Show he red guy how it is done!
Yes, totally WTF moment. I fail at humor and i know it, just live with it. Let's go back to prison: There is not a lot of space to move around, and Toraport does not work if you try to just escape the easy way and LOL at the Yama guy. You can talk with Helena or try the bars, and the bars do not work so we go talk with the Girl. We need to talk several times with her to pass time.
*walks around*
*walks around*
*walks around*
You are the dashing prince with the worse fashion sense, like, ever, but it is kind of cute the way he tries to use the saving his butt thingie as an excuse to let us out and then goes to warn us about Ueno like the carebear emo ninja he really is, nya. Once outside we start meeting new demons straight away, and riddle them full of holes. The first one is Yuuki Sanni Yaka and not even the Megami Tensei wiki knows who he is suposed to be. He has some poison power and stuff, we just AUTO the bleeding crap out of them each time they appear and move out since Helena can heal the poison thingie and she has a load of MP by now.
Next in the new demon showcase comes Touki Mezuki, the angry horsie of doomity doom. I recruit him and stuff, then look around the Wikipedia and the Megamipedia and the Googlepedia for something to tell you about him but no luck so far other than he is chinese and has a Yugioh thingie so he must be pretty famous among Obscure Mythology Nerds or something. His sheet, meanwhile, shows me he has a mean right punch, Zionga, and the critical skill but too little MP to use him as a shocker other than in emergencies, so it's straight to the COMP with him until I need a brawler. He also has the accuracy buff i will never use until i get to fight the sequel's main bosses, meh.
Then we come across a Chirei Sarutahiko we also recruit. I will quote from the Megami Tensei wiki because what i know of this guy would be otherwise summed up in one word: Nothing.
As a footnote i will mention he is called square-square-square-square-square just by people who like me and, i am willing to bet, most of fair Codexia doesn't have the Japanese fonts installed or something. Also, if that bit I quoted is to be believed, Fivesquares is such a bloody ogling dirty macho jerk so I'm regreting looking up his name. Finally, he is mentioned as having a third-rate side-part on Nocturne but he is so, like, totally forgetable I didn't remember anything about that until I read it in there so it's straight to the COMP with him. He has three nice spells and is a fairly good brawler so it is a bloody shame, i say.
Next in line we come across across Touki Gozuki, the angry cow of doomity doom, whom Wikipedia tells me is from the same chinese thingie the angry horsie was and, you guessed it, Google tells me he also has a Yugioh thingie. Other than that your guess is as good as mine so let's see his art and his sheet: He has Sibabu, so he can bind enemy demons while the other guys in the party laught at them and do bad things to them, and both the Fireball and Rampage skills. He also kicks backside in melee and has both good HP and STM so i will be taking him in the party for a bit since his two extras are good for against the endless stream of Random Encounters we get.
Since it seems we are in Furrylandia or something we also get of those Ongkots we already got through fusion back at Shinagawa and a Blue Fox thingies whose name I totally forgot to write down because i was too busy trying to cry away the fact he reflects physical damage back at you as a natural, permanent hability so you can't AUTO him and by the end of the current area we will had come across him a couple hundred of times, screw you Atlus. There, have his art and a screenshot where he even laught at us while he is at it, sobity sob.
Around this one floor, as well as the next one, we will be comming across a bunch of cells containing other victims of the Yama's harsh and unreachable itchy thingie. In this floor we find two inhabit ones: One by this kid...
... and one by this guy.
And really, the game threw my lot with those bloody zealots because I, like, wanted to give money to some random poor guy and I used a soul incense to free a girl who just was in the wrong place at the wrong time and I dislike to kill defeated thingies in cold blood and, like, totally inocent stuff like that? Since i already explored all of this floor i go down to the next one, and the first cell I visit has the creepy disabled stalker guy on it: At least the Yama's justice got a true pervert, right on!
No way, creep! Keep your distance, thank you. He then offers me to save, heals the party to max, and then tell me that to escape this prison i need to defeat a guy called Nio or something. Ta-ta, and stuff. I'm gone. Next cell in line contains a, let's say, champion of moral relativism...
Next door i try has a big Nio behind. I will not be making a round by round telling of the battle because he is suposed to be quite strong if you are not building attack plans made of ZIO and BUFU and Nerve Bullets. Since we do he never got a turn of his own, and in return for totally anihilating his backside Koneko and Helena got three levels each.
But we do not leave just yet since there are still thingies to explore and stuff. Appart from some empty cells we get a Mesian praying the bit about seventy two virgins wasn't just Bardon pulling his leg...
... and a guy who went vigilante against the demons.
With me geting angrier and angrier because that Yama retard throw me in with a bunch of murderous weirdos we leave and start exploring the rooms and corridors outside the prison, where we come across a kid who more or less explains to us where we are now and stuff.
This means we are either in the Sunshine 60 building or in the Sunshine City complex built around it, all in Ikebukuro. I don't think the building would survive a nuclear war, being a very tall skyscraper and all, but since it is build to resist earthquakes and thingies who knows? Both the Sunshine 60 building and the Sunshine City complex around it are built were once stood Sugamo Prison, and include all the kind of thingies you would usually expect to do when playing one of those Sims games were you build big-big towers, and then some, including a Yama and some thousand furry demons, yay.
We keep exploring, then go to the second floor and kill and loot and charm until we reach a door the game informs us leads to the Yama's court! It's payback time, Hell Boy! We kick the door and barge in, doing the bang-bang thingie and the Zio-Zio thingie and stuff. As soon as we are inside, though, I, like, go pale and panic, for I remember two very, very important thingies, sob sob: Thingie the first is that I had forgoten to buy magical artifacts protecting the party from Mudo spells and Energy Drain attacks since thanks to ZIO and BUFU i never had to worry of those during a boss fight. Thingie the second is that the Yama is immune to ZIO and BUFU.
By now i was going to just give up and re-do everything from Shinagawa, now stoping along the way to buy nine or so Anti-Curse thingies and call it a day. But then i remembered that this guy got his butt kicked by a very bored Pazuzu back in Devil Survivor, and i will not be put to shame within earshot of my very fangirled Assyrian and Babylonian and Akkadian demons. Also, our heroine's heroine would never retreat in face of injustice nor forgive any evildoing creepy thingie regarless of how strong it were! Here, have an inspirational speech by the best Megami Tensei character, like, ever:
Black Cat
Magister
Chapter the tenth, Who Yamas the Yama? (second part)
In which our heroine shows post-apocaliptic Tokyo why that saying about never meddling in the affairs of scorned witches came to be. She also kills a whole bunch of thingies, makes lots and lots of really bad jokes, and stuff.
So it's Magical Punishment Time for the Yama thingie, bloody nya! I quickly improvise a battle plan, and since i am a lucky cat i had Isora with me so I actually have a chance of wining even if not as i first planed, and then we start kicking redish butt in the name of the moon, etc. Since a brick has more sense of humor than the Yama, though, before we can even get our act together he casts Maha-Agion at my team: Werewolf takes 104 damage, Troll takes 212 damage, Gozuki reflects the attack for 105 damage to the Yama (way to go, angry cow! *cuddles*), Isora takes 47 damage, Koneko takes 85 damage, and Helena takes 41 damage. Then Helena shots him for 15 damage and puts him to sleep, yay! Koneko shoots for 23 damage, Werewolf does his Claw attack for 18 damage, Isora raises a wall of water to nullify the AGI spells, Troll slaps red thingie for 25 damage, and Gozuki uses his fireball spell for no effect since the bloody Yama is immune to almost everything and then some.
In the second turn Isora casts Diarama to heal Koneko, Helena shots for 15 damage and Koneko for 23 damage, Werewolf bites for 22 damage, Gozuki attacks for 30 damage, Troll attacks for 25 damage. The same happens the next turn, only this time Isora heals Werewolf instead and Koneko misses. And the fourth turn is also the same, only now Trolls get healed, this time no ones misses, and before the end of the Turn the Yama hits Gozuki, Werewolf, and Isora with his pointy Yama thingie, doing 98 damage, 108 damage, and 190 damage, respectively.
Isora opens the fifth turn by casting Diarama to heal himself. The Yama then casts Agirao on Helena but, lucky me, either the wall of water was still in place or Helena got a really good dodge roll. Everyone then does the same thing than in the previous turns. From the next turn onwards, though, Helena will be on DIA duty and Isora will keep recasting the Wall of Water each turn until the end, because it ending all of a sudden would mean my party getting a Game Over since the Yama's AGI spells do a lot of harm and we can't risk that since Justice can't be allowed to lose, etc.
So now Helena opens with a casting of Me-Dia, healing the group. In response the Yama casts Mudo, because he is a bloody jerk: Werewolf resists the spell but Gozuki goes back to the COMP. Everyone then does his thingie as always. Next round Koneko puts Ongkot on the field, the Yama throws more AGI our way but we laught at him, and stuff. The one after Helena puts the Yama to sleep with her Nerve Bullets, so everyone goes and kicks him in the head for three turns. Yama then opens the, i believe, eleventh turn with another failed Maha-Agion. The same happens in the next couple of turns: Yama casts an AGI, he fails thanks to Isora's wall of water, then we slap and punch and kick and shoot and call him funny names. After those turns Koneko and Helena somehow managed to put him back to sleep every time he was waking up, so thanks to the dice gods it was smooth sailing until the very end.
This battle shows that having the right party composition can make or break your game, even if the guy is so tought because he is more of an optional boss and you can leave Ikebukuro without facing him in mortal combat. Isora won this battle all by himself, even when Koneko and Helena's nerve bullets saved us one or two more Mudo castings: The Yama's AGI spells do too much damage for your healers to keep up with the party-wide varieties of the healing spell we now have, and the single target varieties are not, like, smart when you would be leaving most of your party in risk of dying next turn over. As a reward both Koneko and Helena gained three levels, yay! So thanks to our alignment being Law when we reached Ikebukuro we won six extra levels from the bosses alone.
As we are leaving the magically punished, beaten to a pulp and shot to pieces carcass of the underworld's judge we come across Aquino. He is having a fit about the Yama being such a wuss, maybe because he never got to play Devil Survivor before and thus it comes as a surprise to him this Enma guy was all talk and no action.
Now we go to the ground level and start interviewing the locals, as we always do, while we do some shoping and stuff. First we meet this old guy...
... this shabby-looking guy...
... and then, after finding the Jakyo Mannor and the Exit for later use, i enter the Gaian temple to not leave any tile undiscovered in the auto-map and almost got a stroke out of it!
I AM NO LONGER LAAAAAAAW, BLOODY NYA! :megasuperhappy: I don't know, nor care, why i am not, but i am not and thus i am made of happy stuff. First thing in my To-Do list, just after finishing mapping the ground floor, is to go and get me a bunch of Chaos Demons just out of spite. After saving at the local terminal and browsing the local armor shop i get a random encounter consisting of Chulruks and decide to try my neutral alignment, yay! The warm thingies fluttering in my heart almost make me cry!
Then we go back exploring and browsing stores. We come across some Gaian lady...
... then buy two Golden Guns at the Arms Dealer...
... then meet another bald Gaian guy...
... and then go straight to the Jakyo Manor to get us some Chaos Demons. First we put Archangel and Ongkot in the pot to get a Datenshi Decarabia to cuddle and fangirl and squeee...
... then we throw Troll and Fivesquares to get a Shuten-Doji, who is a big ogre-like Oni ruler who got his own anime and manga or, like, something. He is basically a very angry brawler with some buffs...
... and then we put Loa and Mezuki into the horadric cube to get a Kijo Dakini. She is one of those Asian Goddesses that are embodiments of concepts or thingies, like Dakshina is the personification of the act of repaying one's master by means of a quest or service instead of money or gifts and Soma is the embodiment of, like, Soma. Dakini, though, is the female embodiment of tantric energy or something like that, i'm not too sure since i always start running as soon as someone mentions that Tantra thingie. She has Maha-Agion and two skills i do not remember what they do so i will have to test them in some inocent random encounter.
So finishes the present update. Next time we meet our heros will journey to Ueno and Tokyo Destiny Land, meet a bunch of important characters, find Koneko's lost doggie dog, pay a visit to the four heavenly kings or whatever they are suposed to be, and pull another one of their Let's kill everyone with a name and call it a victory for neutrality, nya! acts. Then God will get all spoiled butthurt brat and sink the world, ending the second act.
'Til next time!
@ Ghostdog
I will study much harder to make Master Ethereal Dog proud. *bows, twiches ears*
In which our heroine shows post-apocaliptic Tokyo why that saying about never meddling in the affairs of scorned witches came to be. She also kills a whole bunch of thingies, makes lots and lots of really bad jokes, and stuff.
So it's Magical Punishment Time for the Yama thingie, bloody nya! I quickly improvise a battle plan, and since i am a lucky cat i had Isora with me so I actually have a chance of wining even if not as i first planed, and then we start kicking redish butt in the name of the moon, etc. Since a brick has more sense of humor than the Yama, though, before we can even get our act together he casts Maha-Agion at my team: Werewolf takes 104 damage, Troll takes 212 damage, Gozuki reflects the attack for 105 damage to the Yama (way to go, angry cow! *cuddles*), Isora takes 47 damage, Koneko takes 85 damage, and Helena takes 41 damage. Then Helena shots him for 15 damage and puts him to sleep, yay! Koneko shoots for 23 damage, Werewolf does his Claw attack for 18 damage, Isora raises a wall of water to nullify the AGI spells, Troll slaps red thingie for 25 damage, and Gozuki uses his fireball spell for no effect since the bloody Yama is immune to almost everything and then some.
In the second turn Isora casts Diarama to heal Koneko, Helena shots for 15 damage and Koneko for 23 damage, Werewolf bites for 22 damage, Gozuki attacks for 30 damage, Troll attacks for 25 damage. The same happens the next turn, only this time Isora heals Werewolf instead and Koneko misses. And the fourth turn is also the same, only now Trolls get healed, this time no ones misses, and before the end of the Turn the Yama hits Gozuki, Werewolf, and Isora with his pointy Yama thingie, doing 98 damage, 108 damage, and 190 damage, respectively.
Isora opens the fifth turn by casting Diarama to heal himself. The Yama then casts Agirao on Helena but, lucky me, either the wall of water was still in place or Helena got a really good dodge roll. Everyone then does the same thing than in the previous turns. From the next turn onwards, though, Helena will be on DIA duty and Isora will keep recasting the Wall of Water each turn until the end, because it ending all of a sudden would mean my party getting a Game Over since the Yama's AGI spells do a lot of harm and we can't risk that since Justice can't be allowed to lose, etc.
So now Helena opens with a casting of Me-Dia, healing the group. In response the Yama casts Mudo, because he is a bloody jerk: Werewolf resists the spell but Gozuki goes back to the COMP. Everyone then does his thingie as always. Next round Koneko puts Ongkot on the field, the Yama throws more AGI our way but we laught at him, and stuff. The one after Helena puts the Yama to sleep with her Nerve Bullets, so everyone goes and kicks him in the head for three turns. Yama then opens the, i believe, eleventh turn with another failed Maha-Agion. The same happens in the next couple of turns: Yama casts an AGI, he fails thanks to Isora's wall of water, then we slap and punch and kick and shoot and call him funny names. After those turns Koneko and Helena somehow managed to put him back to sleep every time he was waking up, so thanks to the dice gods it was smooth sailing until the very end.
This battle shows that having the right party composition can make or break your game, even if the guy is so tought because he is more of an optional boss and you can leave Ikebukuro without facing him in mortal combat. Isora won this battle all by himself, even when Koneko and Helena's nerve bullets saved us one or two more Mudo castings: The Yama's AGI spells do too much damage for your healers to keep up with the party-wide varieties of the healing spell we now have, and the single target varieties are not, like, smart when you would be leaving most of your party in risk of dying next turn over. As a reward both Koneko and Helena gained three levels, yay! So thanks to our alignment being Law when we reached Ikebukuro we won six extra levels from the bosses alone.
As we are leaving the magically punished, beaten to a pulp and shot to pieces carcass of the underworld's judge we come across Aquino. He is having a fit about the Yama being such a wuss, maybe because he never got to play Devil Survivor before and thus it comes as a surprise to him this Enma guy was all talk and no action.
Now we go to the ground level and start interviewing the locals, as we always do, while we do some shoping and stuff. First we meet this old guy...
... this shabby-looking guy...
... and then, after finding the Jakyo Mannor and the Exit for later use, i enter the Gaian temple to not leave any tile undiscovered in the auto-map and almost got a stroke out of it!
I AM NO LONGER LAAAAAAAW, BLOODY NYA! :megasuperhappy: I don't know, nor care, why i am not, but i am not and thus i am made of happy stuff. First thing in my To-Do list, just after finishing mapping the ground floor, is to go and get me a bunch of Chaos Demons just out of spite. After saving at the local terminal and browsing the local armor shop i get a random encounter consisting of Chulruks and decide to try my neutral alignment, yay! The warm thingies fluttering in my heart almost make me cry!
Then we go back exploring and browsing stores. We come across some Gaian lady...
... then buy two Golden Guns at the Arms Dealer...
... then meet another bald Gaian guy...
... and then go straight to the Jakyo Manor to get us some Chaos Demons. First we put Archangel and Ongkot in the pot to get a Datenshi Decarabia to cuddle and fangirl and squeee...
... then we throw Troll and Fivesquares to get a Shuten-Doji, who is a big ogre-like Oni ruler who got his own anime and manga or, like, something. He is basically a very angry brawler with some buffs...
... and then we put Loa and Mezuki into the horadric cube to get a Kijo Dakini. She is one of those Asian Goddesses that are embodiments of concepts or thingies, like Dakshina is the personification of the act of repaying one's master by means of a quest or service instead of money or gifts and Soma is the embodiment of, like, Soma. Dakini, though, is the female embodiment of tantric energy or something like that, i'm not too sure since i always start running as soon as someone mentions that Tantra thingie. She has Maha-Agion and two skills i do not remember what they do so i will have to test them in some inocent random encounter.
So finishes the present update. Next time we meet our heros will journey to Ueno and Tokyo Destiny Land, meet a bunch of important characters, find Koneko's lost doggie dog, pay a visit to the four heavenly kings or whatever they are suposed to be, and pull another one of their Let's kill everyone with a name and call it a victory for neutrality, nya! acts. Then God will get all spoiled butthurt brat and sink the world, ending the second act.
'Til next time!
@ Ghostdog
I will study much harder to make Master Ethereal Dog proud. *bows, twiches ears*
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