Let's Play Every Shin Megami Tensei Game In Order Of Release - Now Playing Shin Megami Tensei
- Thread starter Squirtodyle
- Start date
- Let's Play
Shin Megami Tensei - Part 3
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Immediately following the harrowing revelation that Hero's mom was murdered and impersonated by a demon, we have a little bit of housekeeping to do. Fortunately Ama-no-Sakugami ate the corpse, so that doesn't include her.
Having spent my turns summoning demons, I'm happy to see that they stick around after the battle—but then I remember that I'm about 80% sure that having demons out at all costs magnetite, and so I quickly return them to my stock.
I do wonder where they go when I do this. The COMP makes use of the Demon Summoning Program, which obviously allows for the summoning, dismissal, and translation of demons, but from Brownie's defeat and near-death earlier, we know we're summoning the exact same demon rather than having learned the specific spell or command to summon a Brownie. Do they get digitised and stored inside the COMP, like in some Digimon games? Or do we banish them back to the Abyss and call them up again when necessary? Are they in danger there, or does having a contract protect them in some way?
Questions that may or may not be answered—it'd be fun to run into Steven again and get a little more lore.
With that out of the way, I next check up my party formation and am a little disappointed.
Booo.
Despite the text following Hero's decision to take Pascal along saying he's part of my party, the formation shows only the three humans. We won't be setting up Pascal as a fourth party member this way. I switch to the Minions menus on the COMP to see if Pascal has been rudely, unjustly forced into that status, and I find two sets of bad news.
The economy is in shambles.
Firstly, no, Pascal isn't here. He may have joined my party, but he apparently can't fight in any capacity at all. For all intents and purposes it has no effect on gameplay that I can see, which is kinda lame even if that means there's a story beat coming with it since I doubt they'd give me the choice if they were going to actually do nothing.
Secondly, summoning demons costs money upfront, and probably magnetite to keep them out.
This is an absolute scam—I have a decent amount right now, but summoning Weredog would require me to grind out about four or five random encounters if I got unlucky with the distribution of enemies, which really sucks. I hope that there's gonna be some way to make money faster and in greater amounts soon because when the basic bitch Attack Knife costs 2500 yen and prices only go up from there, getting pocket change every battle is not gonna cut it.
Well, regardless—housekeeping done, mom dead, Echo building sus. We move out, and I check Pascal's usual spot to confirm that he's gone. He's with us in person, even if it's absolutely indistinguishable from being with us in spirit. Walking south of Hero's home, we run into the Psychotic Murderer Guy who once again tells us how happy he is that Hero is off the streets. Hits a little different when the actual murderer was probably inside Hero's home when they were stopped and arrested—they might have only been moments away from saving her life.
We push forward, clearing out a couple random encounters with no real resistance or anything interesting to talk about save for the fact that Noah and Adam are both much better equipped than Hero—both have guns, and both can easily outdamage them when using their specialties. I'm half-regretting the defense focused initial build now that I've got a real party, but it shouldn't be too hard to pivot. Upon entering the Echo building, Hero automatically uses the ID card, and…
Oooooh. Oh no.
It's no longer pulsating and undulating, but this is the same building the old man's vision took us to earlier. There are a good few floors here, and at the very end is Douman, who kicked our ass last time. The music knows that things have gotten serious too—we've switched to an intense, percussion-heavy beat with long, droning bass and guitar supplementing it. It's still a beat you can bop your head along to, but it's a more intense song than we've had most of the game so far.
I think this is the turning point, yeah? The party is together in reality, back in the spot we got a flash-forward to earlier with a preview of an absurdly strong boss, and we've just had the personal inciting incident of Hero's mother being murdered, with Noah's desire to find Mary and Adam's desire to protect Tokyo from demons driving the both of them onward alongside Hero. Something is bound to happen at the end of this, though I can only really guess as to what.
Then, as if to completely undercut everything I just said—the very second door I find leads to an elevator.
That was easy.
The damn thing actually works too, taking us up to the 5th floor immediately. Like any self-respecting RPG player, I spin my ass 180 degrees, march back into the lift, and direct it back to the ground floor. It'll take me longer, it'll be more of a pain in my ass, it'll drain my resources, but goddamnit there will be treasure here, and more demons to recruit. We're doing this dungeon properly!
Having said that, the first floor is a complete bust. It's absolutely empty except for everything but a random encounter with our first new non-boss demon in a while.
Gremlins are folklore creatures from the early 20th century, where they were created as a way to explain otherwise inexplicable malfunctions in aviation equipment.
It's a full moon so we're throwing hands, and unfortunately for Gremlin they're very big hands. It folds without too much trouble and gives very little EXP, though we get a nice 120 yen to soften the blow. I'll try sweet talk another one when the moon shifts phase again, but for now the only way is up. The second floor is similarly empty, only a single Brownie in a room to surprise us, and at this point we're stomping those.
I'm struck by how easy the game is so far, which is a weird feeling to have. The initial bit was about as brutal as I was expecting when I was outnumbered and outgunned, but having Noah and Adam on the party turn things into a cakewalk even without other demons—both have guns, which on occasion seem to hit all members of the enemy party at once, and both act as meat-shields to keep the damage away from Hero. Time will tell if this is just a case of a 1992 RPG not being that difficult on the whole for someone playing it multiple decades later, or if the game is lulling me into a false sense of security.
We're rewarded for our perseverance as we head up to the third floor, which gives us a treasure box.
A fancy treasure box at that.
There's an Amethyst inside, which I assume is mostly going to be used for selling, so I pocket it and move on. All the floors here are quite small, maybe a dozen rooms max, so while the entry hyped me up so far things are a bit of a breeze. Reaching the fourth floor and exploring a bit leads us to another treasure box, this one with an Intelligence Incense inside, as well as a set of four Gremlins. A failed negotiation leads to one shocking Hero with Zio, wasting their turn, and so Adam calmly unloads his gun into the whole pack, dealing 63 damage to each of the four Gremlins and killing them instantly.
Goddamn, Adam.
Right next door is another treasure box with 4800 yen inside, which handily more than doubles my current funds in one fell swoop, and the last room has a final treasure box with a Speed Incense in it. Unlike the others, this one I feed to Hero immediately—acting first is too good to pass up. As we backtrack, we run into another new demon.
Andreas is a Great Marquis of Hell in the Ars Goetia, notable for teaching those he favors to kill their masters, servants, and enemies, as well as having an owl's head with an angel's body. The design is replicated pretty faithfully here, albeit missing the black wolf he uses as a mount.
I immediately make a balls of negotiations and send Andras laughing along his merry way, and the Knocker that attacks me right after doesn't do anything to make me feel better about it. Oh well. The fourth floor has nothing left, so it's off to the fifth now. I'm definitely a little whelmed by this dungeon.
Just before I reach the door, I'm attacked again.
Kobolds are a folklore faerie-type creature of Germanic origin. Traditionally they're invisible household spirits, but certain stories talk about kobolds that live underground.
Some quick negotiation to the tune of about 1000 yen secures me a Kobold, and immediately after that another one attacks. Shin Megami Tensei has limitations in terms of how it can do multiple enemies in a fight—it seems to only be able to render one enemy on screen at a time, with additional copies represented by the icons above them. In the screenshot above, for example, whether I was fighting one Kobold or four would only change the number of flexing icons above. This also means they can't have two different enemies on screen at once—from what I've seen so far, I'll never be forced to fight a Kobold alongside a Knocker. It'll always be defeating the Kobold, followed by the Knocker spawning in immediately as a next wave.
It's an interesting limitation given how hard the games will later go on the importance of weaknesses and mixing and matching demons, but for the moment it's a bit simple. I beat up the Kobold, explore a little more, and run into an old acquaintance.
Yuriko assures Hero that with their power, they can do anything they set their mind to, so this one is very obviously the boss door. With that in mind, I turn around and start looting the rest of the place—which doesn't give me much save for a Luck Incense. I use it on Hero and realise that Incenses also max out the target's HP, so unless it's something like Speed I think I'll hold onto them as emergency healing options as well. We're almost at the door, but the elevator is still working, so we're gonna dip for a moment and do some quick shopping, saving, and most exciting of all—fusing.
As I make my way back, however, we have one last interruption.
Goblins originate from Middle Ages folklore around Europe, and have a lot of varying tales. Some of the most famous or distinct are the redcaps from the British Isles who die their caps with human blood.
Some money and magnetite later and we have a new member on our team.
Taking the elevator to the first floor, the first spot I go for is the mall, since I want to see if I can pick up a gun somewhere for Hero. Failing that, they can at least get a better melee weapon, because the Attack Knife isn't cutting it anymore. I wander around a little while, batting away Brownies and Pixies as they attack me, until finally I've entered every single room in the mall…except one.
I visited the Antique store a while back, and all it sold was prohibitively expensive items that I obviously couldn't see the use of, so I just forgot about it. In my exploration of the mall, I ran into that one guy who was yelling about how the Antique owner wouldn't sell him any of the "good stuff" again, and as it happens the good stuff is very good. The owner takes one look at Hero and seems to be able to figure out they'll need the help, so he opens up his full stock to us.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wick. It's been a long time."
Unfortunately I can afford none of it, so it's time to start pawning off some of my stuff. Beads go for 5000 a pop, and with the way combat is going in this game so far I take a gamble. Incense are basically Beads anyway, so I sell sell sell. By the time I'm done cleaning out some stuff, I can afford a "New Nanbu" and some bullets.
Guns seem to be broadly more powerful than melee weaponry, but aren't affected by Strength scaling and also require equipping bullets to work—you can see in the screenshot above that standard bullets cost 1500 yen, while shotgun shells are 4000 instead. The difference between the two is that the standard bullets add 2 power to the base power of the gun, while the shotgun shells at 10. This makes them pricier, but gives you a bit of scaling with your money, rather than your stats.
With the gun and bullets equipped, Hero's firearm power raises to 20, and firearm accuracy jumps to 26, well beyond the current accuracy of their knife. I'll be using my gun from now on until I find a better sword. As an aside, the "New Nanbu" is a misspelling of New Nambu, which refers to the New Nambu M60, a standard sidearm for police in Japan.
When all is said and done, we're broke but strapped, so I head over to my second stop—the freaky house in Inokashira park. Naturally, the second I step outside I'm attacked by another Thug.
It's really not, but we don't have a lot of options.
Well, the guns definitely work. As an aside, the Thug enemy is just a palette swap of the Yakuza enemies.
Onward we go.
The Heretic Mansion remains as charming as ever, the ominous organ droning on as the strange old man serenely informs us that this is a place where demons "come together", hah. Time for a bit of a crash course on demon fusion!
Demons in this game don't seem to gather EXP in any way, which means they can't learn new spells, boost their stats, or really grow in any regard. Our Pixie and Brownie will eventually get outmatched, and then they're not worth a whole lot. The solution is to make use of demon fusion—sacrificing two weak demons in a ritual to blend them together, creating a stronger third. The benefits are obvious, keeping my demonic allies ready for the threats ahead while ensuring that it never falls too hard to Hero and the other humans to keep things on track, but it does require a pretty constant influx of demons to keep going, since inevitably you end up with fewer demons than you started with.
Fusion is determined by the race the demon belongs to, and while I'm sure I could find a fusion chart and plan it out, I really don't want to bother with it, so we'll go in blind. The main limitation to fusion is that you can't fuse a demon whose base level is beyond yours—no scamming the system by using a broken combination of low level demons to jump to an endgame one that can play the game for you.
Now that that brief mechanics talk is out of the way, I go ahead and start up the fusion menu, where—
What is da dawg doin?
Pascal??????
So, uh, Pascal is here. Not particularly happy about him being labeled as a demon, but evidently his main use is to…be fused into something? I check to see what exactly we get with fusing Pascal with Brownie, and I can honestly say I was not expecting the result.
Buddy, where's head 2 and 3?
Jesus, a level 43 demon? I'm not even level 10!
We're given the status spreadsheet and I hit "yes fuse them please" as fast as I possibly can, partially to see if it'll actually let me fuse something more than four times my level, and partially because gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme-
And let me tell you, for being on the SNES on a game that is noticeably worse looking than other SNES games of the time?
It looks good as hell.
There's a lovingly detailed techno-mystical aspect to the whole thing, a digital magic circle glowing on top of a massive machine fed by numerous fleshlike tubes as our two demons are placed in enormous glass tanks, everything standing in front of a metal altar that looks like a bizarre mechanical ribcage and heart. Mysterious blue liquid, very well animated for a 1992 SNES game, floods each tank from below, and the demons slowly melt away as the liquid drains out through the bottom of each. The glowing intensifies and starts flashing faster and faster as the ominous drone increases in volume, until finally…
Cerberus was the guard dog of the land of the dead in Greek mythology. Famously, he had three heads, but some of the earliest artwork we find often gave him two or even just one.
A pillar of light explodes from the hexagram in the center of the circle, and our new demon is born. Shockingly, there's no downside. We have a level 43 Cerberus on our team for absolutely nothing, and everything I just said above was possibly nonsense—so I need to test it out. I try a bunch of potential fusions, and ultimately I'm able to come to a handful of conclusions.
Firstly—Cerberus, being Pascal's fusion, is special. He can't be used in any other fusion of any kind, which leads me to suspect that him being level 43 and fusible anyway is another special bit—I like this idea because thinking of Pascal loving Hero so much he willingly follows them despite being so vastly above them in terms of power is sweet.
Secondly, there is definitely a level cap.
The only demon I can make with the demons I have on hand, or at least the only demon that I can make that I don't already have in my storage, is the Brute Azumi, who is one hell of a looker.
Azumi is short for Azumi-no-isora, the name of a minor sea deity in Japan, said to be the ancestor of the Azumi people who were known for their skill at sailing and navigation.
Stats are whatever, but Media is the basic multi-target healing spell in Shin Megami Tensei games, and having just sold my Bead, I'm feeling like I could use a little of that support. I fuse away Pixie and Weredog…
Or, I try to.
So yeah, Cerberus is special, and we're locked out of any real fusion for the moment because the only thing I can get is either Goblin, who I already have, or Azumi, who is too powerful for me right now.
It's not really a big loss, but I was hoping to do a bit more fusion. Aww.
With our newly evolved doggo in step (metaphorically, he's got a CP value of 25 and I'm not made of magnetite), we make our way back to Hero's house to have a quick snooze and save, then back to the Echo building to finally confront Douman.
Fun fact, you run past the Psychotic Murderer Guy every single time you go up and down your street. By the fifth time he says it to Hero, I'm starting to wonder if he knows that it was Hero who got arrested and he's just being really passive aggressive about it.
In no time at all, we're back at the Echo building, and a quick lift to the fifth floor brings us right in front of the Terminal. Yuriko offers us some words of encouragement again, kindly not bringing up the fact that I made a beeline for the exit the last time we spoke, and we enter the Terminal room. Douman finds us and mockingly declares that we've come back, and we're given the option to try and escape. Hero, being a hero, chooses to stay and fight.
Once again…
The boss fight music kicks into gear, and I smirk as I prepare my secret weapon. With Strength in the mid-20s, Power topping 100, and a powerful Fire Breath ability, Cerberus will make short work of Douma-
FUCK
It costs thirteen-goddamn-hundred yen to summon Cerberus, and I'm flat broke, and the fight already started.
This one takes me a minute.
The battle begins in earnest once I collect myself, and neither side is pulling any punches. Hero shoots, Noah casts, and Adam slashes, dealing a respectable 40+ damage to Douman, who retaliates with Maragi, a multi-target basic fire spell that deals between 10~20 damage to everyone. Rough, but not unmanageable. The unmanageable part comes in when Douman casts Shibaboo, a multi-target spell that inflicts Bind on Hero and Adam, leaving them completely unable to act. This is bad, because while Noah knows the healing spells, it's Adam that knows the status restore spells—namely Patra, which cures any affliction one unit is suffering. Noah is on his own for a while.
Unfortunately, this leads to disaster.
Bind takes between 1 and 2 turns to wear off, and Noah can only attack or heal, not both. He outspeeds Douman, but can only heal once per turn, and Douman's Maragi spell is devastating to Hero and Adam both. It doesn't take long for Adam to keel over, and as Noah spends precious turns healing Hero, he gets targeted for physical attacks himself, leaving him at death's door, and very swiftly afterwards dead. Hero is next, and it's only a matter of time before we make another trip to that lovely river of the afterlife.
We call that "hubris", everyone.
I reload, and start grinding some cash. It'll take time, but there was no real indication that Douman was actually being meaningfully hurt by our attacks—I wonder if this whole setup isn't just a clever way of pushing the player into fusion by showing off an over the top example of it? It's a fairly common tactic in games to give some sort of early preview of a really strong ability, so it'd make sense, though that makes me worry about how they're going to take it away because obviously I'm not going to be able to keep a level 43 demon in level 10 territory, and if they kill Hero's dog too I'm going to be deeply upset.
That, or I'm coping because not summoning any demons at all was a terrible idea. Either or.
In no time at all, we're back in business.
You can see I've changed up my formation, though I'm not sure if it has any actual effect on things. The main benefit is that Cerberus is The Fucking Strong.
The battle begins again, and this time it's a lot more one-sided in our favor. Douman opens with Shibaboo which binds Hero, but everyone else escapes the effect. Noah hits around 20 with his Zan, Adam hits around 10 with his sword, and Cerberus, well.
Good doggy.
Cerberus makes mincemeat out of Douman. The battle is a slaughter, Cerberus dealing five turns worth of damage in a single blow, and I couldn't be happier about it. This is the real strength—friendship with a loving dog and the incredible amounts of violence they can output in defense of their adopted human. I even figure out that this game does, in fact, have elemental affinities, and I find this out by Cerberus reflecting back Douman's Maragi spell and dealing a nice chunk of damage back to him. It's no contest at all, and I'm kind of living for it.
Douman, on the other hand, is dying for it.
In hindsight, this would be eminently doable without Cerberus—I'd put Douman's health at roughly 400 or so, and with an Azumi and some other demons backing me up it'd have been grand.
We head north back into the Terminal after Douman's death, and find a strange machine.
Pascal doesn't like it very much.
As soon as we enter, Cerberus leaps at the machine and attacks it, causing lightning to rain down from the ceiling and Cerberus to vanish. Presumably, attacking the Terminal activated some kind of defense mechanism programmed into it by Steven, or maybe Douman, but either way—our best friend is gone. Not dead, most likely, but teleported elsewhere, or maybe sent to the Abyss given what Douman's goal was. I knew it couldn't last, but one boss fight was too little time to spend with Pascal.
Shine on, wherever you are. :C
Accessing the machine tells us that this is the Echo COMP Terminal, and those with valid COMPs can access it. This functions as a save machine, but also as a transportation device, as per Steven's original intent. When I open up the Transmit menu and see where we can go, there's only one, very interesting option.
Hell yeah.
I don't transport just yet, choosing instead to save and take a break for the moment. Douman might not have been hard, but that was only really because I thought the game might have been forcing me into using Cerberus—it's obvious that's the intended route, but it's hardly the only one. I'm getting the sense of difficulty that I was expecting now—bosses that require you to be on your toes and careful with how you build and strategise, because going at them guns blazing without overwhelming power will get you killed quick.
I'm a big fan, so that's a good sign.
Next time—we find out what's going on at this mysterious lab.
Having spent my turns summoning demons, I'm happy to see that they stick around after the battle—but then I remember that I'm about 80% sure that having demons out at all costs magnetite, and so I quickly return them to my stock.
I do wonder where they go when I do this. The COMP makes use of the Demon Summoning Program, which obviously allows for the summoning, dismissal, and translation of demons, but from Brownie's defeat and near-death earlier, we know we're summoning the exact same demon rather than having learned the specific spell or command to summon a Brownie. Do they get digitised and stored inside the COMP, like in some Digimon games? Or do we banish them back to the Abyss and call them up again when necessary? Are they in danger there, or does having a contract protect them in some way?
Questions that may or may not be answered—it'd be fun to run into Steven again and get a little more lore.
With that out of the way, I next check up my party formation and am a little disappointed.
Booo.
Despite the text following Hero's decision to take Pascal along saying he's part of my party, the formation shows only the three humans. We won't be setting up Pascal as a fourth party member this way. I switch to the Minions menus on the COMP to see if Pascal has been rudely, unjustly forced into that status, and I find two sets of bad news.
The economy is in shambles.
Firstly, no, Pascal isn't here. He may have joined my party, but he apparently can't fight in any capacity at all. For all intents and purposes it has no effect on gameplay that I can see, which is kinda lame even if that means there's a story beat coming with it since I doubt they'd give me the choice if they were going to actually do nothing.
Secondly, summoning demons costs money upfront, and probably magnetite to keep them out.
This is an absolute scam—I have a decent amount right now, but summoning Weredog would require me to grind out about four or five random encounters if I got unlucky with the distribution of enemies, which really sucks. I hope that there's gonna be some way to make money faster and in greater amounts soon because when the basic bitch Attack Knife costs 2500 yen and prices only go up from there, getting pocket change every battle is not gonna cut it.
Well, regardless—housekeeping done, mom dead, Echo building sus. We move out, and I check Pascal's usual spot to confirm that he's gone. He's with us in person, even if it's absolutely indistinguishable from being with us in spirit. Walking south of Hero's home, we run into the Psychotic Murderer Guy who once again tells us how happy he is that Hero is off the streets. Hits a little different when the actual murderer was probably inside Hero's home when they were stopped and arrested—they might have only been moments away from saving her life.
We push forward, clearing out a couple random encounters with no real resistance or anything interesting to talk about save for the fact that Noah and Adam are both much better equipped than Hero—both have guns, and both can easily outdamage them when using their specialties. I'm half-regretting the defense focused initial build now that I've got a real party, but it shouldn't be too hard to pivot. Upon entering the Echo building, Hero automatically uses the ID card, and…
Oooooh. Oh no.
It's no longer pulsating and undulating, but this is the same building the old man's vision took us to earlier. There are a good few floors here, and at the very end is Douman, who kicked our ass last time. The music knows that things have gotten serious too—we've switched to an intense, percussion-heavy beat with long, droning bass and guitar supplementing it. It's still a beat you can bop your head along to, but it's a more intense song than we've had most of the game so far.
I think this is the turning point, yeah? The party is together in reality, back in the spot we got a flash-forward to earlier with a preview of an absurdly strong boss, and we've just had the personal inciting incident of Hero's mother being murdered, with Noah's desire to find Mary and Adam's desire to protect Tokyo from demons driving the both of them onward alongside Hero. Something is bound to happen at the end of this, though I can only really guess as to what.
Then, as if to completely undercut everything I just said—the very second door I find leads to an elevator.
That was easy.
The damn thing actually works too, taking us up to the 5th floor immediately. Like any self-respecting RPG player, I spin my ass 180 degrees, march back into the lift, and direct it back to the ground floor. It'll take me longer, it'll be more of a pain in my ass, it'll drain my resources, but goddamnit there will be treasure here, and more demons to recruit. We're doing this dungeon properly!
Having said that, the first floor is a complete bust. It's absolutely empty except for everything but a random encounter with our first new non-boss demon in a while.
Gremlins are folklore creatures from the early 20th century, where they were created as a way to explain otherwise inexplicable malfunctions in aviation equipment.
It's a full moon so we're throwing hands, and unfortunately for Gremlin they're very big hands. It folds without too much trouble and gives very little EXP, though we get a nice 120 yen to soften the blow. I'll try sweet talk another one when the moon shifts phase again, but for now the only way is up. The second floor is similarly empty, only a single Brownie in a room to surprise us, and at this point we're stomping those.
I'm struck by how easy the game is so far, which is a weird feeling to have. The initial bit was about as brutal as I was expecting when I was outnumbered and outgunned, but having Noah and Adam on the party turn things into a cakewalk even without other demons—both have guns, which on occasion seem to hit all members of the enemy party at once, and both act as meat-shields to keep the damage away from Hero. Time will tell if this is just a case of a 1992 RPG not being that difficult on the whole for someone playing it multiple decades later, or if the game is lulling me into a false sense of security.
We're rewarded for our perseverance as we head up to the third floor, which gives us a treasure box.
A fancy treasure box at that.
There's an Amethyst inside, which I assume is mostly going to be used for selling, so I pocket it and move on. All the floors here are quite small, maybe a dozen rooms max, so while the entry hyped me up so far things are a bit of a breeze. Reaching the fourth floor and exploring a bit leads us to another treasure box, this one with an Intelligence Incense inside, as well as a set of four Gremlins. A failed negotiation leads to one shocking Hero with Zio, wasting their turn, and so Adam calmly unloads his gun into the whole pack, dealing 63 damage to each of the four Gremlins and killing them instantly.
Goddamn, Adam.
Right next door is another treasure box with 4800 yen inside, which handily more than doubles my current funds in one fell swoop, and the last room has a final treasure box with a Speed Incense in it. Unlike the others, this one I feed to Hero immediately—acting first is too good to pass up. As we backtrack, we run into another new demon.
Andreas is a Great Marquis of Hell in the Ars Goetia, notable for teaching those he favors to kill their masters, servants, and enemies, as well as having an owl's head with an angel's body. The design is replicated pretty faithfully here, albeit missing the black wolf he uses as a mount.
I immediately make a balls of negotiations and send Andras laughing along his merry way, and the Knocker that attacks me right after doesn't do anything to make me feel better about it. Oh well. The fourth floor has nothing left, so it's off to the fifth now. I'm definitely a little whelmed by this dungeon.
Just before I reach the door, I'm attacked again.
Kobolds are a folklore faerie-type creature of Germanic origin. Traditionally they're invisible household spirits, but certain stories talk about kobolds that live underground.
Some quick negotiation to the tune of about 1000 yen secures me a Kobold, and immediately after that another one attacks. Shin Megami Tensei has limitations in terms of how it can do multiple enemies in a fight—it seems to only be able to render one enemy on screen at a time, with additional copies represented by the icons above them. In the screenshot above, for example, whether I was fighting one Kobold or four would only change the number of flexing icons above. This also means they can't have two different enemies on screen at once—from what I've seen so far, I'll never be forced to fight a Kobold alongside a Knocker. It'll always be defeating the Kobold, followed by the Knocker spawning in immediately as a next wave.
It's an interesting limitation given how hard the games will later go on the importance of weaknesses and mixing and matching demons, but for the moment it's a bit simple. I beat up the Kobold, explore a little more, and run into an old acquaintance.
Yuriko assures Hero that with their power, they can do anything they set their mind to, so this one is very obviously the boss door. With that in mind, I turn around and start looting the rest of the place—which doesn't give me much save for a Luck Incense. I use it on Hero and realise that Incenses also max out the target's HP, so unless it's something like Speed I think I'll hold onto them as emergency healing options as well. We're almost at the door, but the elevator is still working, so we're gonna dip for a moment and do some quick shopping, saving, and most exciting of all—fusing.
As I make my way back, however, we have one last interruption.
Goblins originate from Middle Ages folklore around Europe, and have a lot of varying tales. Some of the most famous or distinct are the redcaps from the British Isles who die their caps with human blood.
Some money and magnetite later and we have a new member on our team.
Taking the elevator to the first floor, the first spot I go for is the mall, since I want to see if I can pick up a gun somewhere for Hero. Failing that, they can at least get a better melee weapon, because the Attack Knife isn't cutting it anymore. I wander around a little while, batting away Brownies and Pixies as they attack me, until finally I've entered every single room in the mall…except one.
I visited the Antique store a while back, and all it sold was prohibitively expensive items that I obviously couldn't see the use of, so I just forgot about it. In my exploration of the mall, I ran into that one guy who was yelling about how the Antique owner wouldn't sell him any of the "good stuff" again, and as it happens the good stuff is very good. The owner takes one look at Hero and seems to be able to figure out they'll need the help, so he opens up his full stock to us.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wick. It's been a long time."
Unfortunately I can afford none of it, so it's time to start pawning off some of my stuff. Beads go for 5000 a pop, and with the way combat is going in this game so far I take a gamble. Incense are basically Beads anyway, so I sell sell sell. By the time I'm done cleaning out some stuff, I can afford a "New Nanbu" and some bullets.
Guns seem to be broadly more powerful than melee weaponry, but aren't affected by Strength scaling and also require equipping bullets to work—you can see in the screenshot above that standard bullets cost 1500 yen, while shotgun shells are 4000 instead. The difference between the two is that the standard bullets add 2 power to the base power of the gun, while the shotgun shells at 10. This makes them pricier, but gives you a bit of scaling with your money, rather than your stats.
With the gun and bullets equipped, Hero's firearm power raises to 20, and firearm accuracy jumps to 26, well beyond the current accuracy of their knife. I'll be using my gun from now on until I find a better sword. As an aside, the "New Nanbu" is a misspelling of New Nambu, which refers to the New Nambu M60, a standard sidearm for police in Japan.
When all is said and done, we're broke but strapped, so I head over to my second stop—the freaky house in Inokashira park. Naturally, the second I step outside I'm attacked by another Thug.
It's really not, but we don't have a lot of options.
Well, the guns definitely work. As an aside, the Thug enemy is just a palette swap of the Yakuza enemies.
Onward we go.
The Heretic Mansion remains as charming as ever, the ominous organ droning on as the strange old man serenely informs us that this is a place where demons "come together", hah. Time for a bit of a crash course on demon fusion!
Demons in this game don't seem to gather EXP in any way, which means they can't learn new spells, boost their stats, or really grow in any regard. Our Pixie and Brownie will eventually get outmatched, and then they're not worth a whole lot. The solution is to make use of demon fusion—sacrificing two weak demons in a ritual to blend them together, creating a stronger third. The benefits are obvious, keeping my demonic allies ready for the threats ahead while ensuring that it never falls too hard to Hero and the other humans to keep things on track, but it does require a pretty constant influx of demons to keep going, since inevitably you end up with fewer demons than you started with.
Fusion is determined by the race the demon belongs to, and while I'm sure I could find a fusion chart and plan it out, I really don't want to bother with it, so we'll go in blind. The main limitation to fusion is that you can't fuse a demon whose base level is beyond yours—no scamming the system by using a broken combination of low level demons to jump to an endgame one that can play the game for you.
Now that that brief mechanics talk is out of the way, I go ahead and start up the fusion menu, where—
What is da dawg doin?
Pascal??????
So, uh, Pascal is here. Not particularly happy about him being labeled as a demon, but evidently his main use is to…be fused into something? I check to see what exactly we get with fusing Pascal with Brownie, and I can honestly say I was not expecting the result.
Buddy, where's head 2 and 3?
Jesus, a level 43 demon? I'm not even level 10!
We're given the status spreadsheet and I hit "yes fuse them please" as fast as I possibly can, partially to see if it'll actually let me fuse something more than four times my level, and partially because gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme-
And let me tell you, for being on the SNES on a game that is noticeably worse looking than other SNES games of the time?
It looks good as hell.
There's a lovingly detailed techno-mystical aspect to the whole thing, a digital magic circle glowing on top of a massive machine fed by numerous fleshlike tubes as our two demons are placed in enormous glass tanks, everything standing in front of a metal altar that looks like a bizarre mechanical ribcage and heart. Mysterious blue liquid, very well animated for a 1992 SNES game, floods each tank from below, and the demons slowly melt away as the liquid drains out through the bottom of each. The glowing intensifies and starts flashing faster and faster as the ominous drone increases in volume, until finally…
Cerberus was the guard dog of the land of the dead in Greek mythology. Famously, he had three heads, but some of the earliest artwork we find often gave him two or even just one.
A pillar of light explodes from the hexagram in the center of the circle, and our new demon is born. Shockingly, there's no downside. We have a level 43 Cerberus on our team for absolutely nothing, and everything I just said above was possibly nonsense—so I need to test it out. I try a bunch of potential fusions, and ultimately I'm able to come to a handful of conclusions.
Firstly—Cerberus, being Pascal's fusion, is special. He can't be used in any other fusion of any kind, which leads me to suspect that him being level 43 and fusible anyway is another special bit—I like this idea because thinking of Pascal loving Hero so much he willingly follows them despite being so vastly above them in terms of power is sweet.
Secondly, there is definitely a level cap.
The only demon I can make with the demons I have on hand, or at least the only demon that I can make that I don't already have in my storage, is the Brute Azumi, who is one hell of a looker.
Azumi is short for Azumi-no-isora, the name of a minor sea deity in Japan, said to be the ancestor of the Azumi people who were known for their skill at sailing and navigation.
Stats are whatever, but Media is the basic multi-target healing spell in Shin Megami Tensei games, and having just sold my Bead, I'm feeling like I could use a little of that support. I fuse away Pixie and Weredog…
Or, I try to.
So yeah, Cerberus is special, and we're locked out of any real fusion for the moment because the only thing I can get is either Goblin, who I already have, or Azumi, who is too powerful for me right now.
It's not really a big loss, but I was hoping to do a bit more fusion. Aww.
With our newly evolved doggo in step (metaphorically, he's got a CP value of 25 and I'm not made of magnetite), we make our way back to Hero's house to have a quick snooze and save, then back to the Echo building to finally confront Douman.
Fun fact, you run past the Psychotic Murderer Guy every single time you go up and down your street. By the fifth time he says it to Hero, I'm starting to wonder if he knows that it was Hero who got arrested and he's just being really passive aggressive about it.
In no time at all, we're back at the Echo building, and a quick lift to the fifth floor brings us right in front of the Terminal. Yuriko offers us some words of encouragement again, kindly not bringing up the fact that I made a beeline for the exit the last time we spoke, and we enter the Terminal room. Douman finds us and mockingly declares that we've come back, and we're given the option to try and escape. Hero, being a hero, chooses to stay and fight.
Once again…
The boss fight music kicks into gear, and I smirk as I prepare my secret weapon. With Strength in the mid-20s, Power topping 100, and a powerful Fire Breath ability, Cerberus will make short work of Douma-
FUCK
It costs thirteen-goddamn-hundred yen to summon Cerberus, and I'm flat broke, and the fight already started.
This one takes me a minute.
The battle begins in earnest once I collect myself, and neither side is pulling any punches. Hero shoots, Noah casts, and Adam slashes, dealing a respectable 40+ damage to Douman, who retaliates with Maragi, a multi-target basic fire spell that deals between 10~20 damage to everyone. Rough, but not unmanageable. The unmanageable part comes in when Douman casts Shibaboo, a multi-target spell that inflicts Bind on Hero and Adam, leaving them completely unable to act. This is bad, because while Noah knows the healing spells, it's Adam that knows the status restore spells—namely Patra, which cures any affliction one unit is suffering. Noah is on his own for a while.
Unfortunately, this leads to disaster.
Bind takes between 1 and 2 turns to wear off, and Noah can only attack or heal, not both. He outspeeds Douman, but can only heal once per turn, and Douman's Maragi spell is devastating to Hero and Adam both. It doesn't take long for Adam to keel over, and as Noah spends precious turns healing Hero, he gets targeted for physical attacks himself, leaving him at death's door, and very swiftly afterwards dead. Hero is next, and it's only a matter of time before we make another trip to that lovely river of the afterlife.
We call that "hubris", everyone.
I reload, and start grinding some cash. It'll take time, but there was no real indication that Douman was actually being meaningfully hurt by our attacks—I wonder if this whole setup isn't just a clever way of pushing the player into fusion by showing off an over the top example of it? It's a fairly common tactic in games to give some sort of early preview of a really strong ability, so it'd make sense, though that makes me worry about how they're going to take it away because obviously I'm not going to be able to keep a level 43 demon in level 10 territory, and if they kill Hero's dog too I'm going to be deeply upset.
That, or I'm coping because not summoning any demons at all was a terrible idea. Either or.
In no time at all, we're back in business.
You can see I've changed up my formation, though I'm not sure if it has any actual effect on things. The main benefit is that Cerberus is The Fucking Strong.
The battle begins again, and this time it's a lot more one-sided in our favor. Douman opens with Shibaboo which binds Hero, but everyone else escapes the effect. Noah hits around 20 with his Zan, Adam hits around 10 with his sword, and Cerberus, well.
Good doggy.
Cerberus makes mincemeat out of Douman. The battle is a slaughter, Cerberus dealing five turns worth of damage in a single blow, and I couldn't be happier about it. This is the real strength—friendship with a loving dog and the incredible amounts of violence they can output in defense of their adopted human. I even figure out that this game does, in fact, have elemental affinities, and I find this out by Cerberus reflecting back Douman's Maragi spell and dealing a nice chunk of damage back to him. It's no contest at all, and I'm kind of living for it.
Douman, on the other hand, is dying for it.
In hindsight, this would be eminently doable without Cerberus—I'd put Douman's health at roughly 400 or so, and with an Azumi and some other demons backing me up it'd have been grand.
We head north back into the Terminal after Douman's death, and find a strange machine.
Pascal doesn't like it very much.
As soon as we enter, Cerberus leaps at the machine and attacks it, causing lightning to rain down from the ceiling and Cerberus to vanish. Presumably, attacking the Terminal activated some kind of defense mechanism programmed into it by Steven, or maybe Douman, but either way—our best friend is gone. Not dead, most likely, but teleported elsewhere, or maybe sent to the Abyss given what Douman's goal was. I knew it couldn't last, but one boss fight was too little time to spend with Pascal.
Shine on, wherever you are. :C
Accessing the machine tells us that this is the Echo COMP Terminal, and those with valid COMPs can access it. This functions as a save machine, but also as a transportation device, as per Steven's original intent. When I open up the Transmit menu and see where we can go, there's only one, very interesting option.
Hell yeah.
I don't transport just yet, choosing instead to save and take a break for the moment. Douman might not have been hard, but that was only really because I thought the game might have been forcing me into using Cerberus—it's obvious that's the intended route, but it's hardly the only one. I'm getting the sense of difficulty that I was expecting now—bosses that require you to be on your toes and careful with how you build and strategise, because going at them guns blazing without overwhelming power will get you killed quick.
I'm a big fan, so that's a good sign.
Next time—we find out what's going on at this mysterious lab.
- Location
- Florida
- Pronouns
- He/Him
One thing that has always interested me is seeing how SMT slowly shifted away from the cost of summoning into battle and using your demons as a common limiting factor since it was absolutely something that is more on the infuriating side than any sort of real challenge.
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Oh, right, as a quick thing since I forgot to put it in the actual update—all the heroes have official art!
From the SNES era.
Oh boy is it ever wonderful. Meet the crew!
From the SNES era.
Oh boy is it ever wonderful. Meet the crew!
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Jesus christ.
"How do three teenagers chosen by God not have $30 between them?"
"They're- the economy's in shambles..."
Truly kinda sends me how, having an accurate yen-to-USD-to-AUD mental scale, I am now forced to picture you joining battle with a literal demon from hell and when you're done it explodes into under 2 dollars in change like it's a Scott Pilgrim fight. You ran his pockets and that MF didn't even have bus fare on him. That's why your shoes raggedy, Gremlin. That's why your baby got a glass eye you gotta wash with Windex. That's why your grandma got no knees.
I'd say the odds that the game will take Adam and/or Noah away from you the second you diverge from their respective routes is roughly 100%. Mary has done precisely jack and shit this whole first act, no way she doesn't slip in to fill the gap left by whoever runs away because you won't do the right Gatorade or Code Red flavoured warcrimes.
>be a japanese teenagerI visited the Antique store a while back, and all it sold was prohibitively expensive items that I obviously couldn't see the use of, so I just forgot about it. In my exploration of the mall, I ran into that one guy who was yelling about how the Antique owner wouldn't sell him any of the "good stuff" again, and as it happens the good stuff is very good. The owner takes one look at Hero and seems to be able to figure out they'll need the help, so he opens up his full stock to us.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Wick. It's been a long time."
>apocalypse is nigh, demons running rampant in the streets, martial law in effect
>go to the antique store and buy a gun for self-defence against fucking Beelzebub
>cannot buy alcohol due to being under 21
Me rolling up on the gates of Hell slowly loading 12-gauge buckshot shells into my revolver to show Lucifer that I mean fucking business.
Now that that brief mechanics talk is out of the way, I go ahead and start up the fusion menu, where—
Pascal??????
What is da dawg doin?
CLASS
Dog
Dog
Douman: "It smells like broke in here."The boss fight music kicks into gear, and I smirk as I prepare my secret weapon. With Strength in the mid-20s, Power topping 100, and a powerful Fire Breath ability, Cerberus will make short work of Douma-
It costs thirteen-goddamn-hundred yen to summon Cerberus, and I'm flat broke, and the fight already started.
FUCK
Hero: sobbing, crying, shaking, throwing up, frantically feeding Pascal yen coins like they're trying to buy the last canned coffee from a vending machine
We head north back into the Terminal after Douman's death, and find a strange machine.
As soon as we enter, Cerberus leaps at the machine and attacks it, causing lightning to rain down from the ceiling and Cerberus to vanish. Presumably, attacking the Terminal activated some kind of defense mechanism programmed into it by Steven, or maybe Douman, but either way—our best friend is gone. Not dead, most likely, but teleported elsewhere, or maybe sent to the Abyss given what Douman's goal was. I knew it couldn't last, but one boss fight was too little time to spend with Pascal.
Pascal doesn't like it very much.
Typical pet, you spend an exorbitant amount on them and the honeymoon period is amazing, then they see a computer wire and lunge for it like a wagyu steak and ruin your life.
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supersmall
Possibly a fae. Definitely a witch.
- Location
- inside your walls
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Good dog, best friend. Hi, it's me again, by unpopular demand. If you're reading this and you're not Squirt, tell him he's a nerd.
Oh geez, that's me. That's pretty much it. The term specifically originated from British RAF troops stationed across Malta, the Middle East, and India. How the term was coined is debated, but it was popularised by some pilot and now first-time children's writer called Roald Dahl. Wonder where that career went. We'll never know.
Love Pascal, hope he comes back. If he dies for good I'm deleting my account.
I was gonna end this by mentioning the peak 90's aura of the official protagonist art, but you beat me to it while I was writing this. Bitch.
Like our boy Orias, Andras also commands thirty legions of demons. If precautions aren't taken, he will kill the conjurer and all assistants. Sometimes he has a raven head, but I see the owl-headed variant more often. They should give him the dog back, every design is made better with a dog.
Kobolds are extremely similar to Brownies and Knockers. There are three major types; the first do household tasks and play malicious tricks if insulted, the second live in underground spaces such as mines and can turn into brick, the third live on ships and smoke pipes when not rescuing sailors. They're one of the pagan elements of Germany that largely escaped the spread of Catholicization. The name for cobalt also comes from Kobolds, as they were blamed for the poison and trouble brought on by the arsenic often found when mining the metal.
Also me fr fr. As Squirt said, the tales around goblins are varying since it's used as a term for several types of creature. The term comes from the Old French gobelin and Medieval Latin gobelinus, a demon haunting Évreux, Normandy back in the 12th century. It likely shared the same origin as the Kobold, but these guys are worse because they became French. Terrifying.
The biggest goodest boy of mythology. Cerberus came from a large family of multi-headed relatives; his father was Typhon with multiple snake feet, and his brothers were the multiplying=headed Lernaean Hydra, the three-headed Chimera, and the two-headed dog Orthrus. The actual origin of the name Cerberus, or Kérberos, is highly debated, ranging from "flesh-devouring" to "evil of the pit" to my personal favourite - "spotted".
That's just about it for Azumi-no-isora. A shinto kami of the seashore, ancestor of the Azumi people, and hired to bring the emissary Takenouchi no Sukune to Ryuujin.
Love Pascal, hope he comes back. If he dies for good I'm deleting my account.
I was gonna end this by mentioning the peak 90's aura of the official protagonist art, but you beat me to it while I was writing this. Bitch.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
How is Hero Japanese
The others look passably Japanese, but Hero doesn't even look anime, he just looks Middle Eastern or something
The others look passably Japanese, but Hero doesn't even look anime, he just looks Middle Eastern or something
Look what they've taken from you.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
If we're talking accurate yen-to-USD scaling, what gets me isn't any of the demon drops, its not even the prices of goods. What gets me is Hero's goddamn allowance. 10000 yen was $81.30 in 1992 USD.
Which is $180.07 in 2024 USD ($270.51 AUD). Even for a monthly allowance that is insane, particularly for a country in the middle of a huge economic downturn. Boy was upper upper middle class before shit started to go down.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
The kid owns a fuckin' arm-mounted computer in the 90s, his family must be rich as hell.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
The main character looks as if Lucas got out of The Wizard movie the nerdiest he could be while half-assing his "It's so bad" pose with the Power Glove. And I guess the girl is a gunslinger out of a cyberpunk version of The quick and the Dead.
I'm also not sure what to think of the very next artwork (out of 3 instances) being a BDSM furry adept.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
The weird thing is, that's BDSM furry's Nocturne design, not the one she has in SMT 1.I'm also not sure what to think of the very next artwork (out of 3 instances) being a BDSM furry adept.
- Location
- Northern Virginia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well. There's a reason for that. The original Devilman manga was a big inspiration for SMT.
Honestly, this is one of the coolest thing in SMT, imo. Breaking gameplay conceits because of the power of loyalty is honestly a great beat.
Shin Megami Tensei - Part 4
- Location
- Ireland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
First things first—the battles here have boosted our level up to 11, which means that now we can actually fuse Azumi. The battle with Douman was a pretty good warning as to how dangerous multi-target attacks can be in this game, so having a source of multi-target healing is going to be a godsend. Fortunately, we're not too far away from the Heretic Mansion, so I'll make a quick pit-stop back to Hero's place and nap to heal up and get rid of any statuses—Bind sticks around after battle, which is annoying—and then zip down there to get Azumi.
I also say hi to the Psychotic Murderer Guy, who at this point is just rubbing Hero's nose in it.
Pixie and Weredog fuse together nicely into Azumi, and along the way I notice that I have a Bead that I must have gotten from an enemy drop back in the Echo building. Full heals are nice, but 5000 yen is even nicer when I'm trying to bump up people's power, so I'll make a quick stop in the mall to pawn it off and buy some shotgun shells for Hero so they can load them up into the revolver they bought earlier.
God, I love how this game does guns and bullets.
Along the way, we run into another new demon!
Obatarion is…weird. The term is slang from the 1980s in Japan, combining the terms "obaa-san" for grandmother and the English word "Battalion" which was used as the title for The Return Of The Living Dead in Japan to create a word to refer to unpleasant older women. The demon Obatarian is taking the pun a step further and making this an actual zombie woman.
Being an Undead, it can't be spoken with, so we gun it down in the middle of the mall and move onto the Antique store. The shotgun shells bump Hero's Gun power up to 28, so we're making some strides here. Hopefully the new ammo with Azumi to act as a healer will be enough to get me through whatever's to come in the Lab, especially since I'm down Pascal for the foreseeable future. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the mall to the Echo building, so once I'm there I beeline for the elevator and jump to the Terminal. A quick save, and we hit Transmit on the Lab.
There's a quick cutscene that's mostly just zooming into the PC screen at the center of the Terminal, and then we arrive.
Oooh, green floors.
The lab is nondescript to start out, though it shares the same pumped-up soundtrack as the Echo building did. I don't think the two are considered the same dungeon, but who knows, maybe Douman was just a taste of what's to come.
The door immediately to my left as I enter has nothing but a quick encounter with some Kobolds and a Gremlin, while the door to my right has something a little more interesting.
I've been there, man.
The researcher shares the Zombie model and has been wondering what's going on in the outside world—it might be the case that the Lab is entirely sealed, and can only be accessed via the Terminal network? What the researcher says next seems to support this, in that he's forced to send all his data from the experiments he's carrying out here to the "main center" from the Lab. They're working on the Terminal system, and given that Douman was working on it from the Echo building end, things probably went badly wrong.
Wuh-oh.
It's a little interesting that demonic attacks of any sort seem to produce zombies as almost a byproduct—they don't seem to be separate demons themselves, but rather the actual reanimated corpses of the demon's victims. Maybe some kind of Abyssal energies seeping into the bodies from the demons, or maybe demons just have the ability to raise their kills? It'd be interesting to see more on how this actually works, though I imagine it's probably just "because it's the apocalypse, silly" in practice.
He warns us to hurry up and get out, with a startling amount of ellipses appearing in his dialogue. Entering again replays his text, but I think the idea is that he's starting to succumb to whatever it is that's zombifying humans—I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we came back this way after finishing up the dungeon and he turned into a Zombie encounter. Poor guy.
We move forward, and almost immediately run into a new friend, who has some very unfortunate ideas about what Hero and the boys are.
Orcs don't have a strict mythological basis, instead being a term invented by Tolkein for his works. There's really only one reference to any sort of "orc" in mythology or old literature, which is in Beowulf, where the "orcneas" are listed as descendants of Cain who are condemned by God alongside elves and giants.
The very friendly orc thinks that the squad are demons, and gives us an extremely warm welcome, happily congratulating us on finally making it to Earth, telling us to take it easy and get used to our new home since we must be tired, and praising us for our successful human transformation…
Or are we dancer?
We transition into a battle where we have no choice but to fight, so unfortunately the very friendly Orc has to die. The squad light it up and it does before it can even take a turn, so I actually have no idea what Orcs do in this game yet. Something to figure out later on when it becomes a random encounter I guess!
There's not much more on this floor besides a treasure box with 240 magnetite, so down the stairs we go. The first floor contains another Orc who starts an immediate fight with us after asking incredulously how the hell we actually made it to the lab in the first place, and it goes about as quickly as the first one did, with the added bonus of giving Hero another level up.
Just around the corner is a set of four rooms, each of which contains a pretty neat treasure. The first has a Vitality Incense, the second has a Luck Incense, the third has 320 magnetite, and the fourth and final has…
I never would have guessed.
Steven! He gives us a rundown on what's happened—the man named Gotou has taken control of the Terminal laboratory, which bodes ill for the enormous amount of demons currently swarming the place. There are only two real possibilities, and neither are fun: either Gotou has lost control of things, or he hasn't.
Steven then asks if the program has been useful to us, and we of course say yes, because it's the truth. He then asks if we're satisfied with the number of demons we can make our minions, and I say absolutely not because I can practically smell the free stuff he's gonna give me if I make a stink about this.
Worked like a charm.
Steven doesn't see through my ruse at all, never even realising I didn't so much as hit the original cap. I don't even know what it actually was, but whatever it used to be it's now two potential demons higher. Ordinarily I wouldn't condone complaining to get free stuff, but it's the middle of the apocalypse. Either it's justified so we can save the world, or we're already in hell so there's no moral punishment for giving an old man in a wheelchair a middling review of his life's work.
Beyond the area the Orc was standing guard in is an exit, so my theory about the lockdown seems to be shot—though that makes more sense in hindsight. After all, all the demons roaming the streets can't possibly have emerged from only the Echo building—people would have noticed. Wherever the lab is, it's possibly the main source of demonic activity in Tokyo right now, seeing as how the building is under demonic control and they're actively working on summoning more from the Abyss.
We emerge into the first new "world map" area in the game, Sendagaya.
It's a roughly 30 minute trip between Sendagaya and Kichijoji, so those Terminals are really putting in work.
Upon checking my inventory, I then find something a little strange. Evidently I clicked through a battle end screen too quickly or wasn't paying attention, because there's something called a "San-sets" in my equip screen. I don't actually know what this is, but I give it a whirl and and it is a doozy. Hero's attack power for the sword goes from 17 to 23, and their accuracy goes from 19 to 33. It's a massive leap up in effectiveness, especially since Strength is going to mean that damage scales higher as we level up more, so I'm eternally grateful to the Orc that I assume dropped it. You might not have wanted to help a human, but you sure did welcome me to Sendagaya the best way possible.
First off, we check the barricade to the south. There's no difference between it and the ones in Kichijoji, which means that it's very possible that the vast majority of Tokyo and its smaller neighborhoods are under individual lockdowns with no travel possible between them. How far has the demon threat spread, anyway? If it originated here in Sendagaya and has pushed as far out as Kichijoji, what are the odds that anywhere in Tokyo has managed to escape? As long as there's a single Terminal located anywhere in the city, demons seem to have an in.
It's a pretty grim thought. Unless and until someone shuts down the Terminal system, there's a potentially endless horde of demons that can emerge with no way of effectively containing them.
From the barricade I head straight north—it's a pretty big map already. Kichijoji's barricades meant that we were restricted heavily, but there seem to be fewer on this map, at least when it comes to the x-axis. It turns out that the reason for this is that we're actually in two connected locations, as I notice when I glance at the bottom right of the screen.
Shinjuku! This is where Mary is was headed, so chances are we'll find her somewhere here. I had intended to go into the buildings, but this is an RPG, so we're not going to risk going the right way straight away, are we? I back up and head down into Sendagaya again and start exploring.
…Is what I would say if there was anything else to Sendagaya. Going to the east just leads us back up to the eastern side of Shinjuku, so I guess we're going to Shinjuku after all!
We find a new demon along the way, which…look, I give up.
I don't know. I've got no clue where this comes from. My best guess is that it's some kind of awful pun that I'm just too intelligent to understand.
You know the drill, Undeads don't understand words so we approach with the universal language and get some EXP for our trouble. It's not too bad save for the fact that it attacks twice per turn and can paralyze the target, which Hero unfortunately falls victim to, but as it happens we're not done with the encounter yet.
Fukei, or rather Fuxi, has no relation to the Chinese deity Fuxi, which is spelled differently in Chinese. There's very little information about what Fukei actually is, so all I can really do is parrot the SMT wiki and tell you that it's a bird that lives on Mount Tai and war breaks out wherever it appears.
This would be a prime opportunity to talk, except with Hero paralyzed we can't actually negotiate. I'm left with no choice but to start gunning down Fukei and hoping I find another one soon. Once the battle is over, I pull up the magic menu and have Adam cast Patra on Hero to cure them…and then have Noah cast Paraladi on Hero when I remember that Patra seems to only cure minor statuses like Happy and Bind, rather than something like Paralysis which has a specific spell to cure it.
As we head up into Shinjuku, the map opens up a lot towards the east, letting us move all the way towards the neighborhood of Ichigaya. There aren't any buildings here so we're mostly just exploring for exploration's sake, but eventually we do hit more barriers and are forced to turn back. I guess the lockdown is going better than expected.
Not that much better, though.
Stabbing the zombie soldier to death after realising that guns aren't effective allows us to do a little more exploring, and eventually we're guided back to Shinjuku to actually progress things. It's not a total loss though, given that we got some more money, EXP, and even a Bead from the random encounters. I also get to see that Hero sometimes hits twice with their attacks, so that's potentially doubled their output when going up against enemies resistant to guns like the zombie soldier. Good to know!
There are a couple small yellow buildings with openings on them in Shinjuku, and entering them brings us to a tiny building with stairs that go down into what I think is a huge mall, but I'm not too sure. The first thing that happens when we descend is that we're attacked by another new demon.
Slimes originate from the first editions of Dungeons and Dragons. They were lifted basically wholesale for enemies in Wizardry, and then Dragon Quest used Wizardry as inspiration to take slimes as weak, early game monsters. The rest is history.
Being of the Foul race, talking is once again not an option. I'm feeling very violent today, basically every chance we get to find a new demon is one where we can't actually engage it in conversation. I'd like to recruit someone new soon!
Especially since the Slimes turn out to be incredibly resistant to physical damage of any kind—both Sword and Gun attacks from all three of our party are dealing single digit damage down in the 3s and 4s, which makes Hero effectively useless. The upshot is that they seem to be weak to magic, going down in two hits each from Adam and Noah's spells, both having learned the multi-target version of their damage spells along the way. The Slimes have low accuracy, but when they hit you really feel it—each deals about 20 HP worth of damage when they finally land a blow, pushing Hero and Adam to the 1/3rd HP threshold.
We win, but it's definitely the hardest random encounter I've had in a long while. Shinjuku isn't fucking about.
A quick bit of exploration finally brings us to our first human contact since leaving the lab, and it's…well, optimistic would be an understatement.
I agree, but not for the reasons you think.
Then she says something that makes me spit out my drink.
The WHAT forces???
We don't get much more than that, but that in and of itself is a hell of a lot. Martial law hasn't been enacted because of the demonic threat, or at least not just because of it—it's also because there's a goddamn coup going on in the middle of Tokyo. Is this Gotou's doing, whoever he is? The demons might be getting used as a distraction, or maybe even as footsoldiers if Gotou has people with the Demon Summoning Program. Things are escalating very, very rapidly.
My suspicion that this is a big underground mall is validated by the fact that I find a bar after very little exploration, and given the circumstances I start hunting around for more information. The place is an absolute goldmine of tidbits, with SDF soldiers off duty being willing to spill details like Gotou's right-hand-man being named Ozawa, the same guy who was beating the shit out of Adam when we first met. He acted like he disbelieved the whole thing about demons, but it turns out he's the main lackey for the guy who caused all this in the first place—though judging by the moderately respectful way the SDF soldier is talking about Gotou, maybe there's more going on than I thought originally?
We're then told that Ozawa is in a building north-west of Shinjuku, so that seems like a pretty smart place to go next once we're done exploring—and speaking of exploring, a little bit more and we meet another new demon.
Pyro Jack is the inexplicable early localization of Jack-o'-Lantern, which comes from an old Irish folktale. Stingy Jack, as he was known, lived a life of sin, but was able to trick Satan into promising to never take his soul to Hell. When he died, Jack was barred from Heaven due to his evil, and so he was cursed to wander between worlds forever, with only a candle inside a carved turnip to guide his way.
Fortunately for me and my desire to be at least a little less bloodthirsty, Pyro Jack is amenable to talking, and after a little magnetite and yen to sweeten the deal, agrees to become my minion. At level 9 and packing Agi, Maragi, and Agilao, the upgraded fire single target damage spell, I can definitely see Pyro Jack being a very helpful addition to the team when I need something killed dead. Back to the bar!
Oh, this is even worse than I thought.
So, I'm starting to get the shape of this. The SDF have enacted martial law, because they work under Commander Gotou, who appears to be in charge of the coup. Gotou might be augmenting his forces with demons to accomplish his takeover, while the Americans responded by calling in their army and invading Tokyo themselves.
Presumably they've been invited in by the official government after some portion of the SDF betrayed the official government and are trying to help Gotou coup the government, but still, this is a hell of an escalation. In the span of days, we've gone from police sirens at night to a foreign army placing the entire city under martial law to resist an attempted coup. We aren't rapidly approaching the Cool Zone anymore, we've landed smack dab in the middle of it.
Twitter would be going crazy if this wasn't set in 199X.
Checking out the bar more for the gossip than the drinks, I pass up on the opportunity to try some whiskey on the rocks and instead ask the bartender what's up lately. He helpfully informs us that it's not just the American army that's battling it out with Gotou's forces!
WHAT
Holy shit, it hasn't even been a few days! Mary is a goddamn menace, the instant she's separated from her boyfriend she takes over a resistance group fighting against Gotou, absolutely iconic. Hero and Noah have good taste.
We explore a little more and talk to an SDF soldier who reveals that the reason Gotou tried a coup is because he's worried that humanity will eventually destroy itself if it continues to live the way it's living now, which I can sympathize with but also I'm struggling to see where the "open the gates of Hell and allow demons to invade" part of the plan helps stop that. Finally, as we're leaving, a man interrupts us to ask if we've been looking for a woman. He can't help us directly, but he does push us towards meeting with a man called J.B. at the disco, who probably can. Excellent info! We've got a lead on Mary and on Ozawa.
The rest of the mall has a bunch of stuff in it, like shops with expanded inventories and more little tidbits of lore. Gotou's forces and the American army haven't gotten to the point of active conflict yet, but they're both pooling into Shinjuku and tensions are high. I also find a Knife and Survival shop, which I ignore for the moment because my current goal is to grab the same model of gun as Adam, which will ensure that Hero can also hit multiple enemies at once and make clearing the 4 and 5 enemy encounters much easier. Unfortunately the Shinjuku mall is a lot bigger than the Kichijoji one, so I'm left to wander. There are some interesting people here.
Immediately following this up, he laughs about how he's above suspicion because he'd be kidnapping men, then assures us that he wouldn't kidnap anyone anyway. Classy.
We also run into a new demon, which seems to be a little rarer than the other types.
Imps come from European folklore, where they're similar to faeries. While they currently have an association with demons and devils, some of the earliest stories played them as more mischievous or even benevolent rather than evil.
There's not much to say about this, it's a palette swap of Gremlin. What is much more interesting is the next demon we run into.
Jack Frost is a personification of winter in many folklore tales, with plenty of variations across different countries. Other versions include the Finnish Pakkasukko, and Sweden's King Bore.
The mascot of Atlus itself, Jack Frost. Naturally, I try to recruit it, and naturally, I bungle it. Jack Frost casts Bufu which freezes Hero solid, and Noah and Adam gun it down without hesitation. Freeze doesn't last after the battle at least, and the very next random encounter is a much friendlier Jack Frost who joins the party without much fuss. The one after that is another new demon.
Oshichi comes from a historical figure known as Yaoya Oshichi, who was burned at the stake for conspiracy to commit arson, and whose story inspired several plays.
Oshichi is not interested in joining, and more worryingly is absolutely immune to gunfire. It's resistant to sword attacks too, but not immune, and thankfully a lucky double hit from Hero seals the deal.
We continue exploring, and I really can't stress enough how absolutely gargantuan the Shinjuku mall is. I can barely find my way out, let alone to the places I need to go, so I'm going to abridge a lot of this so that the entire update isn't "and then Hero and company bumble about a little more". We learn that the Resistance is fighting both the American army and the SDF, and a little further on from the person that tells us that we find a Terminal and save the game, before heading back to the Echo building. If there is a gun shop in the Shinjuku mall, I wasn't able to find it, so I decided to cut the rope and just buy from the one I already know—pretty soon, I've got an MPS Machine Gun, which drops Hero's gun accuracy from 27 to 22 in exchange for a ludicrous upgrade in power from 28 to 44, along with multi-targeting.
With that in the tank, getting through the Shinjuku mall becomes a bit of a breeze—Hero and Adam are able to unload on all enemies with very high power every turn, and Noah is able to pick off anything that survives. Wandering through the labyrinth of the Shinjuku mall, we finally find the disco and enter.
That's not very disco of you, man.
Tensions are getting high. Wandering around, we find J.B., and unfortunately he doesn't have any direct information about Mary's whereabouts—Ozawa is hunting her down, but without any physical description, he and his goons have just been taking any woman named Mary. That solves the kidnapping rumours, anyway, though it means we have more work to do. Another patron of the bar darkly comments that they don't know what'll happen if things get rough for the American soldiers—they might go as far as a full invasion, or even drop nuclear bombs to get their way.
Some further exploration of the mall brings us to a familiar, friendly face.
Yuriko invites Hero for a cup of coffee, but unfortunately she's not the woman we're looking for. Down the road, we find the bar where all the American soldiers hang out, and…
I'm going to ignore everything about this and focus on the fact that the American ambassador is named fucking Thorman.
Every soldier speaks like this. We learn that Gotou's platform is that he'll use demons to make Japan an ideal country, and the Americans are opposing that. There's a lot of emphasis on how Ambassador Thorman is a just and righteous man, so you can guess what I'm thinking the reveal is going to be. I mean, the name is just so…subtle.
Eventually we run into a bar where a bartender starts asking us some questions, which I endeavor to answer honestly, suspecting that I kind of know what's up with this guy. Firstly, he asks if I have a demon summoning program, to which I say yes. He then asks if it's okay to let demons run around unrestrained, which prompts a "no" from me. Finally, he asks if it's wrong to call on greater powers to restore peace, which I say "yes" to. One neutral, one chaos, one law question, this guy is a neutral rep if I've ever seen one.
My suspicion is rewarded with a Bar Matchbook, which he assures me will allow me to find who I'm looking for. This is obviously a place where they recruit members of the Resistance, who oppose both the Chaos aligned Gotou forces who seek to use demons, and the Law aligned American forces who seek to punish Gotou for daring to use demons. We haven't received any specific confirmation of these alignments, but at this point with the Ambassador literally named after a god, I don't think there's much room for doubt.
With the matchbook in hand, and Ozawa's location in mind, I make my way out of the underground and head for the north-west of Shinjuku. We're taken to another house with the same coloration and background music as the Heretic Mansion back in Kichijoji, and then we fight another new demon.
Dryads originate from Greek mythology, where they're minor spirits of trees. They were very long-lived, but their life was tied to their tree, and if it died then they would shortly follow.
At first I fight it, until I see that it also has Media. After that, I pay as much as it takes to get Dryad on the team, which works out handily. I've got quite a squad in my back pocket now, and plenty of magnetite—I won't pull them out just yet, but I'm definitely giving some pretty heavy consideration to keeping at least one or two useful demons summoned. It's not too much further from there to the end of the house, where we'll find Ozawa, and hopefully a lead on Mary.
…Or so I thought. All that plays is the man seeming scared of us, and then we leave. I try again just to make sure, and the same thing happens. The Ozawa lead seems to have been a bust for the moment—he's not here, presumably because he's also out hunting down Mary.
Well, shit.
I head back into the underground because that's really the only place that I can go at this point, and I'm condemned to wander even more, which sucks. I'll cut out a lot of that because not much happens outside of random encounters that we clean up—spoiler alert, but Mary is hiding in the underground, just in an even more underground spot than the rest of the mall. Along the way, I check out the building to the north of the two entrances, and we tune into a fun broadcast.
He seems nice.
Gotou explains that civilization is rotten to the core, because the roots of civilization are built on the exploitation of the planet, Gaia. Humans mistreat and hate each other, and the world is filled with prejudice, poverty, and war. In order to provide the help that humanity needed to survive, Gotou awakened the demons, referring to them as ancient gods. He also warns that there is a true danger lurking behind the scenes that he awoke the demons to help prevent—the Japan Obliteration Project. Gotou proclaims that there are those who wish to obliterate Japan so as to pave the way for a new totalitarian regime where all humanity is enslaved under a dictator. The ancient gods have pledged to help him prevent this, and when he defeats this dictator, they will help him establish a utopia where man and demon live alongside each other in harmony.
This is a lot.
I don't know how much of this to take at face value, if any. Gotou's justification borders on ecoterrorism to start, but if there's any truth to the whole Japan Obliteration Project then his response kind of starts looking reasonable and proportionate. The caveat to that is that he provides absolutely no proof whatsoever—it could easily just be an excuse for Gotou to seize power himself through the use of demons while insisting that he's doing so for the good of all Japan. There's a lot to think about, but before I can come to any sort of conclusion I've gotta find Mary.
There are stairs towards the north-east of the Shinjuku mall that lead down further into the basement rather than up towards the street, and going down here is exactly what we need to do. A short bit of exploration through the dank underground part of the mall that you're not supposed to see, and we run into someone blocking our way.
It's the matchbook, naturally.
Directly ahead, we run into a man with a green coat and a cape, and Noah instantly assumes he's the resistance leader. The man corrects him and explains that they can't allow newbies to meet the leader, since they don't know who they can trust. He himself is interrupted by a girl's voice saying that she does trust us, and that we mean her no harm, so she's happy to meet with us. A little of humming and hawing from her guard, and we finally meet face to face.
You don't look as familiar as I thought you would.
The girl introduces herself as Mary, and Noah almost immediately says what we're all thinking—"Your name is Mary too?"
She's not the Mary we went looking for, but she is the Mary that we rescued from that ritual in the dream not so long ago. She remembers the dream just the same as the others did, which in hindsight is a fun bit of foreshadowing—Mary, Hero's neighbor, didn't remember the dream not because she was special, she didn't remember it because she never had it in the first place. We've always been working with multiple people named Mary, but the fact that the souls never showed their true real forms meant that they were able to disguise it.
I like this twist a lot, but I am worried about what's happened to Hero's friend Mary. Given that she was going to Shinjuku where all of Ozawa's men are hunting down women named Mary, the odds aren't great that things are going well for her.
Mary admits that her resistance can't stop the American army or Gotou's forces alone, and begs us for help—firstly by rescuing all the kidnapped girls who shared her name, and secondly by destroying Ozawa and his gang of thugs. It's the perfect bait to get both of Hero's friends helping—Noah wants nothing more than to find Mary, his girlfriend, while Adam wants to get even with Ozawa. I'm down with both of these, so the squad remains a squad for the time being. Hero agrees to help Mary, and everyone shares a smile as we pledge to aid one another.
So naturally, it all goes to shit.
Yuriko appears, teleporting past us all and grabbing Mary from behind, her arm wrapped around Mary's neck as she gloats about finally finding the real Mary. She declares that she's taking Mary to Ozawa, then disappears in a flash of light. The resistance is left dumbfounded and floundering, unsure of what they've just witnessed, but they bounce back quickly and all storm out of the hideout, on the lookout for their leader.
We're left by ourselves, and that's where we're gonna leave it off for this update.
This was absolutely insane. I was not remotely prepared for the sheer escalation—to remind you, when this update started, I was speculating about an attempt at quietly suppressing the demons through martial law that was failing because of the Terminal Networks. The coup plot, the involvement of the Americans, Yuriko's sudden betrayal, and the potential of the Japan Obliteration Project—all of these come out of left field in the best way. I'm loving the story here, and as things build up and up and up I cannot wait to see the payoff.
I also say hi to the Psychotic Murderer Guy, who at this point is just rubbing Hero's nose in it.
Pixie and Weredog fuse together nicely into Azumi, and along the way I notice that I have a Bead that I must have gotten from an enemy drop back in the Echo building. Full heals are nice, but 5000 yen is even nicer when I'm trying to bump up people's power, so I'll make a quick stop in the mall to pawn it off and buy some shotgun shells for Hero so they can load them up into the revolver they bought earlier.
God, I love how this game does guns and bullets.
Along the way, we run into another new demon!
Obatarion is…weird. The term is slang from the 1980s in Japan, combining the terms "obaa-san" for grandmother and the English word "Battalion" which was used as the title for The Return Of The Living Dead in Japan to create a word to refer to unpleasant older women. The demon Obatarian is taking the pun a step further and making this an actual zombie woman.
Being an Undead, it can't be spoken with, so we gun it down in the middle of the mall and move onto the Antique store. The shotgun shells bump Hero's Gun power up to 28, so we're making some strides here. Hopefully the new ammo with Azumi to act as a healer will be enough to get me through whatever's to come in the Lab, especially since I'm down Pascal for the foreseeable future. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump from the mall to the Echo building, so once I'm there I beeline for the elevator and jump to the Terminal. A quick save, and we hit Transmit on the Lab.
There's a quick cutscene that's mostly just zooming into the PC screen at the center of the Terminal, and then we arrive.
Oooh, green floors.
The lab is nondescript to start out, though it shares the same pumped-up soundtrack as the Echo building did. I don't think the two are considered the same dungeon, but who knows, maybe Douman was just a taste of what's to come.
The door immediately to my left as I enter has nothing but a quick encounter with some Kobolds and a Gremlin, while the door to my right has something a little more interesting.
I've been there, man.
The researcher shares the Zombie model and has been wondering what's going on in the outside world—it might be the case that the Lab is entirely sealed, and can only be accessed via the Terminal network? What the researcher says next seems to support this, in that he's forced to send all his data from the experiments he's carrying out here to the "main center" from the Lab. They're working on the Terminal system, and given that Douman was working on it from the Echo building end, things probably went badly wrong.
Wuh-oh.
It's a little interesting that demonic attacks of any sort seem to produce zombies as almost a byproduct—they don't seem to be separate demons themselves, but rather the actual reanimated corpses of the demon's victims. Maybe some kind of Abyssal energies seeping into the bodies from the demons, or maybe demons just have the ability to raise their kills? It'd be interesting to see more on how this actually works, though I imagine it's probably just "because it's the apocalypse, silly" in practice.
He warns us to hurry up and get out, with a startling amount of ellipses appearing in his dialogue. Entering again replays his text, but I think the idea is that he's starting to succumb to whatever it is that's zombifying humans—I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we came back this way after finishing up the dungeon and he turned into a Zombie encounter. Poor guy.
We move forward, and almost immediately run into a new friend, who has some very unfortunate ideas about what Hero and the boys are.
Orcs don't have a strict mythological basis, instead being a term invented by Tolkein for his works. There's really only one reference to any sort of "orc" in mythology or old literature, which is in Beowulf, where the "orcneas" are listed as descendants of Cain who are condemned by God alongside elves and giants.
The very friendly orc thinks that the squad are demons, and gives us an extremely warm welcome, happily congratulating us on finally making it to Earth, telling us to take it easy and get used to our new home since we must be tired, and praising us for our successful human transformation…
Or are we dancer?
We transition into a battle where we have no choice but to fight, so unfortunately the very friendly Orc has to die. The squad light it up and it does before it can even take a turn, so I actually have no idea what Orcs do in this game yet. Something to figure out later on when it becomes a random encounter I guess!
There's not much more on this floor besides a treasure box with 240 magnetite, so down the stairs we go. The first floor contains another Orc who starts an immediate fight with us after asking incredulously how the hell we actually made it to the lab in the first place, and it goes about as quickly as the first one did, with the added bonus of giving Hero another level up.
Just around the corner is a set of four rooms, each of which contains a pretty neat treasure. The first has a Vitality Incense, the second has a Luck Incense, the third has 320 magnetite, and the fourth and final has…
I never would have guessed.
Steven! He gives us a rundown on what's happened—the man named Gotou has taken control of the Terminal laboratory, which bodes ill for the enormous amount of demons currently swarming the place. There are only two real possibilities, and neither are fun: either Gotou has lost control of things, or he hasn't.
Steven then asks if the program has been useful to us, and we of course say yes, because it's the truth. He then asks if we're satisfied with the number of demons we can make our minions, and I say absolutely not because I can practically smell the free stuff he's gonna give me if I make a stink about this.
Worked like a charm.
Steven doesn't see through my ruse at all, never even realising I didn't so much as hit the original cap. I don't even know what it actually was, but whatever it used to be it's now two potential demons higher. Ordinarily I wouldn't condone complaining to get free stuff, but it's the middle of the apocalypse. Either it's justified so we can save the world, or we're already in hell so there's no moral punishment for giving an old man in a wheelchair a middling review of his life's work.
Beyond the area the Orc was standing guard in is an exit, so my theory about the lockdown seems to be shot—though that makes more sense in hindsight. After all, all the demons roaming the streets can't possibly have emerged from only the Echo building—people would have noticed. Wherever the lab is, it's possibly the main source of demonic activity in Tokyo right now, seeing as how the building is under demonic control and they're actively working on summoning more from the Abyss.
We emerge into the first new "world map" area in the game, Sendagaya.
It's a roughly 30 minute trip between Sendagaya and Kichijoji, so those Terminals are really putting in work.
Upon checking my inventory, I then find something a little strange. Evidently I clicked through a battle end screen too quickly or wasn't paying attention, because there's something called a "San-sets" in my equip screen. I don't actually know what this is, but I give it a whirl and and it is a doozy. Hero's attack power for the sword goes from 17 to 23, and their accuracy goes from 19 to 33. It's a massive leap up in effectiveness, especially since Strength is going to mean that damage scales higher as we level up more, so I'm eternally grateful to the Orc that I assume dropped it. You might not have wanted to help a human, but you sure did welcome me to Sendagaya the best way possible.
First off, we check the barricade to the south. There's no difference between it and the ones in Kichijoji, which means that it's very possible that the vast majority of Tokyo and its smaller neighborhoods are under individual lockdowns with no travel possible between them. How far has the demon threat spread, anyway? If it originated here in Sendagaya and has pushed as far out as Kichijoji, what are the odds that anywhere in Tokyo has managed to escape? As long as there's a single Terminal located anywhere in the city, demons seem to have an in.
It's a pretty grim thought. Unless and until someone shuts down the Terminal system, there's a potentially endless horde of demons that can emerge with no way of effectively containing them.
From the barricade I head straight north—it's a pretty big map already. Kichijoji's barricades meant that we were restricted heavily, but there seem to be fewer on this map, at least when it comes to the x-axis. It turns out that the reason for this is that we're actually in two connected locations, as I notice when I glance at the bottom right of the screen.
Shinjuku! This is where Mary is was headed, so chances are we'll find her somewhere here. I had intended to go into the buildings, but this is an RPG, so we're not going to risk going the right way straight away, are we? I back up and head down into Sendagaya again and start exploring.
…Is what I would say if there was anything else to Sendagaya. Going to the east just leads us back up to the eastern side of Shinjuku, so I guess we're going to Shinjuku after all!
We find a new demon along the way, which…look, I give up.
I don't know. I've got no clue where this comes from. My best guess is that it's some kind of awful pun that I'm just too intelligent to understand.
You know the drill, Undeads don't understand words so we approach with the universal language and get some EXP for our trouble. It's not too bad save for the fact that it attacks twice per turn and can paralyze the target, which Hero unfortunately falls victim to, but as it happens we're not done with the encounter yet.
Fukei, or rather Fuxi, has no relation to the Chinese deity Fuxi, which is spelled differently in Chinese. There's very little information about what Fukei actually is, so all I can really do is parrot the SMT wiki and tell you that it's a bird that lives on Mount Tai and war breaks out wherever it appears.
This would be a prime opportunity to talk, except with Hero paralyzed we can't actually negotiate. I'm left with no choice but to start gunning down Fukei and hoping I find another one soon. Once the battle is over, I pull up the magic menu and have Adam cast Patra on Hero to cure them…and then have Noah cast Paraladi on Hero when I remember that Patra seems to only cure minor statuses like Happy and Bind, rather than something like Paralysis which has a specific spell to cure it.
As we head up into Shinjuku, the map opens up a lot towards the east, letting us move all the way towards the neighborhood of Ichigaya. There aren't any buildings here so we're mostly just exploring for exploration's sake, but eventually we do hit more barriers and are forced to turn back. I guess the lockdown is going better than expected.
Not that much better, though.
Stabbing the zombie soldier to death after realising that guns aren't effective allows us to do a little more exploring, and eventually we're guided back to Shinjuku to actually progress things. It's not a total loss though, given that we got some more money, EXP, and even a Bead from the random encounters. I also get to see that Hero sometimes hits twice with their attacks, so that's potentially doubled their output when going up against enemies resistant to guns like the zombie soldier. Good to know!
There are a couple small yellow buildings with openings on them in Shinjuku, and entering them brings us to a tiny building with stairs that go down into what I think is a huge mall, but I'm not too sure. The first thing that happens when we descend is that we're attacked by another new demon.
Slimes originate from the first editions of Dungeons and Dragons. They were lifted basically wholesale for enemies in Wizardry, and then Dragon Quest used Wizardry as inspiration to take slimes as weak, early game monsters. The rest is history.
Being of the Foul race, talking is once again not an option. I'm feeling very violent today, basically every chance we get to find a new demon is one where we can't actually engage it in conversation. I'd like to recruit someone new soon!
Especially since the Slimes turn out to be incredibly resistant to physical damage of any kind—both Sword and Gun attacks from all three of our party are dealing single digit damage down in the 3s and 4s, which makes Hero effectively useless. The upshot is that they seem to be weak to magic, going down in two hits each from Adam and Noah's spells, both having learned the multi-target version of their damage spells along the way. The Slimes have low accuracy, but when they hit you really feel it—each deals about 20 HP worth of damage when they finally land a blow, pushing Hero and Adam to the 1/3rd HP threshold.
We win, but it's definitely the hardest random encounter I've had in a long while. Shinjuku isn't fucking about.
A quick bit of exploration finally brings us to our first human contact since leaving the lab, and it's…well, optimistic would be an understatement.
I agree, but not for the reasons you think.
Then she says something that makes me spit out my drink.
The WHAT forces???
We don't get much more than that, but that in and of itself is a hell of a lot. Martial law hasn't been enacted because of the demonic threat, or at least not just because of it—it's also because there's a goddamn coup going on in the middle of Tokyo. Is this Gotou's doing, whoever he is? The demons might be getting used as a distraction, or maybe even as footsoldiers if Gotou has people with the Demon Summoning Program. Things are escalating very, very rapidly.
My suspicion that this is a big underground mall is validated by the fact that I find a bar after very little exploration, and given the circumstances I start hunting around for more information. The place is an absolute goldmine of tidbits, with SDF soldiers off duty being willing to spill details like Gotou's right-hand-man being named Ozawa, the same guy who was beating the shit out of Adam when we first met. He acted like he disbelieved the whole thing about demons, but it turns out he's the main lackey for the guy who caused all this in the first place—though judging by the moderately respectful way the SDF soldier is talking about Gotou, maybe there's more going on than I thought originally?
We're then told that Ozawa is in a building north-west of Shinjuku, so that seems like a pretty smart place to go next once we're done exploring—and speaking of exploring, a little bit more and we meet another new demon.
Pyro Jack is the inexplicable early localization of Jack-o'-Lantern, which comes from an old Irish folktale. Stingy Jack, as he was known, lived a life of sin, but was able to trick Satan into promising to never take his soul to Hell. When he died, Jack was barred from Heaven due to his evil, and so he was cursed to wander between worlds forever, with only a candle inside a carved turnip to guide his way.
Fortunately for me and my desire to be at least a little less bloodthirsty, Pyro Jack is amenable to talking, and after a little magnetite and yen to sweeten the deal, agrees to become my minion. At level 9 and packing Agi, Maragi, and Agilao, the upgraded fire single target damage spell, I can definitely see Pyro Jack being a very helpful addition to the team when I need something killed dead. Back to the bar!
Oh, this is even worse than I thought.
So, I'm starting to get the shape of this. The SDF have enacted martial law, because they work under Commander Gotou, who appears to be in charge of the coup. Gotou might be augmenting his forces with demons to accomplish his takeover, while the Americans responded by calling in their army and invading Tokyo themselves.
Presumably they've been invited in by the official government after some portion of the SDF betrayed the official government and are trying to help Gotou coup the government, but still, this is a hell of an escalation. In the span of days, we've gone from police sirens at night to a foreign army placing the entire city under martial law to resist an attempted coup. We aren't rapidly approaching the Cool Zone anymore, we've landed smack dab in the middle of it.
Twitter would be going crazy if this wasn't set in 199X.
Checking out the bar more for the gossip than the drinks, I pass up on the opportunity to try some whiskey on the rocks and instead ask the bartender what's up lately. He helpfully informs us that it's not just the American army that's battling it out with Gotou's forces!
WHAT
Holy shit, it hasn't even been a few days! Mary is a goddamn menace, the instant she's separated from her boyfriend she takes over a resistance group fighting against Gotou, absolutely iconic. Hero and Noah have good taste.
We explore a little more and talk to an SDF soldier who reveals that the reason Gotou tried a coup is because he's worried that humanity will eventually destroy itself if it continues to live the way it's living now, which I can sympathize with but also I'm struggling to see where the "open the gates of Hell and allow demons to invade" part of the plan helps stop that. Finally, as we're leaving, a man interrupts us to ask if we've been looking for a woman. He can't help us directly, but he does push us towards meeting with a man called J.B. at the disco, who probably can. Excellent info! We've got a lead on Mary and on Ozawa.
The rest of the mall has a bunch of stuff in it, like shops with expanded inventories and more little tidbits of lore. Gotou's forces and the American army haven't gotten to the point of active conflict yet, but they're both pooling into Shinjuku and tensions are high. I also find a Knife and Survival shop, which I ignore for the moment because my current goal is to grab the same model of gun as Adam, which will ensure that Hero can also hit multiple enemies at once and make clearing the 4 and 5 enemy encounters much easier. Unfortunately the Shinjuku mall is a lot bigger than the Kichijoji one, so I'm left to wander. There are some interesting people here.
Immediately following this up, he laughs about how he's above suspicion because he'd be kidnapping men, then assures us that he wouldn't kidnap anyone anyway. Classy.
We also run into a new demon, which seems to be a little rarer than the other types.
Imps come from European folklore, where they're similar to faeries. While they currently have an association with demons and devils, some of the earliest stories played them as more mischievous or even benevolent rather than evil.
There's not much to say about this, it's a palette swap of Gremlin. What is much more interesting is the next demon we run into.
Jack Frost is a personification of winter in many folklore tales, with plenty of variations across different countries. Other versions include the Finnish Pakkasukko, and Sweden's King Bore.
The mascot of Atlus itself, Jack Frost. Naturally, I try to recruit it, and naturally, I bungle it. Jack Frost casts Bufu which freezes Hero solid, and Noah and Adam gun it down without hesitation. Freeze doesn't last after the battle at least, and the very next random encounter is a much friendlier Jack Frost who joins the party without much fuss. The one after that is another new demon.
Oshichi comes from a historical figure known as Yaoya Oshichi, who was burned at the stake for conspiracy to commit arson, and whose story inspired several plays.
Oshichi is not interested in joining, and more worryingly is absolutely immune to gunfire. It's resistant to sword attacks too, but not immune, and thankfully a lucky double hit from Hero seals the deal.
We continue exploring, and I really can't stress enough how absolutely gargantuan the Shinjuku mall is. I can barely find my way out, let alone to the places I need to go, so I'm going to abridge a lot of this so that the entire update isn't "and then Hero and company bumble about a little more". We learn that the Resistance is fighting both the American army and the SDF, and a little further on from the person that tells us that we find a Terminal and save the game, before heading back to the Echo building. If there is a gun shop in the Shinjuku mall, I wasn't able to find it, so I decided to cut the rope and just buy from the one I already know—pretty soon, I've got an MPS Machine Gun, which drops Hero's gun accuracy from 27 to 22 in exchange for a ludicrous upgrade in power from 28 to 44, along with multi-targeting.
With that in the tank, getting through the Shinjuku mall becomes a bit of a breeze—Hero and Adam are able to unload on all enemies with very high power every turn, and Noah is able to pick off anything that survives. Wandering through the labyrinth of the Shinjuku mall, we finally find the disco and enter.
That's not very disco of you, man.
Tensions are getting high. Wandering around, we find J.B., and unfortunately he doesn't have any direct information about Mary's whereabouts—Ozawa is hunting her down, but without any physical description, he and his goons have just been taking any woman named Mary. That solves the kidnapping rumours, anyway, though it means we have more work to do. Another patron of the bar darkly comments that they don't know what'll happen if things get rough for the American soldiers—they might go as far as a full invasion, or even drop nuclear bombs to get their way.
Some further exploration of the mall brings us to a familiar, friendly face.
Yuriko invites Hero for a cup of coffee, but unfortunately she's not the woman we're looking for. Down the road, we find the bar where all the American soldiers hang out, and…
I'm going to ignore everything about this and focus on the fact that the American ambassador is named fucking Thorman.
Every soldier speaks like this. We learn that Gotou's platform is that he'll use demons to make Japan an ideal country, and the Americans are opposing that. There's a lot of emphasis on how Ambassador Thorman is a just and righteous man, so you can guess what I'm thinking the reveal is going to be. I mean, the name is just so…subtle.
Eventually we run into a bar where a bartender starts asking us some questions, which I endeavor to answer honestly, suspecting that I kind of know what's up with this guy. Firstly, he asks if I have a demon summoning program, to which I say yes. He then asks if it's okay to let demons run around unrestrained, which prompts a "no" from me. Finally, he asks if it's wrong to call on greater powers to restore peace, which I say "yes" to. One neutral, one chaos, one law question, this guy is a neutral rep if I've ever seen one.
My suspicion is rewarded with a Bar Matchbook, which he assures me will allow me to find who I'm looking for. This is obviously a place where they recruit members of the Resistance, who oppose both the Chaos aligned Gotou forces who seek to use demons, and the Law aligned American forces who seek to punish Gotou for daring to use demons. We haven't received any specific confirmation of these alignments, but at this point with the Ambassador literally named after a god, I don't think there's much room for doubt.
With the matchbook in hand, and Ozawa's location in mind, I make my way out of the underground and head for the north-west of Shinjuku. We're taken to another house with the same coloration and background music as the Heretic Mansion back in Kichijoji, and then we fight another new demon.
Dryads originate from Greek mythology, where they're minor spirits of trees. They were very long-lived, but their life was tied to their tree, and if it died then they would shortly follow.
At first I fight it, until I see that it also has Media. After that, I pay as much as it takes to get Dryad on the team, which works out handily. I've got quite a squad in my back pocket now, and plenty of magnetite—I won't pull them out just yet, but I'm definitely giving some pretty heavy consideration to keeping at least one or two useful demons summoned. It's not too much further from there to the end of the house, where we'll find Ozawa, and hopefully a lead on Mary.
…Or so I thought. All that plays is the man seeming scared of us, and then we leave. I try again just to make sure, and the same thing happens. The Ozawa lead seems to have been a bust for the moment—he's not here, presumably because he's also out hunting down Mary.
Well, shit.
I head back into the underground because that's really the only place that I can go at this point, and I'm condemned to wander even more, which sucks. I'll cut out a lot of that because not much happens outside of random encounters that we clean up—spoiler alert, but Mary is hiding in the underground, just in an even more underground spot than the rest of the mall. Along the way, I check out the building to the north of the two entrances, and we tune into a fun broadcast.
He seems nice.
Gotou explains that civilization is rotten to the core, because the roots of civilization are built on the exploitation of the planet, Gaia. Humans mistreat and hate each other, and the world is filled with prejudice, poverty, and war. In order to provide the help that humanity needed to survive, Gotou awakened the demons, referring to them as ancient gods. He also warns that there is a true danger lurking behind the scenes that he awoke the demons to help prevent—the Japan Obliteration Project. Gotou proclaims that there are those who wish to obliterate Japan so as to pave the way for a new totalitarian regime where all humanity is enslaved under a dictator. The ancient gods have pledged to help him prevent this, and when he defeats this dictator, they will help him establish a utopia where man and demon live alongside each other in harmony.
This is a lot.
I don't know how much of this to take at face value, if any. Gotou's justification borders on ecoterrorism to start, but if there's any truth to the whole Japan Obliteration Project then his response kind of starts looking reasonable and proportionate. The caveat to that is that he provides absolutely no proof whatsoever—it could easily just be an excuse for Gotou to seize power himself through the use of demons while insisting that he's doing so for the good of all Japan. There's a lot to think about, but before I can come to any sort of conclusion I've gotta find Mary.
There are stairs towards the north-east of the Shinjuku mall that lead down further into the basement rather than up towards the street, and going down here is exactly what we need to do. A short bit of exploration through the dank underground part of the mall that you're not supposed to see, and we run into someone blocking our way.
It's the matchbook, naturally.
Directly ahead, we run into a man with a green coat and a cape, and Noah instantly assumes he's the resistance leader. The man corrects him and explains that they can't allow newbies to meet the leader, since they don't know who they can trust. He himself is interrupted by a girl's voice saying that she does trust us, and that we mean her no harm, so she's happy to meet with us. A little of humming and hawing from her guard, and we finally meet face to face.
You don't look as familiar as I thought you would.
The girl introduces herself as Mary, and Noah almost immediately says what we're all thinking—"Your name is Mary too?"
She's not the Mary we went looking for, but she is the Mary that we rescued from that ritual in the dream not so long ago. She remembers the dream just the same as the others did, which in hindsight is a fun bit of foreshadowing—Mary, Hero's neighbor, didn't remember the dream not because she was special, she didn't remember it because she never had it in the first place. We've always been working with multiple people named Mary, but the fact that the souls never showed their true real forms meant that they were able to disguise it.
I like this twist a lot, but I am worried about what's happened to Hero's friend Mary. Given that she was going to Shinjuku where all of Ozawa's men are hunting down women named Mary, the odds aren't great that things are going well for her.
Mary admits that her resistance can't stop the American army or Gotou's forces alone, and begs us for help—firstly by rescuing all the kidnapped girls who shared her name, and secondly by destroying Ozawa and his gang of thugs. It's the perfect bait to get both of Hero's friends helping—Noah wants nothing more than to find Mary, his girlfriend, while Adam wants to get even with Ozawa. I'm down with both of these, so the squad remains a squad for the time being. Hero agrees to help Mary, and everyone shares a smile as we pledge to aid one another.
So naturally, it all goes to shit.
Yuriko appears, teleporting past us all and grabbing Mary from behind, her arm wrapped around Mary's neck as she gloats about finally finding the real Mary. She declares that she's taking Mary to Ozawa, then disappears in a flash of light. The resistance is left dumbfounded and floundering, unsure of what they've just witnessed, but they bounce back quickly and all storm out of the hideout, on the lookout for their leader.
We're left by ourselves, and that's where we're gonna leave it off for this update.
This was absolutely insane. I was not remotely prepared for the sheer escalation—to remind you, when this update started, I was speculating about an attempt at quietly suppressing the demons through martial law that was failing because of the Terminal Networks. The coup plot, the involvement of the Americans, Yuriko's sudden betrayal, and the potential of the Japan Obliteration Project—all of these come out of left field in the best way. I'm loving the story here, and as things build up and up and up I cannot wait to see the payoff.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A little sad there was no way fool this guy or something, but I Guess that'd be kind of a lot of stuff even for a game about talking up demons.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
I think you got it in one, honestly. It's the apocalypse (Biblical) and the dead don't leave their bodies like they should because the day of judgement is coming. From all I've heard and seen SMT is very heavy on the Biblical stuff, as opposed to Persona keeping it on the down-low relatively speaking, so it seems entirely likely to me.
The very friendly orc thinks that the squad are demons, and gives us an extremely warm welcome, happily congratulating us on finally making it to Earth, telling us to take it easy and get used to our new home since we must be tired, and praising us for our successful human transformation…
Or are we dancer?
We transition into a battle where we have no choice but to fight, so unfortunately the very friendly Orc has to die. The squad light it up and it does before it can even take a turn, so I actually have no idea what Orcs do in this game yet. Something to figure out later on when it becomes a random encounter I guess!
I can picture this so clearly. Hero, Adam and Noah kinda looking askance at each other as the 5'11 orc rambles to himself utterly convinced that they're demons who changed into human forms, and by the time he finally realises he's duped himself the three of them are already absolutely ventilating him with a hail of gunfire like a Hot Fuzz gag.
Hashino you crafty devil you went back in time and left your calling-card like a Phantom Thief in your own right!
Immediately following this up, he laughs about how he's above suspicion because he'd be kidnapping men, then assures us that he wouldn't kidnap anyone anyway. Classy.
Jack Frost is a personification of winter in many folklore tales, with plenty of variations across different countries. Other versions include the Finnish Pakkasukko, and Sweden's King Bore.
The mascot of Atlus itself, Jack Frost. Naturally, I try to recruit it, and naturally, I bungle it. Jack Frost casts Bufu which freezes Hero solid, and Noah and Adam gun it down without hesitation. Freeze doesn't last after the battle at least, and the very next random encounter is a much friendlier Jack Frost who joins the party without much fuss.
Again I just so clearly imagine this as the first Jack Frost getting blasted to pieces like the opening of Robocop starring the Stay Puft Marshmellow man and then the second Jack Frost who saw the whole thing walks around the corner like "get a load of this guy-ho".
I'm going to ignore everything about this and focus on the fact that the American ambassador is named fucking Thorman.
Every soldier speaks like this. We learn that Gotou's platform is that he'll use demons to make Japan an ideal country, and the Americans are opposing that. There's a lot of emphasis on how Ambassador Thorman is a just and righteous man, so you can guess what I'm thinking the reveal is going to be. I mean, the name is just so…subtle.
Shut up, Bozo: STRONG FUCKING THORMAN
This is a twist I guess but honestly my initial reaction to it was just "...okay?" Like I didn't get the point of it so I was left wondering in a daze whether the game pulled the flipso-reverso just to prevent you from inevitably cucking Noah.The girl introduces herself as Mary, and Noah almost immediately says what we're all thinking—"Your name is Mary too?"
You don't look as familiar as I thought you would.
She's not the Mary we went looking for, but she is the Mary that we rescued from that ritual in the dream not so long ago. She remembers the dream just the same as the others did, which in hindsight is a fun bit of foreshadowing—Mary, Hero's neighbor, didn't remember the dream not because she was special, she didn't remember it because she never had it in the first place. We've always been working with multiple people named Mary, but the fact that the souls never showed their true real forms meant that they were able to disguise it.
And then Yuriko undercranked into the scene like a fucking stop-motion demon from Smiling Friends and kidnapped Mary in the span of what felt like five seconds and left everyone involved nonplussed, most of all me, so I guess I'm kneeling???
- Location
- Florida
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No looking Squirt
It still amazes me how on the nose they were initially with Thorman of all things
I don't know what you guys are talking about, I'm sure this Thorman reached his high political position through great campaigning, being responsive to his constituents and a progressive and efficient push to improve people's lives.
Well, either that or he has some weird and incestuous connection with an immoral lobbying group like big oil or something, one of the two.
Well, either that or he has some weird and incestuous connection with an immoral lobbying group like big oil or something, one of the two.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
He's an ambassador. He either got the position through years of underappreciated work at the State Department, or, more likely given this is not usually a high-tension ambassadorship, by making huge cash donations to the current president's election campaign.
- Pronouns
- He
They're pushing the limits of the console with this graphic design.
How many Mary's can there be in Tokyo anyway?
Also, I was not expecting things to get all geopolitical in here.
- Location
- Spain
There are 96000 catholics in Tokyo so i expect the answer is "a whole lot of them".
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Revlid
blob of bugs
- Location
- England
Bodycon is iirc a style of dress, referring to the same kind of figure-hugging one-piece worn by the, uh, Bodyconian.
So it's literally just... a zombie named for its presumably then-novel and in-style fashion choices. Like a Skinnyjeansian or a Yogapantsian.
So it's literally just... a zombie named for its presumably then-novel and in-style fashion choices. Like a Skinnyjeansian or a Yogapantsian.