It's the sequel where you fight god with Satan, Satan being originally on the side of god and not Lucifer, with a badass "not so fast genocider" speech.. This one law ending is where every demon and most humanity is killed and humanity loses free will. So in effect, SMT II law ending is actually ironic neutral where you convince the main agent of gods judgment that god needs to be judged after fighting Lucifer, and that's the coolest law ending in the series as far as I'm concerned.
It's the sequel where you fight god with Satan, Satan being originally on the side of god and not Lucifer, with a badass "not so fast genocider" speech.. This one law ending is where every demon is killed and humanity loses free will. So in effect, SMT II law ending is actually ironic neutral where you convince the main agent of gods judgment that god needs to be judged after fighting Lucifer, and that's the coolest law ending in the series as far as I'm concerned.
What?! That's not at all how the endings work out.
In SMT II, you literally kill everyone on the planet on God's orders. Then fight God for.....reasons? And the setting is a totalitarian Law-aligned theocracy! SMT I ending, humanity definitely still has free will. God's just running things.
In SMT II, you literally kill everyone on the planet on God's orders.
That's the thing: Satan takes them to (real) paradise, not the fake one maintained by the corrupt theocracy where they were actually in a matrix scenario while their bodies died or slaving away in mines while brainwashed. As Satan says, the world is far too far gone to save. That's actually not true, as per neutral and chaos endings but SMT3 is not even the same dimension so we don't know how that turns out.
Then fight God for.....reasons? And the setting is a totalitarian Law-aligned theocracy!
That's always the base state of the game. It starts as a theocracy because the SMT 1 neutral hero society got corrupted by fanatics. But after law ending it's a a theocracy without the basic asshole YHVH of SMT. And Satan fights god because he had a revelation YHVH is just another demiurge as far as I can tell based on the psx version extra scenes. But I also like the fan translation "fuck this criminal" sentiment.
SMT I ending, humanity definitely still has free will. God's just running things.
The psychotic egomaniac that starts all the apocalypses in SMT, including this game, is "Just" running things, after destroying chaos. Press X to doubt.
Judging by their personalities, Noah casts magic purely through the power of love, while Adam learned how to cast magic through the power of seething and coping.
In SMT II, you literally kill everyone on the planet on God's orders.
That's the thing: Satan takes them to (real) paradise, not the fake one maintained by the corrupt theocracy where they were actually in a matrix scenario while their bodies died or slaving away in mines while brainwashed. As Satan says, the world is far too far gone to save. That's actually not true, as per neutral and chaos endings but SMT3 is not even the same dimension so we don't know how that turns out.
Then fight God for.....reasons? And the setting is a totalitarian Law-aligned theocracy!
That's always the base state of the game. It starts as a theocracy because the SMT 1 neutral hero society got corrupted by fanatics. But after law ending it's a a theocracy without the basic asshole YHVH of SMT. And Satan fights god because he had a revelation YHVH is just another demiurge as far as I can tell based on the psx version extra scenes. But I also like the fan translation "fuck this criminal" sentiment.
SMT I ending, humanity definitely still has free will. God's just running things.
The psychotic egomaniac that starts all the apocalypses in SMT, including this game, is "Just" running things, after destroying chaos. Press X to doubt.
So fun fact some of the ports have extra content the sega cd and pc engine versions have extra cutscenes including showing the nukes exploding. The GBA version has items that give you flashbacks including showing how your mom got eaten namely the demon was disguised as a cop and claimed to be there to talk about hero and one where the protagonist gets pascal where it's implied they were depressed before they got him. I'm not linking them because I can only find compilations which include ones that are spoilers at this point. It's also mentioned in interviews that hero's parents are divorced.
Welcome back to Shin Megami Tensei, where last update we got told that the nukes dropped just offscreen by a thirsty old man.
To catch everyone up—En-no-Ozuno has been testing us, training us, or possibly both throughout our journeys throughout the Kongokai. We had to grab him Soma twice, fight off or convince phantoms that might be phantoms of our allies Noah and Adam to claim their unique weapons, and now we've gotta make our way to the eastern exit which will take us to Tokyo once again, albeit this time a post-apocalyptic Tokyo comparable to Hell itself.
Coincidentally, this map is also comparable to Hell itself.
The easternmost exit is very probably that blank square that was blocked off by a door almost exactly four squares to the east of the yellow dot that marks the party's location, which means we're going to the very outside. The Kongokai is sort of kind of maybe if you squint arranged in a ring of three concentric circles, where the southern exit takes us to the middle with the phantoms and the northern exit takes us to the outer ring with the exit. It's a bit of a roundabout trip, but with Noah and Adam back in the party it'll be a much more relaxed trip than going at it with just my demons.
I'll keep them on lock for the moment—summoning them changes my alignment and some of my most powerful are Law aligned, and I really want to make use of that Neutral sword that I got from En-no-Ozuno soon enough. Speaking of swords, I realise that I can only really make use of one of the three legendary weapons at once, so the game has to be telling me I can give the others to Noah and Adam and swap out their equipment, right?
DOWN WITH THE ANCIEN RÉGIME
Upside, Noah and Adam get some powerful weapons that make their regular attacks comparable to Hero's with the Gladius. Downside, I absolutely could have robbed Mary's Nerve Bullets and could have used them all this time if I'd just bought some regular bullets to swap out first. You can't directly unequip things, only swap or sell them, which is very much annoying me but hopefully it won't be too long until I get my next bullets upgrade and I forget all about how much stronger Mary's machinegun was.
It's at this point that I realise that I'm a clown and the north entrance is the one that gets me to the middle ring, and the south entrance that gets me to the outer ring. I make the walk of shame back to Goki and Zenki and at least heal and save for my troubles, then start going the correct way. The upshot of it is that Adam and Noah are at such a lower level than Hero that they get double EXP every time I beat a demon, so it's not too rough bringing them back up to speed. The trip to the door goes a lot quicker now that I'm actually going the right way, and my suspicions are confirmed when I see who's there to greet me.
I don't like those ellipses. I feel like they're the kind of ellipses you use when you're about to attack me to test if I'm worthy to pass.
Zenki continues to tell us that they're going to attack us to test if we're worthy to pass, and that we have to defeat them if we ever want to return home. Pretty standard setup, though I'm a little sad that En-no-Ozuno isn't testing us directly. That would have been fun.
Zenki opens the fight with a devastating Zionga, dealing 69 damage to Tan-Ki which equates to just a hair under half its total HP. Not nice. Even less nice is the fact that it inflicts Shock, which means that Tan-Ki's entire turn is forfeit. Ordinarily this would convince me that I need to focus down Zenki as soon as possible, but Goki isn't a slouch either, immediately casting Media and swinging my aggro right back around as effectively as any taunt skill. I don't like prolonged battles in this game, and I especially don't like prolonged battles where the enemy can just decide one member of my team doesn't get to play that turn. Goki is visually the weaker and smaller of the two, so I'm assuming the setup is Zenki being a powerful beatstick and Goki being the trickier magic-focused support. Cut out the support, and I should be able to heal my way through anything Zenki can throw at me.
I eat those words immediately when Zenki uses a critical attack that deals 80 damage to Tan-Ki, killing it instantly. Goki itself deals about 40 damage with its physicals, so yeah, holy shit these guys aren't playing around. Zenki fortunately continues to target Hero now that Tan-Ki is dead, which costs me a turn and Hero about 50 HP, but they've got enough to spare and the main damage is coming from Noah spamming Zanma every turn. A few more turns, in fact, and Noah is able to kill Goki with another Zanma, removing the healing from the equation and a little bit more—midway through the assault, Goki casts Makajama, which has a chance of silencing the whole team. It only hits on Adam, which is not the best case scenario (that'd be Hero, who can't use magic anyway) but means that Noah is free to cast with impunity. Had that spell triggered on Noah as well or instead, I'd be restarting the right by now.
Zenki reminds me that I might still have to by the time things are finished, because his critical attack deals 77 damage to Hero, who has by far the best defenses of the entire team. Adam could probably soak a hit, but if he targets Noah I half feel like that'll just kill him outright from his max HP of 90. I end up using one of the Beads I was given by demons for chatting to them while having another of their species on my team to heal Hero so Noah can continue to fire off Zanmas, because at this point I need to burn Zenki down ASAP.
As it happens, Zenki doesn't like it that much.
Holy shit.
Zenki's critical hit deals 140% of Noah's max HP, sending our beloved Law Hero to the fucking Shadow Realm. I don't have any way of reviving people mid-battle since Cerberus is the only demon I've seen with the Samarecarm skill, so at this point it's really just down to whether or not Zenki is fragile enough to go down to Hero and Adam beating it over the head. I, uh, I don't give it good odds.
This is salvageable, I'm sure.
Zenki cleans our clock, and I go back to the drawing board—or rather I would, but that was a fairly close run and I was using only one of my more defensive focused demons. After I reload, I do a bit of shifting and swapping, and end up with a full squad ready for some payback.
This time around, it's a cakewalk in my favor. Zenki is not immune to Marin Karin, so Nekomata easily charms it turn one and leaves it to start beating its own face in with critical hits. Meanwhile, I have five people beating Goki over the head, and as per the last fight it wasn't particularly tanky, just filled with annoying stuff like healing and silence spells. The main worry comes when Goki attacks and deals about 60 damage to Noah, Nekomata, and Apsaras in one shot, but that's easy enough to heal away without losing much of the damage potential when I've got three demons up and ready.
Goki goes down one turn later, but not before leaving me with an extremely unfortunate turn of events to deal with—it turns out that the last thing it knew was Tarukaja, which boosts it and Zenki's attack. The game also doesn't provide little icons for bosses, which means there's no way of knowing when a boss has broken free of a multi-turn status like Charm. I'm left to watch as Zenki caves in Adam's face, dealing exactly 128 damage with a critical attack, which just so happens to be Adam's max HP. It's a sting, but it's nowhere near enough to put me in danger of actually losing since Zenki was obligingly lowering its own HP every time it punched itself with Charm in play.
Adam is going to be so pissy when he realises he lost out on the multiplied boss EXP.
Noah levels up six times and I seriously consider restarting the fight to try to let Adam survive. I don't, in the end, but I was sorely tempted. Goki and Zenki vanish without a last word, and the door behind them opens, revealing En-no-Ozuno once more.
You could try to sound a little happy we passed your test.
He warns us not to be shocked when we see how much the world has changed, heals us all up to max HP which includes reviving Adam, and everything goes black.
When we come to, we're somewhere almost familiar.
The vast majority of the buildings have been shattered or just outright obliterated, and most of what's left is in a state of ruin or disrepair. The roads have been broken and we're no longer forced to travel along them, and while there does appear to be at least some greenery the vast majority of the world around us seems like it's just dead. Progressing a little further north results in our first encounter with this new world's inhabitants, and it's an interesting one.
Influenced Gained: Kreia. Influence Lost: Kreia.
He begs us for some spare change because he hasn't eaten in days, which tells us a lot about the new world. Firstly, people are still around. Good sign! Secondly, capitalism is still around. Not such a good sign!
Jokes aside, the fact that currency is accepted in this world for things like food suggests that some semblance of civilization has survived, albeit perhaps not very organised. I'd expect a post-apocalyptic society to be operating on barter or rationing rather than just raw money, since that implies that there are people producing some kind of currency and that employment is an actual thing—I actually recall reading a book series when I was a child about a bunch of kids getting stuck in an isolated area by a magic barrier for more than a year, and partway through they found some gold bars and used a blowtorch and some bullet moulds to turn them into an agreed upon currency to help with governing, so maybe something similar has happened here? I can't imagine that the yen is worth much.
We're given the choice to give the man money or not, and when I choose to say yes, well, Adam has opinions.
That awkward moment where you realise the friend you made a couple weeks ago was just really good at hiding his powerlevel.
Hero ignores him, hands over some money, and receives some heartfelt thanks.
Sorry, what I meant to say was that the yen absolutely isn't worth anything now, the new currency is something called "Macca", and we just tried to give a beggar Monopoly money. Flash forward from the future here, "macca" is the currency used by most of the SMT games that I've played, so I was honestly a little shocked when we opened up with just yen. It's a fun touch that the pre-nuke world would obviously run on regular currency, but it unfortunately means that the 110K yen I have stored up is probably worth diddly-squat. Maybe we'll find someone who'll exchange it, but I expect the exchange rate is going to be brutal.
The shabby-looking man helpfully and calmly informs us that macca can be exchanged for goods and services, and wishes us well by noting our own destitute state and praying that we find gainful employment.
He's got such a way with words.
Jokes aside, Ozawa survived and seems to have set himself up as some kind of petty lord in Shinjuku. It's not that big of a surprise in hindsight—while his demon wasn't that tough to kill with Hama, it was ultimately more powerful than most around that time, and his main competition was Gotou. With Gotou dead and the American army likely scattered post-nuke, a relatively middle-of-the-pack Demon Summoner like Ozawa would be in the perfect position to carve himself out a piece of the post-apocalypse pie.
In an extremely funny twist, the man seems to notice the squad's confusion and actually puts his rants on hold to give us detailed directions to the place he just told us he hopes we get enslaved in. He stresses again that the yen is now worthless, and then all my hopes and dreams are absolutely obliterated when the status screen pops up on the top-left corner and my hard-earned cash evaporates in stacks of 1000 at a time.
I don't think paper is all that worthless, but I get the gist.
And yes, that means sitting through the entire thing. At about 4000 yen vanishing per second, that's roughly a full thirty seconds of me sitting around watching my wallet empty like I'm betting on BBBY. The only upside, if I can call it one, is that it stops at 14444 yen and the guy tells me to get the hell outta there. It's the best advice I've gotten in a long time.
Pulling up the status screen again real quick, I doublecheck to make sure my suspicion was correct and confirm that the symbol for yen has switched to the symbol for macca. The exchange rate was brutal, just a little better than 10 to 1, but it means I'm not totally penniless. I kept all my magnetite too, which is probably going to be worth a lot in a post-apocalyptic Tokyo with demons running around it.
A few more steps and we pause again, this time because Hero hears a woman's scream. Noah and Adam are confused, not having heard a thing, but Hero continues to hear her voice begging them for help before fading away. The experience drains some of Hero's health, 19 points exactly, but there's no follow up to it just yet. The optimistic prediction here is that Hero is hearing Mary and we have some way of rescuing her. The pessimistic prediction is that this is a trap set up by Yuriko.
We make our way west and then south, following the ruined roads, and every so often the woman's scream event happens once more, draining Hero's HP each time. It's specifically phrased as Hero's vitality being sucked away, so I wonder if this isn't some kind of ritual meant to hurt Hero through Mary, or otherwise drain their essence to try and fuel something? It's a little irritating getting interrupted, especially when the interruptions hurt me and I have no idea where the healing spots are yet, so hopefully I can figure out what's going on sooner rather than later. The screen goes black again, I prepare myself for another event, and instead we meet our first new demon! Unfortunately it's yet another topless woman, so I won't be posting a screenshot, but it's the Raptor Furiae. Also known as the Furies or the Erinyes, the Furiae are a trio of chthonian spirits or goddesses tasked with punishing those guilty of sinning. Traditionally, there are three sisters—Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. I try diplomacy but it doesn't work, and being a bird-woman I make an educated guess that she's weak to guns which is rewarded by a cakewalk of a fight.
Immediately after, however, I'm jumped by another new demon.
Kelpies are spirits from Irish and Scottish folklore that live in and near lochs. Traditionally, they take the form of beautiful horses to encourage people to try and ride them, whereupon their mane traps their victims in place so they can be drowned and eaten.
Kelpie is more receptive to diplomacy, but unfortunately I'm reminded that I'm full on demons for the moment, so it gets offended and takes off. Oh well.
Heading further south leads us to our first building that we can enter, which has the same aesthetics as the underground pathways and prisons from before the nukes dropped. It's not a nice, friendly place by any means, but the door to my immediate north leads to a Terminal, which makes it vastly more useful than I'd initially hoped. The Terminal's transmit menu has Shinjuku, but not Kichijoji's Echo Building, not a good sign. Before going to Shinjuku, though, there's a while building to explore.
The door to my left, unfortunately, contains nothing but a new enemy.
Even if it wasn't literally called Messian, I figure the cross on the flag and helmet would be easy identifiers for this particular enemy.
The Zealots go down easy—the most notable point about them is that they can cast healing spells, which is interesting but doesn't really save them when I've got a party of six including two sporting AOE machine guns. I'm immediately assaulted afterwards by another demon, this one the Hybrid Werecat, which is just a palette swap of Nekomata in the sense that Nekomata had at least a bizarre chalk-white fur vibe going on, while Werecat is just flat out a naked woman with a tail.
Anyway, traditionally a werecat was a human that had the ability to shapeshift into a cat, either at will or at certain stimuli. They were considered witches during the witch trials throughout history, but in other locations have different associations, like the weretiger being seen as a malevolent and powerful sorcerer in India. I don't see any gimmicks to it outside of a multi-attack that's becoming more and more common, and it goes down easily enough. The two battles back to back give pretty good EXP and macca, which is good because I'm starved of both right now, especially for Adam. He hits pretty good with the Guillotine Axe, but he's six levels behind the others now and it's starting to show.
Another few steps, another new demon.
Dwarves are supernatural creatures from Norse and Germanic myth and folklore, often portrayed as powerful wielders of magic, smiths of surpassing skill, or both. Some famous dwarves are Brokkr and Sindri, who crafted Mjolnir and other treasures for the Aesir, or Fafnir, the dwarf who becomes a dragon as a result of the cursed treasure of the Nibelungs.
Dwarves are stanced the fuck up and ready to brawl. They're slow, but take less than 20 damage from anything from guns to melee to Mazan casts, and when they hit they deal between 40 and 60 damage. One uses a critical attack that kills Nekomata, and I end up having Apsaras constantly healing to ensure that I don't lose anyone else to an unlucky crit. The game has definitely stepped up in terms of difficulty from the days of Hero and Mary perforating everything in front of them with a hail of sleepytime bullets.
Further exploration rewards me with a fancy chest, which I open to unveil—
A deeply annoying mechanic.
Inventory space is limited in this game, and each new item is another item that takes up one of my slots. They can stack up to 9 of the same item in any given slot, but my one single Smoke Bomb takes up a slot and will only ever stack with other Smoke Bombs. I resolve to sort out the issue with some vigorous selling as soon as I find a shop, and grab the Luck Incense in the chest by using my 19th Life Stone to heal Apsaras. Right around the corner is an Intelligence Incense which I use on Hero instinctively before remembering they can't learn spells, but it at least governs some magic defenses so it wasn't a total waste.
The place is a little bit of a maze, and also almost certainly a Messian hideout. The Zealots might just have been squatting here, but I'm attacked by another kind of Messian soon.
I'd bet these are meant to be Templars.
They aren't too dangerous in terms of raw damage, but they come packing Tarunda, Sukunda, and Makajama, which lower attack, lower accuracy, and seal magic respectively. As a single group they're alright, but if I ever start fighting them mixed with more dangerous demons I can see them being a pain in the ass.
Towards the end of the path I find two branching paths, one that leads up the stairs and another that leads to a seeming dead end, which in fact leads to another encounter.
Rusalka are beings from Slavic folklore with various depictions throughout the ages. It's been suggested that they were originally a subject of pagan worship and were considered benevolent, but over the years this has shifted towards viewing them as the spirits of the drowned dead who seek to drag others in with them.
Rusalka has the misfortune of being weak to physical, which means she goes down basically instantly. It's a little sad that I don't know what she does, but hey, more EXP isn't ever something I'll turn down. I initially head straight down towards the door to the stairs, but a quick double-check of the map tells me that I'm missing two doors at the entrance of the building, so I double back to grab those first just in case they're something good.
Boy howdy, I do not regret that decision.
It's a fun touch that the whole thing is locked down with a fence and presumably a window that can be sealed.
The Junk Store sells three status restore items for poison, paralysis, and petrification, and also for 700 macca sells an item called a "Gold Pill". I can't find the exact name online, but I'll take a gamble and assume that this is a "Jin Dan" as the wiki says, which means that it's a revival item, the very first we've had the chance to get. Thankfully I'm right, so I'm able to resurrect Nekomata and summon her back out. Her Marin Karin is going to be invaluable with hordes of powerful demons that can be five or more at a time now, and I was really hurting without her.
Naturally, it turns out that dying zeroes your MP and being revived does not restore it. Oof.
Right next door to the Junk Shop, however, is a Healer. It's not listed as Messian or Gaian, so this appears to just be an outright neutral healing spot. I suppose that maybe the Messian troops are here as an advance party, trying to clear out the demons to secure a formerly neutral ground as their own territory?
I make my way back to the stairs, taking a wrong turn and ending up in a Heretic Mansion I skipped somehow because I'm very bad at directions. My stock is full of demons I'm not using, so I take the opportunity to do some fusing!
First up, Jack Frost and Angel, which nets me Ame-no-Uzume.
Ame-no-Uzume is a goddess of entertainment, dance, revelry, and the arts in Shintoism. Her most famous anecdote is having danced at the mouth of the cave that Amaterasu shut herself inside, drawing the goddess of the sun from her self-imposed exile thanks to her fascination with Ame-no-Uzume's dancing.
She comes equipped with Diarama, good for healing the big hits we've been taking, and two "Extra" skills, Joy Song (inflicts Happy on a group of enemies) and Sexy Dance (inflicts Charm on a group of enemies). To talk a bit about the Extra skills, demons don't have a Gun command as our humans do. Instead, their menu has Attack, Magic, and Extra. Selecting Extra will order a demon to use an attack or ability that costs no MP and has some kind of special effect to it, but from what I've seen if a demon has multiple Extra abilities then it's up to chance which one is used. In this case, selecting Extra for Ame-no-Uzume would randomly decide between Happy, an okay debuff, and Charm, a very powerful one, so it's a little unreliable but still mostly useful.
Also, pretty fun to have Sexy Dance as a skill given Ame-no-Uzume's story.
I try to fuse Kinnari and Tan-Ki, but I'm then struck in the face by a mechanic that I was not expecting and do not enjoy.
So, I was wrong. Summoning demons doesn't just affect your alignment, your alignment also affects what demons you can summon. The result of this fusion, Momunofu, is a Chaos aligned demon. This means I can make it, but I won't be able to actually use it, which sucks incredible amounts of ass. This feels like it pushes things into an obvious spiral if the summoning of Law demons also pushes me towards Law, so hopefully I can force myself back to Neutral soon because this is outrageously obnoxious.
I end up fusing Tsuchigumo and Tan-Ki into Bai Ze instead, mostly to free up slots in my stock.
Bai Ze is an intelligent supernatural creature from Chinese folklore, said to understand all elements of ghosts, spirits, and gods. The Yellow Emperor, Huang Di, charged it with creating a book of illustrations of all these entities, which became known as the Bái Zé Tú.
It also has Diarama, but its other two abilities are Trafuri, which is an auto-escape spell, and Paraladi, which cures paralysis. It might be valuable purely for stats, since it's level 22, but it's a bit of a let-down.
I call it quits there, and head up the stairs on the other side of the building. Immediately to my left is a door, and when I enter it, I'm introduced to another new mechanic!
I thought this was a glitch first.
The area features zones of the map that completely black out your vision, leaving you to fumble along and try to figure out which way is which. This is probably a perfect time for the Mapper spell, but I've got the quick-access map which does just as well, even if it's not quite real-time. They're not as bad as they seem on first glance, but it is a little annoying—it's not a mechanic I'm super fond of even if it's not game ruining.
Once we make it out of the first blackout, we run into an interesting character.
How oddly specific.
He clarifies a moment later that this ability might be exactly what's needed to defeat the demon that's currently possessing their Messiah. Given the flashes Hero had to a screaming woman calling out for their help, I'd bet that's probably her. Whether or not it's Mary is a little up in the air, but now we've got two reasons to head to Shinjuku after this dungeon has been cleared. Along the way, I'm attacked by another new demon.
Lilim, or lilin, are spirits of the night that attacked men in Jewish and Mesopotamian folklore, comparable to succubi. I can't show it in a screenshot, but they animated it giving us a wink.
Lilim are my goddamn nightmare. They can cast Bufula for high damage and a high chance of freezing someone solid, they can bite gently on my characters which has a high chance of inflicting Charm along with dealing damage, and they can sing a lullaby that can and will put all of your party to sleep in one shot. I hate them, they're awful, I run from the battle and resolve to never give one the time of day again.
I find a Garnet along the path, then I walk forward, hear a weird noise, and I'm in a different area. I thought that maybe it might have been an invisible wall, but everything seems…vaguely familiar…
Deep breaths.
Pits on the floor that you can fall through with no warning!
I count to ten and persevere. I'm finding out what's in this dungeon before the end of the update if it kills me, and as it happens it really wants to kill me.
Note Adam and Noah both dying behind the text box.
We eventually run into a Messian sobbing over how their Messiah has been possessed by a demon and how it must be the work of the Gaian church. They beg us to help her, and when we step past them we round out the visuals of the opening with this familiar view.
I think there's a lot more wrong with her than that.
The woman's voice calls out in Hero's mind again, and we're left to exit the room and ponder what the old man told us. Shinjuku is the obvious next step, and we happen to be right next to a Terminal that'll teleport us right there. In the mean time, I need to heal up, so I'll cut the update there.
Next time, we return to Shinjuku and find ourselves a psychic.
So, I was wrong. Summoning demons doesn't just affect your alignment, your alignment also affects what demons you can summon. The result of this fusion, Momunofu, is a Chaos aligned demon. This means I can make it, but I won't be able to actually use it, which sucks incredible amounts of ass. This feels like it pushes things into an obvious spiral if the summoning of Law demons also pushes me towards Law, so hopefully I can force myself back to Neutral soon because this is outrageously obnoxious.
It's one of those game decisions that make perfect sense from a story/flavour perspective and makes even more sense as something that quickly gets ripped out of a franchise never to return.
... At least I hope it gets ripped out quickly, not getting to use your Demons due to mechanics you can't even see sounds horrible.
It's one of those game decisions that make perfect sense from a story/flavour perspective and makes even more sense as something that quickly gets ripped out of a franchise never to return.
... At least I hope it gets ripped out quickly, not getting to use your Demons due to mechanics you can't even see sounds horrible.
Oh, is that sort of thing not a spoiler? Then it at least stops in SMT3 and SMTV doesn't have it either. Unless 4 brought it back, 2 should be the end of it.
Oh, is that sort of thing not a spoiler? Then it at least stops in SMT3 and SMTV doesn't have it either. Unless 4 brought it back, that should be the end of it.
Fair enough. I'm a little tempted to make a spoiler thread for this before we get into topics more important than whether or not a specific annoyance got repeated in given games.
The Kongokai is sort of kind of maybe if you squint arranged in a ring of three concentric circles, where the southern exit takes us to the middle with the phantoms and the northern exit takes us to the outer ring with the exit.
Downside, I absolutely could have robbed Mary's Nerve Bullets and could have used them all this time if I'd just bought some regular bullets to swap out first. You can't directly unequip things, only swap or sell them, which is very much annoying me but hopefully it won't be too long until I get my next bullets upgrade and I forget all about how much stronger Mary's machinegun was.
I got bad news for you homie - I read about this specific exploit and you are probably going to be upset about not keeping those Nerve Bullets for a while longer. Personally I'm still waiting for the axe to drop that dumpsters Adam and/or Noah out of your party, and frankly I'm shocked that you even still have them now having made it past the flip to Apocalypse Tokyo.
I'll be honest because Adam and Noah are names with similar enough symbolism to me I constantly get it twisted which one is the Lawcuck and which one is the Chaosjak so I initially expected to post Least Bigoted Law Enjoyer. Insanely funny that of the two alignments Law was introduced successfully nuking the world no matter what you did but with a representative hero that's kinda normal while Chaos at least had a certain ambiguity and greyness in its NPC while the represenative hero is a seething loser who definitely makes up greentext stories about how minorities inconvenience him and ironically would love access to the Billions Must Die button.
Hero ignores him, hands over some money, and receives some heartfelt thanks.
Sorry, what I meant to say was that the yen absolutely isn't worth anything now, the new currency is something called "Macca", and we just tried to give a beggar Monopoly money. Flash forward from the future here, "macca" is the currency used by most of the SMT games that I've played, so I was honestly a little shocked when we opened up with just yen. It's a fun touch that the pre-nuke world would obviously run on regular currency, but it unfortunately means that the 110K yen I have stored up is probably worth diddly-squat. Maybe we'll find someone who'll exchange it, but I expect the exchange rate is going to be brutal.
[...]
He stresses again that the yen is now worthless, and then all my hopes and dreams are absolutely obliterated when the status screen pops up on the top-left corner and my hard-earned cash evaporates in stacks of 1000 at a time.
I don't think paper is all that worthless, but I get the gist.
And yes, that means sitting through the entire thing. At about 4000 yen vanishing per second, that's roughly a full thirty seconds of me sitting around watching my wallet empty like I'm betting on BBBY. The only upside, if I can call it one, is that it stops at 14444 yen and the guy tells me to get the hell outta there. It's the best advice I've gotten in a long time.
This entire sequence is hysterical and I applaud the devs for going through with it. Of course currency is gonna get wiped away when damn nukes go off (and I have to assume there's also been a timeskip to explain the lack of radiation, maybe they mentioned that already and I forgor it's been a while) but the fact you first find out about it because you try to give someone else money and the literal beggar sniffs and says "smells like broke over here" is ascendant.
Also I like to imagine Adam going bright red and studiously saying nothing at all for at least three hours after this incident praying that neither Hero nor Noah interact with him. Nekomata is gnawing on his coattails the entire time.
I try to fuse Kinnari and Tan-Ki, but I'm then struck in the face by a mechanic that I was not expecting and do not enjoy.
So, I was wrong. Summoning demons doesn't just affect your alignment, your alignment also affects what demons you can summon. The result of this fusion, Momunofu, is a Chaos aligned demon. This means I can make it, but I won't be able to actually use it, which sucks incredible amounts of ass. This feels like it pushes things into an obvious spiral if the summoning of Law demons also pushes me towards Law, so hopefully I can force myself back to Neutral soon because this is outrageously obnoxious.
Holy shit the game done gentrified your demon compendium. A bunch of low-income demon housing was demolished to make way for high-rises for powerful Law demons and now Hero's driving through town to pick up more chicken tendies for Adam (it's the only thing he will eat) when they suddenly stop and wonder why they haven't seen any minorities in a while.
I find a Garnet along the path, then I walk forward, hear a weird noise, and I'm in a different area. I thought that maybe it might have been an invisible wall, but everything seems…vaguely familiar…
Deep breaths.
Pits on the floor that you can fall through with no warning!
I'll be honest because Adam and Noah are names with similar enough symbolism to me I constantly get it twisted which one is the Lawcuck and which one is the Chaosjak so I initially expected to post Least Bigoted Law Enjoyer. Insanely funny that of the two alignments Law was introduced successfully nuking the world no matter what you did but with a representative hero that's kinda normal while Chaos at least had a certain ambiguity and greyness in its NPC while the represenative hero is a seething loser who definitely makes up greentext stories about how minorities inconvenience him and ironically would love access to the Billions Must Die button.
I remember picking Noah specifically because originally I was gonna go with "Trafalgar" to make a One Piece joke but that wouldn't fit, and since I had the association with ships I went with Noah since it seemed vaguely fitting. My thinking with Adam was more along the lines of how he and Eve were the first sinners, so while he initially started out as God's Favorite Child he turned away after pursuing knowledge.
I firmly was not expecting Noah to be Wifeguy Supreme who doesn't seem to care much about Law in general beyond wanting to save his girlfriend or for Adam to be a colossal giant loser who needs to get bailed out at every opportunity but still talks mad shit about not getting handouts. It's kind of incredible how much of a dick he is!
This entire sequence is hysterical and I applaud the devs for going through with it. Of course currency is gonna get wiped away when damn nukes go off (and I have to assume there's also been a timeskip to explain the lack of radiation, maybe they mentioned that already and I forgor it's been a while) but the fact you first find out about it because you try to give someone else money and the literal beggar sniffs and says "smells like broke over here" is ascendant.
Also I like to imagine Adam going bright red and studiously saying nothing at all for at least three hours after this incident praying that neither Hero nor Noah interact with him. Nekomata is gnawing on his coattails the entire time.
The way my jaw dropped when the money counter actually started going down, I swear to god. It doesn't help that I was diligent about selling off my high value items prior to the nukes falling so I lost even more money that way.
There's actually been no mention of radiation whatsoever, which is a little weird but could theoretically be chalked up to demon barriers or whatnot? We'll see if they mention it later on.
