History GameBreaker / ShinMegamiTensei

* Omagatoki: Critical is hands down the best Magatsuhi skill in the game. It makes every attack, including Magic, to be a guaranteed CriticalHit. With a single use of the skill, you can decimate any enemy within a single turn or in the case of bosses, take a large chunk of their HP. Since every attack is a critical hit, your Press Turns won't immediately disappear allowing for some set up game, especially early on where a single round of said skill can turn a number of bosses into nearly jokes through proper planning. The only downside to the skill is that you can still miss and lose Press Turns but with all the power the skill provides, it's almost negligible.
** Omagatoki: Critical seems almost tailor made to work with several skills locked specifically to the Nahobino; Aramasa, Wrath Tempest and Murakumo in specific can make a Strength based Nahobino sever huge chunks of HP bars all at once. Add in Impaler's Animus if you want to abuse Wrath Tempest for extra carnage.

** Omagatoki: Critical seems almost tailor made to work with several skills locked specifically to the Nahobino; Aramasa and Murakumo in specific can make a Strength based Nahobino knock huge chunks of HP bars all at once.

* Yoshitsune's game-breaking SignatureMove from the {{GameBreaker/Persona}} titles, Hassou Tobi, makes its mainline debut in this game and is no less busted, always dealing eight hits of damage and ''always critting'', guaranteeing the player an extra press turn. Thanks to the new Demon Essence system it's absurdly easy to EliteTweak him to maximize Hassou Tobi's damage potential without having to reply on lengthy and complicated fusion chains. Abilities like Charge, Critical Zealot, and any number of Omagatoki buffs will let Yoshitsune rip through most enemies. This can even include demons resistant to or otherwise immune to Physical moves if [[PiercingAttack Omagatoki: Pierce]] is applied beforehand. Even though he's a mid-level demon instead of an endgame one a steady diet of Strength Incenses will ensure that he'll be able to keep up long after other demons around his level have fallen off.
* Idun's SignatureMove, Golden Apple, both heals the party a moderate amount and raises all of their stats. What makes this so powerful is the level you can access this skill: Idun can be fused at level 42, about mid-way through the game. To put it in perspective, by the time a player can fuse her, they likely only recently got access to Ma-kaja skills (that raise a *single* stat for the party) in the mid-late 30's, and Luster Candy (which raises all of the party's stats) doesn't come until endgame at level 70. Therefore, from the moment you fuse Idun, you can access a level of buffing that the game doesn't expect you to have for another 30 levels, with a party heal tacked for good measure. The only thing stopping it from being completely broken is its prohibitively high cost, but its common for players to keep Idun until the end of the game thanks to how powerful Golden Apple is.
* Yabusame Shot, acquired lategame, is one of the strongest Physical skills in the game through the sheer utility it provides. It deals low damage, but it hits all enemies, [[ArmorPiercingAttack pierces through their resistances]], and is a guaranteed CriticalHit. In short, using this skill always costs only half a Press Turn, guaranteeing that you get more actions per player phase.

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%%* Vishnu
%%* Pulque
%%* Physical combos

* Yabusame Shot, acquired lategame, is one of the strongest Physical skills in the game through the sheer utility it provides. It deals low damage, but it hits all enemies, [[ArmorPiercingAttack pierces through their resistances]], and is a guaranteed CriticalHit. In short, using this skill always costs only half a Press Turn, guaranteeing that you get more actions per player phase.

* Yoshitsune's game-breaking SignatureMove from the ''GameBreaker/Persona'' titles, Hassou Tobi, makes its mainline debut in this game and is no less busted, always dealing eight hits of damage and ''always critting'', guaranteeing the player an extra press turn. Thanks to the new Demon Essence system it's absurdly easy to EliteTweak him to maximize Hassou Tobi's damage potential without having to reply on lengthy and complicated fusion chains. Abilities like Charge, Critical Zealot, and any number of Omagatoki buffs will let Yoshitsune rip through most enemies. This can even include demons resistant to or otherwise immune to Physical moves if [[PiercingAttack Omagatoki: Pierce]] is applied beforehand. Even though he's a mid-level demon instead of an endgame one a steady diet of Strength Incenses will ensure that he'll be able to keep up long after other demons around his level have fallen off.

** [[StandardStatusEffects Marin Karin]] works on the vast majority of bosses. Get it to stick, and you can sit back and watch the boss beat itself to death.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIMAGINE'' has Erosion Hex, a skill that can hit [[StandardStatusEffects paralyze, poison, amnesia]] and [[TakenForGranite stone]] all at the same time, and has a huge area of effect. When combined with the soulstones of Mothman (+50% Amnesia rate) and Catoblepas (+50% Stone rate), this skill can make everything not immune to mystic/amnesia and death/stone easy targets. It has such low requirements to be learned that nearly every build in the game can incorporate it with minimal effort.

* Luster Candy and Debilitate are by far the most sought-after buffs and debuffs, respectively, in any game that they appear in. The former boosts your entire party's attack, defense, and hit/evasion, while the latter reduces them for the entire enemy party. While the MP/SP cost is often relatively high, it's still more efficient than casting individual stat buff/debuff spells. That said, they do get nerfed in the ''Persona'' series as their durations are reduced to 3 turns, and further so from ''Persona 4'' onwards where buffs and debuffs become single-target skills. They are also nerfed in a different way in ''Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse'' where their MP costs are greatly increased to encourage use of the Affinity system.

* Recarmdra, with proper exploiting and fusion, you can create an infinite cycle of healing or one powerful mage. When the HP/MP of your party is low, have that demon use Recarmdra, Blammo; your party gets back all their HP and MP, next have another demon use Samrecarm to resurrect it, and summon it again. Mana Drain also is useful, give it to a powerful magic user and let them do all the damage dealing; it is even better if they know Megido class magic.

* Dante/Raidou, though he can only be recruited near the end of Labyrinth of Amala. They resist all non-Almighty damage, are immune to Light and Dark and ailments, and know a good variety of skills for nearly any situation; they have a high-crit physical skill, their own version of Maziodyne and Mazandyne, a free Taunt that can refill their MP, and their own Dekunda. They also get a single passive that gives a 50% overall damage boost and Pierce (unless you're playing on the original Maniax). They can't be fused off, dismissed from the roster, or enhanced with Mitamas, but their own strength makes them worth a permanent roster spot.

* Dante, though he can only be recruited near the end of Labyrinth of Amala. He may not learn Pierce if you're not playing the HD Remaster, but he does learn Son's Oath, which increase his offensive output by 50%. He possesses a freakishly high crit rate in 'Rebellion' and his 'Showtime' is basically a cheap Megidolaon with more flash. Sure, you don't get him till near the very end of the game, but then you can watch him wipe out any DemonicSpiders with style and ease. The updated re-release buffed this more granting Son's Oath the Pierce effect to all his moves, meaning that nothing is safe from him anymore.

* Freikugel: Almighty damage, very high critical chance, and abnormally high damage output that can be augmented with Focus. It's simply the strongest damage skill in the game, and useful even as late as you could get it. In addition, on the True Demon Ending, due to it being an odd mix of Physical and Almighty, you can combine it with Pierce to break one of the last bosses in the game, who is a BarrierChangeBoss resistant to Almighty.

* The Fiends are very good demons to fuse because they retain their ContractualBossImmunity -- they will be at minimum immune to ailments and both OneHitKill elements, and then they have their own innate elemental damage immunities that make them great combatants. Hell Biker, White Rider, Red Rider and Mother Harlot are excellent examples since you only need three immunity passives to make them invulnerable to everything that isn't almighty. Of course, you'll need to [[DefeatMeansPlayable defeat them first.]]

** White Rider's a level 52 demon, accessible from the midgame, and comes with God's Bow, which is a guaranteed instant kill on any enemy without Expel immunity, great for sniping troublesome demons!

* Fusion Accidents, while normally something unwanted, it can sometimes spit out some unbelievable demons that the player might not be meant to have at the point in the game they might be in. That includes demons that might be way above their current level. Stories range from players getting demons with every resistance in the book, to others such as getting endgame demons while having barely left the starting zones.

* Most games have Victory Cry (sometimes with another name, such as [[VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga Auto Soma]]), a passive skill that ''completely heals'' the character who has it after every battle. While these may not be much help ''during'' combat, they make grinding and regular dungeon exploration quite easy. In games where SP healing is rare or expensive, the game might as well be over as soon as you get these skills.

* Fog Breath drops the accuracy and evasion of every enemy by two stages and can't be blocked. You can get this skill [[DiscOneNuke from a common Magatama as early as Level 21]], and although the MP cost is steep at that level, Fog Breath retains its value right up until the endgame.

* Black Frost joins the party from the Third Kalpa if you've beaten him in the frozen Kabukicho Prison about two-thirds into the main plot, and he comes as a level 66 demon without caring for your base level. He's got a fantastic set of resistances, resisting Phys, voiding Expel, reflecting Fire and Death, and absorbing Ice, so he can only be reliably damaged with Elec and Force attacks. His skill set looks pretty sparse -- Berserk and Diarama are not very strong for a level 66 demon -- but you can augment him into a fine combatant by fusing him with Mitamas and passing their skills into his empty spots.

** Daisoujou is immune to every status ailment in the book in some way, has a good Magic stat, and can restore his own HP and MP during boss fights with Meditation, and also learns Prayer, which makes him a stellar support caster, especially if you sacrifice demons to level him up and/or give him skills like Dekaja and/or Debilitate. Give him Makatora and he makes a near-bottomless MP tank for your travels, as he can refill your party in between combat before draining it back at the next random encounter!
* Hell Gaze has a very high chance of killing anybody not immune to Death, and it's relatively common among recruitable demons. God's Bow from the Fiend White Rider is even better; either the enemy is immune to Expel, or they die; simple as that.
* Beelzebub (Fly form) has Death Flies, a skill which ''will'' kill all enemies unless they are immune to Death like God's Bow above. The kicker is, even if they are immune to the instant kill they still take an amount of damage equivalent to Megidolaon. The catch is, he can only be fused after defeating him in the [[BonusLevelOfHell Labyrinth of Amala]].

* The end-game Masakados magatama gives you immunity to everything but almighty attacks and a whopping +10 to all stats except Luck. This game's stat cap is 40, by the way. As you gain levels with this magatama, you also pick up passives for repelling each element, so you can become immune to everything without needing it. Its PurposelyOverpowered because you have to gather all the other magatamas and then defeat [[BonusBoss the four Devas]], which is not an easy task.
* Freikugel: Almighty damage, very high critical chance, and abnormally high damage output. It's simply the strongest damage skill in the game, and useful even as late as you could get it. In addition, on the True Demon Ending, due to it being an odd mix of Physical and Almighty, you can combine it with Pierce to break one of the last bosses in the game, who is a BarrierChangeBoss resistant to Almighty.

* Bright Might and Dark Might give the character guaranteed critical hits during a Full or New Kagutsuchi respectively. Spread it around your team a little and do a little Phase stalling before engaging a boss, and you can easily get a lot of free turns with it. Add buffs and debuffs to this and you get to ''auto-attack a boss to death''! Add Pierce (makes attacks ignore all resistances except Repel) and you get to ''do this to most random encounters as well''!

* Hoo boy, Black Frost. Where to start? He's one of few demons that can be recruited outside of fusion, he has ridiculously high stats, comes with a Ma-Dyne spell, and has no weakness. And his resistances? He absorbs ice, reflects fire and darkness, is immune to light, and takes negligible damage from physical attacks. This means the only attacks effective against him are electricity and force.
** Even though he joins the party outside of fusion, he can still be fused and/or have Mitamas fused to it to make him ''even stronger''.

* The Fiends are very good demons to fuse because they retain their ContractualBossImmunity -- they will be at minimum immune to ailments and both OneHitKill elements, and then they have their own innate elemental damage immunities that make them great combatants. Hell Biker, White Rider, Red Rider and Mother Harlot are excellent examples since you only need three immunity passives to make them invulnerable to everything that isn't almighty. Of course, you'll need to defeat them first.

* Fog Breath drops the accuracy and evasion of every enemy by two stages and can't be blocked. You can get this skill from a common Magatama as early as Level 21, and although the MP cost is steep at that level, Fog Breath retains its value right up until the endgame.

* Atropos. When you get her she has Element Boosts, which amp up damage of a specific element by 50%. In other words, she is optimal for being a Quad-dyne-spell user.
* Daisoujou. Immune to every status ailment in the book in some way, has a good Magic stat, and can restore its own HP and MP during boss fights with Meditation, and also learns Prayer, which makes him a stellar support caster, especially if you sacrifice demons to level him up and/or give him skills like Dekaja and/or Debilitate.
** Really, any of the Fiends can be this because they retain their ContractualBossImmunity to OneHitKill spells and StandardStatusEffects when you unlock them for fusion. The Hell Biker, Red Rider, and Mother Harlot really stand out thanks to the above-mentioned combination of Null/Absorb/Repel skills and their natural immunities letting them become immune to everything except Almighty and still have slots for other skills.

* Surt. He's the only demon in the game with a Fire-type normal attack, making it the only normal attack capable of being boosted by Fire Boost. Because it's physical, however, it can also be enhanced by Pierce, Focus, and either Bright Might or Dark Might. Giving Surt these skills, as well as any skill that covers his Ice weakness, makes Surt capable of dishing out tons of damage from his normal attacks.

* Victory Cry + Jihad (Megidolaon-level of almighty damage + Debilitate debuffs) or any powerful almighty-type spell on a demon - you get to annihilate enemy formations with devastating damage, and receive full healing at the end of the battle to recoup the losses.

* Shiva as well as [[spoiler:The Demiurge]] appear as the demons with the highest starting level for the Chaos and Law alignments respectively. Both naturally start with the aforementioned Victory Cry + Jihad combo and have respectable resistances (both are immune to expel and curse and have a good spread of other resistances and immunities). Additionally Shiva has Enduring Soul (a full revive after death once per battle) and [[spoiler:The Demiurge]] has Luster Candy (boosts all stats for the party). Shiva gets bonus points here for being considerably easier to summon (he only requires the player to be level 91 and is created in special fusion with his traditional recipe, while [[spoiler:The Demiurge]] is the bonus boss and must be beaten, only in the second playthrough and later, before you can fuse it from 3 specific demons.)
* Huang Long qualifies in a magical vein, being able to learn Megidolaon and Victory Cry, being strong to all elements and physical skills, and immune to Light and Dark skills outright. Doesn't hurt that he can be fused way earlier than Shiva, as a special fusion at level 78, rather than Shiva's 92.

* The Skill Augment app. It makes demons more likely to mutate skills. With a little luck, it's possible to get useful skills early in the game and get even more powerful skills as you proceed.

* Huang Long qualifies in a magical vein, being able to learn Megidolaon and Victory Cry, being strong to all elemements and physical skills, and immune to Light and Dark skills outright. Doesn't hurt that he can be fused way earlier than Shiva, as a special fusion at level 78, rather than Shiva's 92.

* ''Redux'' also adds the Lucifer equipment set, all of which are exceptionally powerful but must be obtained by defeating the new Bonus Bosses. To note:

* The MP recovery apps. You know it's broken when you can use ''Megidolaon'' every battle and have no shortage of MP by the next battle.

* Remember Jihad from Strange Journey? It's back in this game as Antichthon. Antichthon received a couple of nerfs in the transition to ''Apocalypse'' to make it less spammable -- it's MP cost was greatly increased and the debuff effect only applied if its user was Smirking.

* Among demons, Da Peng and [[spoiler:Lucifer]] stand out. Da Peng has perfectly placed stats and innate skills for Multi Strike, and best of all, it's not a unique demon and comes with one of the best Racial skill in the game. Additionally, its only weakness, Fire, is painfully easy to fuse over by ranking up Feng Huang, who naturally learns Drain Fire; while [[spoiler:Lucifer]] has all around good stats, and hidden resistance modifier to everything (even Almighty), which stacks with its innate resistance to everything, on top of being a Tyrant. Their downside are they are realistically only unlockable in NewGamePlus thanks to their high level, that and you need to [[spoiler:take Al Saiduq's route to unlock Lucifer]].

* Fusion in general can get you some hilarious results, if you get lucky with the save scumming. Most games since TheNewTens have adopted the "pick-and-choose" skill inheritance system. Signature skills are usually restricted, and certain games also add in restrictions on which skills demons can inherit, but barring those restrictions, anything is fair game. If you cultivate your fusions correctly, it is possible to fuse a demon that, with the combination of their natural immunities and Null/Absorb/Repel skills, is invulnerable to anything that's not [[InfinityPlusOneElement Almighty-elemental]]. [[DevelopersForesight That being said, most of the top-tier Bonus Bosses in the series are programmed to insta-kill your party if you have something that repels their attacks.]]

* The end-game Masakados magatama gives you immunity to everything but almighty attacks and a whopping +10 to all stats except Luck. This game's stat cap is 40, by the way. As you gain levels with this magatama, you also pick up passives for repelling each element, so you can become immune to everything without needing it. That said, this magatama is only available after you beat [[BonusBoss the Four Devas]], which is not an easy task.

* Multi-hitting physical moves can mangle anything not immune, only impeded by it's random targeting nature. Bosses are mostly solo. Taken with the above Focus skill and most powerful enemies are in for a beating. Best part, Rampage is an early skill that can be gotten from the first Magatama you get, and it will see a lot of use.

* The Death Flies skill from ''Nocturne'' makes a comeback in both DDS and DDS2: Guaranteed insta-kill if targets don't null Death, and Almighty damage equivalent to Megidolaon if they do.
* The Null Attack skill nulls ''everything'' except Almighty attacks. This makes you effectively invincible for 90% of the game as only the last two dungeons have random encounters that make use of Almighty attacks and none of the storyline bosses (except for the last boss) use Almighty as their main form of attack. It won't help you against most of the bonus bosses however since they generally have unique Almighty attacks. In particular, the aforementioned [[spoiler:Demi-Fiend]], will rip you to shreds on his first turn if you dare to have immunities equipped, and the second game’s Ultimate Boss [[spoiler:Satan]] will simply negate any resistance you have which are imparted by passive skills in his first turn.

* The Death Flies skill from ''Nocturne'' makes a comeback in this game: Guaranteed insta-kill if targets don't null Death, and Almighty damage equivalent to Megidolaon if they do.
* The Null Attack skill nulls ''everything'' except Almighty attacks. This makes you effectively invincible for 90% of the game as only the last two dungeons have random encounters that make use of almighty attacks and none of the storyline bosses (except for the last boss) use almighty as their main form of attack. It won't help you against most of the bonus bosses however since they generally have unique almighty attacks. The [[spoiler:Demi-Fiend]] in particular, the first game's ultimate boss, will rip you to shreds on his first turn if you dare to have immunities equipped.
* Null Sleep, especially in the first game (where it's on the same Mantra as Cocytus above). That title is a misnomer; it doesn't make the user immune to sleep, it makes them ''dodge all attacks if they're asleep'', causing the enemy to waste precious turns. It's so good that it's even part of a strategy that makes the aforementioned [[spoiler:Demi-Fiend]] even ''possible'' to take down, because it enables the user to dodge even the strongest Almighty attacks!

* Drain. It does Almighty damage (which means that 99.9% of enemies can't resist, null, deflect, or absorb it), is surprisingly damaging, and robs the enemy of their HP and MP while replenishing yours. To make it even more lethal, ''2'' and ''Overclocked'' give high-level Tyrants the Blood Treaty Racial Skill, ''tripling'' the effectiveness of all healing and draining skills.
* [[UselessUsefulSpell Petra Eyes]] is ''[[SubvertedTrope extremely useful]]'', at least [[NewGamePlus on the first run]], since petrified characters can be killed in one hit with luck no matter the HP or level. Being an [[NintendoHard Atlus game]] filled with GoddamnedBats where a huge part of them aren't resistant.

* Some skill combinations certainly count.

* Multi-Strike is also an extremely powerful attack in ''Overclocked''. It costs less HP than other physical abilities and deals additional hits with higher Agility. Put this on a physical-oriented MC and work on boosting his agility, and he'll almost always go first and pretty much instantly kill all three enemies in one turn. Combined with Pierce, you can kill almost everything instantly. Combined with Phys Drain instead, and you'll heal yourself to full against anyone with Phys Repel (fairly common near the end).
* Some player-created demon-skill combinations. For example, usually the biggest weakness of a SquishyWizard is their physical defense. No problem, pass on Phys Repel to one via fusion, and you now have a magic user that is practically immune to Phys attacks and also has high resistance to magic because of their stat focus. This allows demons of all kinds last a LOT longer past their normal practical use because of the skills you give them. This is easier still in ''Overclocked'' with the addition of the Demon Compendium. The only problem, thus, [[AdamSmithHatesYourGuts is how deep your pockets go]].
* Anti-Most gives resistance to elemental damage and Mystic/Curse all at the cost of one passive slot. It's not as effective as an immunity passive for covering a targeted weakness, but it conveniently lets you give anything a good well-rounded defense and is perfect for demons with multiple weaknesses. Anti-All turns up later and gives resistance to everything that isn't Almighty.
** If you have Battle Aura, attacks that do 50 or less damage will not harm your team at all, and it comes with a very low cost of 10 MP per skirmish. Pair this with Anti-Most or Anti-All and you can No-Sell most attacks barring Pierce-enhanced ones.
* Rolling Recarm chains. Especially effective against the BonusBoss. Each squad has two demons faster than their human and the human faster than their targets; both have Recarm or Samarecarm. Demons do whatever, human does something that gets reflected and causes them to suicide. The next human revives the first one, then does the same demons do whatever, human suicides thing. Since a character that's just been resurrected acts immediately after their reviver, this creates an infinite chain of revivals that keeps enemies from ever getting a turn.

* While there's several new races with new racial skills available, above them all is the Fiend race. Every single Fiend is a Unique demon and must be recruited by defeating a BonusBoss, most of whom are only available on NewGamePlus, for good reason: their racial skill Unearthly Form lets you spend MP to immediately make it your turn again. You can only use Unearthly Form once per turn, but this still allows you to travel a staggering 16 squares in one turn if paired with Devil Flash, or twelve squares while teleporting with Winged Flight, or attack four times in one turn with Matchless, or make up for the large MP cost by making your other member a Tyrant or Divine so you can use it over and over. No other racial skill even comes close to the power of Unearthly Form, especially if the Fiend also has Victory Cry and Drain to keep their MP full.

* Individual Demon wise there's Da Peng and [[spoiler:Lucifer]]. Da Peng has perfectly placed stats and innate skills for Multi Strike, and best of all, it's not a unique demon and comes with one of the best Racial skill in the game. Additionally, its only weakness, Fire, is painfully easy to fuse over by ranking up Feng Huang, who naturally learns Drain Fire; while [[spoiler:Lucifer]] has all around good stats, and hidden resistance modifier to everything (even Almighty), which stacks with its innate resistance to everything. Their downside are they are realistically only unlockable in NewGamePlus thanks to their high level, that and you need to [[spoiler:take Al Saiduq's route to unlock Lucifer]].
* Various skill combos can qualify:

* Watchful and Vigilant are supposed to bestow LeakedExperience onto whoever's using it, but what it doesn't tell you is that if that skill's user is deployed in combat they actually earn ''more'' experience. Stacking Watchful and Vigilant on the main character while deploying only him results in him rapidly leveling up, and due to every other team leader experiencing innate LeakedExperience, it's great for mass LevelGrinding, especially on a NewGamePlus.

* Surt. He's the only demon in the game with a Fire-type normal attack, making it the only normal attack capable of being boosted by Fire Boost. Because it's physical, however, it can also be enhanced by Pierce, Focus, and either Bright Might or Dark Might. Giving Surt these skills, as well as any skill that covers his Ice weakness, makes Surt capable of dishing out tons of damage from his normal attacks.

** Judgment Light can also qualify. Yes, its MP cost is huge, but it's an all-target Light instant kill with '''insane''' chance of hitting. If you cast this, it's pretty much all but guaranteed to kill every enemy or all but one... and that's when they are ''not weak to Light''. And since in this game humans have natural immunity to Light, passing it via Whisper means that you can spam it with all day with no fear of Reflection as long as your MP holds. Mix it with the aforementioned MP recovery app and you can destroy nearly every random encounter with the press of a button.

* Bright Might and Dark Might give the character guaranteed critical hits during a Full or New Kagutsuchi respectively. Spread it around your team a little and do a little Phase stalling before engaging a boss, and you can easily get a lot of free turns with it. Add buffs and debuffs to this and you get to ''auto-attack a boss to death''! Add Pierce and you get to ''do this to most random encounters as well''!

* Surt. He's the only demon in the game with a Fire-type normal attack, making it the only normal attack capable of being boosted by Fire Boost. Because it's physical, however, it can also be enhanced by Pierce (makes attacks ignore all resistances except Repel), Focus (boosts the next physical attack's damage by 250%), and either Bright Might (Guarantees a critical hit when attacking normally on a Full Kagutsuchi) or Dark Might (Guarantees a critical hit when attacking normally on a New Kagutsuchi). Giving Surt these skills, as well as any skill that covers his Ice weakness, makes Surt capable of dishing out tons of damage from his normal attacks.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' brings back Demonee-Ho's ''Desperate Hit''... which is now more useful considering that it can be passed onto your character. Basically, it's an Almighty attack that hits enemies multiple times, but it also has physical attack attributes. Not only does it bypass all weaknesses, but it can also be charged and can get critical hits. Combine with the MP recovery apps and you'll find it hard to use any other skill.
* The MP recovery app is broken in itself. You know it's broken when you can use ''Megidolaon'' every battle and have no shortage of MP by the next battle.
* Remember Jihad from Strange Journey? It's back in this game as Antichthon. Antichthon received a couple of nerfs in the transition to ''Apocalypse'' to make it less spammable -- it's MP cost was greatly increased and the debuff effect only applied if its user was Smirking.

** Judgment Light can also qualify. Yes, its MP cost is huge, but it's an all-target Light instant kill with '''insane''' chance of hitting. If you cast this, it's pretty much all but guaranteed to kill every enemy or all but one... and that's when they are ''not weak to Light''. And since in this game humans have natural immunity to Light, passing it via Whisper means that you can spam it with all day with no fear of Reflection as long as your MP holds. Mix it with the aforementioned MP recovery app and you can destroy any random encounter with the press of a button.
* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' also (ahem) inherits the "pick and choose" skill system of ''Devil Survivor'' mentioned at the top of the page, but instead of selecting only a few, it gives you full customization of the result. This means you can toss aside undesirable innate skills from the demon's base skill set and fill it up with whatever you want from its fusion components. ''Anything'' you want can become a quad-dyne user with buffs and heals, for instance, and your only limiting factor would be the demon's HP/MP pool and stat spread.[[note]]Not that it matters much when a lot of the demons you fuse here have perfectly even stats across the board.[[/note]] This customizability got nerfed in ''Apocalypse'' as it introduces demon affinities that influence skill efficiency, encouraging you to play to the demons' preferences instead of just slapping the same skills on everyone.
* Yet another [[GoodBadBugs Streetpass]] [[LoopholeAbuse Exploit]] found. Want to increase a certain demon's stats without level grinding, (or if it's already at level 99) or using up Incenses? Just have at least another 3DS with Streetpass enabled on both of them, attach the demon to your DDS card, and insert the cartridge from one system to the other when you get the data from either of them. If done correctly, the attached demon's stats will increase (along with a possible gift) when you access the Streetpass feature on your gauntlet. Just save afterward (This is '''very''' important in order to keep the increased stat), and go back to the menu where you can then receive more Streetpass data from the other 3DS. [[UpToEleven This even works with demons]] '''only available through DLC, even if only''' ''' ''one'' ''' ''' 3DS has the purchased data required'''. Without said data on the SD card, the DLC demon attached will appear as a question mark and be unplayable (with the possible exception of the Archangels, whose names still appear as "???") but will ''still'' get the stat boost(s). Meaning you can get something like [[spoiler: Masakado's Shadow]] with maxed out stats before or ''after'' it reaches Level 99 in a much easier fashion that doesn't require using up a single Incense or waiting to receive Streetpass data from more players.

* Nanashi's [[EleventhHourSuperpower Awakened Power]] is obtained near the end of the game, once you've made your decision to take the Bonds or Massacre route. It powers up ''all'' his attacks and lets them bypass ''all forms of resistance''. Since the player can fully control his stat growth and dump a lot of stat points in his main attacking stats, this makes Nanashi an outstanding attacker.

* Once defeated [[GuideDangIt and the method discovered]], Krishna can be fused for you to use. His [[SignatureMove Raga skills]] can each inflict three possible ailments at once with 2 applications of an attack or defense debuff, making him useful both against random encounters and bosses, and Combat Tara is his own, cheaper version of Luster Candy. Keep him alive and he becomes a fantastic support party member.

* Kannuki-Throw is already a very unbalanced skill —it hits from 1 to 15 times for Physical damage, and it's the signature skill of Uriel, a demon who has very high HP, extremely high natural Str and Dx, and a good propensity for Critical hits. But if you take some time to build him up, you can give him Phys and High Phys Pleroma (multiply natural Phys damage by 1.20 and 1.50), Pierce Physical, and your pick of Beastly or Draconic Reaction (increases accuracy+evasion, therefore, number of hits), Speed or Haste Lesson (increase agility, ergo, accuracy), and Bloody Glee (increase Crit chance). Uriel can already deal obscene amount of damage per hit on base with this skillset, but if during battle he is further buffed with Charge + Dark Energy (increase damage of the next Physical attack by 150 and then by 200% respectively, and they stack) then an Archangel's Law on him for the Smirk multiplier (or three Tarukajas to specifically buff Physical attacks, since Smirk and Tarukaja doesn't stack), along with potentially three Rakundas (reduces enemy physical defense); there is ''absolutely nothing'' in the game who can survive a 15-hit Kannuki-Throw doing over 2000 HP of damage per hit. Pair him up with a demon with Guardian's Eye, and your only concern for the rest of the game is activating the combo before a Fiend or Sanat Kumara can knock out Uriel.

* Kannuki-Throw is already a very unbalanced skill —it hits from 1 to 15 times for Physical damage, and it's the Signature Skill of Uriel, a demon who has very high HP, extremely high natural Str and Dx, and a good propensity for Critical hits. But if you take some time to build him up, you can give him Phys and High Phys Pleroma (multiply natural Phys damage by 1.20 and 1.50), Charge + Dark Energy (increase damage of the next Physical attack by 150 and then by 200% respectively, and they stack), Pierce Physical, and your pick of Beastly or Draconic Reaction (increases accuracy+evasion, therefore, number of hits), Speed or Haste Lesson (increase agility, ergo, accuracy), and Bloody Glee (increase Crit chance) and then drop an Archangel's Law on him for the Smirk multiplier (or just sticking with Tarukaja), along with potentially three Rakundas. and there is ''absolutely nothing'' in the game that can survive a 15-hit Kannuki-Throw doing over 2000 HP of damage per hit. Pair him up with a demon that knows Guardian's Eye, and your only concern for the rest of the game is activating the combo before a Fiend or Sanat Kumara can knock out Uriel.