A bit of fusing later and I’ve two new demons of useful races: Kikimora the Femme and Heqet the Avatar. A Femme’s Racial Skill is Devotion, which is like Charm except the amount of HP it heals is half the Femme’s current HP, while an Avatar’s Switch lets you swap one allied team with another, which is quite useful for quickly getting weakened teams out of harm’s way. My goal right now is to make a team with good elemental coverage.
There are a couple more scenes available to watch now. First we head to Shiba Park by Tokyo Tower which seems to have become the main gathering point for everyone trapped inside the lockdown. Akira and his friends witness a group of Shomonkai preaching to the crowd, including the group’s founder. The Founder preaches about the story of the Tower of Babel and how modern-day globalization is proof that mankind has overcome the division of languages that God inflicted on man to punish their arrogance. While he starts to go on about how this lockdown is another ordeal from God Atsuro wonders if that’s why the demons started showing up, and then notices that Amane is with the Shomonkai as well. Another woman with the cult, a generic hooded one this time, comes up to the group to sell the Shomonkai beliefs in the manner familiar to anyone who’s seen sidewalk evangelists. You can humor her or try blowing her off, but whichever tact you take Amane comes over and dismisses the woman for being too forceful. Though honestly, I think her opening line about how in essence there are no differences between gods and demons would be seen as more off-putting to the average joe than the woman’s spiel. Anyway, she formally introduces herself to us again and asks where we received our altered COMPs from, and it turns out that the Shomonkai had originally commissioned Naoya to program them. After she bids us farewell Atsuro wonders what the Shomonkai would want a demon-summoning device for (according to Akira the only possibilities are to summon a god, reenact God’s ordeal, or just plunge Tokyo into hell).
Speaking of the Shomonkai, heading to Roppongi next allows us to witness a meeting between Haru and another Shomonkai member who’s wearing a tunic like the Founder instead of the acolyte robes and a black duster atop that. Whatever he’s selling, Haru’s not having any of it. The man departs saying that he’ll still be available if she feels like speaking, and that his name’s Azuma
◊. After he’s gone Haru recognizes Akira’s group from the street show earlier to Yuzu’s delight. She doesn’t have much else to say, just that if the Shomonkai were serious about helping out they’d do something about the blackout.
One more character-based event to see. This one’s back in Ikebukuro where the group runs into a girl on the street wearing a rather unusual costume. She’s apparently a cosplayer, and is stuck wearing the outfit because she was at an event yesterday in Shinjuku and got caught in the lockdown without a change of clothes. But she doesn’t mind that, as she thinks he costume makes it look like she’s wearing “extra-cool everyday” clothes. She introduces herself as Midori Komaki, she of the notoriously high-pitched voice, and after she leaves Atsuro suddenly realizes that she’s a cam-girl who’s famous in nerd-circles as “Dolly” and laments the fact that he couldn’t get an autograph. Yuzu grumbles that mentioning something like that around “Otakuro” is a bad idea. What’s wrong with being an otaku, he protests?
We spend the rest of the afternoon checking the east side of the Yamanote circle for a weak point in the barricade, but there’s none to be found and the characters start worrying about the very real possibility of the city’s infrastructure starting to fall apart if the lockdown isn’t eventually lifted. The next mandatory event is at five in the afternoon outside of the Nippon Budokan arena, where the group hears singing. Yuzu recognizes it as one of Haru’s songs (the BGM being played is the instrumental version of Reset) and the group finds her by what appears to be a back entrance. A group of demons appear and when the group calls out to Haru she mutters that she “screwed up” before taking out a music sequencer. Whatever it’s supposed to do, well, doesn’t happen, so we’re forced to come to her rescue.
Mission 5
- All demons must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
- Haru cannot die
Well, here we are at our first Escort Mission of the game. Haru is completely defenseless and boxed into a corner and the demons, interested in some sort of power she has, will go for her over us. They’re mostly made up of Wairas and Moh Shuvuus too, so they can jet over to her very quickly.
Fortunately though, there are a number of qualities to this mission that make it easier on us then it could’ve been. First, thanks to the ranged effect of the Harmonizer Haru can take a hit or three before losing all of her HP, so while she can’t fight back she can at least survive a few turns until we can beat off the demons attacking her. Next, the map is relatively small, so having a Moh Shuvuu or Waira on one of our own teams enables us to close the gap that much more quickly. Finally, the demons really aren’t that powerful (or maybe I was just slightly overleveled) so beating them isn’t much of a problem, keeping Haru alive is the issue. That’s why I have my Kikimora with me: she’s decently-powerful on her own and her Devotion Racial Skill allows her to heal at a range, allowing us to top off Haru’s HP when we get close enough.
Completing the mission earns us 110 EXP and 85 macca.
After that’s taken care of Haru’s death clock rises to 2 and Yuzu expresses how impressed she was that she remained calm throughout that whole ordeal. Haru explains that she’s sort of a demon tamer too, only she doesn’t use a COMP. Instead, she says that she can summon demons by singing along to the music her sequencer plays. Atsuro asks if Naoya made it too, but she has no idea who he is. The sequencer was apparently a gift from Aya, the former lead singer for D-Va. Unfortunately it’s out of power and unusable right now but her attitude is “so it goes” and leaves after whispering to Akira that he has a dangerous air about him. Eh, believe what you want. After she’s gone Yuzu’s a little concerned that she didn’t seem all too pleased to have been saved, but she says that maybe that’s just her disaffected rock star attitude. The fact that her death clock went up is good news though, says Atsuro, for it proves that they can change death clocks other than their own.
Two more short scenes to watch before we close out the day with another battle. The first is a throwaway scene where Yuzu talks about how a classmate managed to recover a stolen bike after she posted about it online, while the second takes place in Shinagawa, the southernmost part of the Yamanote circle. Here the group catches Gin standing in front of the building that serves as the Shomonkai’s headquarters, apparently lost in thought. He snaps out of it when he sees the group and explains that he was just taking a walk and hastily leaves. Uh huh.
The final battle of the day takes place back in Aoyama Cemetery, where the group gets surrounded by demons. Not much importance to this battle plot-wise; it mainly serves to introduce yet another feature.
Mission 6
- All demons must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
And that feature is berserk COMPs. These act as spawn points for demons, represented on the map as panels with a reddish miasma emanating from them. Every few turns they’ll spawn a demon team (each map seems to have a certain capacity) so you need to make it a priority to remove them, which is simply done by moving one of your characters onto one of the miasma panels and selecting the “Pick Up” option that will appear. There are two spawn panels on this map, one near our starting point, and other at the far end. I don’t think you even have to pick any of them up to complete the mission; if you beat all the demons Atsuro will just say that they should pick up the COMPs later if any are left.
The demon teams are a little sturdy, but not much trouble. The only difficulty I had was getting stuck in a bottleneck on the map, so my guys couldn’t attack all that often thanks to the demons trying to pile on. By now though I’ve fused a Sarasvati who learns Force Dance, and thanks to her Racial Skill (the Megami’s ranged, heavy-healing Affection) keeping everyone safe is no problem.
Completing the mission earns us 140 EXP and 105 macca.
The group examines the COMP that they retrieved and Atsuro figures that someone else got their hands on an altered COMP like they did, but weren’t able to beat the demon that came out of it, resulting in their death, and COMP still active, allowing more demons to emerge into the real world. Yuzu wonders if there’s a whole demon world on the other side of the COMP, prompting Atsuro to explain that the Demon Summoning Program is most likely running on a server to reduce the workload on the individual COMPs. He launches into an explanation of client programs and data packets, stuff that’s over my and Yuzu’s head, but the point he arrives at, starry-eyed, is that if they could somehow trace the data packets they could access the server directly and fiddle around with the program all they want. Yuzu tries to knock him back down to Earth by saying that they need to find a way out of the lockdown instead.
Final scene of the day takes place at 7:30PM back at Shibuya Station. The group tries to decide on what to do about finding shelter for the night since they don’t know anyone within the Yamanote circle to crash with (in the manga they spend the night at Gin’s bar which is pretty sensible) and decide on finding the nearest park. They then discuss gameplay mechanics for a bit, including a conversation I’ve actually seen held on this very site over whether fused demons retain their components’ memories and personalities, before deciding that they should use the Laplace Mail as a guide for what to do for the next day. Atsuro notes that their COMPs have a lot more functionality now than before and wonder if Naoya’s doing this on purpose, y’know, like how in games the player is started off easy, then... Then it’s email time: one each from Atsuro and Yuzu wondering some more about what’s going on (Yuzu’s are littered with chatspeak) and one from Naoya saying that he’s restricting email usage to nighttime in order to avoid taxing the server. Another day down.
Compendium
- Kikimora
◊
- Kikimoras are Slavic house spirits. If a household is in order they will take it upon themselves to help out with housework and other chores, but if it isn't they'll make noise, break things, and make babies cry in order to make the neglectful homeowners miserable. It's in-game design is identical to an illustration drawn by Russian illustrator Ivan Bilibin.
- Heqet◊
- An Egyptian fertility goddess that was often depicted as a woman with a frog's head. As a symbol of fertility and childbirth, eventually she became more and more closely associated with resurrection resulting in some early Christians wearing her amulets.
- Kijimunaa◊
- Diminutive Okinawan tree spirits who like to play pranks on humans, most notably sitting on their chests so they cannot breathe. Sometimes they befriend humans and carry them around on their backs. If this happens to you, make sure you don't fart; they'll chuck you right off it you do.
- Sarasvati◊
- The Hindu goddess of knowledge and fine arts. She is one of the Tridevi, the three consorts of the gods Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu.
- Hairy Jack◊
- Also known as Barghests, Hairy Jacks are said to be vicious black dogs that wander the moors of northern England and are omens of death. The hound in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound of the Baskervilles was inspired by the Barghest.
Soundtrack
- Sad Seeing
- Guess what's in the future.
Comments
