After a throwaway scene in Shiba Park where Atsuro expresses doubt in the government’s ability to contain the demons a Naoya-designated scene appears in Shinjuku again. The crew loses sight of him again, but there are no demons to fight this time. Instead we encounter a sly-looking man in a purple suit whom is identified in the text boxes as only “Gigolo.” He may not be Naoya, but he apparently knows him as he recognizes Akira as his cousin before waxing poetic on destiny - namely, our destiny of death. This guy knows all about our predicament, and is impressed when he learns that we intend to fight Beldr rather than flee. So he gives us a hint: Beldr is immortal because all living being swore never to harm him, however, there is one thing that didn’t and it’s here, inside the lockdown. It would be too easy if he just told us what that something is of course, and after a conveniently-distracting dust of wind blows through the crew finds that the man’s vanished. That’s their only lead, so it looks like they’ll need to find someone or something else to flesh that information out a bit.
But first we’re scheduled for a mandatory 1:30 battle in Ikebukuro, in the same spot where we came to Keisuke’s rescue yesterday. Once again demons are menacing innocent civilians, and here Midori tries coming to their rescue. Proclaiming herself to be “Magical Dolly, the Warrior of Love” who brings “magical punishment” to demons she makes a show of summoning her own (two Cait Siths, which thanks to the voice acting taught me that they’re actually pronounced “ka-chee”). But as Keisuke predicted, all that does is panic the people even more. The crew’s rather flabbergasted at Midori’s actions, and Atsuro says we need to stop the demons before they can stop her.
Mission 13
- All demons must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
- Midori and no civilian can die
Most of the demons here are Jack Frosts and Wendigos, so Midori’s actually fairly well-equipped to deal with them since she’s packing Fire spells. Unfortunately she doesn’t seem to be very good at the actual fighting part, since she seems to have puzzlingly low damage output in addition to letting herself get swarmed almost immediately. So inevitably falls to us to help her, and we can try talking to her once we’re adjacent to try to get her to escape. She won’t have any of this, however, claiming that heroes never retreat and just get right back up if they fall. She has Media, so even if you sit back and let the demons whale on her she’ll endure for a while.
Meanwhile, there are two civilian teams that are trying to escape, and they’re boxed in by Wendigos. These guys deserve our attention first, and I was fortunate in that the beasts kept using Bind on me rather than the civilians. It’s important to keep an eye on their HP just in case, and to stall until the man and woman manage to reach the escape panels nearby, upon which the “no civilian can die” objective is dropped.
Once we beat all the demons however, a voice lets out a long groan and a silver, statue-like demon appears at the far end of the map, claiming that it smells the blood of a Bel. This is the Beldr that we’ve heard so much about, meaning that the Laplace Mail was outright lying to us, the unhelpful bastard!
Beldr (Lv. 30)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Nulls Physical, Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, Mystic, and Almighty
- Weak Kill - Deals Physical damage to one target, heavy if they’re suffering from an ailment.
- Power Hit - Deals heavy Physical damage to one target.
- Lost Flame - Deals heavy Fire damage to the entire enemy team.
- Life Surge - HP raised by 30%.
- Mana Surge - MP raised by 30%.
- + Stone - Physical attacks may petrify enemies.
- Immortal - Immune to all attacks and can ignore obstacles when moving.
- Vampiric Mist - Hits all enemy teams with Mystic damage and recovers HP equal to total damage dealt.
The game wasn’t kidding; Beldr is well-and-truly immortal. The crew needs to flee as well, but unfortunately Midori won’t come along until she gets a first-hand demonstration of Beldr’s immortality, so someone needs to engage him. And then there’s his opening Field Skill. Vampiric Mist is why I prefer to stall defeating the demons until the civilians get away, because in the past I’ve gotten a game over on this mission because it was enough to finish one of them off. So now we have to get everyone to the escape panels as well, and our team refuses to escape before Midori does. Beldr is thankfully pretty slow and while he does summon some demons to harass us they’re not really positioned well enough to inflict significant harm as long as we keep moving.
Completing the mission earns us 400 EXP and 240 macca.
Everyone has a narrow escape and while Midori does utter a thanks she still refuses to give up her COMP despite Keisuke’s objections. He tells her about the death clock and how she only has one day left but she refuses to listen under the logic that our is at zero and we’re still alive. She says that it’s not right to just watch other people die and declares that she’ll beat up all the bad guys and leaves us. That sure didn’t go well, to say the least. Putting Midori aside, the crew resolves to find this one thing that can hurt Beldr by the time he shows up in Aoyama Cemetery like the Laplace Mail said. I would’ve thought they’d be a little more cautious after it just misled them, but eh.
Only one scene available at the moment, all the way down in Shinagawa. At the Sengakuji Temple Atsuro announces to his friends that he’s figured out a way to search for some answers by trying to access and analyze the COMP’s local memory. He hooks it up to his laptop while Akira and Keisuke takes turns keeping it charged with the crank generator and Yuzu writes down whatever he finds. The laptop soon dies, but he did manage to find the following passage on Beldr: “All creation, save the devil’s fuge, vowed never to bring harm to beautiful, radiant Beldr. The evil Loki tricked Beldr’s brother into using the devil’s fuge to send him to Hel.” Reading the myth, they realize that now they have to find whatever this devil’s fuge is and set out to find more information. This is accomplished by seeing a couple timeless events across the lockdown during which we learn from a shady-looking punk with an apparent eye for botany that devil’s fuge is another name for mistletoe. He claims that some weird guys in suits bought all he had and said they’d be in front of the Diet Building in Nagata at five o’clock. Okay then, time to put that on the itinerary.
Next up, another battle has opened up outside the Tokyo Dome. Here a woman is trapped by demons and Midori comes to her aid, only making the woman more hysterical with her Magical Dolly shtick.
Mission 14
- All demons must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
- Midori and no civilian can die
Blah blah beat demons blah blah heal civilian blah blah escape panels blah blah unremarkable mission.
Completing the mission earns us 200 EXP.
Blah blah Midori won’t listen blah blah hero.
One more Midori scene for the road: next in Shinjuku the crew sees her telling a defeated Jack Frost that her strength comes from The Power of Love. Remember this...
At this point if you choose we can check out Nagata to spy Izuna and her commander, who’s now named Fushimi
◊, discussing their investigation. It seems they believe the front of the Diet Building to be the ground zero of the contamination area, and we’ll learn that they have men out in the lockdown looking for COMPs to retrieve. Yuzu says at least they’re doing their job.
We can see one more scene before being railroaded into the next battle, so let’s check in with Haru who’s outside the Bugeikan again. Since Akira’s the main character she ends up spilling her guts to him in regards to her past: basically Parental Abandonment with a side-helping of Stepford Smiler and the belief that she can never form meaningful relationships with anyone. She actually lampshades the whole “why am I telling my tragic backstory to someone I don’t even know” bit and then again mentions our hero’s “dangerous air” and wonders if we’ve given up on life too. Maybe she’s lonely because she drives people away with talk like that?
Next up, it’s a somewhat unusual battle at Miyashita Park. Kaido and Honda have pursued a group of demons into the park, and upon seeing us the gang leader yells at us to back off, these are his. Yuzu is...less than pleased at his attitude, and long story short we’re drawn into a demon-slaying competition. Kaido sets the terms: whichever team kills more, ours or his, will take the losers’ COMPs and macca.
Mission 15
- All demons must be defeated
- The party must defeat the majority of demon teams
- The whole party cannot die
This does require some strategy, namely the strategy of remembering to send one of your guys down some stairs. The Miyashita Park map has an upper and lower level accessed by a set of stairs at either end of it. There aren’t enough demons on the upper level to decide the contest once things start rolling, so preemptively sending someone down there, either at the start of the mission or via Phantasma/Flight, to attack the two demons down there will allow us to win. Don’t count on getting any kill-steals because Kaido and Honda, especially Kaido, are really good at manipulating the Stone status ailment to one-hit-kill teams.
Kaido takes this match very seriously, for when it becomes clear that he won’t win he takes it as a sign that he’s too weak to accomplish anything and cries out that he needs more power, the power to crush everything, no matter who it’s from. In response to his cry a voice says that he hears his bitter despair and a winged demon appears. It introduces itself as Pazuzu and that he’ll grant his wish. Kaido exclaims that summoning without a COMP is sick and Pazuzu whisks he and Honda away.
Uh, mission complete I guess?
Completing the mission earns us 410 EXP and 270 macca.
Atsuro and Keisuke wonder how you can summon a demon other than the auction and initial COMP activation, but Akira comes up with the answer of having a strong will. If that’s the case, Atsuro says things’ll get pretty bad if people start summoning demons whenever they want and the strong use them to trample over others. Keisuke then wonders why this is only possible now, as strong desires are nothing new and his friend figures that it’s just easier for demons to appear with the COMPs around.
Then Yuzu exclaims something: Kaido never handed over his macca like he promised!
Compendium
- Heimdall
◊
- Also known as Heimdallr, Heimdall is the Norse god that serves as the guardian of the rainbow bridge Bifrost that extends between the heavenly realm of Asgard and the material realm of Midgard. When Ragnarok approaches he will sound his horn Gjallarhorn to alert the gods and is destined to mutually die in combat with Loki.
- Pendragon◊
- Welsh for "dragon chief", this is a symbol of a king's authority and several Briton kings, including the legendary King Arthur, took "Pendragon" as a surname.
- Silky◊
- A house spirit from the United Kingdom, Silkies carry out housework while the family is asleep. If anyone tries to cause harm to her family, the Silky will kill them without remorse.
- Basilisk◊
- A legendary king of serpents (though it's not always depicted as a snake) that can kill its prey merely by looking at them. Traditionally its gaze causes its victims to petrify.
- Mezuki◊
- The partner of Gozuki. It's Chinese name is Ma Mian, which means "horse-face".
- Cait Sith◊
- A black cat spirit from northern Britain. The Scottish believed that it could steal the souls of the recently deceased by passing over them before they were buried and would thus try to "distract" them with music and catnip. It's in-game design is clearly based off of the eponymous Puss in Boots of the late 17th century fairy tale.
- Vidofnir◊
- A golden, shining rooster that sits atop Mimameior, a tree analogous with Yggdrasil, in Norse mythology.
- Nalagiri◊
- A king of elephants in Sri Lankan myth. Curiously for the region he is depicted as evil, falling in line with Sri Lankan belief that Hinduism was a pagan religion.
- Power◊
- In Christian tradition Powers occupy the lowest level of the Second Sphere of Heaven. They are warriors and the keepers of history. Sometimes they are referred to as Authorities.
- Afanc◊
- A Welsh lake monster that has been depicted in numerous different ways, from a crocodile and beaver to a dwarf. As you can see, Kaneko went with the beaver interpretation.
- Pazuzu◊
- A Mesopotamian demon of the wind. He is closely associated with the southwest wind in particular which tended to bring famine and drought.
- Beldr◊
- A corruption of Baldr, the Norse god of light. Baldr was immortal thanks to his mother making every living thing swear to never harm him, but she overlooked mistletoe, which Loki took advantage of to trick Baldr's blind brother Hod into killing him with a mistletoe-tipped spear. The goddess Hel promised to restore Baldr to life if every living being wept for him, however one giantess refused to do so, and Baldr remained dead. The giantess was later discovered to be Loki, and the gods imprisoned him as punishment. With Loki imprisoned and the light of the world gone, the stage was set for Ragnarok...
Soundtrack
- Deep Night
- The dark map theme for the main bosses of the game.
- Coldheartedness
- And the battle theme to go with it. And no, most of that doesn't play in-game.
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