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Live Blogs Survivors of the North Star: Let's Play Shin Megami Tensei Devil Survivor 2
ComicX62015-02-17 08:21:43

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The True Revival of the Goddess

So with half of Team Tokyo recruited back onto our team it’s time to go after the other half. The next battle takes place at SL Plaza, where we fought Dubhe at the start of the game. Clustered at the northern end of the map are Daichi, Io, and the small group of demon tamers they’ve managed to recruit. They’re up to something, for Daichi’s asking Io if some plan of her’s is really going to work, and when he sees us he freaks and refuses to listen to what we have to say, claiming that we just plan on forcing them to join up. Ronaldo’s concerned over what they’ve got planned, but we can’t afford them being absorbed by Yamato’s faction he says that we’re just going to have to shoot first and ask questions later.


Ronaldo Mission 2: Settling Up
  • All demon tamers must be defeated
  • The whole party cannot die

Well, this time we start on the side of the map opposite the steam locomotive that we weren’t allowed to during the Dubhe battle. In total there are eight adversaries, but all but two of them are over on the original side to the north, leaving the center an empty no-man’s land that we must traverse. None of the demon tamers on the northern half make any attempts to move or engage us either until we land the first blow, and you’ll notice that many of them don’t have full skill load outs. You might think that means that they’ll be easy to handle because of that, but there’s a reason for it. Once you attack one of the tamers, Io will put her plan into action: to once again channel the power of Lugh and give all of her allies an HP/MP buff and their missing skills.

Once this happens the tamers will start coming after you in earnest, and they can be a handful. The new skills that they’re blessed with tend to complement their specialties, for example the mages get Megido while the Physical attackers get Pierce. Demon choice is pretty good too, like the Worker with Python and Zouchouten to compensate for his Auto Skill being Desperation, or the Policeman with Shield All and two Seiryuu to automatically remove extra turns with their Racial Skill. All in all, they don’t mess around and the northern half of the map can become a meat grinder real fast. They do, however, come with a number of Auto Skills that you’d want to crack, like Ban Ice and Ban Fire and Null Auto, which is useful against human opponents as it cancels out the opposing Auto Skill. As the mission’s two bosses, Daichi and Io don’t slack either:


Daichi (Lv. 53)

HP/MP

  • 409/151
Affinities
  • Resists Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, and Curse
Command Skills
  • Multi-Hit - Deals multiple Physicals hits to one target; number of hits dependent on user’s Agility.
  • Nigayomogi - Attempts to poison entire enemy party.
  • Bufudyne - Deals heavy Ice damage to one target.
Passive Skills
  • Anti-Most - Grants resistance to all elements other than Physical and Almighty.
  • Endure - Survive an otherwise lethal attack with 1 HP.
  • Pierce - Physical attacks bypass Physical resistance, nullification, and absorption.
Auto Skill
  • Debilitate - Reduces enemy party’s defense and hit/evasion rate by 25%.
Demons
  • Taown, Kresnik

Daichi’s going to be the first of the two to attack, given that he’s more mobile than Io thanks to Devil Flash and True Phantasm. He definitely plays to his strengths here with his usage of Multi-Hit, and coupled with Pierce and Debilitate he is capable of one-shotting unlucky demons while Endure lets him live long enough to potentially throw out a Nigayomogi and have his Taown fully heal him with Diarahan. Taown and Kresnik have + Paralyze and + Poison respectively, though the latter’s more likely to inflict his ailment since he actually has an AOE Physical Command Skill in the form of Deathbound. If Daichi had Death Call instead of Bufudyne he would’ve really been something to fear, but even without it he can still certainly be an example of Who's Laughing Now? if you can’t take him out quickly.
Deity Io (Lv. 57)

HP/MP

  • 808/321
Affinities
  • Resists Physical, Fire, Ice, Elec, and Force; Nulls Curse
Command Skills
  • Areadbhar - Deals heavy Almighty damage to one target.
  • Prayer - Fully restores entire party’s HP and cures negative status ailments.
  • Samarecarm - Revives one ally at full HP.
Passive Skills
  • Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit entire enemy party.
  • Anti-Most - Grants resistance to all ailments other than Physical and Almighty.
  • Drain Hit - Absorbs HP when using Physical attacks.
Racial Skill
  • Enlightenment - Sacrifices some HP to raise magical damage by 50% for one turn; team’s MP costs reduced by 25%.
Demons
  • Kazfiel, Vivian

As a (temporary) Deity, Io’s skills get the largest upgrade (Prayer, Samarecarm, and Anti-Most used to be Diarahan, Recarm, and Anti-Ailment respectively, for example) and her movement range gets bumped up to five panels, so you’ll find her bearing down on you pretty quickly. What’s more, she gets access to Enlightenment and will use it to deadly effect. Sure, she only has one offensive skill, but by itself Areadbhar is basically a single-target Megidolaon, and when it’s running off of her already-high Magic stat and buffed by 25% it’s basically a tactical nuke. She can take a number of hits too and has more than enough means of healing and support across her team. Fortunately she doesn’t have any defenses against Holy Dance other than her Magic stat, so basically doing the same thing I did with Shiva was enough to take her on. She’s still faster than Shiva (and her Vivian’s Fairy Dust can move her turn forward) so it wasn’t quite as effective and she was still able to take her pound of flesh from Otome’s team though. Thankfully she doesn’t have quadruple-digit HP like the Destroyer did, so the fight didn’t take as long. Once defeated the power of Lugh will leave her and she’ll defeat the battle like every other defeated human enemy after saying Hibiki’s name to herself. I didn’t check to make sure if beating her returns the other remaining demon tamers to normal but eh, no biggy.
Completing the mission earns us 3400 EXP and 8500 macca.
Lugh’s finally unlocked for fusion after that (as hinted in the battle just now he’s a Deity) and Ronaldo notes that Yamato’s group and the day’s Septentrione are all that’s left, and in the meantime Hibiki should talk to the defeated Daichi and Io, as he’s likely the only one they’ll listen to. Getting on that, Io’s at the Kanda street location where we ran into Mari a lot in the first game. Her little recruitment scene involves her realizing that she lost because she was deluding herself by taking the easy way out of fighting instead of talking it out and voicing her own opinions, and naturally by the end she agrees to accompany Hibiki once more. Daichi meanwhile, is over in Shibuya and his hang up is that he’s convinced that he sucks at everything he tries and is basically useless.We tell him that he can’t afford to give up and that in the spirit of equality his friends will always be there to help him out with whatever he can’t understand, and the final promise of egalitarianism being a means of world peace win him over.

So now that Daichi, Io, Hinako, and Jungo are back in the fold it’s time for the next mandatory event at 12:00PM at Miyashita Park. The void on the park’s upper level has expanded a bit more since yesterday, but that’s not the focus of the scene. The party’s here because the daily Septentrione has appeared in the park, and Ronaldo and Airi run ahead of the others, eager to fight it before Yamato has a chance to get to it. Switching over to the park’s map, we see the Septentrione at the far end, looking like a featureless, rounded beige cone. This one, Benetnasch, is oddly enough considerably smaller than the ones we’ve been fighting recently, and Ronaldo also notes that he doesn’t really sense any particular threat from it. Still, it generates some miasma spawn points and demons, so it’s time to fight.


Ronaldo Mission 3: Unknown Enemy
  • Benetnasch must be defeated
  • The whole party cannot die

The common demons include guys like Yaksa, Baihu, and Laksmi so they’re a little bit stronger compared to the currently-available free battles, and they naturally come with some good skills to crack like Fire Repel, Megido, Life Lift, and Mediarahan. You shouldn’t bother cracking a skill off a demon who’s on a far away team for a reason that’ll soon become clear unless you have a specific plan that turns the cracker into Speedy Gonzales. For its part, Benetnasch is by far the most passive of the seven Septentrione in that it doesn’t actively “do” anything. It doesn’t move or show any sort of proactive offensive power (contrast with the anime, where Benetnasch was a nigh-unstoppable juggernaut Hero Killer). What it does have, however, is a large attack range.
Benetnasch (Lv. 60)

HP/MP

  • ???/???
Affinities
  • Weak to Fire and Elec; Resists Ice; Reflects Physical; Nulls Force and Curse
Command Skills
  • Binary Fire - Deals two hits of moderate Fire damage to one target.
  • Circumpolarity - Deals heavy Ice damage to entire enemy party.
Passive Skills
  • Pacify Human - Grants immunity to all human-based attacks.
  • Repel Physical - Grants reflection of Physical attacks.
  • Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
Racial Skill
  • Alkaid Proof - Has an attack range of 7 panels.

...and Dubhe and Merak’s signature attacks, along with the ability to completely neuter our party leaders. Well then, ordinarily that’s not too too bad as you can just have your humans stick primarily to healing and support, but there’s another catch to this battle. You may have caught on that we’ve only fought Septentriones during the late afternoon/early evening at the earliest so far, and Benetnasch breaks the trend. The reason for that? After one battle it will use a Field Skill called Revoke Demons. This banishes all demons on the field (hope you already cracked all the skills you set!)...and returns all the party’s demons to their phones and prevents the summon app from summoning anymore. Okay, that’s bad...

In the face of this, Ronaldo orders a retreat, and three escape panels appear on the bottom level of the map. Escaping should be easy given that Benetnasch doesn’t move and there are no demons on the field, right? Nope, because Benetnasch actually summons two Benetnasch Buds which look identical to the Megrez Buds which’ll use Phecda’s Dark Thunder to hit any characters who’re nearby and Diastrophism to hit any who aren’t. I think you can guess what Benetnasch’s gimmick is...

If a character is equipped properly and has decent stats in whatever their offensive specialty is they can take out the Buds without much trouble, but it’s really best to just motor towards the nearest escape panel. Despite having to flee we still get EXP and macca at the end, though since the demons were banished from the field only the humans get to enjoy it.


Completing the mission earns us 3600 EXP and 9000 macca.
The party regroups after fleeing and after comparing their notes come to the conclusion that Benetnasch’s defenses are perfect, and impossible for them to breach. As the group departs Otome gives the oh-so-subtle hint of how to proceed by wondering if there’s “someone” that they could talk to who could help them with this problem. Too bad that “someone” is currently a member of a hostile faction...
Compendium
  • Arioch (NSFW)
    • Arioch was originally an ancient king mentioned in the Bible, but in John Milton's Paradise Lost he was one of the angels who was cast out of Heaven for taking part in Satan's rebellion, and his name shows up as a demon in several old grimoires. I also suspect that the only reason this game is rated T and not M is that, despite having folds and a clitoris and everything, Arioch's case of Vagina Dentata is still more subtle and easier to miss than Mara the giant green penis.
  • Sleipnir
    • The eight-legged horse who served as Odin's steed in Norse mythology. Sleipnir's father is the stallion Svaoilfari, the legendary horse who assisted in the construction of a massive fortification around the gods' domain. When it looked like the builder was going to meet his contract (which the gods never planned on honoring), Loki "distracted" Svaoilfari by taking the guise of a female horse, and Sleipnir was the result of their union.
  • Anzu
    • In Mesopotamian myth Anzu is a lion-headed bird monster who serves as the personification of the southern wind, the wind of storms. In numerous ancient civilizations his most famous feat is stealing the tablets of destiny from the sky god Enlil in order to become all-knowing, and in pretty much every version of the myth he is killed in retribution.
  • Decarabia
    • One of the seventy-two demons listed in the Goetia and the keeper of herbs and precious minerals. It's often depicted as a pentacle, hence its star-like design.
  • Benetnasch
    • More commonly known as Alkaid, Benetnasch is the third and final star of the Big Dipper's "handle", and in Japan and China it is known as the "army-crusher star" as it is located in the northern reaches of the sky and north was considered an unlucky direction by ancient hunters and soldiers. Property-wise Benetnasch is a blue-white B-type star and is the third brightest among the Big Digger stars. Both of its names come from the Arabic phrase qa'id binat na'sh, meaning "the mourning maidens", referring to the three stars that make up the handle, as the Arabs saw the ladle as a bier (a coffin stand).

Comments

Hunter1 Since: Dec, 1969
Mysterion Since: Dec, 1969
Feb 18th 2015 at 10:11:05 PM
I suppose the usual party at this point would be

Jungo/Hinako/Ronaldo, Otome, Io/Airi/Joe

The game does a pretty good job of giving every faction some good characters.
ComicX6 Since: Dec, 1969
Feb 19th 2015 at 3:06:23 AM
Pretty much. Right now I'm rolling with Ronaldo/Io/Otome, and I'll likely switch Io out for Fumi once she rejoins. Normally I prefer to use Hinako in place of Ronaldo for Multi-Strike slaughter, but as I said in Devil Survivor 1 I like using route-relevant characters, and there's still not quite enough room for two Physical attackers with Pierce + still being a long ways off.
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