With the big reveal that the entire party did indeed die and that this is not the original world created after defeating Polaris you’d think the mood would dip considerably, but that’s not quite the case as the available free time events have yet to update, and won’t for at least another hour. So, focusing on characters who’re about to achieve higher Fate stages first is Keita’s event, where Hibiki comes across him being pinned to the ground in a judo hold by Ronaldo, and he can’t break free no matter how hard he struggles. They’re not having a fight, Ronaldo insists, explaining that he’s learned that Keita’s the “Raging Wolf of Minami”, a delinquent who once terrified the Osaka police. Pinning him to the ground is the only way he can get the kid to hold still and listen, as he’s taken it upon himself to reform Keita. Heh, good luck with that, especially as his idea of reformation is to instill healthy habits like exercise and sleeping and eating well, which Keita protests that he already does as part of his boxing training. He protests that he’s no longer a delinquent street fighter because boxing is much more conductive to getting stronger, and finally manages to break free of the older man’s grip. Perhaps not realizing that its Keita’s attitude that needs an adjustment rather than his body Ronaldo apologizes for jumping to conclusions but the boy’s more interested in figuring out where Ronaldo’s strength comes from and how to beat him. Once he leaves Ronaldo says that perhaps he should take a leaf out of his book then and decides to join Keita on his next early morning run. I’m sure he’ll just love that. His Fate goes up to Stage 3.
The scene that gets Otome up to Fate Stage 3 is pretty short and fluffy as it’s basically just her directing a battery of questions at Hibiki in the continued effort to determine what exactly is wrong with him. After that is when the available scenes update, with time for two more before the next battle. I’m gonna watch Airi’s first at the Nagoya branch since I haven’t watched any of her events in a while. She asks Hibiki if he knows were Makoto is since she’d like to talk to her, then talks a bit about how her story in the previous world about her old dream of being a swimmer was what helped her find her new path in this world after her old dream fell through, and how she really respects and looks up to Makoto now. It’s sort of like the scene in the Septentrione Arc where Airi was giving her opinion on the other girls and only really had anything good to say about Makoto, only much more genuine this time. Then she and Hibiki overhear some sort of kerfuffle in the distance: Fumi wants to borrow Makoto’s phone for some sort of experiment, causing the woman to get more and more worked up and upset. Fumi ends up forgetting the experiment and decides to hold on to the phone since it’s getting such a rise out of her coworker, teasing her for either keeping a diary or sneaking pictures of “him” on it. Once that passes Hibiki and Airi are left sort of speechless at the sight of Makoto being reduced to such a pitiful, childish state right after she went on about how cool she was. Eventually Airi insists that it’s good to have a playful side, since being perfect all the time must be pretty boring. She’ll just talk to Makoto later! Probably.
Next, the continuation of Io’s subplot from yesterday with that woman in Shinjuku whose husband and son died at the Skytree. The woman has calmed down a little bit since yesterday in that she’s no longer lashing out but she’s still resentful and doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. Still wishing to help her Io presses forward to insist that she can empathize with her and relates how she lost her loved ones too, presumably expressed in such a way that leaves out the whole multiple worlds angle. The woman’s surprised that Io was able to find the strength to move past that and finally opens up about the deaths of her family and the despair she felt at the unfairness of it all. She admits that yes, it was unfair of her to lash out at Io and that she knows that she didn’t really summon the demons, but she just needed someone to blame. She apologizes for the cruel things she said to Io before and the two part on better terms, each promising to stay safe and Io promising that she’ll try her best to try fixing the world, the double meaning obviously lost on the woman. Once she leaves we have Hibiki congratulate her on a job well done and Io says that she’s glad that she was able to take away at least a little bit of the woman’s pain and repeats what she said in her last event about Miyako that you can’t come to an understanding with someone if you don’t know what they’re thinking. Once again she thanks Hibiki for all his emotional anchor stuff and makes another promise to find a way to stop him from fading away and leaving her. She becomes the first character on this playthrough to achieve Fate Stage 4.
After those scenes it’s now 12:30PM, time for the plot to kick in yet again. The party meets up outside the entrance to Tokyo Station to talk about what they’ve learned since meeting Al Saiduq and if you thought we’d finally be getting a break from all the “we don’t know shit!” stuff that’s been going on, boy would you be wrong! Though at least it seems like JP’s isn’t actively pursuing the party, likely feeling that it’s not worth it, according to Fumi. She does note that the bulk of their forces seem to be concentrated around the Skytree, which she finds odd despite the fact that it’s the keystone of the barrier network and has a Septentrione being held captive in a secret underground lab that we’ve already breached twice and will likely do so again in the very near future. I think that level of security is completely warranted.
But then all of a sudden the ground starts to shake and we’re treated to a cutscene of giant explosions appearing beyond Tokyo Station, throwing great flaming gouts of fire and debris high into the air and cutting through skyscrapers like butter. Something crashes down in front of the station, completely devastating the lot and the surrounding Marunochi district, and when the smoke and dust clears we see standing amid the rubble what looks like a giant piece of perforated sheet metal, and the summoning app identifies it as Arcturus, the final Triangulum. Hibiki’s body immediately starts to flicker again, confirming the party’s suspicions that his condition is directly related to the Triangulum. Keita tries to launch an attack at it and the others follow suit, but no matter what sort of spell or element they use their opponent is completely unharmed, and retaliates by expelling some sort of dark green energy burst that weakens the entire party and drops them all to their knees. Arcturus then begins glowing gold as it begins to build up energy for a massive followup attack and that’s when Daichi realizes that he’s seen this happen before: this is exactly how they died in the second world, and we even see a flashback to drive the point home showing the exact same scene, only with Hibiki gone and Yamato and Al Saiduq in his place.
Just when it looks like history is about to repeat itself and the party is about to die yet again Arcturus is suddenly bound by Dragon Stream energy and Miyako comes to our rescue, sword drawn and urging us to escape while she attempts to hold Arcturus back. There’s no time for talk as she can’t restrain it for long, and Arcturus does the usual demon summoning routine. This scenario seems somewhat familiar...
Mission 13: Sudden Disappearance
- The party must successfully escape from Arcturus
- The whole party cannot die
- Miyako cannot die
First things first, let’s look at what we’re running from:
Arcturus (Lv. 50)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Nulls Physical, Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, Curse, and Almighty
- Judgement - A Curse-based attack that halves the entire enemy party’s HP.
- Gigajama - Attempts to make one target forget.
- Drain - An Almighty-based skill that absorbs some HP and MP from one target.
- Physical Amp - Physical attacks powered up by 50%.
- + Stone - Physical attacks may petrify enemies.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Arcturus Sign - Grants immunity to all elements; has an attack range of 14 panels.
- Quasar - Weakens all enemies’ affinities to Fire, Ice, Elec, and Force.
- Plough of Death - Deals moderate Fire damage to all enemy parties.
I made an off-hand comment way back during the Dubhe fight that it was like the game was throwing Beldr at us right off the bat. Well, I was wrong. Arcturus is Beldr. Beldr on steroids. Arcturus’s Command and Passive Skills on their own are not very frightening, it’s its immunity and Field Skills that make it so deadly. Its normal attack range is absolutely massive, and its Field Skills are completely unavoidable. Drawing the comparison with the mission in the first game where we had to flee from Beldr, this one is much, much more intense.
To start with, Arcturus’s initial cutscene attack inflicted us with a unique status ailment called “4-Down”, making it so that the four humans we dispatch start the battle off as weak to the four main elements. This overwrites any resistance you may already have from equipping the various Anti/Null-Element passives, and what’s more this is impossible to remove. Then it will use Quasar to spread those weaknesses onto our demons, and not even Miyako, who remains immobile near Arcturus, can avoid getting hit by that. This is really bad because not only will the unavoidable Plough of Death deal a lot of damage, to the tune of roughly 50% max HP, but lots of the demons on the map know stuff like Mabufu and Mazio etc., so demon teams that we can ordinarily plow right through can now brutally slaughter our guys instead. Arcturus will also reapply Quasar to hit anyone who escapes 4-Down thanks to revival or being summoned from the demon stock. Fortunately the game is merciful enough to not give us a game over if one or two of our guys fall, they’ll instead automatically retreat, instead of going through their usual “oh no im dead!” dialogue. Also unlike that Beldr mission, the escape panels that we need to reach are not in a simple straight line from our starting position: this map is much bigger than the Ikebukuro one and has a lot more debris and rubble to negotiate, and there are a number of Legions who’ll use Evil Bind incessantly to slow us down, and some of them come with Afancs so that they can zip right up to us with Devil Speed. Once we near the escape panels a couple more demon teams will warp in to camp them to serve as one last roadblock, including a Pazuzu that is especially dangerous because it knows Force Dance and Holy Dance.
As for Miyako, Arcturus will spend all of its turns where its not using Quasar or Plough of Death attacking her, but seemingly only with normal Physical attacks, which she’s resistant to thanks to an Anti-Physical. She can take a hit from Plough of Death since she’s about fourteenish levels ahead of us and she does have Media and a Laksmi with Mediarahan for healing, though she seems to only use Mediarahan and Goddess Grace when her HP’s in the red, which game me a couple scares. Still, if you take too long her healing won’t be able to keep up, and storywise Arcturus starts trying to break out of her binding once your guys start nearing the escape panels, and once everyone escapes it indeed breaks free. Overall I do like this mission a lot. It’s easily the best example of an escape mission across the two Devil Survivor games and it’s pretty intense even if you try to cheese it.
Completing the mission earns us 5800 EXP and 11500 macca.
Once we escape the battlefield the party runs all the way to Kanda to regroup where everyone expresses their shock and panic at how powerful Arcturus was and the reality that they really did die before fully sinking in. There is one bright spot though in that it seems that if they can somehow defeat Arcturus then Hibiki’s ailment is likely to cease. Next we have to return to the Nagoya branch command center to talk things over in a safer, more secure environment where they start off talking about how Miyako unexpectedly came to their rescue and why, since they’re pretty much enemies at this point. Keita still thinks it’s just a means to her secret plan but the more empathetic characters like Jungo, Io, and Daichi, want to believe that there was more to it than that. At any rate, Airi sums up the whole thing in a nutshell by saying that it’s really hard to get a read on her.
Then Daichi speaks up with something he just realized: he’s realized in his version of the nightmare Arcturus was nowhere to be seen and since Yamato and Al Saiduq were still standing he suspects that maybe the two actually were able to defeat the Triangulum Administrator somehow in the second world. There might be some clues as to harming it lying with them, but going back to where Al Saiduq’s being held is deemed kinda pointless since they wouldn’t be able to break him out of that tank. Otome suggests that Yamato could use his own power over the Dragon Stream to free him, but getting to the Akasha Stratum is also a no-go at the moment. Makoto then arrives in the hall to report that Fumi hacked into the JP’s network and learned that Arcturus has gone dormant, but as it shut down the spread of the void began to accelerate as foretold in the second dream with Yamato, with Yokohama having been just absorbed, and it being estimated that Japan only has ten hours left before it is completely consumed.
With Miyako currently out of action due to injuries sustained from Arcturus, it’s our chance to act. Makoto delegates the tasks out: she and Fumi will research the Terminals to see if there’s any way they can get to the Akasha Stratum, Otome will continue looking into Hibiki’s condition, Joe, Ronaldo, Hinako, and Airi will scout out the void, and Daichi, Io, Jungo, and Keita will return to what’s left of Tokyo Station to get a glimpse at the inactive Arcturus. Hibiki’s left to his own devices, of course. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually find something out this time?
Compendium
- Arcturus
◊
- An orange giant in the Bootes constellation, Arcturus is the fourth-brightest star in the night sky and one of the three vertices that make up the Spring Triangle asterism. In addition to its brightness and luminosity, Arcturus is notable for having a very fast proper motion through the night sky, and combining that with the fact that it is moving perpendicularly through space rather than horizontally with the disk of the Milky Way means that millions of years from now Arcturus will cease to be visible from Earth. In the meantime, Arcturus is the brightest star visible in the northern celestial equator, as brighter Sirius and Alpha Centauri are located in the southern celestial equator. It's name is a corruption of arktouros Ancient Greek for "the bear's guardian" referencing its relative proximity to Ursa Major.
FYI, I've finally found an article
that supports the "Spica is a quintuple star" interpretation that the game goes with. It's somewhat speculatory, but the gist is some astronomers came to that conclusion based on how its light changes when the Moon eclipses it. Just a bit of fun trivia.
