In this update we’ll be covering the bonus missions of the Triangulum Arc. All two of them. Oh well.
The first one does not show up until the very beginning of Thursday, and even then you might miss it because it’s located at the very, very bottom of the event list on the overworld. It takes place at the Nagoya TV Tower, where Hibiki, Daichi, and Io happen to hear some cries for help and decide to investigate. What they find are not some helpless civilians, but rather a quintet of friendly Jack Frosts who thank us for coming. Why do they want our help, you may ask? Because they want to become the Legendary Warriors of Frost so that they can survive in the chaotic, dog-eat-god world of the demon world (marking the first time the demon world has been mentioned in the whole game!): Blue Hawaii Frost, Strawberry Frost, Lemon Frost, Melon Frost, and Milky Frost. If these names ring some distant bells, you may recall that these are five of the six Ranger demons created by Dr. Thrill from Soul Hackers, who collectively made up the ultimate Ranger demon known as the Frost Five.
Anyway, the transformation process involves the Jack Frosts obtaining something called the Syrup App, and the leader of the group demonstrates by uploading a nearby memory card into himself and becoming Blue Hawaii Frost. There are other Syrup App memory cards scattered around the map for the other four Frosts, and our role is to protect them from the demons who all of a sudden appear from nowhere, seeing the Frosts as cool, refreshing treats. Io feels bad for them and Daichi of course decides to go along with her, so into the fray we leap!
Bonus Mission 1: Frost Five
- The Frost Five must be united within 15 turns
- The whole party cannot die
- No Frost can die
So this is an Escort Mission, albeit one that we have a degree of control over. Basically the way this works is that whenever Blue Hawaii Frost’s turn comes up he will ask us if it’s safe to advance. Answer in the affirmative and he’ll ask us which of the four Syrup Apps we’d like the Frosts to shoot for, and upon making your pick one of them will head out from their starting point towards the designated memory card. We can only send out one Frost per turn, and once all four have ventured out into the field Blue Hawaii Frost will cease his questions.
The Frosts are, well, mere Jack Frosts and there’s no way to stop them once they head out we have to run interference so that the demons don’t squash them. This however is not hard to do - there aren’t that many demon teams and they’re composed of demons native to the upper thirties and low forties, so they’re no match for the endgame stuff I’m carrying around like Lucifer, Zaou Gongen, Metatron, and Kohryu. They’ll respawn after a while, but always in the same spots with the same team makeup. The only real hairy part of the escorting is towards the bottom of the map due to its layout preventing you from camping the demons like you can those elsewhere on the map. Plus, once the Frosts obtain the apps and transform they’ll double in level and gain some new moves and resistances, so they won’t just keel over and die anymore once another demon team looks at them funny. The time limit is, like most of the others in the game, pretty inconsequential too.
Completing the mission earns us 9000 EXP and 16500 macca.
So things end with the newly-formed Frost Five thank us for our help and promise to aid us when we need them before vanishing, and Daichi comments that he’s impressed that even demons can have hopes and dreams. The Frost Five are created by fusing a Jack Frost and Black Frost together, so another demon that I can’t create on this file, and are Lv. 76, slotting them in right below Masakado as the new penultimate Hero. Their only weakness is Fire (they reflect Physical, absorb Ice, and null everything else but Almighty) but that might not as well even be there since Black Frost naturally comes with Repel Fire. Incidentally, this game marks only the second appearance of the Frost Five in the entire Megami Tensei franchise. It’s true! In the eighteen years since Soul Hackers’ original release on the Sega Saturn the Frost Five have not been included in any of the many games released between then and now! Maybe one day we’ll see the likes of Leonard or Morrigan again in a Devil Survivor 3 or something.
Now, the second of the two bonus missions is the big daddy, the Triangulum Arc’s equivalent of the Lucifer and Alice battles, and like them must be unlocked via the Survivor Awards. It becomes available on Friday after the final story mission of the day against the Shards at the Tokyo Government Metropolitan building, and remains so for the rest of the day. Selecting it has Hibiki returning to his room inside the Tokyo branch where Nicaea starts up on his phone, but instead of Tico appearing the screen goes white and when it fades in our hero is somehow within the website itself, on a stage right out of the Megaman Battle Network games. No really, it’s got the exact same “platforms suspended over a vast void” motif complete with circuitry patterns, flashing “NICAEA” holographic popup windows, and a background wallpaper depicting a literal cyberspace. Both of the Ticos have appeared before us, and Male Tico explains that we are currently inside the website’s “gaming application”, and the reason they’ve brought us here is so that we can be entertained, and what’s more entertaining than rigorous combat? That’s right, people have been pegging the two Ticos as expies of Persona’s Elizabeth and Theodore ever since the original DS game was released, and here they fulfill that role by serving as the ultimate bosses of the Triangulum Arc. They summon a bunch of demons to the stage and each warp to opposite sides of the field, Female Tico (I really wish Atlus USA had taken the Woolsey approach by naming Male Tico “Tycho” so that differentiating between the two wasn’t so cumbersome) saying that the rules are simple: the last one standing wins. Oh and by the way, she warns, she’s super-duper strong.
Bonus Mission 2: AI Challenge
- Both Ticos must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
The Ticos have summoned a wide variety of demons, consisting of specimens from the earlygame up to the mid-lategame, including a few that the AI has yet to use in battle, such as King Frost. Being the kind of battle this mission is, they all have massively-inflated levels, from the mid-80s up to the low 90s. They’ve all got some nasty abilities too: a Nekomata with + Paralyze so that it can lay waste to teams with Multi-Strike and cripple the survivors? Check. Legions that drop Petra Eyes so that Loas can use Attack All to wipe out those stoned? Check. Purple Mirrors that’ll block hit for its allies with Hero Soul and Paladin Soul? Check. Rangdas that do the same despite not having the required passives? Check. Going in with a team that doesn’t have levels at a comparable range is tantamount to suicide, and like my preparations for Lucifer I used Mitamas to spread around Victory Cry to my team, as well as Physical Repel, which turned out to be very useful. Each team should have at least one way to fully heal themselves, even if it’s simply Diarahan.
Now the Ticos, they will sit at opposite ends of the map without doing much of anything until we start knocking off demons teams, whereupon they’ll resummon them on their own turns. Only one at a time though, so it’s not really very overwhelming. If you’re curious, they belong to the Digital race instead of the more longstanding Cyber race.
Female Tico (Lv. 88)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Absorbs Physical and Fire; Reflects Elec; Nulls Curse
- Maziodyne - Deals heavy Elec damage to entire enemy party.
- Inferno - Deals heavy Fire damage to entire enemy party and may affect self as well.
- Megido - Deals moderate Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Elec Amp - Elec attacks powered up by 50%.
- Fire Amp - Fire attacks powered up by 50%.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Program: Joy - Has a movement range of 6 panels.
Male Tico (Lv. 88)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Absorbs Ice; Reflects Physical; Nulls Force and Curse
- Piercing Hit - Deals moderate Physical damage to one target while ignoring Physical resistance, absorption, and nullification.
- Mighty Hit - Deals a critical Physical hit to one target.
- Holy Strike - A Strength-based attack that deals heavy Almighty damage to one target.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit entire enemy party.
- Physical Amp - Physical attacks powered up by 50%.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Program: Joy - Has a movement range of 6 panels.
Female Tico being a mage while Male Tico is all Physical, all the time isn’t a surprise given the Guys Smash, Girls Shoot trope. Of the two, Female Tico is the more dangerous, I found, thanks to the high likelihood of her using both her turns to dump Megido on us for close to a total of 700 damage. Male Tico on the other hand can only hit one target most of the time, plus all those Repel Physicals take away a fair bit of his bite. Both of them have somewhere in the ballpark of 3000-4000 HP, so they shouldn’t last too long at this stage. Naturally however this is a multi-phase fight, and once you beat them both they’ll warp over closer to the center of the map for round 2.
Female Tico (Lv. 93)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Absorbs Physical and Fire; Reflects Elec; Nulls Curse
- Maziodyne - Deals heavy Elec damage to entire enemy party.
- Inferno - Deals heavy Fire damage to entire enemy party and may affect self as well.
- Megido - Deals moderate Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Elec Amp - Elec attacks powered up by 50%.
- Fire Amp - Fire attacks powered up by 50%.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Program: Joy - Has a movement range of 6 panels.
- Replenish! - Automatically replaces dead demons at the start of an engagement.
- Pazuzu, Pisaca
Male Tico (Lv. 93)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Absorbs Ice; Reflects Physical; Nulls Force and Curse
- Piercing Hit - Deals moderate Physical damage to one target while ignoring Physical resistance, absorption, and nullification.
- Mighty Hit - Deals a critical Physical hit to one target.
- Holy Strike - A Strength-based attack that deals heavy Almighty damage to one target.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit entire enemy party.
- Physical Amp - Physical attacks powered up by 50%.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Program: Joy - Has a movement range of 6 panels.
- Replenish! - Automatically replaces dead demons at the start of an engagement.
- Mothman, Decarabia
The second phase Ticos have the same skills, but five more levels, demons, and a new gimmick in their new Field Skill. Replenish! is a bit annoying because it works to deny you the advantage of pounding on the Ticos without the usual defensive buff that leaders get when they have demons/allies out. There’s no way to stop it, and it can easily screw up the usual boss-killing strategy of letting Jungo or whoever going to town with Deathbound if one of the demons happens to reflect Physical, either naturally or through a passive. They all have custom movesets too. The demons they pull aren’t random though, it appears that there’s a set list of them and whenever one of their demons is downed they’ll just pull the next one or two from the list. I don’t know how many demons are available for them to draw upon, or if it’ll eventually loop back around to the start with Pazuzu, Pisaca, Mothman, and Decarabia again because while the demons themselves tend to go down relatively quickly to Dances the Ticos themselves can still be dangerous thanks to their new staying power, so I didn’t want to waste too much time screwing around and testing things. They’ll no longer summon new demon teams at this point, probably because they’ll actually move around now.
Once they’re beaten for a second time they decide to whip out their ultimate technique, the “Tico Tico Fusion” to become Tico Duo! ...which simply consists of Male Tico holding Female Tico up in the air with one hand. Hibiki can either accuse them of cheating, or exclaim “That’s amazing!” in a very Luffy-like manner. It’s certainly very goofy, but the power of the Tico Duo is certainly not to be trifled with...
Tico Duo (Lv. 98)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Resists Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, and Almighty; Nulls Physical and Curse
- Megidolaon - Deals heavy Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Mabufudyne - Deals heavy Ice damage to entire enemy party.
- Zandyne - Deals heavy Force damage to one target.
- Avenge - High chance of countering Physical attacks.
- Excharge - Attack power is doubled on an extra turn.
- Dragon Eye - Allows three actions per turn during battle.
- Program: Ultra - Grants resistance to Almighty.
- Replenish! - Automatically replaces dead demons at the start of an engagement.
- Megidoladyne - Deals heavy Almighty damage to all enemy teams; power increases with each casting.
- Orobas, Anzu
No, your eyes are not deceiving you, Atlus did indeed bring back the most notorious spell in the Devil Survivor series, and on its second outing I found Megidoladyne more deadly in the Ticos’ hands than in Lucifer’s. That’s partly because my team aren’t all at Lv. 99 like it was then, but also because their turns come up a lot more quickly than the demon lord’s did. That’s because the Tyrant Lock strategy no longer works as Tyranny/Blood Treaty no longer pushes teams back in the turn queue, so they get to move more, and Megidoladyne grows more powerful more quickly. And at the first casting it’s already dealing around 500 damage! Setting Megidoladyne aside, they can also dump Megidolaons multiple times a turn, killing you anyway if they have that extra turn available.
Just like against Lucifer, this final phase is a frantic race against the clock to defeat the Tico Duo before Megidoladyne does me in, and since it’s so strong you can actually lose just by your guys being out of position at the end of the second phase, too far away to reach and attack the navigators in time before we get nuked. It’s a damage race, pure and simple. I lost some guys towards the end in my rush to take them out but I didn’t care - there’s just no time to worry about it.
Completing the mission earns us 9000 EXP and 16500 macca.
Once we do manage to best them the Ticos basically just gush over our strength for a while, saying that even the current ordeal will not be able to stop us, and then Hibiki, and I guess the teammates that we brought along into battle, are returned to the real world. That’s it, no uber-demon unlock or what have you as an award, just an associated Survivor Award title. Time to move right along and finally bring this story to its conclusion.
Compendium
- Black Maria
◊
- A depiction of Mary with dark skin, possibly having been derived from ancient earth goddess depictions.
- Frost Five◊
- A team of superhero Frosts consisting of Strawberry Frost, Blue Hawaii Frost, Melon Frost, Lemon Frost, and Milky Frost. Individually they are nothing special, but by combining their powers and covering each other's weakness they are a force to be reckoned with! They don't actually taste like the shaved ice treats they happen to be named after, though.
- Seth◊
- The Egyptian god of the desert, war, and general disorder, brother to Osiris and Isis, and father to Anubis. Seth was known for his jealousy towards Osiris, even going so far to dismember him in one myth, and later had a rivalry with his grandson Horus which exhibited itself through innocent means such as boat racing and more icky means such as attempted rape. These qualities made him a prime target for demonization after Egypt was conquered by foreign empires during the late BC era as an evil storm deity.
- Yurlungur◊
- In Aboriginal lore Yurlungur is a serpent colored with the seven colors of the rainbow who brings rainfall. The basis of the myth seems to be an ordinary copper snake who appeared rainbow-hued thanks to light refracting through the water of the well it lived in.
- Ongyo-ki◊
- Ongyo-ki was one of the four oni alongside Fuu-ki, Kin-ki, and Sui-ki controlled by the Fujiwara no Chikata noble family of ancient Japan. Ongyo-ki's special abilities were rooted in stealth, and it's speculated that he was one of the primary inspirations for ninjas.
