Last Day - Sunday’s Fruition
I suppose, after the triumphs yesterday, that Hibiki has decided that he’s earned the right to sleep in today, for despite it being the final day we wake up at 10:00 instead of 6:00. Ronaldo’s the one to greet us this morning (we can be cheeky and greet him in Spanish, despite the fact that he’s part Brazilian) and says that everyone else is already at the branch’s command center. There all the characters cycle through the usual morning greetings and commentary on what a big day it’s going to be. For now they all decide that their first objective of the day is to find the Anguished One for guidance on exactly how to reach Polaris.
Upon hitting the overworld we can see that barely any of Japan remains - all that’s left is basically an archipelago of islands with the largest three being in the vicinities of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. Like the first game the last day is pretty much entirely linear, and there are only two events currently available, one of which being the first story mission. As usual I did some free battling and fusing to start with, getting the next Tyrant up, Loki, to replace Tzitzimitl (whom by this point had the consistency of toilet paper), the next Deity Alilat to make Fumi into even more of a magical nuke, and an interesting demon that I want to see how far I can go with: Purple Mirror. Purple Mirror’s the ultimate Ghost and has as its gimmick the innate reflection of all elements but Physical and Force, which it’s weak to. However, since one of its possible fusion combinations involves Rangda, if you have a Force Set add-on available like I did you can make one that reflects those elements too, making it another demon like Titania that’s only vulnerable to Almighty with a bit of tinkering.
Aside from the mission, the only other available event is called “Swallowed World”, where Hibiki, Ronaldo, and the other members of their faction observe the void, now spreading over Asakusa Temple. Ronaldo reports that he heard that the Edogawa ward was swallowed by the void earlier today, which is directly east of the Taito ward where the temple is, so there’s not much time left. People are trying to flee towards the intact parts of the city, but they’re still at the risk of demon attacks. He says that at this rate the world will only last a few more hours, so we’re really down to the wire here. Fortunately the other event is where we find the Anguished One, on the steps outside of the Akasaka Palace. Ronaldo tells him that all the Septentriones have been defeated, and the will of the species has been united, so he better show them how to reach Polaris already. The Anguished One says that no, not all of the Septentriones have been defeated; they’ll meet the final one today. Yeah...uh, apparently none of the party remembers the time they theorized that he might be one himself, because they all act incredulous.
Naturally, we can’t do things straight: the Anguished One wants to test us yet again to see if we have the power to see things through. He tells us to “return silence to this place” and summons some demons to the courtyard, including one special guest. Normally the two boss demons he summons are souped-up versions of Botis and Bifrons, but because we already trumped them earlier in the game he instead summons the messenger of love and justice here to deal out some magical punishment, Black Frost! Only, this doesn’t seem to be the same one from Devil Survivor 1 because if you call him Frosty he says that you’re mistaking him for someone else. Good thing, because we’re going to have to kill him too.
Ronaldo Mission 7: Shown Path
- All demons must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
This mission is really just a warm-up. There are some new demons here like the Physical bruiser Cerberus, the bulky Airavata, and the Physical-reflecting Rangda, but nothing that can really pose much of a threat other than maybe the boss, who even then isn’t so hot.
Black Frost (Lv. 80)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Reflects Fire and Ice
- Mabufudyne - Deals heavy Ice damage to entire enemy party.
- Agidyne - Deals heavy Fire damage to one target.
- Recarmloss - Revives all allies with full HP at the cost of reducing self to 1 HP.
- Fire Repel - Grants reflection of Fire attacks.
- Ice Repel - Grants reflection of Ice attacks.
- Life Lift - Recovers 20% max HP at the end of battle.
- Evil Bind - Sacrifices some HP to reduce the movement range of a team within a three-panel-range to 1 for one turn and push their turn back in the queue.
- Jack Frost x2
Black Frost is the highest-leveled opponent we’ll be facing on this playthrough I believe, but don’t let that number intimidate you; he’s really not that hard. His high level coupled with Life Lift turns him into a tank, but his means of attack are very limited since by now it’s not hard to have demons that can completely negate both Fire and Ice. The two Jack Frosts with him naturally have inflated levels, but their only real purpose is to cast Diarahan on Black Frost if he uses Recarmloss...which he never did when I was fighting him, so they were just chaff. Since he’s Lv. 80 he does provide over ten-thousand EXP upon defeat which is nice.
Completing the mission earns us 5000 EXP and 11000 macca.
The Anguished One returns once all the demons are cleared out to commend us on becoming so powerful over the last eight days. As promised, he tells us that the means of reaching Polaris lie with, unsurprisingly, the Terminal. The catch however, is that the Terminal is currently too weak to take us to Polaris’s realm, so we must find some way of strengthening it, and naturally we’re on our own on that one. Black Frost is now unlocked for fusion, and he’s the ultimate Jaki of the game.
The next scene we have to watch is outside of the Mori Tower, where the party’s discussing what to do re:powering up the Terminal. We can suggest taking the Tim Taylor route of powering it up just adding some physical enhancements to the device, but that idea’s shot down by Fumi saying that sure, that can be done...after years’ worth of research and development. Joe asks if there’s any other way, and we eventually come up with using the Dragon Stream, and Fumi agrees that that might indeed work, since it works by channeling spiritual energy into raw power. However, Airi points out that it was all used up to summon the anti-Mizar dragon, but that’s actually not so! If you remember, the dragon’s head still remains, laying petrified in front of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building.
The problem is though, that it’s a petrified dragon head that’s the size of a sixteen-wheeler; the party has no way to move it. Fortunately for them that problem’s taken care of when it suddenly springs to life when demons appear, attracted to its energy. We’ve got to calm this big boy down some.
Ronaldo Mission 8: Unexpected Battle
- The Dragon must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
The demons have some specimens among their ranks that are a touch stronger than what we’ve fought so far today, such as Feng Huang and Oberon, but on the whole they’re not much to worry about aside from the ones that spam Shield All. There are two skills to crack in this battle: Inferno and Megidolaon, the latter being the powerful Almighty staple spell and the former basically being a Maragidyne that hits both of the battling parties. It’s possible to make strategies around this, like have all your guys null or absorb Fire, but if you have Maragidyne already there’s not much incentive to use Inferno. I’m just snagging it for completion’s sake. Anyway, the Dragon (who FYI is the sole member of the enemy-exclusive Energy race) has a large, ten panel attack range. Luckily though it’s much too big to move, and the game’s nice enough to have our starting points being well within walking distance of the giant head.
Dragon (Lv. 72)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Resists Fire, Ice, and Force; Absorbs Physical; Reflects Elec; Nulls Curse
- Swallow - Removes a demon from battle and deals and absorbs heavy Almighty damage from it at the end.
- Megidolaon - Deals heavy Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Deathbound - Deals several random hits of heavy Physical damage to multiple targets; damage depends on user’s current HP.
- Anti-Most - Grants resistance to all elements other than Physical and Almighty.
- Physical Drain - Grants absorption of Physical attacks.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit the entire enemy party.
- Dragon Shard - Swallowed enemies take damage whenever the Dragon is attacked.
Swallow is the first of two new unique enemy-exclusive status ailments we’ll be seeing today. As the description states, swallowed demons (it’s never used on leaders) are temporarily removed from battle. At the end of the skirmish they’ll be spat out...but not before taking heavy damage and healing the Dragon by the same amount. However, you can get the Dragon to prematurely spit out the swallowed demon by attacking it. The demon will take about 75% of the damage dealt to the Dragon, but it won’t heal it. But since stuff like Holy Dance and Deathbound (piercing of course) are the best ways to deal with this thing since it has so many resistances and HP this method it’s very easy to team-kill your guys. There’s not really much choice though, and defeating it brings the whole mission to an end since the remaining demons aren’t interested in “tiny power”.
Completing the mission earns us 5500 EXP and 12000 macca.
The dragon head’s no longer thrashing around, but the problem of how to transport it remains. Thankfully when Airi suggests that it should shrink itself it obliges, shrinking down to the size of a paperweight that can conveniently fit in the palm of a person’s hand. That was nice of it (the characters try offering the Hand Wave that it responds to the will of whoever’s trying to make use of it, but wasn’t its thing supposed to be that only the Hotsuin family could control it? Meh, roll with it I guess.). Ronaldo suggests that they power up the Osaka Terminal, which if you remember is supposed to be the master switchboard for the Terminal network, so away we go to our next stop.
The Osaka Terminal is called the Shinsekai Terminal. It’s namesake is the neighborhood it’s located under, but I see what you did there, game! The party clusters around the terminal device in the center of the room, wondering how this is actually going to work now that they have their little dragon talisman. Luckily it seems the the answer is to just impose your will on the Dragon Stream’s potential (IE think real hard about what you want to do with it) and Hibiki takes out the talisman and holds it up to the device. When he does the floor beneath their feet begins to glow and shake, and once everything goes white and fades back in we can see that the chamber has greatly grown in size and that the Terminal is now sitting in the middle of a large, raised circular dais in its center. The Anguished One appears next to the Terminal and Ronaldo again asks him how to reach Polaris since they’ve done everything he’s said so far. Well, it’s finally revealed to the party straight from the horse’s mouth that the Anguished One is the final Septentrione, his true name being Alcor, the Lifespan Star.
“Wait, how can there be eight Septentriones when there are only seven stars in the Big Dipper?” you might ask. It’s a bit of a loophole, really. As I mentioned in its compendium entry a number of updates ago, Mizar has a number of binary star companions, the most prominent of which is the star Alcor. Alcor is just far enough away from Mizar that it can actually be seen by the naked eye unlike most binary companions, but it’s still quite dim in comparison, and throughout the centuries locating it in the night sky unaided has been considered a test of one’s eyesight (which ties into something else about Alcor the character that I’ll bring up when we reach the appropriate time and place).
Floating up into the air, Alcor explains that while the consciousness of Polaris and the other Septentriones are normally united, he began to doubt them, thus leading to a schism with the Administrator. This makes me wonder if the other Septentriones have the capability for independent thought and shapeshifting like Alcor does, and just don’t because they have no reason to, being completely loyal to their master. Alcor transforms into his Septentrone form, which looks like a hypercube or tesseract, and says (unlike the others he continues to use human speech) that now that we’ve found our answer he’ll fulfill his long-abandoned duty as one of Polaris’s swords and assign an ordeal for the sake of seeing our wills. The party’s pretty bummed that they have to fight their one-time ally like this but there’s no choice. Time to pull up some Beethoven and get to work.
Ronaldo Mission 9: Last Assassin
- Alcor must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
The layout of this map is pretty simple. We start on the narrow “ring” that lies in between the dais and the chamber walls, while Alcor is sitting by the Terminal. The dais can only be accessed by four ramps at each of the dais’s cardinal points, and the requisite demon teams also start in the ring. They’re a little far away, but many of the teams have Avian like Feng Huang or a Wilder like Sleipnir to give them a good degree of mobility within the ring’s confines. All of the demons have levels in the low-to-mid 60s, so that’s about where we’re expected to be by this point. Alcor is one of those rare Septentriones that actually move, and he has a pretty decent movement range of five panels coupled with a Racial Skill that basically lets him move like an Avian: far and undisturbed.
Alcor (Lv. 70)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Resists Fire, Ice, and Elec; Absorbs Force; Nulls Physical and Curse
- Mazandyne - Deals heavy Force damage to entire enemy party.
- Judgement - A Curse-based attack that halves the entire enemy party’s HP.
- Anti-All - Grants resistance to all elements other than Almighty.
- Life Lift - Recovers 20% max HP at the end of battle.
- Dragon Eye - Allows three actions per turn during battle.
- Alcor Proof - Ignores obstacles when moving.
- Ominous Star - Casts an ill star over one enemy team within a 6 panel range.
Ill Star is the second of the two unique ailments I mentioned. The way it works is pretty simple: anyone who’s been ill-starred takes an addition two-hundred points of damage when successfully attacked, no questions asked. He’ll use up his entire turn casting it, usually leaving the demons to take advantage of the added damage. Ow. Luckily however, it can be removed with the usual methods, and will fade away on its own after only a single turn.
Alcor himself is very tanky and recovers a little over 800 HP per battle thanks to Life Lift. His reliance on Mazandyne though makes it pretty easy to defend ourselves though. I’m still relying on the good ol’ “boost magic damage with Enlightenment” strategy to get through his heal. You may notice that he’s the first enemy we’ve encountered with the Anti-All skill. However, we cannot crack it. That’s because he actually has a different form that he’ll eventually transform into as the battle goes on, where the faces of his cube get stretched out into spiked vertices (so that he ends up kinda resembling Andromeda
◊ from Shin Megami Tensei II). This form is a bit different:
Alcor (Lv. 70)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Physical and Force; Resists Almighty; Reflects Fire, Ice, and Elec; Nulls Curse
- Deathbound - Deals several random hits of heavy Physical damage to multiple targets; damage depends on user’s current HP.
- Holy Dance - Deals several random hits of Almighty damage to random targets.
- Power Charge - Charges to give next attack more power.
- Chaos Stir - Counters foes with their own attack at double the power.
- Anti-Almighty - Grants resistance to Almighty attacks.
- Extra One - Guarantees the user an extra turn.
- Alcor Warrant - Ignores obstacles when moving.
Yep, this game has a skill that lets you resist Almighty attacks, and it’s not enemy-exclusive either! This form of Alcor is...well, it’s a doozy. Don’t let those two weaknesses fool you, Chaos Stir is lethal. Hit him with Megidolaon, Deathbound, Force Dance, Multi-Strike, etc.? He throws it right back in your face, at increased power. It also mimics the “properties” of the attacks too, like if you attack with a Pierce-boosted Physical attack...the counter will also be piercing. I thought I had the genius plan of equipping Ronaldo with Physical Drain for this portion of the fight, but nope, the Deathbound that was tossed back at me bypassed it. I definitely wish that I had more Force users on my party since I already had at least one team that was fully immune to that element for Alcor’s first form. Ah well.
Luckily Alcor doesn’t stay in this form for long; he’ll soon revert back to his first one, resummoning any of the demon teams that you’ve knocked off since the start of battle. Thankfully he doesn’t recover HP in between transformations like Phecda did, so once it’s safe to attack I just continued to plug away with Fumi’s team’s boosted Dances, which finally defeated our one-time ally, who exclaims that this the true potential of humanity when the final blow is dealt.
Completing the mission earns us 6000 EXP and 15000 macca.
Alcor reverts back to his human form upon defeat and falls to the chamber floor, with Ronaldo crouching down beside him, imploring him to say if he’s okay. Alcor finds it odd that we’d feel sorrow for him and not elation upon achieving their goal, but upon Ronaldo saying that even though he was a Septentrione he was still an ally and friend Alcor agrees that he feels the same way. He snaps his fingers to give the Terminal the last bit of juice it needs to start up, the giant gears in the background beginning to grind into motion. Addressing Hibiki by his name for the first time all game, Alcor tells him to go and meet with Polaris, and then finally bring about his ideal world as he vanishes in a burst of dark energy like all the other Septentriones before him.
The faction each say some words regarding how they didn’t want to fight Alcor like this, but Ronaldo reminds them that there will be plenty of time left to grieve later. Everything is set, and the time to have an audience with the Administrator of the World is here at last.
Compendium
- Gucumatz
◊
- Gucumatz is considered to be the Mayan equivalent to the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. In Mayan creation myth he created the world along with the god Tepeu, first creating animals and then man when they realized that animals could not offer praise to them. Similar to Quetzalcoatl, Gucumatz is sometimes shown as a feathered serpent, but he's also depicted as an eagle, jaguar, and even a snail.
- Airavata◊
- In Hindu mythology Airavata is a giant white elephant that serves as the god Indra's steed. He can call forth rain after a drought.
- Alilat◊
- An ancient Middle Eastern goddess from before the rise of Islam, Alilat seems to have originated from the Sumerian goddess of the underworld, Ereshkigal. As her own goddess, Alilat became associated with Venus, and was thought to dwell within the Kaaba at Mecca. When Muhammad took over the city in the 7th century he ordered all of her idols destroyed.
- Feng Huang◊
- A mythological Chinese bird described as a composite of many other birds including a peacock and crane, symbolizing the sky, Sun, Moon, wind, Earth, and planets. It only appears during times of peace and tranquility, and is analogous to the western concept of the phoenix. However, this demon is actually supposed to be Zhu Que, the Vermillion Bird of the Ssu-Ling.
- Black Frost◊
- A Jack Frost that has grown much more powerful and evil, according to Atlus's own lore. It's Japanese name, Evil Frost, is actually a pun: the word used for "evil" is jaaku, the same phonetic spelling for "jack" in Japanese.
- Norn◊
- A trio of female deities, Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld who govern fate in Norse mythology. In other Megami Tensei games it is traditionally created by fusing the Three Fates from Greek mythology together.
- Grendel◊
- A monster from the Beowulf epic, described as being descended from Cain himself. In the poem he attacks the halls of the Danish king Herot, killing and eating whatever can be found there, until Beowulf engages him in battle and mortally wounds him by ripping off one of his arms.
- Oberon◊
- The husband of Titania and the king of the fairies most known for his role in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, though the name had appeared in French literature prior to that. In the play he and his wife get into disputes over how to raise a human child (Oberon wants to raise him as an underling, Titania as a son) and he has his servant Puck slip her a love potion in order to make her fall in love with a donkey-headed man as a spiteful joke.
- Vritra◊
- An evil serpent known as the Enveloper from early Hindu lore. He is one of the Asura and personifies drought through the action of making rivers run dry by damming them with his body. He and his mother Danu were defeated by the Deva Indra, with later writings indicating that their battle lasted almost a year straight.
- Orochi◊
- The shortened form of Yamata no Orochi, an eight-headed serpent in Japanese mythology that terrorized the land and demanded a sacrificial maiden each year. It was eventually slain by the hero Susano'o during his attempt to rescue his love interest Kushinada-hime.
- Behemoth◊
- While generally used as short-hand for an especially large and powerful beast, in the Book of Job the Behemoth was used as an allegory to illustrate the futility of questioning God. In other traditions Behemoth is a part of apocalyptic imagery, being the land-based counterpart of the sea monster Leviathan.
- Murmur◊
- The fifty-fourth demon of the Goetia. He practices necromancy and leads thirty armies of Hell as a Grand Duke from atop either a griffin or vulture.
- Alcor◊ (2nd Form◊)
- One of Mizar's companion stars, Alcor is just barely visible with the naked eye, leading to many beliefs and superstitions regarding it. The epithet "the Lifespan Star" comes from the Japanese belief that a person would die within a year if they could not see it, while in Hinduism it and Mizar symbolize marriage and the British saw it as the rider atop the "horse" of Mizar. Its name is derived from al-khawwar, Arabic for "the Faint One", and the Arabs themselves called it "Suha", meaning "the Forgotten One". Recently it was discovered that Alcor is a binary star itself, with its companion being a red dwarf known as Alcor B.
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