These are what we call the 'YMMV items.' Things that some people find in this work. We call them 'your mileage might vary' because not everyone sees these things in the same way. This starts discussions in the trope lists, a thing we don't want. Please use the discussion page if you'd like to discuss any of these items.
YMMV: Strange Journey
Alas, Poor Villain: Jimenez in the Neutral path. Even before the fight, he expresses regret that things have lead to a Duel to the Death due to your bond with each other, and after the battle, as he dies he acknowledges that you were always better than him.
Anvilicious: The game drops a lot of anvils about everything wrong with humanity, especially in conversation with demons. Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped, though. The Demon Lords are excellent at hammering the point. A point likely to keep bugging you, long after you turn off the DS.
At least, when he's not casting Tetrakarn (reflect Physical attacks once).
Breather Level: After what you had to go through in Delphinus and Eridanus, Fornax is relatively simple and straight-forward. Of course, Grus follows after to pick up the slack...
Jack himself is one of the most vile villains in the series, spinoffs included. It's worth noting that when Jimenez is about to kill Captain Jack, "Stop him" adds Law points to your Character Alignment. "Watch", on the other hand? Neutral. It doesn't count as Chaotic to let him die. This is a game where not shaking someone's hand is Chaotic! That is how evil he is.
His lieutenant, Ryan, somehow manages to be worse.
Mitra also counts, as he's one of the few demons to actually earn the title.
The crew of the Red Sprite welcoming back Commander Gore when he returns as an enlightened Ubergestalt to give them hope for the future.
This troper may not have teared up over the battle with Awake Jimenez in the Neutral path, but Arthur's dialogue after it shows that even AIs can have a soul:
"This is Arthur speaking. I have verified your victory over Jimenez. [Player], I understand the pain of having to eliminate a former comrade. I will not tell you to forget it. So long as you continue to live alongside humans capable of sin, it cannot be avoided. But I am partially responsible for leading you down this path. Like you, I am an entity that bears sin. The only way to atone... is to succeed at our task. [Player], continue your mission."
The game does something if you go Neutral that really makes you feel like it was a good choice. In other SMT games, hardly anyone cheered you on if you decided both the Law and Chaos sides were crazy. In this game, every human on your team will not only cheer you on, but as you go deeper and deeper in the boss dungeon, you get so many slaps on the back and encouragement to put your foot up the ass of the final boss that it's impossible not to feel like humanity's survival is worth your efforts.
As mentioned above, Law and Chaos are color coded as Blue and Red. These are also the colors of the Investigation Team and the Strike Team, respectively. Remember which units Zelenin and Jimenez belonged to?
Fridge Horror: The computers can't detect the mental parasite. Mitra had some experimental data about them. The parasite's effects grow worse over time. Now look at how Norris behaved in Bootes and how Jimenez acted at times in Carina. Did the parasites really first appear in Delphinus...?
"Fridge" nothing. The first time you meet Mitra, a Bifrons asks about "the delivery" and Mitra tells him to take it to "the squandered nation". That's the name of Delphinus's theme music. The demons were working on that parasite for a very long time.
Game Breaker: Victory Cry + Jihad (or any powerful Almighty-type spell) on a demon. The Eternal Rest spell in conjunction with any sleep spell is also effective, as status ailments work quite often on a surprising amount of enemies, and the combo can lead to a near Disc One Nuke if you get it early enough.
There are several guns that allow you to cause the Stone element. This counts as instant death. Almost everything except bosses are weak against this attack. Your Main Character gains 4x the EXP he would normally get if you have no demons out. Manshonyaga (an early game weapon with the stone element) will allow you to gain levels every 2-3 fights for a while.
The 4x EXP bonus can also be gotten by softening up an opponent with your demons, then giving them the return order and finishing the battle on your own. This makes it trivial to break the game in a different way.
While Jihad is commonly considered the ultimate skill, it isn't necessarily the most damaging. That falls to the ultra-rare skill Desperate Hit (only naturally on Demonee-ho, and can only be passed on via demon source), which does a random number of almighty hits. If it does 3 or more to a single enemy, that enemy takes more damage than it would from Jihad. VERY useful against bosses. Not to mention it's only 40 mp.
It's possible to fuse Rangda so she reflects everything but Almighty and the two instant death elements. This means that almost any time an enemy casts a hit-all spell at your party, a chunk of it will bounce back and damage them. Gets even funnier if they target her with an ability that has a chance to cause a status effect, as it also bounces back; they can wind up inflicting Charm, Petrify, or even Instant Death on themselves.
Golden Ending: Arguably, the Neutral ending is the most sane and optimistic of all three endings, with the Schwarzwelt being obliterated and Earth returning to normal. And this is on top of Neutral being the Path of Most Resistance (and having a bullshitFinal Boss), as per SMT tradition. See High Octane Nightmare Fuel below to see how the Law and Chaos endings fare in comparison.
Hell Is That Noise: A good deal of the game's soundtrack uses rather intimidating/panic-inducing chorus vocals.
Also: the sound of a successful Hama or Mudo going off. It's a tiny stylized scream as the target is zapped out of existence.
Sounds to me more like the sound of a bullet whizzing by like in those old west gunslinger movies.
Mitra's castle, the "Palace of Pleasure." It starts off with Sexy Silhouettes peeking through diaphanous curtains in the walls of lower levels. As you climb up, the silhouettes are replaced with Iron Maidens, silhouettes of demons holding torture devices, and metal slabs hanging from the ceiling with the chained-up (and disemboweled) corpses of fellow Strike Team members and crewmen of the Elve. Then you're captured a second time and get to see the results of those experiments...
Discovering what Jack's Squad does to the demons is an Ironic Echo that's no less unsettling.
The Law and Chaos endings. Law? Everyone is reduced to mindless worshippers stripped of their free will. Chaos? Humanity lives amongst the demons... as barbaric savages in a world of Might Makes Right anarchy.
Not everyone in the Law ending ends up being mindless beings stripped of their free will. The Three Wise Men mention after the defeat of Mother Maya that the weak willed shall be eliminated and only the strong willed shall be allowed to live in the new world.
So basically, neither side is willing to succor the weak? Yeesh, when did weakness become blameworthy...?
A successful Mudo or Hama going off on one of your enemies.
The "splutch!" of an enemy being Charmed or Muted.
Nightmare Fuel: Some subtle, in that the game has no problem gutting optimism and human achievement in light of human atrocity. Some overt, in the hideous monster designs and grim plot twists. Some self-inflicted as you stumble around low on health and magic points looking for the next healing fountain.
The absolute worst is that brief moment while your suit scans for a hidden demon. Will it be a pushover who drops a high-Macca forma? Or will it be one of the Heralds out to gut you like a fish? Or, God forbid, a Fiend?
The standard Game Over screen. You see the Schwarzwelt quickly advance over the Earth's surface and absorb it entirely, which isn't that bad (the same thing happens in the Law and Chaos endings) but you also hear a swelling chorus of voices during the event. Whether this is is the demons or the angels crying out in awe, or every last living thing on Earth screaming as they're disintegrated, is up to you and your nightmares.
Try talking to an Angel on a full moon. It's pretty disturbing.
Nightmare Retardant: Pay close attention to the Ominous Chanting in the soundtrack, and you will quickly realize that it's notLatin- it's nonsense language that resembles nothing so much as "hee-ho hee-ho hee-ho," Jack Frost's Verbal Tic.
Player Punch: Captain Gore's death hits the crew, and probably the player, pretty hard.
Any situation where the appropriately-titled track "Sorrow" plays, such as seeing the results of Jack's Squad's experiments in Jack's Squad HQ or Arthur malfunctioning and self-terminating just after the Point of No Return in the Law and Chaos routes.
That One Boss: This being an Atlus game, there's quite a few of them, but the one that gets the most attention is Ouroboros, the final boss of the fifth block. Her first form isn't terribly hard, except for the fact that she heals about 160 damage per round, which is more damage than you can do to her unless you exploit her weakness to fire. Her attacks include Wild Thunder, a powerful group lightning spell, and Disaster Cycle, a spell that hits for moderate physical damage and inflicts random status ailments. That last one is really nasty because sometimes she gets really lucky with it and manages to either leave you with a dead weight party or petrify the main character (instant game over). Fortunately, your chances of seeing Disaster Cycle are slim. All this is just her first form, however. Her second form no longer regenerates every turn, but now she uses Disaster Cycle almost every turn, and whenever she's not using Disaster Cycle, she's using Wave of Death which hits the whole party for nearly 300+ physical damage per hit! Her liberal use of Disaster Cycle almost makes the fight a Luck-Based Mission. Fortunately you can save between her two forms.
Maya, the boss of Sector G also qualifies. For starters, if anyone on your team uses an Elemental- or Almighty-skill, they're dead. No exceptions. She can safely be damaged with Phys. and Piercing skills, the latter of which she is weak against, but just hitting her can be a problem as she has a tendency to use Illusion Ritual, which doubles her agility. Oh, and she knows pretty much all of the single-hit -dyne spells, extremely powerful Gate spells which can oneshot anything vulnerable to their element, and Ultraviolence, a hit-all attack that deals gobsmacking amounts of physical damage. Basically, if you don't have the ability to nullify her stat changes and/or have demons that block or repel Phys., you're not going to win.
A demon with Luster Candy helps here. Stack three shots of this and you can usually hit Maya even if she does Illusion Ritual, and it'll also soften the blow of her elemental spells. Unfortunately, she also has a move that randomly petrifies people. If this hits the MC, game over.
The final boss of the Law and Neutral paths. When you reach it, you will probably be around level 75. At that point any of its attacks will kill you in two hits (three if you're guarding). It has extremely powerful spells of all elements as well as a particularly nasty physical attack that hits up to eight times (random target each hit) which is perfectly capable of killing a guarding protagonist at full health. It is also capable of cancelling all buffs and debuffs (healing about 600 HP in the process) and possesses the Disaster Cycle attack of Ouroboros. This is its first form. The second one, which is a Clipped Wing Angel in appearance but a One-Winged Angel in gameplay, does about twice the damage the first form did and gets the ridiculous MA attack, which instantly kills a party member and absorbs their HP without fail. Pray it doesn't happen to the protagonist. All in all your best bet is to get demons that reflect as many of its attacks as possible and hope for the best. Even the "perfect final boss party" you can get through passwords isn't a guarantee you will win.
Then again it IS the Mother of all demons. No one said it would be an easy fight.
Hell, even with the best possible equipment (read: equipment that prevents Curse and Expel [which it just LOVES to spam] from working and reflects all elements and reduces damage from Phys and Gun), you can still be killed on turn 1 of the second part of the boss with Mother's Kiss (6~8 hits, as mentioned above), even if your first action is to summon a demon from a full set of 12 level 99 demons (which, due to the game mechanics, gives you the first action automatically regardless of agility).
Captain Jack also qualifies. Unlike many of the bosses in the game, he has no real gimmicks. Just absurdly high damage output and the ability to heal himself to full whenever he wants. The battle is basically a matter of doing as much damage to him as possible in a short amount of time.
Commander Gore on the Law & Chaos routes. His normal attack does 5 hits to one party member (enough to kill if you're not careful), and his abilities don't help either. Self-Denial heals him and boosts his attack. His other abilities do very high random-target phys or gun damage... and when he Turns Red, he starts spamming Charge + Adaptation, which is fatal if you're not both strong to phys and guarding (and still can be even then). Not to mention that when he hits 0 hp the first time, he gets healed 7500 hp. His starting health is 15000. That puts his total (22500) as the highest in the game. The only thing going for you is he's weak to wind, and if you were smart, you picked up something with Garudyne (differing by alignment) back in Grus, and maybe the Reaper Colt gun while you were at it.
That One Attack: Asura Roga, Disaster Cycle, MA, Bites the Dust, Wave of Death, any sort of Mudo or Hama, the list goes on. Special mention goes to the new "Bomb" status ailment; it makes the afflicted physically fragile. If they get smacked around too many times, they explode, and do damage to all other party members equal to their own total health. Just one "Bomb"ed party member (including yourself, for an instant Game Over) can wind up blowing up your entire team. Annoyingly, you can't inflict "Bomb" on the enemy.
Mother's Kiss turns the final boss for the Law and Neutral routes into a luck-based mission. Mother's Kiss is a 6-8 hit (random target) physical attack capable of total damage above 1000 on capped characters. The only way to prevent it from working allows the boss to instant-kill you via Curse (or Expel, depending on armor in use), as the only equipment that negates or reflects Physical attacks is an accessory, and the only equipment in the game that nullifies Curse and Expel is a different accessory.
Just that? MA is 100% guaranteed instant death for whoever is targeted—arguably the most bullshit attack in the entire game. You have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a Game Over every time it's cast (even higher chance if you have empty slots). It doesn't matter if your entire team is level 99. It also heals the boss, but that doesn't matter when you're DEAD.
A different sort of horrid attack: Macca Beam. It'd be one thing if it stole a set amount of Macca, but it doesn't. It steals a percentage of your current cash. If a Preta in the second dungeon hits your New Game+ party with it, you can lose six-digit amounts of money.
That One Level: Sector Eridanus doesn't seem so bad at first... until you get a particular plot-character to move out of the way to get to the bulk of the level. Suddenly, you're dealing with unavoidable poison floors, enough hidden pits to turn the maze into Swiss cheese, one-way doors and a series of teleportation rooms with no rhyme or reason that forces you to memorize sequences just to figure out what'll let you finally move on. It's a dungeon-crawler-player's nightmare made manifest.
The game even lampshades it. Jimenez says he hates the area.
There are later levels that pull similar annoying stunts, but with much less frequency and intensity. After Eridanus, they seem like cakewalks.
With the single exception of the monstrous secret passage leading to freaking Alilat in Grus. Mix enough teleporters and pitfalls to make Eridanus turn green with envy, a fucking HORRIBLE maze with one-sided doors and two subdimensions you have to traverse over and over and over to unlock the stairs leading to the "exit", ditch in a powerful boss with Diarahan (full HP recovery for one), reflecting Phys and Gun, and capable of firing off Mind Charged Megidolaons... and begin losing that hair.
Normal Grus, just as much (if not more so).
Let's face it, the developers love torturing us. They haven't had a chance to make a ridiculously complex dungeon since Nocturne.
Floor 5 of Delphinus, anyone? It's a massive maze of conveyor belts that you need the Visualizer to see; in other words, it requires a Rare Forma that can be easily missed and/or ignored, and the conveyors don't show up on your map, even with the Visualizer. It's almost a Guide Dang It to figure out how to get to the upper floors.
