Shin Megami Tensei IV *SPOILERS ABOUND*

No kidding. I had Spirit Drain on Flynn for quite a while, and even when I dropped it, it was just for Energy Drain. Chupacabra is pretty nifty for skill fodder.

I didn't bother with Energy Drain because the tiny amount of HP healed doesn't strike me as worth getting 5 less SP back from the increased cost. Plus sometime I want to keep things alive in critical.

edited 20th Jul '13 2:36:55 PM by Clarste

Really? I've had plenty of experiences where a few points mean dying or staying alive by the skin of my teeth, usually right when my MP is starting to get low, too.

I'm more likely to die in one round, honestly. There's no defensive stat in this game, is there? My basic strategy on normal enemies is to kill them all in one round with Megido/Megidola, and my basic strategy on bosses is to debuff them to oblivion with Fog Breath and War Cry.

Then again, I also min-maxed myself. I put enough points in Agility to stay faster than my team, and dumped the rest into Magic. I have like 230 Magic now. The bar is full but I can still dump points in it.

edited 20th Jul '13 2:43:04 PM by Clarste

Ah, okay. I've been playing balanced- If it weren't for Luck being my Dump Stat, my stats would all be within ten points of each other or so.

...I suppose it's also worth mentioning that I keep Mediarama on most of my demons too (plus Flynn). The way fusion works now, it's possible to transfer an entire skillset indefinitely. As long as you don't fuse any two of your workhorses with each other, you can preserve a good skillset forever, while picking and choosing upgrades as necessary. The fact that they all have pretty much the same moves also helps upgrade Flynn's spells.

I'm pretty uncreative, aren't I? I don't even have a single physical attack specialist. I just transfer the same generic "caster" set-up no matter what the fusion result is.

Though you gotta keep the eye on the MP for those physical ones.

Not if you have Spirit Drain! Although honestly most of my team doesn't even spend SP except on bosses. I think of them mostly as a level-up factory to upgrade Flynn's spells.

...I'm a terrible person.

edited 20th Jul '13 2:58:03 PM by Clarste

Get energy drain onto demons, level them all the way up, and then they'll stack onto the energy drain that's on Flynn. Applies to all his skills really. This also decreases the MP Cost by a certain amount and goes up to +8 and boosts the damage done as well.

Also the max for any stat is 999 apparently. Someone got a stat that high according to /smtg/.

The particular bonuses vary based on the skill itself. Attack and healing spells go up to +8, but utility spells are idiosyncratic. Spirit Drain goes up to +5 and -kaja/kunda spells goes to +3. The SP discount seems to be a flat amount instead of a percentage so it's basically meaningless for higher level spells. And Energy Drain will always cost exactly 5 more than an equivalent Spirit Drain so I'm not sure what your point is. I don't know how much effectiveness it boosts for attack spells, but Media was boosted from 60 to 95 at +8, so around 50%?

Anyway, yes, I turn my demons into skill farms for Flynn, so I max out all my spells pretty fast.

edited 20th Jul '13 4:39:33 PM by Clarste

You know, I find it very interesting that, for the first time since the original Devil Survivor Law actually seems like a pretty decent faction in this game.

Uh... do they? The horror movie segment of the game was basically the Law faction. They're very much "sacrifice the helpless to save those in power".

To be fair, from what I've seen, the Chaos guys aren't much better in that regard.

From what I can tell, both factions are basically made up of assholes (with the sensible members being killed off or corrupted as the game goes on, of course).

edited 20th Jul '13 4:46:50 PM by Otherarrow

Well, both Jonathan and Walter are relatively sympathetic and humanized, and it certainly helps that they spend the entire game following you around instead of appearing randomly every so often like Nocturne, but I found it kind of hard to make the leap from "a world where an individual can change their own life" to "unleash all the demons to weed out the weak" as we were required to.

I mean, there was kind of a reason I blew up the world.

Really, unlike the previous games, both Law and Chaos have noble goals, but have very destructive means of doing them.

Law: Merkabah wants to ensure eternal peace by destroying all the demons in Tokyo...which also ends up destroying the humans there too.

Chaos: Lucifer wishes to create a world of freedom, equality, and free will...by burning Mikado to the ground. Though to be fair, Mikado probably deserves it.

Not everyone in Mikado. There's folks both good and bad amongst both the Casulries and the Luxurors.

As much as I dislike forcibly relocating everyone in Mikado, Neutral is still the best ending, seeing as how there's no genocide involved.

Now if only the Neutral path wasn't so unfairly hard to unlock. Hell, according to several threads on gamefaqs, you can screw yourself out of it just by doing Challenge Quests.

Has anyone else seen that official pic of naked Flynn in front of Burroughs, Lucifer, and Merkabah?

Not sure if I can post a link to it here.

...OK, I have to see that.

If it ain't full-frontal, I'd assume it's safe.

Here it is.◊

I'll remove it if it isn't allowed.

OK, that is pretty cool looking.

Ehhhhhh, I liked Burrough's face before it was uncovered.

GODDESS REBORN!

edited 21st Jul '13 4:50:55 AM by phoenixdaughterAM

The style of the picture is like a blend between Doi and Kaneko. Anyone else think that?

It does, I agree. The shading is very reminiscent of Kaneko's style. You can really see it in Merkabah's face.

So I just got past the content that's covered in the strategy guide. I think I'm a bit overleveled at the moment for I've streamrolled almost everything in Shibuya so far. Call me crazy, but I'm looking forward to encountering the bosses that don't have elemental weaknesses, since it's very easy to steamroll them as long as you have a well-balanced roster of elemental spells.

My Power has evolved into a Virtue. Now he finally has enough MP to adequately use his spells.

edited 21st Jul '13 11:40:31 AM by ComicX6