Shin Megami Tensei Series

the difference is that never noticed septentriones (?) denoting 7.

i literally only just realised.

or wait, am i imagining things? (。ヘ°)

edited 6th Feb '15 7:56:54 AM by Tarsen

Pretty much. Also to be clear Miyako is still a Hotsuin as she was born half human/half Triangulum.

I didn't follow the Break record news other than there would be Yamato's sister as a new character. So, mind telling me what's new storywise? Triangulum and tsuff.

From what I've gleaned from spoilers and stuff, this is the basic gist of the new plot, without being too too spoilery:

The Triangulum Arc follows an ending that combines the Kingmaker and Triumphant endings from the original game - the party unites as one, destroys Polaris, and the Anguished One takes his place, only instead of creating a new world like he did in his own ending, he restores it to how it used to be.

The problem is that because he usurped Polaris's position, he's not considered an "official" Administrator, so the Triangulum appear to destroy humanity and take the throne for themselves. Due to tomfoolery with the Akashic Records, in this new world Yamato's twin sister Miyako is the leader of JP's instead of he, and he doesn't appear to exist. Miyako's plan to save the world involves sacrificing the party's lives so that the Anguished One can become a "true" Administrator, so she takes an antagonistic role for much of the story.

Also this is the third world. The second one was destroyed by the Triangulum Arcturus in a battle against everyone + Alcor save for Bunny. The Triangulum was attacking his data in the Akashic Record while attacking earth, leading to his deletion in the second one. Yamato entered the records to restore Bunny's data. Yamato's existence is part of the destiny the Great Will expy Canopus has planned, so it created Miyako to replace him.

edited 6th Feb '15 8:43:29 AM by OmegaRadiance

I see. Thanks. So I assume it's NG+ only.

It's actually a separate story mode that you can pick right from the start.

So I wonder if my previous team cameo battle idea might make it in somehow.

Be interesting to see the two groups interact, even if only for one fight.

The three other Record Breaker endings are on Youtube now:

• Ronaldo's seems to objectively be the worst (after the "everyone dies" one of course), as it involves the party resetting the world...but doomed to repeat the events of the game, as it ends with the Hero and Daichi once again signing up for Nicaea (now at ver. 2.1) and once again getting death clip notifications. Basically a more explicitly ominous version of Restorer.
• The Anguished One's looks like it involves the Hero Ascending To A Higher Plane of Existence and becoming the new Administrator. This is where the image of the Anguished One wearing a copy of his hoodie comes from.
• Yamato's is the best, as there the party forever frees Earth from the Administration system and restores the world, complete with a Where Are They Now Montage (Joe getting married to his girlfriend, Yamato's either the Chief of Police or other high-ranking law enforcement official with Makoto and Ronaldo working with him, the Hero, Daichi, and Io graduating high school, etc.) so it's basically Triumphant: Electric Boogaloo. It ends with the cast reuniting on a beach (the Anguished One seems to have taken up surfing, heh) and I'm guessing there's a slight change if you max out everyone's Fates like the original Triumphant.

edited 7th Feb '15 7:12:23 AM by ComicX6

im happy with all of that.

especially ronaldo's suckiness leading to the worst ending and the new anguished ending letting you become the new administrator.

Guess they took everyone's hatred of Ronaldo to heart. Not sure if I like that though. Couldn't they have just focused on his better points rather than making his ending one of the worst ones?

...does he have any better points?

im not so sure...

Apparently Yamato's ending is basically a different variation of Alcor's original ending, as making a brand new world puts it outside the Administrator system. Thus Canopus and its Administrators can no longer wipe out humanity as part of its destiny.

The difference apparently is that they use the souls of the seven billion humans to make the new world similar to the old world, unlike with Alcor's where he becomes one with the earth.

While Canopus is "mindless" it still wants the universe to work and walk down the path it has programmed, which is why the bad endings lead to mankinds annihilation. Only dramatically changing things like placing a human as the Administrator truly changes things.

Basically most of Daichi's, Ronaldo, and Yamato's endings in the original are Pyrrhic Victory.

Oh and the Frost Five return as a demon.

Edit: Also I now imagine the Triangulum all wear Bunny's outfit in Alcor's ending. How that would work is beyond me though.

edited 7th Feb '15 8:27:11 AM by OmegaRadiance

whelp. to be fair, while yamato's meritocracy was neat, it still required rewiring of the way peoples brains worked in order to make it work. if anything you could basically just see it as a test drive for that form of governing in the long run, and an ideal ending in the short term.

mind you, yamato's ending seemed to continue on from the polaris ordeal, rather than go back to the beginning, so i suspect the real end of the world wouldnt come till the protagonists are all long dead and at that point...

who cares??

Frost Five! Do they still pretty much resist everything?

It reflects Phys and nulls everything save Fire, which they gave a reflect fire resistance through a skill.

Also Miyako's almighty resistance is higher than her brother.

The Final Boss has a battlefield wide Making a Splash attack and the ability to inflict damage the moment you begin battle with it. It harms you before you can even pick what attacks to use..

edited 7th Feb '15 8:41:51 AM by OmegaRadiance

The reason why I don't like Ronaldo, despite never playing the game, is this: He is supposed to be part-brazillian, and yet he speaks Spanish.

Ronaldo had a really good role in the animes, where he died like a bitch and barely accomplished anything aside from motivating the protag to distrust Yamato.

The director in the anime's artbook or whatever apparently commented that if they had more episodes, he would have suddenly popped up out of nowhere in the battle between Alcor and Yamato.

This is also why Hibiki didn't get all Seiryu and Genbu, because they didn't have the time for it.

Are you Brazilian yourself, cause if so, then I could understand why that would piss you off.

As for Ronaldo, his hatred of Yamato (which isn't even justified, though that's not his fault, since the guy he's trying to avenge never comes out into the open) clouds his judgement, but he doesn't bear a grudge against the others for working with Yamato (he makes sure his goons don't attack Joe, and even tries to save the latter when his [Joe's] phone runs out of power), joins with them to fight the Septentrione who shows up when he sees it as the greater threat, has numerous civil discussions with Makoto where he acknowledges her as a decent person (which admittedly does make his decision to kill her an even bigger dick move), and even opts to save some Jps personnel (though he did have to be convinced, but I get the feeling he knew leaving them was wrong and it didn't take that much of a push to convince him).

So yeah, the man can be a total dick, but he has his good points as well. That being said, it's kinda funny that between the two of them, Yamato looks more villainous, but can ultimately be the lesser evil (due to keeping his emotions in check). Ronald definitely lets personal beefs steer him down the wrong course (which isn't really good for a cop).

edited 7th Feb '15 9:07:37 AM by HandsomeRob

That sounds stupid.

Yes, I am.

edited 7th Feb '15 9:07:57 AM by SaintDeltora

Oh yes, popping up out of no where at the penultimate battle and likely dying like a bitch to motivate Bunny is so much better than dying like a bitch to motivate Bunny in the first half of the show.

Also, I called that they planned for Bunny to have the other two Sacred Beasts and maybe even Kohryu (despite Kohryu not being in DeSu2, but that didn't stop Helel), but in the end, they don't even get a cameo because we needed more hamfisted symbolism instead.

Shit I just noticed, Helel replaces Demon Louis in Record Breaker because that's what the anime did. ._.

edited 7th Feb '15 9:14:35 AM by Otherarrow

Don't forget the Lucifer vs Satan/Freedom vs Order symbolism that was shoehorned in. I mean sure I don't think the game had alignments in the typical sense, but that was overblown.

And they likely intended that to be meaningful to the game as well.

Yeah, seriously that bugged me so much. The Evil Law versus Good Chaos symbolism was totes needed in the adaptation of the SMT game that didn't use that alignment setup.

And the totes symbolic way Bunny summons Louis was also very needed and not at all hamfisted either. >_>

(also, in the context of the anime at least, they never established that demon fusion was a thing before this fight, so it's like...this is a thing they can do now with no explanation. I know that's unrelated to the terribly done symbolism, but it still bugs me.)

The DeSu2 anime has a lot of things that bug me. Stop me, please.

edited 7th Feb '15 9:22:42 AM by Otherarrow

I never really had a problem with Ronaldo, to be honest. I've played the main series' games, so I've had to deal with much bigger asshats. While his anger can be misplaced at times, I still felt that he was capable of being reasonable with anyone who wasn't named Yamato and even he extended an olive branch to Yamato in Daichi's route. That one particular day where it's possible that he can kill Makoto always felt a little out of place for me. Maybe the developers weren't expecting people to get his Fate level up that high at that point?

I wonder if Yamato's popularity is why his ending in Record Breaker sounds like the 'golden ending.'