For our first time around I chose Amane’s path, leading us on a mission to become the Messiah and ushering in a Law world that was actually pretty positive. Then on the second time around I chose Yuzu’s path, fleeing the lockdown but then having to go back in to fix the mess we caused. For this third playthrough, how about humanity itself getting control over the demons?
So to that end, and the decision point we go and see Atsuro at Miyashita Park and agree to his proposition to rewrite the summoning server. In response to Yuzu’s worries he says that they’ll have to make it so that not everyone can use demons, only special government agencies. He compares it to a power plant, how only a few people own the plant itself but everyone else can still reap the benefits. And now I get the mental image of something like a Chagrin running in a hamster wheel in order to generate electricity. He outlines his plan to get Naoya to help, get the server’s location from Amane, and then meet with Izuna to see if she can’t cancel or at least delay the final option. Then I guess it’s “Step 4: ???, Step 5: Profit.” The scene with Mari joining the party then plays out like it did in Amane’s route (provided you didn’t try to discourage her she’ll join at this point in all routes but Yuzu’s), and it’s time for bed.
Last Day - Silent Revolution
The next morning Remiel arrives to tell us that he will fulfill his promise to tell us where the server is if we manage to convince Naoya to help us, and understandable Yuzu’s not very confident in their ability to find and convince him. Atsuro says that they shouldn’t actually have much trouble finding him since this is his last day to make Akira overlord, and Remiel promising to help them boosts her confidence some. But then Izuna hurries up to the crew to tell us that the government has decided to move the final option’s implementation forward, to one o’clock rather than six. We need to get started on the day ASAP if that’s the case.
Naoya’s at a pretty predictable location: Aoyama, and since there’s a battle upcoming he’s skulking around the graveyard. And also predictably, he’s not interested in helping us unless it involves a word that starts with “o” and ends in “d”. He tries to convince us that if we want to control all the demons, that will be our best bet but Atsuro objects, saying that he doesn’t want one person to have that sort of power, he wants everyone to benefit. Naoya scoffs and gets on his soapbox to rattle on a bit about the foolhardiness of entrusting the power of demons to a corrupt and bloated government but says that fine, if we beat him he’ll tell us how to reach the server, Babel, and let us do whatever we want. Atsuro presses that he doesn’t have the skills to alter the server, only Naoya does, and is told that relying on others’ power is a risky and reckless approach. We finally get the chance to call him out on his hypocrisy, since as Yuzu says his own plan hinges entirely on Akira agreeing to go along with him.
That touches a bit of a nerve but Naoya recovers a bit to boast that even if they all die today, he’ll get another chance to carry out his plan. The crew’s obviously got no idea what he’s talking about in this route, so Naoya moves on to the game he wants them to play. Which of course entails fighting him. He tosses a bunch of COMPs around the cemetery to summon demons, and the mission begins.
Atsuro Mission 1
- Naoya must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
There are four spawn points out of which demons will issue, and just like in Amane’s route Naoya will chuck out more COMPs to replace any you pick up (giving me the mental image of the insides of his haori being covered with COMP-filled pockets like shady trenchcoat salesmen in cartoons). His battle strategy’s a little different this time...
Naoya (Lv. 53)
HP/MP
- 420/234
- Resists Fire, Ice, Elec, and Force; Nulls Mystic
- Shield All - Protects each team member with a barrier that blocks the next non-Almighty attack.
- Holy Dance - Deals several random hits of Almighty damage to random targets.
- Diarahan - Fully restores one party member’s HP.
- Anti-Most - Grants resistance to all elements other than Physical and Almighty.
- Extra One - Guarantees the user one extra turn.
- Endure - Survive an otherwise lethal attack with 1 HP.
- Full Might - Each team member is guaranteed a critical hit.
- Seiten Taisei, Catoblepas
By which I mean instead of trying to fight us he’ll instead run away, making him the game’s second "Get Back Here!" Boss. Those two demons he has happen to be a Genma and a Wilder, so he’ll be combining Devil Speed’s movement buff with Phantasma’s obstacle-ignoring and his own still-freakishly-high speed to zip all around the map, forcing us to play catch up. What we have to do is corner him (as Phantasma does not allow him to pass over opposing units on the map) and we need movement demons of our own to do so (or you could just try your luck and attempt to head him off). Luckily Akira’s got his increased movement range thanks to being on New Game+, so that helps a little. When he’s defeated Naoya says that he concedes defeat, though he laments that we’re letting our power of Bel go to waste. Tough luck, you aren’t making the decisions anymore.
Completing the mission earns us 2300 EXP and 1500 macca.
Luckily for everyone involved Naoya doesn’t have much in the way of sour grapes this time around other than his omnipresent sarcasm. He says he’ll leave it up to the angels to tell us how to reach Babel and listens to Atsuro’s plan to rewrite the server so that only specific, authorized people will be able to control demons. Yuzu’s still suspicious of him using this opportunity to just stab them in the back but he tells her to relax since he won’t be able to try anything under the angels’ supervision. And besides, he says, all he has to do is wait about a thousand years or so and he’ll get another crack at his plan.
Again, the crew has no idea what he’s alluding to, so onward. Naoya says that he’ll need both time and the server’s source code in order for him to do what Atsuro wants, and the source code is back at his apartment, which conveniently has its own generator just in case something like the blackout occurred. Time is the next biggest concern, so we’re off to Akasaka Tunnel again to speak with Fushimi while Naoya’s left at his apartment working under the supervision of the angel Sariel, who’s still possessing that woman from earlier. After hearing our plan and that we already have the angels’ rubber stamp of approval Fushimi agrees to negotiate with his superiors for more time before the final option, and he even orders Izuna to join our party to offer any assistance she can. It’s quite refreshing to have the government faction being so helpful after playing through Yuzu’s route I have to say.
Izuna’s at Lv. 47, is a physical specialist, and has an interesting stat spread. While everyone else mainly focuses on one stat with a somewhat-even mix for the remaining ones, she keeps her Strength, Vitality, and Agility as even (and high) as possible. So by the time you get her to Lv. 99 she won’t have maxed any stats out, but those three will be in the mid-upper thirties and she’s the only character (other than Akira of course depending on what sort of build you give him) who’ll have multiple stats that high. Compared to the physical specialist benchmark, Atsuro, she’ll be slightly more powerful, more durable, and her extra Agility will allow her to squeeze a few more hits out of Multi-Strike.
However, the caveat is that all this comes at the expense of her Magic stat which’ll top out at around 5 and never get any higher. Since Magic also governs magical defense and most enemies use magic liberally...yeah. If she’s facing something that she or her demons can’t wipe out quickly, she can take a lot of damage in retribution. So she’s somewhat risky to use - but while I wouldn’t bring her into any major boss fights at this stage in the game, she does generally do okay on demons and lesser bosses like the Devas.
And speaking of, going to meet with Remiel reveals that we’re gonna have to fight them again to bring down the Tokyo barrier so that Babel can appear again, in addition to the remaining Bels (save for Jezebel, whom Remiel says either fled Amane’s body out of fear of Akira, or was killed by Belberith so he could absorb her powers). Yeah, all the Day 7’s but Yuzu’s are 85% identical to one another, so I’m just going to be shotgunning through them as fast I can. Atsuro gets a somewhat amusing line mentioning how going after the strongest of the Devas first is a violation of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and we’re off to Eikokuji again to fight Bishamon.
Atsuro Mission 2
- Bishamon must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
Nothing’s different in this battle from when we went through it with Amane, so needless to say I’m not going to cover it. It’s a curbstomp anyway.
Completing the mission earns us 2500 EXP and 1800 macca.
The portal in the sky begins to manifest and Remiel appears to send us on our way to Sengakuji Temple where we’ll encounter the remaining two Devas. I really wonder why the angels are letting us go along with this plan; yes Remiel and Sariel have said that they can’t interfere with however man decides to deal with the demons (well, unless we’re fighting them of course) as per the conditions of the ordeal, but wasn’t the whole reason it exists in the first place because man was summoning demons? Sure Atsuro’s plan is supposed to greatly restrict who can gain access to them, but the fact of the matter is is that they’ll still be around, and the possibility for abuse is absolutely still on the table. Maybe my jokes about the angels being super lazy actually holds true, I dunno. Anyway, we’ve got some Devas to kill.
Atsuro Mission 3
- Zouchou and Koumoku must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
Zouchou and Koumoku’s whole party dies though.
Completing the mission earns us 2700 EXP and 2100 macca.
The portal fully open now, our next stop is to head back to Aoyama to see how Naoya’s doing. A Shomonkai member standing guard guides us to him, and he reports that he’s busy altering the program’s kernal and security so that our new interface can’t be hacked, something Atsuro admits he didn’t think of. Naoya scolds him for not having the foresight and tells us to go to Roppongi to fight Belzaboul and Belberith while he puts the finishing touches on the program. Then he chuckles to himself over the prospect of humanity being able to handle the great responsibility that’ll come with this new great power. I have the feeling he’s betting against it...
Atsuro Mission 4
- Belzaboul must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
Good thing I packed an extra-large can of Raid with me.
Completing the mission earns us 2850 EXP and 2400 macca.
After the battle Fushimi arrives to report that he’s succeeded in delaying the final option by another hour and then he gives us the backstory on the Founder and Belberith, which I do not need to repeat since we’ve learned all about it in past routes. Time now to ascend all fifty-three floors to the Shomonkai’s chapel at the top of the Mori Tower. Here Atsuro identifies the pipe organ-thingy as a console, and then we see the Founder on the stage, who’s very displeased with Belzaboul for failing to stop us. He get’s pissed at the idea of our plan, claiming that gaining control of demons will dull their power, like animals taken from the wild and domesticated. Is he serious? Isn’t that basically what demon tamers, including him and the Shomonkai, do already? Like in Amane’s route he sacrifices himself to summon Belberith and we must fight him.
Atsuro Mission 5
- Belberith must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
The only real difference here is that instead of telling the demons to see how their king betrays them, Belberith says that we’re wasting the King of Bel’s power as he dies. I did discover though that his physicals can still really hurt your squishier humans.
Completing the mission earns us 3200 EXP and 2800 macca.
Once that’s done Naoya arrives. He’s not able to resist some more sarcasm by saying that he’s glad he’s late otherwise we’d’ve made him do all the work. But at least he’s got the program, so we can summon Babel now. The cylinder slams into the roof like before, and this time no face appears from it. Instead, Naoya explains that he’ll head for the main control console, the organ-thing at the center of the map, while Atsuro is to go towards the sub-console in one of the corners. To work then.
Atsuro Mission 6
- Babel must be hacked
- The whole party cannot die
- Atsuro and Naoya cannot die
- Atsuro must be dispatched
For the first half of this version of the final battle we must escort Naoya to the main console. He has his usual defensive skillset, but he has lost his freakish Speed and has a movement range of three panels instead of four. Since I have my uber New Game+ team, a lot of this mission is simply dead air while I wait for him to get to the console. Once there he observes that merging with Babel itself is causing the Demon Summoning Program to “evolve” somehow, but it’s nothing that stops him from using his mad haxxors skillz. Once he gets started we have to send Atsuro to the sub-console in order to upload Naoya’s new program, but once he does Babel’s face appears from the cylinder, this time displaying the face of a man rather than a child. Naoya says that it’s Babel’s “security program” and that we must defeat it to ensure the hack’s success. New look and swapping out Mazandyne for Maragidyne aside, it’s exactly the same as it was in Amane’s route, and falls.
On the second phase once Babel transforms Naoya tells Atsuro to join the fight (his survival is removed from the mission objectives) while he continues hacking. We don’t have to fight all the Bels again in this route, but Babel does have another trick up its sleeve...
Babel (Lv. 77)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Elec; Resists Physical; Reflects Fire, Ice, and Force; Nulls Mystic
- Holy Dance - Deals several random hits of Almighty damage to multiple targets.
- Megidolaon - Deals heavy Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit the entire enemy party.
- Dual Shadow - 25% chance of repeating last action.
- Physical Amp - Physical attacks powered up by 50%.
- King’s Gate - Has an infinite attack range and cannot move.
- Hellfire Gate - Changes skillset.
- Calamity of Babel - Deals heavy Mystic damage to all parties and may silence targets.
Yeah, on routes that don’t involve the boss rush, Babel can chance its skillsets and nuke everyone on the field. Calamity of Babel is very, very dangerous and hurts humans a lot, even with my uber team. Thankfully I’ve got a lot of demons with Prayer, so the silencing isn’t too much of an issue, but for a first-run party, this is probably the hardest incarnation there is of Babel. Naoya gets hit too, but since he naturally nulls Mystic he can tank the attack like a champ. Oh yeah, and this is what he changed to:
Babel (Lv. 77)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Force; Resists Physical; Reflects Fire, Ice, and Elec; Nulls Mystic
- Maragidyne - Deals heavy Fire damage to entire enemy party.
- Holy Dance - Deals several random hits of Almighty damage to multiple targets.
- Megidolaon - Deals heavy Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit the entire enemy party.
- Dual Shadow - 25% chance of repeating last action.
- Physical Amp - Physical attacks powered up by 50%.
- King’s Gate - Has an infinite attack range and cannot move.
- Frost Gate - Changes skillset.
- Calamity of Babel - Deals heavy Mystic damage to all parties and may silence targets.
He has alternate forms for all of the four main elements, but I wasn’t about to let him get that far. He can still take a lot of hits to bring down, even with his weaknesses being consistently struck. In addition to Elec Dance you wanna have a good stable of Force Dance users as well. When it’s defeated Naoya’s able to upload his program, and the gate closes to signify the end of the mission.
With Babel defeated Naoya says that we can now type in the command to return all the demons to their world, and gives Atsuro the honor, as this is the path he chose. Weirdly enough we’re given a choice of three commands to type in, with one of them being “all demons return” spelled backwards. No matter which is chosen, Babel obeys our command, and all the demons in the city are shown vanishing, with Fushimi taking this as a sign that we’ve succeeded.
Babel does its Geiger-esque assimilation with the room below, and Naoya says that from now on humans have direct control over all demonkind. What follows is the usual round of commentary from the entire cast, even those not in the party. Of note is the Gigolo wondering if man will be strong enough to avoid misusing its new power (though he doesn’t really care; it’ll be fun to watch either way) and Remiel saying that if man goes astray there will be more ordeals, but that he will pray for a peaceful future, not for the sake of order, but for mankind. Our heroes, at least, are willing to believe that they can bring about that future.
The ending narration kicks in to say that the lockdown was lifted by evening and the government tried covering up the incident by sticking to the gas leak story and claiming that the demons were gas-induced hallucinations. Yet the technology they went on to produce harnessing their power was apparently enough to usher in a third technological revolution, which the game compares to the Industrial and Information Revolutions, so it’s not really clear if the demons eventually become common knowledge or not. From what I understand the world doesn’t become like Pokemon’s what with demons being casually used for everything under the sun, but it sounds unlikely that they’d be able to keep their existence completely under wraps from the public any longer. Well, whatever the case may be, it’s said that Japan’s “military” use of demons resulted in them becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council. “Military” is pretty nebulous; could be anything from using them to act as deterrents or actually using them to wage war, though if the latter were the case I’d doubt they’d be allowed to join the Security Council. I dunno the politics of that sort of thing very well.
Whatever the case may be, Japan became a prosperous world power and our heroes were able to return to their normal lives. We’re shown an illustration of Atsuro and Yuzu out somewhere while Akira hangs a little behind looking at his COMP. Yep, it’s email time from Metatron:
About as expected, really. “Don’t step out of line, kid.” After the credits finish rolling Atsuro’s silhouette on the save screen is fully filled in. There’s no 8th day for his route, and I only got one additional title this time:
- Master - Completed Atsuro’s ending path. (60p)
Yeah, you don’t really get much for finishing Atsuro’s path alone. After I play through the game a fourth time we’ll tackle a route that has a little more to offer.
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