The site of the final battle against Metatron (what, you weren’t expecting to fight God on a route about fighting God, were you?) is another location that players of Shin Megami Tensei IV should recognize: Shinobazu Pond, where the Samurai fought Peallaidh, AKA “They can’t clean me, bro!” As the whole crew gathers on the path closest to Benten Island (there’s a conspicuous gap in their ranks where Keisuke should be) a host of angels, including our friends Sariel and Anael, descend on the island’s shore in front of the Bentendo temple and their own leader, Metatron, descends in a ray of light, coming to rest above the waterlilies. After the crew marvels at his size and majesty (save for Kaido of course, who’s all too eager to smash some heads as usual because, in his own words “I know I’ll never see Heaven anyway!”) they each proclaim their resolve to win. Metatron reads off a litany of our sins, which includes ignoring Remiel’s help, siding with Cain, and turning away from the Lord. Thus he will purge us personally.
Naoya Mission 13
- Metatron must be defeated
- The whole party cannot die
A portion of the short path that leads up to where Metatron and the angels wait is submerged a bit, which is important since the first thing Metatron will do is consecrate it, turning it to holy water. It’s probably unsurprisingly to hear, but for each turn one of our guys wades in it it moderately damages their whole party’s HP and MP while the angels will recover some HP and MP while on it. For the most part it’s not too worrisome - the stretch of submerged path is only three panels long, so almost everyone can simply walk over it onto dry land without any ill effects. Once the angels start moving and clogging up the path way it might be another story, but even so it’s nothing an application of Prayer/the usual MP recovery methods won’t fix.
Sariel (Lv. 75)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Resists Physical, Fire, and Mystic; Absorbs Ice
- Mabufudyne - Deals heavy Ice damage to entire enemy party.
- Holy Strike - A Strength-based attack that deals heavy Almighty damage to one target.
- Samarecarm - Revives one ally at full HP.
- Ice Amp - Ice attacks powered up by 50%.
- Extra Savings - HP/MP costs reduced to 0 on an extra turn.
- Life Lift - Recovers 20% max HP at the end of battle.
- Blood Wine - Recovers some of the team’s MP at the cost of own HP.
- Troll, Black Maria
Anael (Lv. 75)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Resists Physical, Force, and Mystic; Absorbs Fire
- Maragidyne - Deals heavy Fire damage to entire enemy party.
- Judgement - A Mystic-based attack that halves the entire enemy party’s HP.
- Samarecarm - Revives one ally at full HP.
- Fire Amp - Fire attacks powered up by 50%.
- Extra Charge - Attack power is doubled on an extra turn.
- Life Lift - Recovers 20% max HP at the end of battle.
- Blood Wine - Recovers some of the team’s MP at the cost of own HP.
- Black Maria, Troll
These two guys are pretty much just Elite Mooks now. They don’t even get any lines, likely because they’re just standing in for combatants on the evil route, as the entire set-up for this battle is different there. There Yuzu, Midori, and some other tamers make a last-ditch effort to stop Akira and his gang at the pond, and her desperation and despair summon Metatron, so there we’d have to fight both Yuzu and Midori as well as some humans in edition to the angels. Now Metatron, he’s got some tricks up his metallic sleeves...
Metatron (Lv. 80)
HP/MP
- ???/???
- Weak to Ice and Elec; Resists Physical, Fire, and Force; Reflects Mystic
- Mazandyne - Deals heavy Force damage to entire enemy party.
- Megidolaon - Deals heavy Almighty damage to entire enemy party.
- Dream Feast - An Almighty-based attack that absorbs a large amount of MP from one target.
- Victory Cry - Recovers some HP and MP at the end of battle.
- Attack All - Normal Physical attacks hit the entire enemy party.
- Beast Eye - Allows two actions per turn during battle.
- Lesser YHWH - Has an infinite attack range and does not move.
- Divine Wind - A tornado ravages the 3 x 3 area in front of him, blowing all affected enemy parties to the back of the map while dealing very heavy Force damage.
Metatron’s AI seems like it’s set up to spend his opening actions in battle using just Mazandyne and normal attacks in hopes of getting an extra turn, then using Megidolaon to nuke you twice in a row when he gets one. I never once saw him use Dream Feast. Two weaknesses don’t do him any favors, but his HP and Magic stat are high enough that he can take some decent hits. His in-battle arsenal is rather standard stuff by now, but his out-of-battle arsenal’s another story. I decided to dub Divine Wind as causing “very heavy” damage because if you don’t have any sort of Force protection (or god forbid are weak to it) it will do a tremendous amount of damage to that unit, like in the neighborhood of 70% max HP heavy, even if your Magic or Vitality stat happens to be maxed out. And that 3 x 3 area? Aside from two individual panels sticking out, that’s literally all there is to the solid parts of the field on Metatron’s side, so if you have multiple guys clustered up there and you don’t want to get hurt bad and blown back there’s nothing for it but a dip in the holy water.
And that’s not all. He’s also got incredible defensive abilities thanks to an energy barrier he’ll raise around himself. As long as it is up it’ll put a complete kibosh on your offense, as it will drastically reduce damage, all the way down to the double digits even if, again, your attack stats are maxed out or you’re at Lv. 99 (I tested it!). Even Almighty can’t crack it! He’ll easily heal that off with Victory Cry, but fortunately he will lower the barrier on his own eventually and doing so will also signal that he’s about to use Divine Wind. So his attack pattern is something like: “raise barrier, attack > attack > Divine Wind, lower barrier > raise barrier, attack” and so on and so forth. That should give you enough warning to be able to work with his pattern and exploit it, until the Voice of God is finally defeated by a high school student, a teenage amateur hacker, a pseudo-immortal computer programmer, and a teenage cultist. Hold that L Metatron, hold it tight.
The crew’s got Metatron on the ropes, but he’s still not through. He starts pulsing with golden energy and invokes the names of Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Uriel (at the time the game came out this was the first reference to them as actual characters since Digital Devil Saga 2, I believe). Naoya, his cool facade finally breaking, gasps that if he’s trying to summon the four cardinal archangels than it means that he’s willing to destroy the entire human world just to get them. But then the music from Metatron's ominous narration at the start of the game begins to play and Akira starts emitting dark purple flames, causing the giant angel to exclaim that his overlord powers must finally be awakening. He summons a couple of demons (including Beldr and Belial) without a COMP to attack him, and Metatron finally retreats back towards Heaven along with all the other angels in the city, promising that while he will give us this battle, next time he will lead the full force of Heaven against us. Finally the red sky returns to normal, and the death clocks vanish.
Naoya says that this was a fine conclusion, if a little disappointing (probably because he didn’t get to rip and tear the huge Metatron’s huge guts as much as he would’ve liked) while Atsuro can’t believe he’s being so flippant about this, since he felt Metatron was plenty strong! The crew’s relieved that the crisis is over for them, but Naoya reminds them that Akira’s work has only just begun. While the angels will never again bother the human world he must now raise a demon army in the demon world and take the fight to Heaven itself, those realms being ones that normal humans cannot enter, not even him. Akira’s close friends, Atsuro, Yuzu, and Midori are sad that he’ll be gone, but Naoya tells them not to worry, as he made the summoning server and altered COMPs as a sort of gateway between the human and demon realms. Atsuro acts like this is a huge revelation, but really...it’s kinda obvious that’s what they were from the beginning, speaking metaphorically. Everyone says goodbye, and our hero swiftly hops into a portal to the demon world that suddenly appears, Black Frost at his heels. In the evil version this scene is of course a lot less happy, what with Yuzu leaving Akira forever and the narration stating that he went on to also subjugate mankind, all while Naoya was no doubt patting himself on the back for doing such a good job on corrupting God’s beloved child Abel. As it stands, the good ending narration is that following the angels’ disappearances the government lifted the lockdown and life returned to normal...only without Akira.
Thus we get a little epilogue scene at the Scramble Crossing like Amane’s 8th day got. Atsuro and Yuzu are meeting up a month later, and Yuzu’s in a super pissy mood because he was apparently quite late. She gets over it enough to ask him if he’s heard anything from Naoya and he says no, ever since Akira went to the demon world he’s done nothing but sit in front of the summoning server, paying attention to no one. Of course, it’s then that he gets an email from him that serves to explain what’s been going on just off-screen since the Metatron battle. Naoya’s mail reads that Akira is actually apparently doing quite well for himself, having won his first battle against the Heavenly Host. Even Naoya expresses some surprise, and says that he thinks he’ll be returning some time soon. The end of his letter is addressed to Atsuro, adding that his “momentary dream” is about to come to an end, so too bad for him! The two express their relief at the good news, then Yuzu obliviously asks her friend what Naoya meant by his “momentary dream”, causing him to hastily deny knowing what she’s talking about while inwardly cursing Naoya’s name. Uh huh. When we first chose this route we were facing the prospect of becoming the Demi-Fiend/Aleph and driving away most of our friends in our quest to kill God, and we end on a “wacky” note of anime high school hijinks. Go figure.
That wraps up Naoya’s 8th day for the most part. Pretty interesting way to go about it, showing a more moderate Chaos alternative than is usual, but you can also take a more traditional path if you wish. Upon completion of the credit roll you can actually immediately play through it again from the beginning in order to experience the other version and earn its associated title. I’m doing that off-screen since I already covered the significant differences, so here’re the titles I got this time:
- Overlord - Completed Naoya’s ending path. (60p)
- Warlord - Completed Naoya’s good 8th day. (20p)
- Despot - Completed Naoya’s evil 8th day. (20p)
- Skillful - Cracked all skills in the game. (150p)
I already had all the points necessary to unlock the final bonus boss, but bragging rights are always appreciated. Now to play through the game a fifth time (yeesh) so we can tackle that last ending route, bonus boss, and finally bring this game to a close.
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