Once more is Flynn being given the Good Morning, Crono treatment with someone urging him to wake up. This time he opens his eyes…and once more he is inside the Counter-Demon Force’s control room within the Kasumigaseki bunker. Stephen has kind of a warped sense of humor methinks. The one imploring us to wake up this time is that “certain someone” - Isabeau, who’s overcome with relief at finally finding Flynn unharmed after all this time. What’s gotten her so frantic and frayed all comes out in a rush: due to Walter’s and Flynn’s genius idea to open up the gate to the Expanse Tokyo was flooded with even more demons - imagine that! - and the angels set up a bastion in Naraku and have declared their intent to destroy both them and Tokyo. The Monastery’s defunct (not a bad thing), Mikado is cut off, the Ashura-kai are in shambles with Tayama missing (also not a bad thing), Walter and Jonathan are MIA and she just doesn’t know what to do anymore. Thankfully Flynn’s there to be an emotional anchor in all his silent stoicism so she tearfully asks if she can stay with him.
As soon as control is returned to Flynn Burroughs notes that communication with Mikado is indeed down, thus we cannot use the Terminals to travel back there and any open challenge quests that originated there are marked as closed. You can still take it to the excavation site in Naraku but if you try to advance any further you’ll be blocked by a giant magic barrier at the Hall of the Minotaur. And all the demons are much, much stronger than they were before. So for now we’re stuck in Tokyo where the general mood’s pretty grim with all-out war about to break out between the demons coming out of Ichigaya and the angels coming out of Mikado via Naraku. Some Tokyoites have even thrown in the towel and turned themselves into demons by popping Reds. We’re not given any sort of direction or prompt as to where to go at the moment but the game wants us to head to Cafe Florida to check in on how Fujiwara and Skins are doing. I don’t know why they couldn’t give Isabeau a little dialogue prompt nudging you there when she rejoins you.
In the little Shinjuku coffee shop oasis the two men are surprised to see Flynn and Isabeau still in Tokyo with everything that’s going on, and with the demons being lead by none other than the revived arch-enemy of God, the fallen angel Lucifer himself, Skins says that it’s like doomsday is finally here. That’s when Burroughs speaks up, suggesting that in these times they should turn to the guardian deity of Tokyo the mention of which suddenly gets Skins excited. For some reason I the player have to manually spell out Masakado’s name and the namedrop causes the scarred man to flip out and thrust the gigantic sword he’s been holding into Flynn’s arms and demand that he hold it. Better than that, Flynn can actually unsheathe it! This is Masakado’s Katana, Skins explains, the medium that controls the final National Defense Divinity. He was another member of the Counter-Demon Force twenty-five years ago and he inherited the sword after F used it to give his life up in order to protect the city with the demon’s power. No one’s been able to draw the sword since and Fujiwara and Skins’s true purpose for creating the Hunter Association was to find someone with the talent required to do so. Now Flynn, F’s reincarnation, is that person and Isabeau remarks that it’s as if he’s been chosen to represent all of humanity. Quite an honor and a weight, that. Skins says to take the sword to Ginza and unsheathe it once more in front of the giant boulder that’s at the intersection there and we’ll understand all. Picking Up the Torch is the name given to this quest.
So to the Ginza crosswalk we go. Yeah, I’ve always thought that giant boulder reminded me of the petrified National Defense Divinities. Must’ve been the low-polyness. Flynn unsheathes the sword once again and after some tremors Masakado appears, rumbling that he is the great spirit of the earth charged with protecting Tokyo…or rather just his stony head. Well that’s good enough for Burroughs at least since she announces the above quest complete (5000 macca reward).
Masakado immediately identifies Flynn as F’s reincarnation and says that he already knows of the plan to remove the dome and reunite the people of both Tokyo and Mikado, a prospect that Isabeau finds wonderful. However here’s the catch - Masakado used up too much of his power creating the Firmament and is no longer capable of removing it unaided. He needs hope, something that Tokyo is currently sorely lacking in, to juice himself back up and suggests that we obtain “The Great Spirit of Hope” by uniting the people into one, singular soul by providing them with that hope. The Great Spirit of Hope thus becomes our new mission, and Masakado goes dormant once more.
We’re given a chalice that will apparently fill up on its own as Tokyo’s hope is restored but we have no leads on how we can actually do this…that is, until you head into the Hunter Association downstairs (or any one for that matter). The bartender will call over to Flynn and explain that in these trying times the Hunter Association is trying to raise Hunters’ motivation and morale by throwing a tournament of sorts. Not one involving gladiator matches like before but rather with the leaderboards within each bar which up until now have been entirely fluff. Before they covered random stuff like who was best at fusing demons, excavating relics, negotiating, etc. Now they’re throwing everyone into one big list to determine who the top Hunter is in all of Tokyo and would you look at that, Flynn’s managed to break into the top three! The quest description is updated with a note from Masakado himself urging us to go for the gold since becoming the champion should be a good way to get Flynn’s name out there and bring hope to the people. Though at the moment most of the NPCs in Ginza with something to say about this tournament think it’s a waste of time others elsewhere gradually start to perk up and get into the swing of things.
So that’s what sets the Neutral route apart from the others. On the Law and Chaos routes you can go straight to the respective final dungeon as soon as you return to Tokyo Prime; here you have to do lots of sidequesting first. You don’t have to do all of them to take first place but a number of them are mandatory and the game never actually tells you which challenge quests are required for the ending and which are not. It’s not too bad if you’re like me and have been keeping on top of them throughout the game up until this point but if you aren’t the game’s pacing hits a brick wall and can lead to an acute case of Ending Fatigue. For the record, at this point I’ve put in around eighty hours into this file.
As for me I’m going to wait until the next update to begin the trials because now that we’re at the endgame there is actually some extra miscellaneous stuff to do and some more of Tokyo that we have yet to explore. For example, now that Isabeau is back with us there’s a small optional scene with her that you can trigger here in Ginza if you go to one of the empty rooms inside the members-only shopping district (even now I can hardly buy anything here…). It’s apparently a former bookstore because she finds the next volume of the whatever new manga it is that she’s been reading lately and is quite moved by its contents (spoilers: the couple dies). There are a couple other miscellaneous bonus scenes like that here and there now, like if you return to Midtown Tower in Roppongi to see Mastema he gives his thoughts on whatever route you decided to take: for Neutral he notes that it might not ultimately be the most ideal one but it is an admirable one nonetheless and not to worry if Flynn grows troubled since doubt can be the seed needed for belief in the Lord to sprout. Meanwhile down in the Reverse Hills lab (like Naraku the demons are far stronger) the Ashura-kai men and the little kids are still down there, the adults glad that they’re away from the rampaging demons and sure of one thing: Tokyo has no “hope”.
The main attraction here in Roppongi is if you go to the Mori Tower you’ll find that that hapless Samurai is still hanging around Tayama’s penthouse, still swearing up and down that he’s continuing his search for relics, totally not hiding from all the danger outside. Like before he has something to give us and it’s something much better than those Reverse Hills card keys from earlier; this time he’s managed to scrounge up all of the mediums that Tayama was using to control the National Defense Divinities! With these in our possession we can go around and unlock each one of them for fusion simply by examining their petrified remains:
- Myodo’s Disk unlocks Tenkai (Lv. 77 Famed; Makami + Momunofu + Kikuri-hime + Yatagarasu). Notably he is not resistant to everything like he was during his boss battle, just Physical (though he’s at least immune to Light and Dark still), and is even weak to Gun now.
- Hades’ Soil unlocks Yaso Magatsuhi (Lv. 80 Vile; Yomotsu Ikusa + Shikome + Arahabaki). He notably comes with Shivering Taboo which is a version of Ancient Curse that the player can actually use.
- Ryoja’s Scales unlocks Koga Saburo (Lv. 75 Dragon; Take-Minataka + Mishaguji).
- Tobiume’s Shoot unlocks Michizane (Lv. 84 Famed; Brigid + Hitokotonushi + Raiju). He comes with Thunder Reign, normally Odin’s Signature Move, a severe-level Elec attack that hits all enemies.
- Yagokoro’s Brain unlocks Omoikane (ultimate Lv. 82 Amatsu; Kuebiko + Thoth).
- Yaizu’s Flint unlocks Yamato Takeru (ultimate Lv. 90 Famed; Orochi + Oumitsunu).
Sadly though we can only unlock the first three at the moment since the steps leading down into Camp Ichigaya’s basement where the other three were fought is currently blocked off by another barrier just like the one in Naraku.
Before we depart Roppongi there’s one last Easter egg out there. If you return to Club Milton in Dogenzaka you’ll see that the outside is continuing to happily party away like nothing’s wrong at all, though the manager is furiously (and futilely) trying to contact Tayama concerning the dwindling Red supply. The music untz untz untz-ing away in the background is rather familiar… Almost makes me want to sacrifice the son of heaven…
Now then time to take on the main attraction of this update - the rest of Tokyo. Looking at the map you’ll surely notice that a big chunk of Tokyo’s southeastern region remains unexplored. Remember that subway station east of Tokyo Tower that was blocked off by an Ashura-kai goon who bragged that as long as the organization was around no one was getting through? As he foretold no one’s guarding it now and we can hop on in to hop right on over to Tokyo’s Bay Area - specifically the Shinagawa ward, roughly. Some pretty high-level demons are found here such as Shax, Pendragon, Cerberus, Fenrir, etc. with the highest being Botis at Lv. 83. It’s a good place to grind. The Barbatos demon found here is an excellent Money Spider - if you can paralyze him then ransack his wallet with Fundraise you can get upwards of six-thousand macca a shakedown. Fitting for a demon who can lead summoners to treasure, though I imagine he didn’t expect the script to be flipped on him in this way.
You can hop onto an expressway here and then follow it a touch east before exiting south to reach Tennozu Isle on the waterfront. You’ll soon find a bunker that you can enter. Unlike the ones in Kasumigaseki this one is inhabited by (living) people, though two Hunters who’re here exploring note that they’re very strange. This area’s been mostly cut off from the rest of Tokyo apparently and the inhabitants have developed a cult around the deity Gozu Tennou, which is a bad sign already since he’s associated with disease and pestilence. Some “Red Knight” is involved as well, plus it’s implied that the people here have had to pull a Donner Party and resort to cannibalism to survive…
That’s grim, so let’s have some Mood Whiplash now! There’s a Terminal down here, and you know what that means! After a long absence the Terminal Guardian makes his glorious return dressed in a knight costume he found in an abandoned theater while speaking in over-dramatic Ye Olde Butchered English. The “anachronistic man” boasts that we shall fall before the blade of a steadfast guardian. Have at thee!
Lanling Wang
HP
- 1518
- Nulls Light and Dark
- Myriad Arrows - Deals up to four hits of Gun damage to random enemies.
- Tarukaja - Raises team’s Attack.
- Retaliate - Moderate chance of countering Physical and Gun damage.
- Kresnik, Cu Chulainn
The Terminal Guardian tells us not to underestimate his new team just because they have pretty faces. And yeah, he’s not lying though I’d say that Lanling Wang’s helpers are the bigger threat since Kresnik knows Heaven’s Bow while Cu Chulainn possesses both Grand Tack and Mazandyne. Fortunately their individual HP is not high so I just repeatedly nuked them with Megidola.
Winning earns us two Soma Drops.
From there you can head south into the Ota ward which is mostly wasteland and has the honor of being the southernmost spot in Tokyo that we can explore. Looping back north here takes us to Oi and an undersea tunnel that takes us right to the artificial island of Odaiba that houses stuff like the HQ for Fuji TV (we can snag some relics here), the Tokyo Big Sight venue where Comiket is held twice a year, and of course we can’t forget the life-sized statue of the RX-79 Gundam. In IV it’s just a relic-gathering point at the moment but we will soon be visiting it again on our upcoming championship grind. Next if we backtrack to Tennozu, hop back on the expressway and take it east (coincidentally retracing the path we took to reach Pluto’s Castle in Blasted Tokyo) across the Rainbow Bridge past Ariake we’ll eventually reach solid ground and what’s left of the Koto ward. There’s another one of those annoying small seas of poison here and in the western corner of the area is the Toyosu Shelter bunker. No one’s living here, just lots and lots of relics to be plundered. And once again there’s a Terminal here. Once more the Terminal Guardian shows up, now a well-dressed and serious “businesslike man”. All his losses are starting to get to him so he’s pulling out all the stops this time!
Frosts
HP
- 4600
- Resists Fire; Reflects Ice
- Dream Fist - Deals Physical damage and may put one enemy to sleep.
- Bufudyne - Deals heavy Ice damage to one enemy.
- Glacial Blast - Deals up to four hits of moderate Ice damage to random enemies.
- Mamudoon - A Dark-based attack with a high chance of instantly-killing all enemies.
- Taunt - Greatly raises all enemies’ Attack while greatly lowering their Defense.
Cute, it’s a horde composed of all of the Frost demons that appear in the game: Jack Frost, King Frost, Black Frost, and Frost Ace. Also sneaky of them to resist Fire since that’s probably what the player will instinctively go for first. Mamudoon’s the biggest threat here.
Winning earns us a Summon Stone.
Keep heading east and you’ll run smack-dab into the Firmament and the small shopping district of Minami Sunamachi. Interestingly enough all of the demons encountered here are stuff from the earlygame - Slime, Myrmecolion, Mokoi, etc. They’ve all been driven out of Naraku by the angels so here’s a handy source of them if you wanna recruit them instead of pulling them from the compendium. Like elsewhere in the Bay Area the relics found here aren’t half-bad but Minami Sunamachi is incredibly annoying to navigate thanks to being choked in poison fog. There’s also a Hunter here who says that according to rumor there’s a Fiend lurking here but don’t worry about running into it. Seriously don’t.
And that’s…pretty much all of Tokyo that can be explored save for a spare few nooks that are completely inaccessible…by foot that is. I lied when I said that I was going to hold off on the challenge quests until next update - now that I’ve explored Tokyo the hard way I’m going to wrap things up here with a demon talk-issued quest that’ll make my life a lot easier:
Shibuya Quest 5 - Resurrection of the Kousoushin
This is a delivery quest issued by the demon Futotama. According to the description some demons have sealed away his mistress, the goddess of the sun Amaterasu, so he wants us to collect and deliver the “three vessels” of the Amatsu gods so that they can get some megami tensei action going on. These vessels are actually Japan’s three sacred treasures, the Yato no Kagami, the Yasakani Magatama, and the Kusanagi Tsurugi. We actually already have the first two, snagged from the early bird Erlkonig and Hresvelgr when we first reached Shinjuku so by braving them we’ve saved ourselves some legwork. As for the sword, that one is kept at the tiny Kabuto Shrine in Nihonbashi in the Ginza Region, north of the hospital. One Domain later…
Alciel
HP
- 3444
- Weak to Physical and Gun; Nulls Fire, Ice, Elec, Force, Light, and Dark
- Titanomachia - Deals heavy inaccurate Physical damage to all enemies with increased crit rate.
- Poison Breath - Attempts to poison all enemies.
- Acid Breath - Lowers all enemies’ Defense and Speed.
- Tetrakarn - Erects a one-turn barrier that reflects the next Physical or Gun attack.
I remember during my very first playthrough of the game I stumbled upon this guy way too early on my very first visit to Ginza (like many a player I imagine) and only won through the sheer serendipity of possessing a demon that was immune to Physical in some way, I forget which one. Alciel’s Tetrakarn gimmick isn’t as effective this late in the game since we have ready access to the Megido spell line but I still had to content with Isabeau’s Artificial Stupidity (attacking the Tetrakarn, casting Ziodyne…) giving the demon the opportunity to blow big holes in my team. Grr.
With the final treasure in hand we have to go to Meiji Shrine, south of the main Shinjuku downtown to meet Futotama…and are told to head to the ruins of Edo Castle right outside of Kasumigaseki to conduct the revival ritual. Couldn’t we have just been sent there to begin with? There we hand the three artifacts over to Futotama for real and are paid in the form of two Beads of Life.
However! There is a second, much greater reward to be had. Once she’s revived not only is Amaterasu herself unlocked for special fusion (Lv. 79 Amatsu; Yatagarasu + Futotama + Ame no Uzume) but as thanks for reviving her she bestows the Torifune Shawl upon Flynn which allows Flynn to summon the Ame no Torifune, a magical boat from Japanese myth that here serves as the game’s Global Airship. It can only take off and land at certain spots (marked as yellow dots on the bottom screen’s UI) but it makes travelling around Tokyo so much easier and less stressful. Not to mention that there a few challenge quests where having it is a prerequisite.
Oh, and last but not least let’s polish off the VR quests:
VR Quest - Training Battle 9
This match pits us up against a Zhong Kui and Nata Taishi led by Lanling Wang and we have to beat them in four turns despite their formidable defenses. The answer is to have the Mad Gasser with us spam Pandemic Bomb (Nata Taishi casts Salvation each turn), use Momunofu to throw out a Charged Berserker God to one-shot Zhong Kui, have Flynn use Blight to poison everyone and take out Nata Taishi, then use Death’s Door (reduces a sick unit’s HP to 1) to weaken Lanling Wang enough so that the poison will do him in. Winning earns us 5000 macca.
VR Quest - Training Battle 10
The final one of these has us squaring off against a Samyaza and a Dakini and we must defeat them within ten turns. Plus if we don’t “fight properly” (inflict enough damage I’m guessing) they’ll cut loose with powerful moves like Maziodyne and Hades Blast. The solution is deceptively simple: Swap out the Kushinada-hime demon for a Power in the stock and simply cherry tap Samyaza with physicals until he dies, then do the same with Dakini. Do that and they’ll stick with basic physicals themselves and never break out the heavy artillery. Winning earns us another 5000 macca.
And that wraps things up for today. Next time: the grind begins.
Compendium
- Sphinx
- The Sphinx originated in Ancient Egypt as a creature with the body of a lion and the head of a man that served as temple guardians with the most well-known example being the statue of the Great Sphinx of Giza. Greek folklore tells of Hera sending a female Sphinx to the city of Thebes where she asked passerby to solve riddles and devoured those who failed to reply correctly. Oedipus managed to solve the riddle and the Sphinx killed herself in rage.
- Skadi
- Skadi is a goddess from Norse mythology who is associated with snow, mountains, and winter sports like skiing and hunting. She is half-Frost Giant like Loki and was first married to the god of the sea, Njord, but since Njord couldn’t bear living in the mountains and Skadi couldn’t bear living in the sea they eventually separated and she went on to marry Odin instead.
- Masakado
- Taira no Masakado was a famous samurai from the Heian era of Japanese history. In the 10th century he became embroiled in a conflict between the families in control of the Hitachi, Musashi, Shimozuke, and Shimosa provinces which eventually boiled over into a full-on rebellion against the government in Kyoto. His role as leader led some to dub him the “New Emperor” but in 940 he was killed in battle by his cousin Sadamoto and Fujiwara no Hidesato. Masakado’s head was presented to government officials in Kyoto and was later buried in Edo. His shrine in Tokyo is diligently maintained even today as it’s believed that the fortunes of the city depend on its upkeep.
- Barong
- A holy Balinese beast, depicted as either a lion, tiger, boar, or even dragon depending on what part of Bali you’re in, that is locked in an eternal struggle with the witch Rangda. Their struggle is dramatized as part of the Balinese dance that’s held during festivals.
- Ym
- A dragon that rules the ocean and seas in Semitic tradition. The floods he causes makes him mortal enemies with Baal, the god of agriculture and fertility.
- Fenrir
- A massive wolf-beast from Norse mythology that was said to have fiery eyes and jaws so big they could devour the sky itself. The gods bound him with a dwarven chain known as Gleipnir, but during Ragnarok he is fated to break through it and kill Odin.
- Hekatoncheires
- The Hekatoncheires were a trio of giants in Greek mythology named Cottus, Aegaeon, and Gyges who each sported fifty heads and one-hundred sets of arms. They were imprisoned by their father Uranus until they were freed by Zeus and fought alongside the Olympians during the Titanomachy. Following the war’s conclusion the Hekatoncheires were rewarded for their service and took up roles as the defeated Titans’ jailers.
- Kudlak
- An evil vampire spirit from Croatian lore born from the death of a black-hearted individual. He has the power to shapeshift into a black animal at night, and is forever locked in combat with his diametric opposite, the white vampire hunter Kresnik.
- Titania
- The queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream whose name has since been co-opted for other fictional fairy queens. In the play Titania and her husband Oberon wind up in numerous disputes and arguments concerning their plans for how to raise a human child, culminating in Oberon’s servant Puck tricking her into falling in love with a common laborer whose head had been magically switched with a donkey’s.
- Botis
- The seventeenth demon of the Goetia. As the President and Earl of Hell he has power over sixty armies of demons and great prophetic powers. He usually appears as a snake, but can assume a winged humanoid form should the summoner desire it.
- Shax
- The tenth demon of the Goetia, Shax takes the form of a raspy-voiced stork when summoned. Shax is a compulsive liar who can be ordered to steal horses, money, and even people’s senses. The only time he speaks the truth is when he stands within a magic triangle.
- Barbatos
- The eighth demon of the Goetia. Like many Goetia demons he has authority over thirty armies of Hell and can also speak with animals and find any treasure no matter how well protected.
- Aniel
- One of the seven archangels in Jewish lore. Another way of reading his name is “Haniel” which is derived from the Hebrew word for joy and pleasure, hana’ah. As such he is sometimes called the angel of beauty and is associated with Venus.
- Amaterasu
- The Japanese sun goddess, whose full name is Amaterasu Sume Okami. The most famous story involving her is when she hid from Susano’o’s rampaging, dimming the world until she was lured out from her hiding place by being enraptured by her own reflection. The mirror, the Yata no Kagami, is one of Japanese mythology’s three sacred artifacts alongside the Ame no Murakumo sword presented to her by Susano’o as a peace offering.
