Video Game / Devil Survivor 2

All the stars in the sky are (Not) our enemy

The darkly prospering days of man have reached an end.
You who have strayed from the cycle of the stars will leave not a trace of your existence.
But fear not. You will no longer feel anything...

— Quote from the Game Over screen

Devil Survivor 2 is the sequel to the Shin Megami Tensei Spin-Off game Devil Survivor, developed by Atlus. It released in Japan on July 2011 and in North America on February 28, 2012.

20 Minutes into the Future, three Ordinary High School Students are heading home after a mock exam. They simultaneously receive a phone message from Nicaea, a "dead face delivery site" (in beta). The attached video shows a subway accident killing all three of them.

And then an earthquake derails the oncoming subway car.

Before the train hits them, Nicaea offers the students a chance to change their fate by becoming demon tamers. They agree, and after being saved by (and subduing) demons that appear from their phones, the trio return to the streets of Tokyo to find Earth is under attack by extraterrestrial invaders called the Septentriones. Opposing the aliens is the (Japan Meteorological Agency, Prescribed Geomagnetism Research Department), whose charismatic leader enlists their aid but also knows more about what's going on than he should.

Devil Survivor 2 expands on the first game's demon roster and grants a second level to their racial skills. Like the Social Link system in Persona 3 and Persona 4, the new Fate relationship system grants allies bonuses and unlocks new demons as your friendship deepens.

In Spring 2013, Devil Survivor 2 received an animated adaptation with its own trope page.

Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker is an enhanced Nintendo 3DS port of DeSu2. In addition to a complete voiceover of the original game, it adds a new story arc with a second set of alien invaders, a new cast member named Miyako Hotsuin, and (Japan only) a crossover where Durarara!! characters cameo as demons.

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The Devil Survivor 2 games provide examples of:

Tropes For Both Games

• Akashic Records: They are important to both Arcs of the game!
• All There in the Manual: The artbook has a lot of supplementary information about the characters — their heights; birthdates and zodiac signs; where they'd like to travel to — and even contains information on the idea of Yamato having a younger sister called Miyako. She does not exist in the initial arc, but does make an appearance in Record Breaker.
  • This game assumes you played the previous Devil Summoner and won't bother re-explaining how the Devil Summoning Program works, despite not taking place in the same world.
• Ambidextrous Sprite
  • The stitching of Fumi's dress and Makoto's badge.
  • In Record Breaker, when choosing the guys' physical exam, the writing on Jungo and Daichi's shirts are backwards when they appear on the left side.
• Anyone Can Die: Similar to the previous game, but on a worldwide scale this time around. A plot-relevent death will occur to at least one Fate Link character in each route (some have two). And up to five party members can die during the course of the game, and three of those deaths will occur if the player fails to save them during Death Clip events.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Reaching Rank 4 Fate with anyone in the cast unlocks Summon Demon Transfer Protocol (SDTP), which allows the protagonist to immediately shift one of his active demons to that person's team, or vice-versa. However, if the demon in question moves into an occupied team slot, the demon it's displacing is sent back to stock. The sender's team also is left understaffed, and since SDTP uses up the team leader's on-field action you cannot immediately summon a replacement after using it. Ultimately, SDTP has very niche uses and is not as good as the other Fate-based perks like Joint Skill Crack or innate resistance.
• Biodata: Everything is stored as data in the Akashic Records, including a person's death and the world itself. The current Administrator has the power to delete or rewrite the world with the Records.
• Bland-Name Product
  • There's a ruined Sterbacks in Shibuya and Daichi likes Aberzombie apparel.
  • Joe reads Shoji Leap and the player can ask if Io is looking for Shonen Chump.
• The Blank: Generic JP's members are drawn without eyes to portray Faceless Goons.
• Blatant Lies
  • Grimehkala says something good will happen if you physically attack him. He repels physical attacks.
  • Ghost Q pulls one in his cameo, too.
    Ghost Q: Let's have a fair, one-on-one fight!
    Ghost Q summons multiple demons to gang up on the player
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Yamato wants to convince Polaris to change human nature to be purely meritocratic. When Ronaldo listens in on the said plan, he decides to do the same, except he wants to create an egalitarian society. Daichi thinks both of these plans suck, but gets called out by the others for having no concrete plan to offer.
• Broken Masquerade: Demons are everywhere. Covering them up is impossible.
• But Thou Must!
  • If you've failed to save potential party members enough times, the game will start forcing you to save them by removing excess time-consuming free events until you save the next threatened individual.
  • Averted right before the tutorial battle — The player can choose to die and get a Game Over.
• Butt-Monkey
  • Daichi for most of the early game. The player can choose to help him man up or keep picking on him.
  • Dubhe, after his initial, frightening appearance. Drops onto the floor when Daichi suddenly moves the truck it's standing on, its design makes it look like exploding alien ice-cream and gets recycled as an easy-to-defeat flunky by a later Septentrione.
  • Kama suffers a lot of abuse on the 4th day.
• Common HTTP Status Code: The original ends its Game Over message with 403 Forbidden. The message often appears when a website's code is being rewritten. In the context of the game, the world is being altered. Its Updated Re-release Record Breaker goes for 404 Not Found instead, to signify the world being destroyed in the Triangulum arc.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard
  • The computer loves homing in on a lone character and juggling them with a long-range demon. A few enemies even have unmentioned buffs such as Anti-Almighty or have Anti-resistances reduce attacks by 75% instead of 50% as it should be.
  • The superboss of the Triangulum Arc can freely resummon demons into their party as soon as the player engages them. Just in case the player wanted to remove their lackeys and damage reduction on the leader.
• Deal with the Devil: Nicaea is a website that is said to show you images of someone dying soon, but turns out to be much more than that. Anyone who uses the website can form a contract with a demon, gains the ability to summon them and use spells with their cellphone.
• Death's Hourglass: Played with, in that Nicaea shows how a person will die and where, but the exact time for it to happen is not revealed. The player needs to find the place before it's too late. This is basically the inverse of the first Devil Survivor, which told when someone would die, but not revealing how or where.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Your party fights demons with no weapons. Physical characters are punching deities, demons, aliens and Lovecraftian entities with their bare hands.
• Diegetic Interface: The menu functions are presented as phone apps and the Demon Summoning App is shown to be represented identically to the top screen, with characters explicitly referring to names and skills as shown.
• Dysfunction Junction: The majority of the characters have some form of tragic background to them. Those who don't, or have rather happy backgrounds, tend to have something terrible happening to them during the game.
• Eastern Zodiac: The party members' zodiac sign and demons they unlock by increasing their Fate Link are all based on the Chinese Zodiac. The exception to this rule is the Anguished One.
• Eyeless Face: Generic JP's members are portrayed as this.
• Everything Fades: Even during cutscenes, a body will disappear if they die.
• Family-Unfriendly Death: Most of the deaths shown through Nicaea are these. These range from being beaten to death; burned alive; crushed by a train car or falling debris; shot at point-blank range and tumbling down a long flight of stairs. During the Egalitarian route, a bad one befalls Yamato Hotsuin. The Tsuutenkaku falls and smashes his lower body half, severing him into two.
• Fanservice: Most of the women are well-endowed and even the most conservative uniform is pretty tight-fitting.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: As a staple to the franchise, the player can summon gods from every mythological pantheon. Including ancient heroes; Goetic demons; Urban Legends and horrors from beyond the stars.
• Foreshadowing
  • The theme that plays during the initial start-up of Nicaea is the Anguished One's leitmotif. He made Nicaea.
  • On Wednesday, Fumi makes an off-hand comment about Joe asking her about the Terminals to get to Timor and the call cutting off. It's not just a Call-Back to an earlier joke of Joe's, but also Gameplay and Story Integration, as Joe is completely absent from your team in the menu. As it turns out, Joe is the next fated to die because his phone ran out of batteries and he has no means of defending himself.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Careful comparison of the map of Japan in the top screen over several days reflects the Void causing the rest of the landmass to vanish, even before the party discovers it. The Void even creeps into the battlefield in later days and can change the terrain.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: If the player develops a Fate Link with the party members, they will slowly go through Character Development, but those changes are never actually taken into account during the story itself. Averted, during the Triangulum Arc, though, as the characters' development is taken into account.
• Handy Remote Control: Every weird piece of technology or magic is controllable by cellphone.
• Humans Are Cthulhu
  • Trumpeter feels this way, after he was mercilessly bludgeoned by Fumi's laptops during the Septentrione arc.
    Trumpeter: How do I put this... Humans have become such dreadful beings.
  • The Triangulum arc reveals that humanity fighting against Polaris was so large, it caused Canopus, the creator of the universe itself, to consider humanity an error in the Akashic Records and wants to remove them.
• Improbable Age
  • At the age of 17, Yamato Hotsuin serves as the director and leader of JP's. Justified, as he explains that command of the group has been passed down through his family for generations and are the ones who founded the organization. Deconstructed at the same time, as it shows that being treated as an adult from an early age on has left him incapable of developing a concept of compassion and effectively turning him into a low-key sociopath.
  • Otome is a practicing physician, despite being only 24 years old. Not impossible to happen in Japan, but still rather unlikely. In a similar vein, Fumi is a scientist at 21, an age when most people haven't even finished their undergrad degrees yet.
• Landmarking the Hidden Base: JP's locations. The location in Tokyo is under the Diet Building; the Osaka base is under the Tsuutenkaku and Nagoya's is under the TV Tower.
• Ley Line: The Dragon Stream.
• Life Drain: The Drain skill, which steals HP and MP from the opponent. Alice has a stronger form that drains HP from every enemy within a range of six tiles from her.
• Lighter and Softer
  • Compared to the previous game, the Septentrione Arc is much kinder on the protagonists than the Yamanote Lockdown. The protagonists are not locked into one location, which removes the claustrophobic atmosphere and the decay of society into anarchy is not as obvious. The protagonists are part of a well-organized group and have ample supply to food, medicine and a safe place to sleep. There are also a lot more comedic moments and the Fate System allows sweet, calming moments between the player and characters. In contrast, the destruction going on is on a world-wide scale and not contained in one spot. Death is much more apparent, with a good half of your party members being Killed Off for Real in a playthrough and, as more and more of the world is sucked into the Void, only three small locations remain habitable at the end.
  • Even the cover and color-theme of the games show this. Devil Survivor◊ has a very dark theme on its cover, with most of the characters looking serious or even threatening, and the in-game colors are red and dark. In complete contrast, Devil Survivor 2◊ has a calming blue cover and the characters look serious, but also smiling like they are enjoying themselves and the protagonist is reaching out his hand, like he's asking for help from the player, but also offering help. The in-game colors use a lot of blue and white.
• Literally Shattered Lives
  • Several times, a poor human will get frozen by an ice blast, topple over and shatter. Best shown with a JP's member getting hit by Merak's Signature Move. Same with any human or demon afflicted with the Stone status, when attacked with a physical or wind-based attack.
  • Similarly, if a human is burned to death, their ashes slowly fly away. As demonstrated in Joe's death clip.
• Love Potion: Charm inflicts this. Lilith's battle has her charm men into willingly coming towards her and her racial skill, Temptation, inflicts this on men and demons.
• Medium Awareness: Justified, as the Demon Summoning App shows that it looks exactly like the console's top screen.
  Jack Frost: Gree-heetings from the bottom screen!
• Meaningful Name
  • The Septentriones is the Latin name for the seven stars of the Big Dipper, meaning the seven threshing oxen, and lending its name to the Latin word for North. They are also individually named after each star in the asterism, which is used as a guide to finding Polaris, the north star.
  • Al Saiduq's chosen name is a slightly different spelling of Al Saidak, which means the test. It's also another name for Alcor, a star system that is gravitationally bound to Mirak.
• Monumental Damage: Plenty of Japanese landmarks are shown as having been destroyed.
• Morton's Fork: A result of having two different intelligences judging humanity. Polaris has decided that humanity needs to be killed because it's failed to evolve and grow strong. But defeating Polaris and proving her wrong causes Canopus to determine that humanity's power is an error in the universe that needs to be deleted.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Drain works differently in battles between NPCs, not draining anything.
• Mythology Gag
  • Alice is found in Roppongi.
  • Belial is fought on the Bugeikan Stage.
  • Black Frost's appearance in the game is a huge nod to Devil Survivor. His compendium info even states he's strong enough to become the Overlord!
  • Joe mentions he's a fan of the Featherman manga.
  • Nitta is a character and Shijima is a reason from Nocturne.
  • The melody that Trumpeter plays is a segment of the Law theme from the first Shin Megami Tensei game.
  • "Calm Down" is a common response for the Protagonist.
  • Otome mentions in the artbook that Kohaku wants to go to Destiny Land.
  • The demons unlocked via the Anguished One's Fate Route are Asura and Lucifer, the final Chaos bosses of Shin Megami Tensei I and Shin Megami Tensei II, respectively.
  • Record Breaker adds some to the game's anime.
    • Lucifer's design is switched to his angelic Helel form.
    • Satan's fusion is changed to using Nebiros and Zaou-Gongen, the combination used by Yamato Hotsuin in the anime's final battle.
• Nerf: Drain was one of the few things from the first game to be touched in this one, and it suffered a major damage decrease, to the point of being nearly worthless.
• New Game Plus: The player earns titles for their accomplishments in the game, with each title awarding points that can be used to unlock perks for future playthroughs. These perks include the ability to carry over things like demons, skills, money, the demon compendium and remove the level-based fusion restriction or Anti-Grinding penalties. This is also the only way to unlock the games' ultimate superbosses, Alice (Septentrione arc), and the two Ticos (Triangulum arc).
• Nintendo Hard: Ziodyne and Anti-Phys are on a miniboss on Day 3?! Oh, no!
• Non-Standard Game Over: If you choose to die instead of wanting to live when demons appear from the player's cellphone. Worth looking at, just to see Tico's dumbfounded expression.
• Obviously Evil: Subverted with the sprites for the policemen. They look diabolical with their Slasher Smile and red eyes, but none of the encountered policemen are evil. It's a case of re-used assets from Devil Survivor.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: For all of the characters, if the player develops their Fate Link far enough. Io openly expresses her thoughts; Daichi throws away his hesitance to fight demons; Joe swears to never be late again; Keita saves his teammates and Fumi decides to put Jungo's (or Daichi's) life over the sake of experimental data.
• Outside-Genre Foe: While gods and demons are still a major part of the game, the central antagonists here are aliens.
• Post-Modern Magik: Traditional demon summoning rituals are turned into a cellphone app.
• The Power of Friendship
  • The entire point of the Fate Link system, which allows the player to interact and form deeper bonds with the party members. It allows them to unlock elemental strengths or new demons to fuse.
  • During the Final Day, only characters who have a Fate Link of at least 4 will give the player a chance to recruit them into their party. The exception being Yamato and Ronaldo refusing to join the player, if they are on the other's route or took Al Saiduq's side.
• Press X to Die: You can choose to not be rescued from the trainwreck at the beginning of the game, resulting in a Game Over before your very first battle. In the Record Breaker Updated Re-release, the new Triangulum Arc begins with a helicopter wreck and gives you the same option.
• Redemption Demotion: When fought as enemies, Yamato, Io, the Anguished One and Miyako have unique abilities, but they do not retain them upon rejoining. Justified in Yamato Hotsuin's case, by specifically picking a location that allows the power-up. The rest have no excuse. Especially Io, who never again uses her power as Lugh's vessel in battle.
• Red Shirt Army: The gold-uniformed, generic JP's members already have no proper face given, so it's little surprise that they tend to get killed by demons or Septentriones.
• Running Gag: When commencing battle, Joe is the last one to pull his phone out.
• Screw Destiny: Nicaea's purpose, as mentioned by its creator. They wanted to see if the preordained death in the Akashic Records could be averted, if those capable of stopping it were shown a death clip ahead of time.
• Sequel Escalation: Overclocked added three new, playable days and the most voice acting that an Atlus title produced at the time. Record Breaker trumps this by adding an entirely new, five day arc.
• Status Effects: All the Shin Megami Tensei mainstays are here. Poison, Paralyze, Stone/Petrify, Charm, Forget and Curse. Alcor adds the unique Ill-Starred effect, which adds damage to any attack against the target.
• Strategy RPG: Despite being a rather non-standard one.
• Token Evil Teammate
  • Al Saiduq, though the values fall under a different principle.
  • Yamato and Ronaldo fall under this more, due to their opposing extremes.
• Tokyo Is the Center of the Universe
  • Though in addition to Tokyo, you also get Osaka and Nagoya. Sapporo and Fukuoka make a brief cameo.
  • Taken to a literal extreme in the Liberator ending, where it's the last landmass remaining on earth and the rest being replaced by an endless ocean, after the Void took over.
• Two Guys and a Girl: The protagonist, Daichi and Io are the initial team and trope for this. Joe joins the party very fast, but he's not really a peer in their age group and is not shown with them in the true ending.
• Western Zodiac
  • Except for the protagonist, the Anguished One and the Ticos, the artbook has stated that each of the characters represents one of the twelve Zodiac signs. They each gain resistance to the Element that corresponds with their sign, although Electricity replaces Earth, and their birthdays match them, too.
  • The gender is also determined by sign, with the positives being male and negatives female.
  • The four main routes are also based on the Qualities of their sign. Daichi's is Fixed; Yamato is Mutable; Ronaldo is Cardinal and the Anguished One probably represents Rebirth.
  • There was fan-speculation that the Anguished One and the protagonist are the 13th Sign, Ophiuchus, since they had no assigned sign. It was eventually revealed that the protagonist is Gemini, a sign that contains two of the same. The Anguished One was confirmed to be Ophiuchus.
• World of Badass: Most humans with some latent spiritual power have access to summoning demons, but even those that don't can put up some fight against demons because of the summoning app's secondary function.
• World of Buxom: Every female party member has noticeable breasts. Even Airi, who has the smallest cup-size out of all. Though this only applies to their portraits, as they are modestly drawn in cutscenes or sprites.

Septentrione Arc

• Action Bomb: Dubhe, as well as Alioth's and Merak's spawns.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • When fighting Team Tokyo's leaders on the 7th Day, Io Nitta will begin to channel Lugh and give a power-up to the entire faction after a certain amount of damage has been dealt to them. Defeated Io Nitta before this happens? No problem, they'll get up again and channel Lugh, making it impossible to miss out on Lugh during that battle.
  • The six death clip events where your party members can actually be Killed Off for Real are hard capped at three deaths. Furthermore, they are mutually exclusive (Jungo/Io, Keita/Makoto, and Joe/Otome), and losing the first character in the set prevents the second character's death from happening as well (as the game will force you to pick the right events to save them), and in Makoto's case, if Keita is already dead, she survives even if you side with Ronaldo during the mission. Thus, you can never lose more than three characters before the alignment route split (and no more than five characters total in a single playthrough).
• Apple of Discord: Polaris has the power to rewrite the world and influence the general mindset of mankind. Once Yamato reveals his plan to use this power to create a meritocracy, the party begins to fracture fast.
• Ax-Crazy: Bifrons loves killing humans, always asking the Anguished One if he can kill any human in the area. His master is the only one keeping him in check.
• Back from the Dead: Nebiros brings back defeated demons using his Necromancy skill.
• Barrier Change Boss: Beelzebub changes his elemental resistance every turn.
• Book Ends: The first and last battle of the game takes place on Sunday at 12:30 PM. The Restorer ending shows the subway station where the adventure began as its parting shot.
• Body Surf: Nebiros will use his turn to summon more demons, if there are less than three demon teams left on the battlefield.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: During a conversation on the 3rd Day, Daichi mentions that he feels like he's stuck in some kind of action movie. The player can opt to say it's more horror, which leads to Daichi wondering what will come next: Vampires? Zombies? Vampire-Zombies?
• Call-Back
  • If the player has defeated Botis and Bifrons before the 7th Day, they will be replaced by Black Frost during the confrontation. The demon quickly makes a huge call back to Devil Survivor.
    Black Frost: The messenger of love and justice is here! Time for some magical punishment! ★
    > Frosty!
    Black Frost: ...Ho? What are you saying, ho? You got me confused with someone else!
  • Nicaea's message after the credits when finishing the Anguished One's route is another nod to Devil Survivor.
    You now have a new world. Let's Survive.
• The Capital of Brazil Is Buenos Aires: According to the artbook, Ronaldo Kuriki is part-Brazillian, although he sometimes drops Spanish greetings. Those are only in the English version, though.
• Cell Phones Are Useless: Both times this occurs, it involves death videos of the person they are trying to reach. The 2nd Day is justified, as Keita Wakui is too much of a Jerkass to have shared his phone number with any of the protagonists. On the 4th Day, Yuzuru "Joe" Akie forgot to charge his cellphone, knowing full well that his cellphone is an integral part of surviving in this world.
• Chekhov's Gunman: There's an optional scene of Joe and an NPC mentioning Billiken on the 2nd Day. Come the 6th Day, Billiken is an optional battle.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: The Meritocracy ending shows the group of civilians, that previously shielded a young boy in Makoto's Fate events, being led by the young child.
• Chirping Crickets
  • Some of Joe's punny jokes result in this.
  • Twice when trying to summon Kama, in the form of an empty can rolling across the ground.
• Co-Dragons: Botis, Bifrons and Black Frost are these to the Anguished One.
• Copy Protection: During the battle against Dubhe, which has a Story-Driven Invulnerability, a scene is supposed to occur that leaves Dubhe weak to almost all attacks, allowing the newbie protagonists to defeat it. If the copy protection flag goes off, the scene won't occur, turning it into an unwinnable battle.
  • The copy protection flag actually goes off earlier in the game, where Makoto is normally supposed to be able to kill Bai Suzhen, but instead leaves her with 1 HP, forcing the weaker main party to land the finishing blow on her.
• Creepy Doll: Billiken.
• Defrosting the Ice Queen: Spending enough time with Yamato and Keita allows them to mellow out.
• Delicate and Sickly: Joe's girlfriend. Her condition is worse than she let on and ends up dying as the week progresses. Although the Restorer ending shows that she was brought back to life, her illness apparently no longer a problem.
• Developer's Foresight: If a party member dies, but was relevant to another member's Fate events, the events will occur with a surviving member in place and yield different dialogue.
• Disc-One Nuke: The player can obtain Ziodyne and Repel Elec on the 3rd Day, if they manage to crack it from Botis when going after Fumi. The game's going to make you work for it, though.
• Dub Name Change: The Septentriones' Race was changed to Star for the English release. In the Japanese version, their Race corresponded to each of their ancient Chinese names.
• Early-Bird Boss: Botis is this, if the player chooses to fight him on the 3rd Day. Botis is Level 37, when most of your party might have just reached Level 20 themselves, and he reflects Electricity, resists Physical and nullifies Curse. Already, the player is prevented from using status-ailments to whittle is HP down or using one Element. He also uses Ziodyne, the strongest tier of the single-target Electricity spell, and uses Shield All, which makes each of his party take one hit without any damage. And that usually gives him an Extra Turn. But with some planning and patience, the player can remove his Extra Turns and trick him into spending his MP, making him more manageable.
• Everybody Lives: Implied to be the case in the Restorer ending.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Yamato mentions that Polaris will only change the world, if all of mankind's mind is made up to have it happen. Bluntly put, the party are the only surviving humans left on earth by the end of the game.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Lilith's Temptation skill inflicts Charm on any male, as well as having a medium chance of working on females and demons.
• Face Death with Dignity: Ghost Q, and Botis on the 7th Day, commending the player for beating them.
• Fanservice: Record Breaker added revealing portraits for most of the women, if the player chooses to spy on their health exam on the 4th Day. The men also get new portraits for their physical exam scene, but are simply wearing t-shirts.
• Failure-to-Save Murder: Joe mentions that they could choose to not save Keita, after seeing his death clip, but wonders if this might be just as bad as killing him themselves.
• Faux Yay: The player suggests that Daichi pretend to be gay and lie about the attempted peeping.
  Daichi: Huh... I might get away with it if I said I was in love with Yamato. ...No. That's too risky. *sigh* I don't think I could keep that ruse up when I'm with the girls.
• Five-Man Band: While the main cast is too large to accommodate this kind of dynamic, eventually the cast splits into factions at the route-splitting point. Whoever's with the route you've picked can fit into the roles as follows:
  • Daichi's Route: You're The Leader, Daichi The Lancer, Hinako The Heart, Jungo The Big Guy, and Io The Smart Guy.
  • Ronaldo's Route: You're The Leader, Ronaldo The Lancer, Otome The Heart, Airi The Big Guy, and Joe The Smart Guy.
  • Yamato's Route: You're The Leader, Yamato The Lancer, Makoto The Heart, Keita The Big Guy, and Fumi The Smart Guy.
• Four Is Death: A total of five Administrators is mentioned in the game. Polaris is the fourth.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: During the battle against Lilith, the player must avoid defeating any of the men under her control. If they are defeated, they count as dead and the mission fails, in contrast to other civilian battles where you simply force them to retreat after their phones are broken.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss:
  • Megrez on the 4th Day. It's split into three main bodies, one in each major location, and the party is split into three teams to fight each part. Once Megrez has taken a certain amount of damage, it will move around the battlefield, forcing the player to chase it down three times before it's really defeated.
  • Kama first disguises as five nearly-identical demon teams, and once he is unmasked, he attempts to flee. Letting him escape results in failure.
• Graceful Loser: Botis will commend the player for their great strength.
• Greed: Billiken's entire motivation during his battle is to hunt down anything that might have Macca.
• Hand Wave: Done by Yamato multiple times about how absurdly prepared JP's is.
  Daichi: An exclusive platform...!? Wait a sec, how is this place still running? I mean, after what happened to the subway...!
  Yamato: You're wasting time with these useless questions. Let's go.
• A House Divided: The party ends up splitting into three factions, when they cannot agree on what to do with the chance of having Polaris rewrite the world. Although most of them can be persuaded to join the player again, once they are defeated and have a high enough Fate level with the protagonist. Yamato and Ronaldo are exceptions to this, in regards to certain routes.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Alice.
• I'm Taking Her Home with Me!: Taken to ludicrous extremes by a Badb Catha when it grabs one of Lugh's essences. It squees like a little girl and declares that it's taking it home.
• Indirect Kiss: On the 1st Day, Io offers her water bottle to Daichi, who notes she already drank from it. All three dialogue options allude to this trope.
  > No! Way!
  > Good for you, dude.
  > Lucky bastard.
• Interface Spoiler
  • Even if one doesn't know what Septentriones means, an in-game event states that the invaders are named after the stars in the Big Dipper and mentioning that seven will appear over the course of a week. Looking at the logo, it shows the Big Dipper with an eighth star. There's more after the seventh one.
  • The Fate Link system applies to party members, but the player can form a Fate Link with three extra members long before they actually join. Ronaldo Kuriki, Yamato Hotsuin and the Anguished One. The latter two are a particularly bad example because they do not join until the 7th Day, at the earliest.
• Invisible to Normals: Dera-Deka says that one requires some spiritual power to access Nicaea.
• Interrupted Suicide: During a late Fate event with Io, she and the protagonist come across a little boy about to commit suicide because he lost his family. Io puts her shyness aside and tells the boy to not go through with it, especially since she lost her parents to demons as well and knows how it feels to want to die over that.
• Irony: Abraxas is classified as a fallen demon, but Abraxas talks about repelling evil.
• Just in Time: Anytime the party wants to prevent a predicted death, the party will arrive just before the worst happens.
• Kill It with Fire: Bifrons does this to several JP's members and potentially Otome, too.
• Lame Pun Reaction: If the player picks Boo-njour! before battling Ghost Q, he'll say that's worse than his.
• Luck-Based Mission: Any battle against Yamato Hotsuin. Like most bosses, he gets an Extra Turn, even when attacking from a range. He moves insanely fast, though not very far, and he will likely use Megido twice, if the player manages to get close. And his turn pops up even more once the surrounding teams are defeated. He also has Revive as his auto-skill, meaning he'll revive any of his fallen demons at the start of a skirmish and one of his demons has Samarecarm.
• Make a Wish: Polaris will grant a wish to anyone who manages to defeat her, as long as said wish is also in-tune with the rest of mankind's desire. Unless you decide that Murder Is the Best Solution.
• Matryoshka Object: The materialized Dragon Stream is made up of a chain of heads linked by Nested Mouths.
• Mind Screw: Once the Akashic Records are mentioned, the game begins to pull an absurd number of hand waves. The records are actually files for events at any given point in time, and those files have mostly nothing in them, while the files with data in them are progressively being erased, which justified why the Void exists. The records are ancient and they have been known to record every point in history with incredible accuracy, but the Septentriones are the guardians of said records and these records are similar to the first game's Laplace Mail, in which they are both missing the files for the future. But anyone can give new data to those files, as they are edited by Polaris and whoever controls it, which becomes the party's goal.
• Mood Whiplash
  • The Liberator ending has a melancholic piano melody going on, before suddenly shifting to the battle theme.
  • The Chaos ending shows Yamato and his faction reigning over the new, meritocratic world. Some of the badassery is gone when one notices that the protagonist has his bunny ears up.
  • If you're late to the museum on Day 3, you get a rather depressing scene of Jungo being killed by the rioters which is followed by the decidedly less depressing event of Io sneaking around the theater under a cardboard box.
• Multiple Endings
  • Liberator: Daichi's route and choose to kill Polaris. Polaris is dead and the Void disappears, now replaced with an endless ocean that may or may not be drinkable. Only a small landmass remains and the surviving people are working together to master the aftermath of the tragedy. There are no malevolent deities out to toy with humanity anymore, but neither are there any benevolent ones to help. Nonetheless, the game treats it as a rather positive ending.
  • Restorer: Daichi's route and choose to rewind time. Polaris regresses the world back to how it was a week ago, before the Septentriones began to attack. It's basically an in-game ending variant of New Game+.
  • Egalitarian: Ronaldo's route. Polaris changes mankind's mindset into everyone being equal to the other and helping each other out. JP's, the SDF and civilians are working together to help any injured survivors and work on rebuilding society. It's stated that this utopia may be the one that man has dreamed about for ages, it questions if mankind can maintain its prosperity without a competitive spirit or drive to excel.
  • Meritorious: Yamato's route. Polaris brings about the meritocracy that Yamato desires. A person's creed, age or familial connections will no longer mean anything, as only those with the drive, skill and talent to advance will do so. But those who lack will have a difficult time and Polaris points out that even Yamato and his faction could be challenged for their supremacy at some point.
  • Kingmaker: The Anguished One's route. Polaris is defeated and Al Saiduq takes the place as the world's new Administrator. He creates a new world by becoming it himself, leaving the world without an Administrator of old, but mankind is now deciding its own fate. The world is primeval and everyone will have to fight for survival, but Al Saiduq's presence can still be felt by the party.
  • Triumphant: Not an ending itself, but an addition to either of Daichi's routes. The title is earned by keeping every party member alive and all of them join the protagonist and Daichi's cause.
• No Endor Holocaust: This worry is mentioned when Yamato plans to have Alioth crash onto Sapporo, but he says it'll be no problem. Sapporo is already full of corpses. It's implied to be averted later, though, as Makoto mentions having heard of some survivors still being in Sapporo. Yamato technically didn't lie, since any survivors who were not crushed by Alioth were likely to die from the Septentrione's toxin.
• Noble Demon: Botis.
• Noble Shoplifter: Done by Daichi and Joe at the beginning of the game. Unfortunately, their well-intended act quickly becomes pointless, seeing as how fast civilization breaks down.
• Not Evil, Just Misunderstood: The Anguished One. He feels that humans are too controlled and wishes to give them back their freedom over their own world. But since he's a Septentrione, he cannot fully act against his nature and easily comes off as a villain and does get killed by the party in most of the endings. In his own ending, though, he does usurp his superior and becomes the essence of the new world.
• One Extra Member: Those Septentriones actually have an eighth member to them. The extra one is Alcor, a twin-star to Merak, and is the only one not presented as a mindless abomination. It's the true form of the Anguished One, who created Nicaea and the summoning app to give humans a chance to fight against their fate of being erased.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Obariyon mentions this during the first battle.
  Obariyon: No dying that way! I need to kill you!
• Optional Boss: They appear at specific times as special Free Battles, giving you unlimited retries until you best them or their time slot passes. In accordance with Shin Megami Tensei tradition, defeating the following unlocks them for fusion.
  • Ghost Q and Billiken can be challenged in optional events.
  • Starting a New Game Plus unlocks battles against the Sage of Time, Nebiros, Lilith, Belial, Beelzebub, and Alice, with the last being the superboss of this arc.
• Order Versus Chaos
  • Interesting in its portrayal based on the astrological star sign qualities, rather than the way they are presented in most Shin Megami Tensei games. Both the Law and Chaos routes rely on using Polaris' powers to brainwash humanity into following perfect egalitarianism or a hierarchy based on social darwinism. Each of the factions is presented as having valid points, though Law and Chaos have terrible spokespeople for it.
  • Oddly enough, the Neutral option of the game in the form of the Anguished One's route is a strange mixture of the freedom presented by Chaos and an entity that will watch over, but never interfere with humanity like past Law figures.
• Parking Garage: A recurring random battle location. Also the location of Dera-Deka's death.
• Path of Most Resistance: Choosing to take Anguished One's Route starts you with only two leaders — the protagonist and the Anguished One — and you have to fight through all of your former friends. If you've neglected to raise their Fate levels, you're going to lose out on a lot of allies for the road ahead. To top it off, the final boss is significantly harder on this route.
• The Peeping Tom: The Secret Garden scene has Daichi and Joe peeking in on the women's physical exam. The protagonist can join as well, leading to eavesdropping on a conversation the women are having about their assets.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: If the player has defeated Bifrons and Botis during the earlier days, Black Frost, who was an optional party member in Devil Survivor, will take their place.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Mentioned by Io when it's revealed that the towers' barrier will have to be removed to give the party a chance to fight Mizar. If they leave the barrier, Mizar's duplications will overrun the remaining world. But removing the barrier will leave them all vulnerable to fall victim to the Void.
• Rage Against The Heaven: The Anguished One's route boils down to this. The player overthrows the administration of the world and creates a new world without one.
• Reset Button
  • Daichi's Restorer ending regresses the world to prior the Septentriones' attack.
  • This is the purpose of the Septentriones themselves. They destroy the old world, so the new one can be created.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here
  • If all demon teams are defeated and Ghost Q is the last one remaining, he'll run away.
  • Kama wants to run away, when he learns what the party actually wants him to do.
• Signature Style: Do the Septentriones look familiar? They were designed by Mohiro Kitoh.
• Skippable Boss: Several levels will feature a boss that's significantly stronger than the rest of the mobs, but your primary objective does not require their defeat. You do, however, unlock them for fusion should you defeat them yourself.
• Strength Equals Worthiness
  • Beelzebub's entire reason for being a boss to fight. He's heard a lot about how strong the Protagonist is and has come to test that strength for himself.
  • Belial and Nebiros pick the party members as potential friends for Alice because they are so strong that they are worthy of the girl's friendship.
  • This is how the Anguished One tests people's worth: Letting them battle his Dragons.
  • This is why Yamato takes a shine to the party members, and especially to the protagonist, after they defeat Dubhe.
  • Lastly, this is Polaris' final test. Fight her to prove your resolve to change the world.
• Take a Third Option
  • When the party begins to fall apart between Yamato's plans for a meritocracy and Ronaldo's desire for egalitarianism, Daichi wants to pick an alternate solution that doesn't force someone under another's thumb. And while he has no clue how to achieve that, he still gets Hinako, Jungo and Io to join his side.
  • The protagonist can choose a fourth option by following the Anguished One's plan for a new world entirely.
• Tempting Fate: While the protagonist and Daichi want to walk Io home, they have to go through Roppongi and Shiba Park. As Daichi notes, what's the worst that could happen there? Dubhe, that's what. It appears and causes an explosion, reducing three civilians to scorch marks, and planned to do the same to the party before they ran.
• Ungrateful Bastard: As soon as Billiken is defeated, the demons that were just terrified of him decide that he was onto something and attack the party for their Macca.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential
  • It's entirely possible for the player to just let certain party members die. At least they won't be fought as enemies later on... However, if the player does let the body count pile high enough, they will eventually be forced into events to save the others.
  • When initially meeting Jungo, choose to claim to be part of the bad guys. It's like kicking a puppy.
• Wave-Motion Gun
  • Merak's special attack, Circumpolarity. It may not instantly freeze the party as it did the JP's member prior to the battle, but it still hurts like a ton of bricks.
  • Polaris also uses on in her final fight. Fortunately, it is heavily telegraphed, giving the player enough time to move out of the way before it fires.
• Wham Episode: Friday upends the game's status quo. The barriers keeping the Void from swallowing Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya are dropped, giving them three days at most before they're swallowed. the party divide into factions following Yamato, Ronaldo, or Daichi. Depending on the player's actions, either or both of Makoto and Io, two of the most prominent party members can die Finally, the day ends with Tico announcing that Niceae is shutting down.
• Wham Shot
  • On the 2nd Day, there is an in-game wham shot when Yamato shows the ruined locations across Japan to the party and revealing that the damage is world-wide. Worse, since he mentions these are the locations that JP's knows of.
  • A subtle thing and easy to miss, but take a look at the world map after beating Phecda on the 3rd Day. The island of Shikoku is almost gone. If you don't notice by then, you will by the start of the 5th day once the rest of southern Japan starts following.
• You Are Too Late: If you fail to prevent a death, the party will always arrive just as it's happening. Even the first failed rescue mission is labeled Too Late.
• Your Days Are Numbered: From Sunday onward, each day has a Septentrione attacking Japan. Since they are named after the stars in the Big Dipper, Hinako speculates that there will be a total of seven.

Triangulum Arc

• 11th-Hour Superpower: The Prime Factors that the party has to crack before confronting the Final Boss. They are the factors that make up the universe. Heat boosts all Elemental damages; Gravity boosts all Physical damages; Time boosts Almighty and Curse damage; Space adds 4 to every person's movement range.
• Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The final boss battle's stages have multiple ones, but a special mention goes to the last part. The party is practically floating above a universe made out of blue, glowing shards of light.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Most cutscenes in the game only use two portraits of characters at one point, but one specific scene in Fumi's Fate events allows for three portraits on-screen at once. All for the sake of Rule of Funny.
• Bag of Spilling: When the first battle starts, your party remembers its previous battles and instantly jump from Level 1 to 20, which is around 40 Levels lower than what you were when confronting Polaris. Daichi specifically notes feeling weaker than before.
• Beyond the Impossible: Canopus cannot be killed. The fundamental laws of the universe make it immortal. But those laws can be hacked, allowing for Canopus' destruction.
• Big Bad: Arcturus, the leader of the Triangulum. And then there's an even greater force behind him.
• Call-Back: The arc is filled to the brim to references to various events in the Septentrione arc.
• Cassandra Truth: The protagonist is the only one who remembers the previous world's cycle and what happened. His prior knowledge initially clashes with the other members, who don't believe him, until their memories come back.
• Darker and Edgier: Strangely enough, this arc is much darker than the Septentrione arc. Even with the party having saved the world previously, regressing it has not fixed everything and the world is, again, in danger of being taken by the Void. The enemies are tougher from the beginning and the protagonist has a strange phenomenon where it looks like he's flickering-in-and-out of existence. And this world seems to have erased Yamato, leaving him to be replaced by Miyako. Then it turns out that this world is the third cycle, meaning there was a second cycle previously that most don't remember. And that cycle was one where the party all died to Arcturus, but the protagonist didn't exist in that cycle. And his flickering? That's his existence being in peril of being permanently destroyed in the Akashic Records.
• Demonic Possession: This happens to the protagonist when looking for a way to deal with Spica, before it reaches the Sky Tower through the sea. The party summons Aramisaki to ask her to create a barrier to block Spica's path. The possession is completely intentional, necessary and even a lot of fun because it gives the player a chance to flirt with Aramisaki!
• Disc-One Final Boss: Arcturus is merely the beginning. What were you expecting?
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Everyone but the protagonist start having nightmares of being killed by Arcuturs, when its imminent appearance draws close. It turns out that these are actually memories from the world's second cycle, meaning this is the third cycle.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Most of the party members have achieved their goals from the previous world. Io is more outspoken and friends with Daichi and the protagonist; Airi is a famous pianist and created an idol-duo with Hinako; Keita is close friends with Jungo and Makoto averted the accident that caused her to have to give up on synchronized swimming. She still ended up joining JP's willingly.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Triangulum themselves don't look too freaky, even for what they are. Then there is Cor Caroli, which are two faceless women draped over each other in front of a large black-yellow-striped panels and huge, black hands on the side.
• Everybody Lives: The Triangulum arc establishes due to Merging the Branches that the entire playable cast canonically survived the Septetrione arc, an outcome not possible in actual gameplay.
• Everybody's Dead, Dave: Daichi's nightmare at the beginning of Wednesday has him see the aftermath of fighting Arcturus, with everyone except for Yamato and himself, to be dead. And Daichi dies from a bleeding stomach wound. Yamato turns out to have just barely survived because of Al Saiduq's intervention.
• Foreshadowing
  • The revelation of the world having been regressed twice is a minor foreshadowing in the introduction! After the player has talked to both Ticos and leaves for the new world, the Void is right behind the protagonist...
  • The same revelation has another indication when the player has input the protagonist's name and chosen their Tico. Tico mentions they were worried about how things went down last time, but quickly wave it aside when asked about it and proceed with the introductory protocol. Tico is referring to how the protagonist was swallowed by the Void last time and wasn't around for the second cycle.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Skill Crack ability is mentioned to be required to crack the skills from Canopus to obtain the Primary Factors.
• The Ghost: Er Rai is frequently mentioned to be the next Administrator in line, but never actually appears. The Sacrificial ending's Game Over implies that Er Rai is the one that allows the world to be swallowed by the Void.
• Happy Ending Override: It turns out that regressing the world after defeating a group of alien abominations has merely resulted in giving the next group of alien abominations room to try to do the same to the world.
• Headbutting Heroes: Airi and Hinako are still prone to bicker with each other, but they admit that they are brutally honest with each other and that always leads to the best results for them.
• Here We Go Again!: Time to fight some Eldritch Abominations and Administrator again! The Endless Battle ending takes this to Forever War levels.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite every other change in the timeline, Ronaldo still ends up storming into JP's Nagoya branch. This time, the player is on the same side as him.
• Interface Spoiler: Miyako insists that Al Saiduq and Yamato Hotsuin do not exist in this world, though the Fate Link menu has two empty spots for them.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: The party members have lost their memories of the previous world upon being reborn, though they recall vague feelings off and on. They do remember everything upon having used the summoning app and coming into contact with the protagonist.
• Lighter and Softer: In contrast to the overall arc, the Fate events are much lighter and more comedic than in the Septentrione arc. Helped by the fact that none of your party members are in danger of prematurely dying. There's also very few rogue demon tamers misusing Nicaea to deal with, in comparison to the Septentrione Arc, although it's implied that plenty are still dying from trying to use the app and failing, and JP's better preparations ensure the widespread famine and rioting from the Septentrione Arc is avoided. Ronaldo's Fate events even show that many of the former rioters have pulled a Heel–Face Turn in the new timeline and are now helping protect the civilians. While the Triangulum pose a greater threat than their predecessors, and there's no predetermined path to victory as there was with Polaris, humanity is much more capable of handling the danger than it was before.
• Lovecraft Lite: It turns out that defeating Polaris has caused the mind of the universe itself to believe that humanity itself is an unacceptable error in the Akashic Records and needs to be removed.
• Marathon Level: The final level of the game pits you against five bosses in quick succession: The Four Factors and then Canopus itself. Along the way your team receives massive boosts to their offenses and speed, but even then the final boss has enough HP and Vitality to take a beating. You don't get any opportunities to swap your leaders or skills in the meantime, so if you don't make wise choices you may run out of resources.
• Merging the Branches: The Triangulum arc uses Al Saiduq ascending the throne as the next Administrator from the Kingmaker ending and regressing the world from Daichi's Restorer ending and merged them into one ending, keeping everybody alive.
• Multiple Endings
  • Sacrificial Ending: Everyone agrees to go through with Miyako's plan to sacrifice themselves and their Administrative Authority to turn Al Saiduq into a proper Administrator, allow the world to regress once more, but none of the protagonists will be reborn into that world. The ending quickly shows its flaws, with the world (at least Japan) not having the ability to progress and leading to a standstill. And Al Saiduq is forced to make room for the next Administrator in line, who proceeds to allow the Void to take the world. It counts as a glorified Game Over and not a real ending, though.
  • Guardian Ending: The protagonists decides to become a Human Administrator to the world, and removing the party's memories of him, knowing that he isn't bound by the Administrator rules and will not have to make room for any coming Administrator, managing to keep humanity safe. For eternity. The world is regressed and safe, but Daichi mentions during graduation that he feels like there's something missing... The protagonist watches over the world from then on with only Al Saiduq as his constant companion, the Septentrion wearing an identical coat as the protagonist as a sign of loyalty to his new Administrator.
  • Endless Battle Ending: Following Ronaldo's idea, the protagonists choose to fight Canopus and regress the world, intent on fighting the next Administrator to appear and try to destroy earth, in hopes of the high-risk high-return benefit of gaining full control of the Astrolabe to help benefit mankind. It's mentioned that this could take thousands of attempts because of the number of Administrators and they begin to appear sooner and sooner. The protagonist and Daichi barely have time to leave school before the next invasion begins.
  • Record Breaker Ending: Canopus and the power behind the Akashic Record is destroyed for good and the world is regressed once again, but is finally outside of the system's jurisdiction. No invaders will appear anymore, and if their Fate is high enough, even Miyako and Al Saiduq have been reborn as regular humans.
• The Needs of the Many: Miyako's modus operandi. She will sacrifice the few, in order to save the many. This ideology of hers is also what caused the party to oppose her plan of having them sacrifice themselves to save the world from the Void, including her having captured Al Saiduq, as he opposed her plan, too.
• No Sense of Personal Space: After having had the nightmare, Jungo and Ronaldo are overjoyed and get incredibly close to Airi when seeing her safe and sound. She responds by giving both of them a good punch.
• Not What It Looks Like
  • Wednesday begins with Miyako visiting the protagonist's room, supposedly to tell him about how the search for his friends is going. The conversation ends with her staring intently at the protagonist's face while up-close. Daichi and Io burst into the room. The protagonist can tell them the truth or confirm Io's fears that Miyako spent the night in his room.
  • One of Fumi's Fate events has her want to try some experiments on the protagonist, who can choose to let her take his clothes off. Fumi has no issue with this and sits on his lap, while struggling on how to open the jacket. Again, Daichi and Io are the ones to burst into the room and horribly misunderstand the situation.
• Order Versus Chaos: Order is presented by the Admins, their Swords and Canopus. Chaos is Al Saiduq and humanity.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Record Breaker has the "Lost Demon Rescue" Mission, a DLC available for free, as one. It was supposed to be a way to recruit demons without spending macca, but due to a series of factors, it's best regarded as a Free Battle on steroids.^note Due to being a DLC, not only is it repeatable, but it can also be accessed at anytime in the storyline. Enemy levels scale according to the Playable Character's, except the enemy selection is a bit more loose regarding which demons can participate, meaning that enemies that would only appear on days ahead of the present one may appear here. And due to that, their skills can be cracked much earlier than intended. Of course, the player have to survive the challenge as well, but, once again due to being a DLC, any progress that you have mid-battle (EXP, money, level-ups and cracked skills) will be kept in case of your team retreating. Ergo, a player unable to deal with the overpowered enemies can simply snipe a few manageable ones, flee, rinse and repeat until they're stronger enough to. And by the time it happens, your whole team will be way above the intended level range for the present Chapter! And to top it all off, the mission doesn't count as a Free Battle despise being structured very much like one, so any players avoiding Free Battles in favor of Lost Demon Rescue will also receive the Focused title after finishing this playthrough, worth two hundred points to spend on their New Game Plus unlockables, the third-highest amount of points awarded.
• Plot Armor: Unlike the Septentrione arc, none of your party members will run the risk of prematurely dying and will always see the arc through to the end. Justified! Since Miyako plans to use all twelve of the party to turn Al Saiduq into a proper Administrator, she needs them all to survive. Which explains why she keeps telling the party to desist in fighting demons or heading off into potentially dangerous locations.
• Putting the Band Back Together: The early parts of the game consists of finding the rest of your old party members, have them regain their memories and join in the fight against the Triangulum.
• Retcon: Regressing the world after defeating Polaris has resulted in a few of the occuring. Koharu's parents are alive, Daichi and the protagonist have been friends with Io for a long time and Makoto managed to avoid the accident that made her have to quit her swimming career. These changes show that things are better and that the current invasion is not brought upon by humanity growing stagnant, as the Septentrione's attack was.
• Running Gag: The protagonist can keep insisting that Miyako is just Yamato in drag.
• The Reveal
  • The nightmares that everyone, except the protagonist, keep having are thought to be a strange sense of premonition that they'll lose to Arcturus. Those are actually memories from the world's previous cycle. After defeating Polaris, the world was regressed and the Triangulum attacked. When it was Arcturus' turn, it managed to kill most of the party before it was defeated, but the world was too damaged and ravaged to continue on, so Al Saiduq regressed the world again to give them another chance.
  • The protagonist's lack of said nightmares and why he's never even shown in those is a mystery. He pulled a Heroic Sacrifice during the initial regression, saving Al Saiduq from being consumed by the Void. The protagonist didn't exist in that world, and his current existence is in jeopardy.
  • Miyako replacing Yamato as the head of JP's, with him apparently not even existing. Al Saiduq asked Yamato for help and sent him to the Akashic Records, so he could keep the protagonist's data safe and allow him to exist again for the next cycle. The universal program noticed that the role of 'Yamato Hotsuin' was not filled and hence created an alien replacement for him.
• Rule 63: The protagonist can ask Miyako if she's just Yamato in drag.
• Shout-Out: Daichi can be seen playing a game called Evil Beater on a device that looks like a 3DS. The logo on the device's screen looks very similar to Devil Survivor.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Should the party go through with Miyako's plan to sacrifice themselves to make Al Saiduq into a proper Administrator and keep the world from being consumed by the Void, it turns out to be a temporary solution, since Al Saiduq has to step down when the next Administrator's turn comes up. And said Administrator will simply have the Void consume the world, rendering everything moot.
• Superboss: The Ticos can only be challenged on a New Game Plus and must be unlocked with achievement points. They're far stronger than anything you'll find in the game, capping off at level 98 and calling in highly juiced-up mobs to their fight.
• Total Party Kill: Arcturus killed the majority of the party, with the only surviving members being Al Saiduq and Yamato, who was close to dying, but was saved by Al Saiduq's intervention.
• The Unfought: Canopus if the player chooses the Sacrificial ending.
• Virtual Sidekick: Tico, the face of the website Nicaea, is an AI that acts as an assistant to the user of the website - including the player characters. The users can pick Tico's gender, with the two versions having completely different personalities, and they offer tutorials for how to summon demons, inform you of who is going to die today and how, and can call you out on your more questionable decisions.
• What the Hell, Hero?
  • If the player starts this arc as a New Game Plus and chose to import a full deck of demons, the initial demons will be annoyed and complain about it. Dionysus will feel especially hurt.
    Dionysus: Aw... This really hurts. I mean, this cuts deep. *sigh* I suppose I'll just go then. I know when I'm not needed.
  • If the player agrees to follow the path to the Sacrificial ending, Yamato Hotsuin will chew the protagonist out for choosing this, before going through with it.
  • The protagonist can call Miyako out on killing Aramisaki in one blow. It's not at all explained why she did it, so it comes across as extra jerkish.
• Wistful Amnesia: In the Guardian ending, Daichi feels like he's missing something when he and Io are graduating, with the protagonist - who has become a human Administrator to the world - watching happily.
• Zerg Rush: There's a moment during midgame when the planetarium will keep spawning a stream of JP's members, until the player has managed to get their full party to escape.

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