Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2 Part #5

Part 5: Goddammit Daichi

Goddammit Daichi

[Music: In the Devastated Town]

I think we should make saving Daichi a priority right now. We already decided to skip the second event once before, and the third'll turn up again later anyway.

We'll find him real soon.

Yeah, probably so. Let's keep looking for him.

We need to find him before that monster does...

Well, not quite...

But it is still from Nicaea.

contracted demons as allies whenever they like, please be aware that demons you defeat that were summoned through other terminals will not automatically be contracted to you, as they were when you first started the app.

This app contains a few tutorial functions to help you along. Make the most of them!

This basically exists to explain why beating up things from now on won't add them to your party. We'll get something later on to alleviate that at least.

Now we can fight.

Fight? Oh, I see... You mean if we run into demons again, right?

Yeah... I can see your point...

So... the demons we beat in that battle...

They'll become our allies and fight alongside us? Do I have that right?

That's right.

Hmm... It hasn't really sunk in for me yet... But that sounds like the case.

But why...? Why are we getting these emails...? And who's sending them?

[Music: Silence]

[Music: Exploration]

Hey...! That voice!

It's Daichi!

Mmm-hmm! Let's go over there!

I was so scared... I thought I was dead for sure!

Stop running away.

Haha... Yeah. We didn't think you'd run this far.

Oh, yeah! Daichi, we have to get away from here, or something terrible will...

What, already...? Can't I rest a little? I'm really tired.

Wh... What's going on now!?

[Music: Silence]

Huh!? Something came out!

[Music: Countdown]

...! It's the monster that was in your death clip!

I am Bai Suzhen. Are you the one who broke my seal? I shall repay you... with death!

Waaaaaah! Someone! Someone help! It's a monster!

Dammit... The seal's already been broken!

You've got to help us! This monster's going to kill us!

What's a "demon tamer"?

Well, she can try but I have other plans for our little boss friend.

Hurry up and summon your demons. If you don't fight, you ARE going to die!

Get your phone out!

Huh...? Hibiki? Ohhhhh... The summoning app thing...!

Let's go!

[Music: Challenge to the Fate]

Unlike before, our goal is a lot more simple. We just can't let Daichi die while making sure we kill everything. I'm sure we can manage that easily enough.

Of course, you can't just cheese it and not use Daichi. That'd be kinda silly anyway, but it's just outright not allowed which helps.

If you'd like, I can explain the demon summoning application. Shall I do so?

Wh-What the...!? My cell phone... It's Tico!

It seems that Tico has appeared on Daichi's and Io's cell phones as well...

There's no need.

Well then, I hope you have a pleasant day.

We don't really need Tico to tutorialise at us, so we'll just skip that and cut straight to the fighting.

...After a bit of prep work first. The game's kind enough to give us some basic skills to start off with, enough for 1 per person in fact, so we should really use them. I'm giving Hibiki the Agi spell since it's the most useful for the one thing he will be doing.

We only have the one passive skill so far, and it's not really a good one but I'm giving it to Hibiki anyway. It could come in handy for avoiding an unnecessary casualty.

Daichi's the least magically inclined of our party (barely) so I'm giving him Dia so that his party has a way to heal. He probably won't need it, but it's a good precautionary measure and we do want to keep Daichi alive.

Lastly, Io gets Zio which should be very useful. Her and Daichi are going to actually fight things, and she's better at this than punching dudes (again, barely).

In retrospect, I probably should've switched Obariyon and Pixie around but they're fine as is. It just means Io's going to steamroll everything with a Lightning weakness and Hibiki can't heal.

Still, I'll field the party with their current setups in mind. Hibiki's taking point on account of having the most HP of the trio, Io's beelining for stuff with a Lightning weakness and Daichi's taking out whatever's left over.

Of course, we also have that strange lady helping us out. She's a fair bit ahead of the rest of our party so we don't want her stealing too many kills. She can easily do that with the ability to make sure her regular attacks hit without fail, and wipe out everything at once with Mazan too. Diarama's better healing than what Daichi has so she'll be focusing more on using that than anything else.

Naturally, Bai Suzhen is quite a bit above us too. We're meant to kill her with our helpful friend, but I have better plans in mind. Evil Wave is her Racial Skill so every Dragon race demon has it. This one in particular is really absurdly good, because it's passive and means she can attack us and we cannot counterattack. See, Evil Wave increases her attack range to 2 (but in return she cannot ever get Extra Turns).

We're going to want a Dragon of our as soon as possible for the obvious benefits this entails.

If we could use Ice spells with anything but Poltergeist that reflection could be a problem, but the Fire weakness plays in our favour. You can probably guess why that is already.

Bai Suzhen's a legendary Chinese white snake. May or may not normally be immortal depending on who you ask. Here she is neither of those things. Well, she is very white so there's that I guess.

That's enough prep work, I think. Let's survive!

Oh, hey guys! We need to keep one eye on where the demons are standing.

If one of us got surrounded by them, it'd be really bad!

Yeah, you're right. We just have to defeat the demons.

Right? So let's all gang up on one and kick its ass four ways to Sunday!

Well, the only way we could potentially get surrounded is if we did something silly like went charging right at the boss.

We're obviously not going to do that, so instead Daichi's going to pick a fight with a Pixie. At least we know he can probably manage that.

Well, okay, she has a Poltergeist buddy too. We want to kill him first though; if we just kill the Pixie, the entire unit is wiped out but we only get half the EXP and money that the Poltergeist would drop.

The nice thing about the Poltergeist is that it has absolutely no resistance to ice whatsoever, so our Bufu can take it out.

...And, of course, it would have been frozen had it not died. That is just my luck, that one.

Since Io and Pixie both have Zio, she can bumrush straight towards the demon on the far left.

Much like how Bufu and similar spells can inflict freeze, Zio and its relations can inflict shock. Functionally, the two are more or less identical which helps.

See, what makes those particular ailments so good is that not only do they make whatever is inflicted just skip their turn entirely...

But they also have a very high critical hit chance too. I want to say that it's guaranteed, but I'm sure someone has an anecdote about it dealing regular damage once at some point.

And, yeah, the Kabuso is weak to Lightning too. As witnessed above, it also got shocked in this skirmish... albeit during the extra turn phase which it did not get to do anyway.

Plus side is both Io and her Pixie friend leveled up. One of these is much more useful than the other, of course.

The woman has temporarily joined your party...

And for finishing up our current set of turns, we may as well have our new friend pretend to be doing the job she is meant to. She is not going to kill the Bai Suzhen, merely weaken her greatly.

Impudent humans! You're welcome to try!

[Music: Attack]

The "Tall Woman" further highlights just how far ahead of us she is by having an Auto Skill. We can't get any of these for quite a while, and Tailwind is one that I think's pretty good, especially this early. It is just a flat Agility boost (+5), but in this case that means it increases both hit rate and evasion.

Much like the woman herself, one of her Bilwis partners has the Snipe ability. As you can see, it didn't really deal much damage but that's the tradeoff; you will never miss, but at the same time you deal significantly less damage than you would otherwise.

We'll also take this opportunity to wipe out both Kobolds and cut off a bit of Bai Suzhen's HP thanks to Mazan. Zan is force elemental, the ma- prefix makes it multi-target and like ice/lightning it has a secondary effect.

Unlike those two, though, it isn't relevant for a long ass time.

And the other Bilwis is going to deal about the same amount of damage as it with a regular physical attack. But now comes the extra turns and here's where we really twist the knife.

See, this one in particular does not have Snipe. It has Snipe's bigger, meaner brother. Fatal Strike is a very situationally useful skill but this is a time when it comes in handy. See, it deals the same amount of damage as a regular attack, and it cannot miss... but with the caveat that it will not kill something most of the time. It will almost always leave them with 1 HP.

Being a physical skill, it costs HP to use and unlike spells it's not a set amount either. It's proportional and in this instance is 8% max HP (Snipe is 3%).

But it gets results, so I'm not one to complain. Besides, it's not like a Bilwis has the MP to do anything else anyway.

This also highlights the other reason we don't really want the Tall Woman to kill anything. The EXP is not given out at all; we still get money for her kills, but all that EXP is lost.

So, now we're on the defence. Remember how Bai Suzhen was meant to get the next turn?

Surprise, her turn has been delayed slightly now. This is partially another downside to Evil Wave (your next turn takes slightly longer to come up), but also because of the way this game handles combat. You get some delay for your next turn regardless of who initiated the combat. This is the one major problem this game has, and you can probably guess why already.

Oh, and the Pixie in that Kobold's party used its Racial Skill. Faeries get Glamour which is a skill that has to be manually used, so it costs MP and is a very minor heal to one entire team as well a random effect. In this case it might as well have done nothing though.

Not being one to be shown up, the Kobold decides to use its Racial Skill too. Aggravate costs HP instead of MP, but that 100% critical hit is deceptively evil. It doesn't sound that bad, but critical hits give extra turns, cause whoever gets hit by one to lose theirs and, of course, deals extra damage too. It's pretty good for these early stages, but it's not really something I use that often.

And in this particular case, it just made it irrelevant. They decided to attack the Tall Woman who I just had wipe them out before they even got a turn. It wasn't really worth the hassle of letting them live.

Bai Suzhen finally gets her own turn, which she uses to plink at our overpowered allies with her enhanced range. Nothing particularly noteworthy comes out of it, though.

Meanwhile, that Kobold decided to try the same thing its buddy did before. It ended the exact same way, and now the Tall woman will not fight anything else.

Just as well, because now Io's on the receiving end of an attack.

That Kabuso wanted to die so badly, it got its wish. It also got shocked again, because of course it did.

The Pixie on the other end of the area decided to try something radical. It opted to heal itself before picking a fight with Daichi.

It didn't help, but at least it tried.

Much more important is that Daichi gained a level out of this now too, as did his Poltergeist.

The other stuff is too far away to do anything but try and converge in the centre of the arena, so we'll swing over to Hibiki who's been moving up to Bai Suzhen this entire time.

She was kind enough to corner herself, so now he finally gets to do something too. It's the only thing he'll be doing if it goes well, so lets hope this works.

You might think from this that I'd underestimated Bai Suzhen's capabilities, but not really. If Hibiki couldn't have tanked that hit, he wouldn't have tried anyway and then all that would've happened is something kinda crap would've died.

Instead, we got to see what Leader Soul does and why it's not really that great. Instead of losing a weak demon, Hibiki almost got wrecked.

What goes around comes around, though. The fact that Hibiki survived (albeit only just) means he can put that Agi to good use. Thanks to that Pixie messing with my plans, she only just had enough HP to die in one hit. It wasn't a real issue because the next hit would've done the job either way, but that's not quite as cool.

And this is why I didn't want our helpful guest killing Bai Suzhen. On her own, she gave a lot more EXP than any other given team we could fight.

So much so, that Hibiki gained 2 levels out of it again. This doesn't really make that big of a difference in the long-term, but it helps give us a bit of a boost to the stats that really matter.

Now with that done, we just have some clean up to deal with and I'm gonna leave that to Io and Daichi.

While waiting for those two to catch up, I'm gonna put the Tall Woman's Diarama to spell to good use. Might as well make sure that Hibiki doesn't get punked by that Obariyon that's really close.

It didn't exactly decide to not do anything, though, so rather than do something silly Hibiki's just gonna Guard this entire fight.

Guarding massively reduces damage received, but it's not really something I use that often. I like maximising the numbers I make pop out of things more; if they get big enough, then guarding is a non-issue because things will die before they can do anything.

At least that's the theory. Whether or not it works out like that is... debatable.

Just afterwards, Io catches up to the Pixie she's going to deal with. She isn't quite able to finish it off on her turn...

But since this very same Pixie gets the next turn that matters, it decides to just try and fight back immediately. It doesn't really work how it would've liked. It didn't even try and heal first or anything.

Daichi is next, of course, and this is much the same scenario.

Poltergeist can capitalise on Obariyon's ice weakness... but it's too little, too late since of course it freezes it.

During the Extra Turn phase.

But, again, it's the next thing to get turns that count. It decides to use this to try and attack Daichi. It couldn't really do anything else, though.

And with that, we are done. The bonus EXP is enough to give everyone that matters another level for good measure.

[Music: Exploration]

Ouch... I twisted my ankle.

I'm relieved, though... I don't know how we did it, but we're all alive, right?

...Now, you said you twisted your ankle? Let's see it.

Oh... Thank you...

...Don't worry about it. Tell me, why are you here?

[Music: Connected Hearts]

She also mentioned escaping from Dubhe and seeing Daichi's death clip...

A demon-summoning app... I see.

Yikes...! What's with that!?

Daichi goes pale...

...It would be best if you didn't move around much for the time being.

You said you were headed to Shiba Park, yes? Unfortunately, it's been locked down already.

Wha--!?

Why?

U-Um, what exactly is that thing? It attacked us out of nowhere...

Information on Dubhe, hmm...? There's nothing I can tell you as of now.

Haha... Ha... Don't be an idiot! This isn't some monster movie!

We gotta contact the police and stuff! Sic the SDF on that thing's ass!

Wha...!?

Guns have no effect. Neither do bombs, or any other conventional weaponry.

What!? What're you saying!? Are you out of your mind!?

Did you try them?

...Yes, yes we did. You're pretty sharp.

There's more as well. You must have wondered for yourselves why the sky is silent...

There's nothing we can do while we're crawling on the ground like insects.

...Unfortunately, it doesn't look like that situation will improve any time soon.

Ah...

......

Daichi and Io are in a state of shock at hearing the woman's information...

Is Dubhe a demon?

...Your ankle doesn't look seriously hurt, but you've twisted it a little.

Oh good, we finally have a name for Makoto. Now we can stop with the silly descriptors.

The woman who introduced herself as Makoto lends Io a shoulder and begins walking...

Uh... Hey, wait a sec! What should we do, Hibiki?

Be prepared to run.

Oh, uh... G-Gotcha! Just give me the signal whenever!

You leave Sensouji, following Makoto on her way...

[Music: Exploration]

Now that we've gotten one ~~text~~ email from Nicaea, we'll start receiving some more. Maybe even some from actual people we know, as well. Probably not right now, though, since we still don't have a signal.

- The team that initiates a skirmish will get Extra Turns more easily

Attacking an enemy's weak point or landing a critical hit may award an Extra Turn. However, if the enemy does these things to you, it may result in an Extra Turn being taken away. Likewise, attempting to make attacks which the enemy Nulls, Drains, or Repels will result in the loss of Extra Turns.

In addition, there are some skills that remove the enemy's Extra Turns. Always be aware of the enemy's strength's and weaknesses listed on the top screen.

Most of these early ones are just tutorial stuff, but at least it explains things pretty clearly. Better than I probably could at least.

We've been here for a while already, but I'm sure we have time for one more event.

...This is it. We're here.

What...!? This...?

The Diet Building, eh?

...Yeah. That means Makoto is, well...

Not much further to go. Let's move a little faster.

[Music: Silence]

[Music: JPs -Geomagnetism Research Department-]

Daichi is looking wildly around...

I pronounce it, uh, like the letters because the "real" pronunciation sounds kinda dumb when spoken out loud. Or in my head or in any other possible way. Sadly, that is not an option.

I have no idea.

...It's "Jips." Now be quiet. I'd like to avoid any trouble.

Before Makoto finishes speaking, a man appears up ahead...

Guy looks like he never sleeps, jeez.

Chief. These young men have signed up for THAT site...

You detect a slight tension in Makoto's voice...

...I see. Why are they here?

...I had them come along since I thought we could get intel on the summoning app from them.

They have firsthand combat experience, so depending on the situation...

The "Chief" holds out a hand, stopping Makoto...

...Understood, Sir. My apologies.

The "Chief" looks at you coldly...

I must insist that you leave as soon as possible. Well, then...

The "Chief" nods to you and leaves...

[Music: Exploration]

...What was that about? What a dick.

Chief... So he's your superior, Makoto?

That's right...

H-Him... Chief...!? But he had to be younger than us... right? He's that high up?

It seems Daichi has recalled something...

M-Makoto, did you say you were going to get intel from us!? Are we gonna be interrogated!?

Makoto gives a slight smile and turns towards Daichi...

I don't think I could get away with bringing a civilian just to treat a sprain...

Oh... Hahaha... Good one... Whew, you had me going there.

Daichi seems relieved...

That should do it. It'll hurt for a while, but you should be able to walk.

Io moves her bandaged foot to test it out...

Oh... It actually doesn't hurt at all. Thank you very much.

...In return, I'd like you to help us out a little too.

Tell me what you know about your summoning app.

Oh... Of course.

I see... SO you don't know much about it either.

I'm sorry... And after you went out of your way to treat me...

No... It's all right. I'm just as much to blame. It's just that we're low on information...

I hope so... We're very sorry.

I'll walk you back to the facility entrance. Just let me return this medkit first.

Makoto leaves, medkit in hand...

Mmm-hmm... I'm glad she wasn't as bad as she seemed.

Hm... Hm? Wait...!

Daichi is making strange faces...

[Music: A Moment of Rest]

Oh for heaven's sake...

C'mon, don't be like that! I haven't seen one this entire time! Please...?

Let's go look for one.

Yesss! Thank you! A friend in need is a friend indeed. Now let's get out of here...

Urhg... Hurry, Hibiki... Can't hold it...

Just go here.

Man... I want to, but it just doesn't seem right...

You hear people talking further down the hallway...

[Music: Dark Clouds]

Then how can you be positive they won't abuse the summoning app?

They cooperated with me and helped reseal Coordinate K... I don't think they'd abuse it.

......

This conversation is over. Move them to a cell.

They seem to be talking about you...

[Music: Countdown]

Imprisonment...

So I heard right...!? This is so bad! They're gonna catch us and throw us in jail!

This isn't funny... Hey, let's get outta here! We gotta hurry and catch up to Io!

Huh...? Whoa, wait a second. What happened?

Io doesn't seem to understand what you're talking about...

We're invited to a cell.

It's not an invitation! These guys are going to haul us in and throw us in prison!

What...? I-I don't get it. What's going on here?

Look, we need to run! Let's hurry and get out of here!

You leave the area with Daichi and Io...

[Music: Connected Hearts]

Whew... Much better! Oh, right, we should get far away from here!

Oh...! Hibiki, it's another email...

Let's see!

Y-Yeah...

with a simple auction.

You can bid for the right to a demon's services. They will then become useful allies! Use your demon partners to your advantage!

We'll look at the Auction itself later, but this is how we're going to get our new demons fairly often. It's efficient enough to say the least.