Part 50: Delta Attack!
Delta Attack![Music: The Operation Starts]
Unsurprisingly, this was very, very close between all 3 possible teams but in the end Osaka barely edged out the other two.
The members assigned to Osaka are secretly happy...
Oh right, and everyone in the chosen team gains 2 Fate points. Not much, but it's something I guess.
Is that so...? Then I leave command of Osaka to you.
There will be no second chance. Stay in constant communication and concentrate on defeating them all at once.
Now that's what I'm talking about, Hibiki! You know how great Osaka is!
Together again, it seems... I look forward to it.
What, you're hangin' with us in Osaka? Heh... Well, it's your call. May luck be with you all. Let the operation begin!
Hmph. Looks like it ain't here yet. Is this really the place? JP's doesn't always know--
Hey...! Over there![Music: Silence]
[Music: Countdown]
Let's go. If we can defeat that thing, our mission is complete! We can do this!
Oh if only it was that easy.
Not only does Megrez do the usual trick of summoning a bunch of demons, he conjures up some miasmas too. One of which is inaccessible without (Winged) Flight.
Also despite only summoning Hamsas and Powers these things are somewhat tougher than they seem.
Tch... Demons, at a time like this. It'll get bad if more demons show up. Let's get them before things get even worse![Music: Septentrion]
Mostly self-explanatory, but I have no idea what triggers that "take too many turns" defeat condition. I've never seen it happen so it's at the very least super generous.
These are our cracks for this fight. Yep. Mighty Hit and Phys Boost are the only skills we can get, and they're both only on Megrez. Keita and Otome don't have Fate 2 but it doesn't even matter.
Mighty Hit is like Anger Hit if Anger Hit didn't suck. It's a guaranteed critical but it doesn't miss constantly. Similarly, Phys Boost is Phys Up but better; it's a 20% boost instead of 10%.
Megrez itself is... actually kind of a threat. Making the last fight of Wednesday the first one that's a little challenging. Ruinous Wind is a free action thats basically Mazan-but-better.
Regenerate might as well be a passive since he only uses it to restore his HP on his turns (but never in battle), and Megrez Proof lets him plink at us from 6 spaces away. That 20 Vitality makes it even more of a pain. Regenerate combined with actual defence means it's going to take quite a while to remove all of its HP.
I dunno the actual value of his HP but there's a reason for that. It's tied into his gimmick. You'll see.
Anyway, let's do this thing. Getting the hard miasma out of the way first. You need a minimum move of 5 to even make it to/off of this platform; 6 lets you reach the miasma instantly.
Baphomet's currently sitting in the stock which is why Hibiki can remove it immediately.
That lets Keita be the first to actually fight something. Note that the Hamsas here all have Winged Flight, which will never happen for any you use.
Don't you love it when the game has to resort to blatant cheating to try and keep up?
Anyway, Keita's running Jungo's usual moveset right now. His Power Hits aren't quite as impressive, but Keita's only got 21 Strength to Jungo's 27. Still more than enough to take out most anything here though.
MP Up is basically the same as HP Up but for MP.
I don't really use either, since the boosts they give aren't that great.
Anyway, I'm doing something weird up here. Rather than have Otome take out the Power, I'm switching with Hinako instead.
In retrospect I probably should've done this AFTER taking out the Power but oh well.
Either way, the plan's simple enough. Take out the Power, then the miasma in one fell swoop.
kungfudancingmedusa.gif right here.
Shame that it somehow cost Hinako her extra turn despite the Hamsa not resisting physicals at all and being weak to Curse. Weird.
Irritatingly, were it not for the Power being savvy enough to use Extra Cancel on Pendragon immediately afterwards we still would've taken it out.
Seriously look at that. 9 HP left, and we can't finish it off just yet.
At least it didn't bother even trying to heal and instead immediately picked a new fight with Hinako. A regular ol' lovetap turned it to stone and murderised it all at once.
Megrez's increased attack range is pretty annoying and extends a little further than you might expect it to. It's 6 spaces away from both of those possible attack points.
From where Hibiki is now, he can get to just outside that range, but that would aggro the Power and/or Hamsa stood right there. Not really worth the hassle yet.
So, he just waits on his little platform and lets the Power and Hamsa head down to where everyone else is congregating.
Which, uh, wasn't necessarily a great idea. The Suparnas have Mazans that aren't completely worthless. Well, when it comes to something like Lailah they can get a bit of a hit in at least.
Man, that was a close one. Good thing Keita can deal decent punchy damage, Neko Shogun has Mazio and Lailah's spells are pretty alright.
More importantly, Otome has Diarama for emergencies like this. I'd rather not lose anything this early on.
But in getting to heal Keita, she has to stand just at the edge of the last Hamsa's attack range.
Which doesn't really matter. Wendigo's pretty good at hitting dudes really hard and Otome has a good magic stat.
...Of course, Keita was one space away from the miasma when it spat out a new demon. It's a minor inconvenience, but still.
Okay, bugger it. We're at Megrez now; Suparna's not gonna help that much now. His Multi-Hit crits pretty often buuuuut Megrez resists physicals AND has Retaliate. It's high-risk-low-reward to try it.
So instead, let's pull out a Tlaloc that I picked up solely for this fight. I made one ages ago, so I might as well use it right?
[Music: Break Out]
It's not that great, but its Ice Dance is sufficient for now. That's just two hits but that's still more damage than Multi-Hit could deal.
Unfortunately, Megrez is kind of a jerk who likes to run around. A lot.
You cannot kill him in the first skirmish even if you do deplete all of his HP (well, almost; he stops at 1 of course). He has to run around the map a bunch before you're allowed to win. It's kind of a stupid gimmick.
And it's supposed to happen at set HP amounts too. If he drops below that amount, he restores himself all the way up to where he's "meant" to be.
Ordinarily, this'd be no big deal but the game doesn't tell you how much it restores when it does that. You just have to guess. Bleh.
Hey... It's running away! Get back here, you bastard!Your phone rings...
But, of course, that's only part of the gimmick. There's something else we know it can do but it hasn't yet...
Ah, that's more like it. Every time it runs to a new part of the harbor, it spits out one of the buds from before.
It only does one at a time, but they can add up pretty quick if you never bother to take them out.
[Music: Septentrion]
But we'll deal with that when we can. For now, we'll do something weird and have Otome switch with Keita when stood right next to him.
I'm using Switch in weird ways here just to try and find some form of non-escorty niche use for it. It seems to be working pretty okay at that I guess.
Anyway, this lets her wreck the Hamsa on the miasma. The Shiisaa narrowly survives, but it doesn't matter really.
Wendigo still gets to upgrade Bind to Evil Bind.
On top of reducing the target teams movement to 1, if it works it makes them skip their entire next turn too. Oh yeah, "if." It can fail, and it probably will against everything you want to use it on. It sounds pretty alright otherwise, but... I've never used it and had it actually work.
The reasoning for my insanely circuitous Switch antics has been revealed once again. I had Keita move here and then immediately end his turn. Admittedly, that was by accident, but it's functionally better that I did that. It lets him break this phone...
Then switch out Neko Shogun for Suparna. Flight or Phantasm is needed to access the boat, but just for the obstacle ignoring factor this time. Range isn't a problem here.
With Suparna added, he can waltz onto this boat and pick a fight with the Power that spawned here.
Look at this critical Power Hit. It... it's beautiful.
Since this Bud is the only thing around right now that could be a nuisance let's get rid of it. Rather not have to deal with Diastrophisms.
The Megrez buds are completely unchanged from the first time we fought one. Even though they're immune to Curse it doesn't stop Hinako's fists from flying. It just stops the buds from being Petrified by them.
They still drop in a single skirmish so it doesn't matter all that much in practice.
Megrez continues to be an irritating jerkface. He'll just sit here and Regenerate until something wanders within attack range. It doesn't restore MUCH HP (a little under 90), but its the principle of the thing.
And a new demon spawns right in front of Keita just before he can get rid of the miasma. The miasmas here run on a maximum spite principle, I swear.
Oh well, Otome gets to switch there and take it out instead.
This helps, especially since Kamapua'a's functionally out of MP at this point.
He can punch pretty okay at least and the shock means the Power drops in one hit.
Which lets Otome get rid of the last miasma. Now we just have Megrez and the occasional Bud to take out.
To avoid uncounterable attacks, I had to slip Suparna back into Hibike's party at this point. Now we can see why Multi-Hits aren't all that great here.
Like 3 of 4 were crits, and 2 of them were still sub-30. Its high Vitality combined with Phys resistance means Megrez does not get punched very hard, especially by something like Suparna who relies on its insane crit rate to keep up.
Also there's this. Which happens pretty much every time you try to use physicals.
And it hurts quite a bit! Megrez is not a total pushover.
Still, since it's going to run anyway might as well take the opportunity to regain some MP. Depleting Megrez's doesn't matter since Ruinous Wind costs nothing and Mighty Hit is a physical skill.
Surprising no one, Megrez runs away and puts its HP where it "should" be. Again.
Out of all the Septentrion gimmicks so far, Megrez's is my least favourite because it's just so tedious.
Since we took out the other bud already, the new one drops right in front of Hinako.
This ends up being a monumentally bad idea. She took out the last one in a single skirmish. The same thing happens this time.
Thanks to Megrez's new location, Hibiki can't get close enough to hit it even with the improved range from Winged Flight. Fortunately, we have someone sitting in the stock who can help us out with this one.
Hey Baphomet. I wasn't gonna let you sit out the entire time; I didn't make it explicitly for this fight but it helps so why not use it.
Oh, right. I made a different, non-awful Baphomet between updates by using Nalagiri (and a Pyro Jack) since I totally forgot I had that and it learned Anti-Phys.
[Music: Break Out]
And because this Baphomet has nearly 30 magic, its Ice Dances are really, really good. It's the small things, but it speeds this up so, so much.
Ruinous Wind is kinda damaging I guess. Would be a problem if I had Force weaknesses but eh. As is, its regular attacks are more of a threat and the only thing that warrants legitimate worrying is Mighty Hit anyway.
...And Megrez runs away. Again. Of course it does.
Thankfully, this is the last time this happens so now we can go and finally murder this thing.
Last bud plops down between everyone else who was totally not waiting for this to happen, honest.
In a change of pace, Hinako isn't taking this one out. Rather, I'm leaving it to Keita to finish off.
It doesn't really make a difference, but he hasn't had much to do beyond tank a bunch of hits and get screwed by bad timing. Might as well let him step up and finish off something important for once.
Also, Megrez is a dick and can barely hit Hibiki from his new location. Thanks, buddy.
Most importantly, it uses that range to throw a Mighty Hit on Pyro Jack taking it out.
Oh no, whatever will I do now?
I guess I'll just use Hinako's instead. It's a higher level, has the same skillset and she doesn't need it any more.
This fight is significantly harder than everything else that's happened on Wednesday. I can see it giving someone serious trouble if they don't fully know what to expect.
Problem is, looking at it again, it doesn't really rely on being actually difficult to give you a challenge. It buffs a bunch of chaff demons to distract you and has miasmas that you might not even be able to reach without the "right" demon. It's sort of unfair like that; you might think you know what to expect from the Bud before and then Megrez itself is completely different.
Even if you do know what to expect, and prepare accordingly, it takes ages anyway. It's more of a long, tedious slog. Megrez's gimmick does not help in any way.
It's definitely my least favourite Septentrion fight so far. And I am glad this is over.
The bonus EXP gives Kamapua'a Diarahan and I am fusing that onto so many things. Hibiki hit level 33 from the post-battle bonus too and lets me fuse like 5 new things. Level 33 is great for new demons.
[Music: Silence]
[Music: The Operation Starts]
Heeeey, Hibiki! We're ready in Tokyo! Hurry, deal the final blow!
We're ready in Nagoya, too! Defeat it, now!
The preparations are complete. Good work, all of you. Now... Go! Destroy it once and for all!
[Music: Silence]
[Music: Over the Brink of Death]
Waaaah! Wait... Did we do it!?
Hibiki, what happened in the other cities? How is the mission?Your phone rings...
Mission update? Heh... I was the general of this operation, and I had all the pawns I needed. There was no reason to doubt the success of this mission.
[Music: Exploration]
Man, just when you think its time to wind down and relax after a long fight like that something else intervenes.
Oh, it's Clicky. That's alright then.
His voice is hard to hear over the static...
I'm... so...y ...Hack...ng JP's... broadcasting... I'll... kee... simple... Have... new... in...mation... Can we... eet? Where? I'm... Nagoya... If you don... mind... come see m...
See you...The call ends...
Alright, so we have a LOT of time to kill before the day ends. Naturally, we're gonna go see what Ronaldo wants here and then check out an event in Tokyo. We have to do it eventually so we'll get it out of the way as soon as we can.
That then gives us enough free time for 6 more events before we can even think about ending the day.
Who do we spend all that time with?
