Part 50: Intermission: New Game+
Alright, we're gonna load up this bad boy and see what New Game+ gives us. Not much, but most of it is special, that's for sure.
...Could always just skip through cutscenes by holding down
Except for this one tiny bit near the beginning. Our previously entered name is here by default, rather than being left blank. Hitonari's story is done and over though...
Daredevil extraordinaire Lance Murdock is on the job! Lance here is one of the names used in the screenshots in the US manual so it's arguably more canon as far we should care than Some Guy McHero Man.
yes its a simpsons reference
Lance is a bit of a naughty boy though, and he doesn't participate in Handshake Simulator 2009. Only one hand will be shook during the course of this run!
Lance is also a very, very lazy man. He just mashes the A button here and picks the top option for the Demonica Q&A.
He ends up getting the 2nd/3rd best Demonica (depending on how much Forma grind you want to deal with). This gives more varied but still semi-focussed growth rates than the Luck Demonica did:
St: 24%
Ma: 18%
Vi: 19%
Ag: 20%
Lu: 19%
Initial stats. I don't think I showed this for the Luck suit but it's not really a big deal.
Lance is also a bit of a Cheater since he stole and smuggled in all the endgame ludicrous gear. But it's still not enough!
Lance doesn't deal with Unknowns (outside of scripted sequences) though. The Slimes in the first fight are already fully analyzed.
Lance's big weakness: he forgot to steal Hitonari's maps. Gotta remap everything when that comes up again.
Compendium is also exactly as it was left, very ho hum here. Should've maxed Seraph's analyze to half that cost really. Ah well, he'll make do with these three Horsemen.
HP/Energy Drain, by the way, if it deals a killing blow does 100% of the current HP for sensible reasons. Can't drain what doesn't exist after all. This is the easier way to know weird values like Jack's 2016 (the alternative is to just datamine).
Even though having Irving DOES let you buy stuff from the store, gotta get this first. The material creation thing isn't available until now.
This means we can buy some special new accessories!
...Oh, I forgot one? That's unfortunate. Sorry God Ring, you're kinda shite anyway.
Solomon Ring is the best accessory. Reflect Fire, Ice, Wind, Elec, immue to Expel and Curse? Yes, yes please. Pair this with the Absolute Vest and the only things that can hurt the MC are Physical and Almighty attacks. Ideally, you'd use a Phys immune armor instead (Mem Aleph doesn't have a Gun skill after all!) but that doesn't exist unfortunately.
AC Horolite X x3, Vile Prehite x4 (Samael), Vile Bone x4 (Seth) and Clear Data required to unlock this beauty.
But the Solomon Ring isn't infallible. That's why the Gaia Ring exists. It's not AS good, but it reflects Phys and Gun. Why yes, I do want the MC to be a Doppelganger but even better. A very firm second place overall but better than the Solomon Ring in a few fights (coughgorecough).
AC Horolite X x3, Reaper Tablet x4 (Mot), Enigma Tusk x4 (Kangiten) and Clear Data for this one.
We'll unlock the God Ring later; it's not as good as either of these nor the Dragon/Supple Ring really.
New SubApps are available once we get to buy them as well. 7-Card Hand mostly fixes the SubApp system being inherently shit. It reduces you max capacity to 7 but changes the size of everything to 1. Everything. If it costs more than 1? Reduced to 1. If it costs 0? Increased to 1.
This is a special thing.
That's all I have to say about that.
No random encounters. Do I need to say anything else?
This is also a special thing, but a better special thing.
7-Card Hand in action. The increase of 0 to 1 is the worst thing about this for sure.
New MegaTen is a joke SubApp, really.
When you install it, it just picks one of four messages.
Three of them are generic errors. No, this isn't Atlus suddenly deciding to softlock you or whatever if you're emulating.
But it also semi-rarer does this. That's it. That's all this does.
And the Frost Icon turns your map cursor into a Jack Frost head half the time! It's a normal cursor occasionally but when the green 3 square radar is visible, it switches.
That's it for this intermission. Actual proper content coming up is in...
Well, technically we CAN do a thing in Antlia now. Saving that for when we can finish it though. That means the next thing we're going to see is in, uh... Grus. Good thing getting there now takes about 4 hours if you go slow!