Hey guys. Thought I'd drop in after a fairly long absence. Shin Megami Tensei IV has been eating my life as it is. That game is pretty good stuff. Though I get the feeling I have quite a ways yet to go still.
I made some progress in Digital Devil Saga 2. Namely I beat some of the optional bosses.
Vishnu was a tricky fight. It's a shame there isn't a skill like Pierce like there was in Nocturne which would let me get around the physical absorb affinity of both Vishnu and Shiva so Seraph was just for support for both fights. Shiva was more simple once you figure you he doesn't like buffs or debuffs too much and you need immunity to bind on everyone. It sure went faster than the Vishnu fight.
In order to fight both Shiva and Vishnu you need special items from rare enemies called Parvati and Narasimha. Narasimha was kind enough to give me to the item to fight Vishnu pretty early on while just exploring the Sun normally. Parvati wasn't quite the same. It took quite alot more effort to get what I needed for the Shiva battle and I gained alot of levels as a result. Everyone advanced quite in bit in the mantra grid as a result. Espesically with Cielo and Gale.
I've made some progress in other games in Tales of the Abyss but it hasn't been too much. I pretty much made it rich in the stalk market in Animal Crossing new leaf so I was able to max out my house without much issue. Villagers haven't been giving me too many project ideas though and since i got the gold watering can my play sessions have waned quite a bit.
So lately I've come pretty close to the end of Digital Devil Saga 2 but instead of just fighting the final boss, I decided to try beating all the extra bosses first except Satan (He's hard mode only and I decided to save hard mode for new game plus.) I beat Jack Frost who is actually an optional boss in this game whereas in the first game he was just a random enemy you fought in about halfway in or so. You can see how that fight went below
I did this fight the hard way; you're supposed to just use Ice Drain and hit him with fire attacks which makes things easier than how I did it. His most dangerous move is Breath. It gets especially nasty if it hits one person twice which it does sometimes and if you don't do something about the physical attacks that come after then the frozen person is pretty certain to die. You can see how that messes me up fairly early on in the video (Sorry Cielo!). His (apparent) lack of any sort of fire shield means you can just fire skills on him without much fear. Using Physical skills can be tricky since they consume HP which makes it a gamble to use them.
Not really the most graceful battle but I won. The Magatama item I got was the most powerful bullet in the game with a power of 200 and the Pass Ring lets the holder pass their turn without consuming half of a press turn. Basically the more icons you have the more you can do in a turn and you start with one per person in your party. Doing well in battle will make your actions consume just "half" of an icon and you can get up to double the amount of actions that you start with.
As far as my characters are concerned...
I'm having Seraph focus on on magic and vitality for the extra magic/physical defense since strength is as high as it'll go and I don't think I need to increase my agility any more. As for the mantra board...
I have the majority of the mantra mastered other than some mantra that costs a ton of money. There's a nice physical mantra I can get after I master Amatsukami though it's really pricey. After that I'm not really sure what to go for next. Maybe finish the Hama mantras but Seraph is set and doesn't need too much more.
Gale is doing pretty well especially since he obtained the passive Elec Resist skill. He's been one of my main party members in both this game and in the previous Digital Devil Saga game. His stats make him pretty versatile so he can use magic or physical attacks pretty well.
At the beginning of the final dungeon Gale gets Pyriphlegethon ; a powerful fire attack that hits all enemies. At the time I didn't have any passives that could boost the skills' power. So now I'm having Gale go down the fire skill path for those. The fire skills on that route will be alot less expensive to use than Pyriphlegethon too although not quite as powerful. After that I might get him some more debuffs since he doesn't quite have all the ones I'd like him to have.
Cielo has been pretty great. His weakness to ailments can be hindrance but sometimes it's a blessing that he doesn't have a elemental weakness. Luckily at the end of the ailment mantra line is Null Ailment which solves that problem and has the added bonus of making the enemy lose press turns (two since that's the penalty of using something the someone is immune to)
Since Cielo has Null Ailment I decide to finally get him the the penultimate mantra of the electric skill path. Other than that I should probably get him mind charge for extra damage and some almighty skills. Those kind of skills can't be resisted or blocked in most cases so it's pretty handy.
When you get Argilla in the Sun she'll be behind everyone as far as Mantra goes due to certain events in the story. But she's been catching up pretty well now.
Her skills are good. I dont really bother giving her physical attacks (although she isn't half bad at using them) She has Force Resist and Mind Charge and with her high magic she hits pretty hard. I guess I could get her other elements or more support skills.
You don't actually get Heat until the very last dungeon assuming that you choose the correct options throughout the story of both games. His mantra board is the same as Roland's. Unfortunately you can only have Heat or Roland; not both.
Like with Argilla, due to events in the story he's behind the other characters in Mantra so he has pretty weak skills. I don't think I'll be able to get him up to par in time for the last boss but maybe he will. I'm trying to get him alot of Mantra mastered for new game plus. Currently he's going for Physical attack skills
So what's next for me is beating Vishnu, Seth and Shiva then I'll take on the final boss. Vishnu has proven to be an interesting fight so far. I'll upload a video of that when I beat him.
I've gotten a couple of new games recently which are the 3DS version of Tales of the Abyss, Resident Evil Revelations (also 3DS version) and Xenosaga episode 1. Kind of a shame I can't capture 3DS footage but that stuff is expensive.
I guess I lied about what I said in the first blog post.
