Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei: Sequence Breaking... Kinda
Last time, Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow killed Medusa , saving the Floating City of Bien from her evil curse and made mad bank playing casino games. Today they're... not gonna make a lot of progress. First stop: The Captain's room in the center of Bien's 2F:
"I'm the Captain of the Floating City of Bien. Mr. Cooper, I want to extend my sincerest gratitude for saving us and our fair city. Would you like me to move the city?"
He presents Anderson with three options:
- Mazurka Corridor
- Palatium Infini
- Stay here
Mazurka Corridor is the fourth dungeon,
Palatium Infini is the last. Bien is basically our airship, and yes, there is literally nothing stopping Anderson from flying it over to the final dungeon, fighting his way to the end and challenging Lucifer.
...he would die horribly, for several reasons, but, you know. Right now, he elects to go to Mazurka Corridor.
Wheeee.
Cool thing about the Captain's room: It's right by the elevator, and the eastern exit of Bien is located right in front of the elevator on the 1F. The Gatekeeper here says: "Goodness me, are you folks leaving? Please be careful out there!"
Anderson and Rachel steel themselves for whatever awaits them as they step through the gate and...
Well this is generic.
In the next room they're greeted by writing on the wall: "
Mazurka Corridor." You can see from the map that they've skipped quite a bit of ground. Bien is no longer visible on the map, nor is Valhalla.
I do not much care for the aesthetics of this dungeon!
Andy and Rach wander around for a while until...
A battle!
Femme Naias, level 34. Casts
Marin Karin. Has
Poison Bite and
Petrification. Not very scary, but given that she's nearly ten levels stronger than Andy and Rach, she's worth a ton of experience. They can appear in groups of 3-7.
Enough for level ups, even. That's pretty much what we're doing here. Getting some experience so we can get new allies. It's a good place to level up because the relative safety of Bien is nearby, and if things
do get inky Rachel can Trastart the party back Bien's Elder.
Foul A Bao A Qu. They travel in larger groups (5-8), are comparatively fast, but are weak to fire. So... they don't last long. You know. Because Rachel can burn things with her mind.
Wilder Manticores take a bit more to dispatch because they drain Fire, so Rachel can't just burn them to crispy bits like she's been doing with everything else. They can hit pretty hard and use
Burninate and
Roar, plus they travel in larger packs (5-8), so a party without a lot of Mediama casters might be in trouble.
They gave enough experience for Andy and Rachel to level up (again), and Rachel learns
Marin Karin. Yeah, because I'm definitely gonna spend her MP casting that instead of Agirama/Mediama.
Finally, a neutral encounter!
Beast Basilisk (Level 30) has the
Petrify extra ability (natch), but that's all. Killing it gave Anderson and Rachel another level up. Whee.
Then there's this guy:
Night Loa. Loa has the potential to be one of the most annoying enemies in this section, especially given Anderson and Rachel's current mission. Loas cast
Zio and
Makaranda (2 MP, drains MP from one enemy, naturally this is a spell that only Evil-aligned demons have access to), and if that wasn't annoying enough, they have
Energy Drain. Energy Drain, which only affects Anderson and Rachel, will
knock them down one level and decrease their Constitution by 1 point. This is, like, super annoying, because the only protection from it is casting
Tetraja, but it's so rare that you don't really want to keep a Tetraja casting demon around in the active party all the time, but then it hits and you're like "Danggit" and you reset because you're a sperg and can't stand when Anderson and Rachel level up at different rates.
...not that it happened to me, or anything.
Anyway. Loas only show up in groups of up to three, they drain lightning magic and are weak to Expel. They're pretty beefy compared to other enemies in the area, so it can take a little bit of work to take them down.
Still, at this point, most of their demons were tapped out of MP, so Anderson and Rachel decided to go back to Bien to heal and save.
Then in the room that leads back to Bien, this happened.
Night Succubus are technically at a lower level than Anderson and Rachel, but there's a lot of them and our party is already feeling pretty haggard. Rachel could have burned the rest of her MP casting Agriama, but then the party would have to take a chance against their
Ziolaon (9 MP, the strongest lightning spell, can hit up to three times) spells, and that's not something they're prepared to do. Succubi can also cast
Marin Karin and have the
Paralysis extra, both of which are normally no big deal, but being able to incapacitate multiple members of the team and spam Ziolaon? Things could go bad, quick.
So they run. They run so far away.
...it takes three attempts to get away. Like in these old SMT games, when you run away from a battle, your party literally moves back a space on the map.
...this is how the party came out of the skirmish. I think Rachel cast Trastart to get back to the Bien Midway instead of walking back?
At the Cathedral of Shadows:
Jirae Dwarf and
Fairy Troll are fused together to create
Elemental Pazuzu. I don't know why Pazuzu is classified as an Elemental, ok, but he is. He can cast
Zanma,
Dorminar, and
Tetraja. He's a pretty reliable ally. Not great, but he's got decent stats and plenty of HP and MP.
On the way back to Bien's elevator, Anderson and Rachel level up again.
Back in the salt mines, they bump into level 32
Jirae Lakhe. They appear in groups of up to four, have no abilities, and reflect curses. Their stats are mediocre and they're generally nothing more than a speed bump for our team, plus all the levels that Anderson and Rachel have been gaining have seriously dropped the amount of experience enemies give here.
And another neutral encounter:
Yoma Girtablilu (level 33). Girtabilu can cast
Penpatra (4 MP, heals Sleep, Bind, Panic, Close and Happy status for the whole party), but that's about it. They have fewer HP than Lagoon despite the level difference, and have parties of up to four.
Just for kicks, I tried out Pazuzu's Dorminar spell. It put four of these five Naiases to sleep (as indicated by the facedown demon icons at the top of the screen), which is a pretty good deal. I mean, it's not like I'm gonna waste all his MP trying to put enemies to sleep, but that was neat.
They were also sweet enough to leave behind enough experience for Anderson and Rachel to hit level 30.
Wilder Fenrir. Despite their higher level, they aren't any more dangerous than Manticores (I'd even say they're significantly less threatening because they aren't immune to fire). They kind of look doofy and can travel in packs of five.
I think Anderson and Rachel were on their way back to Bien to make some new allies at this point, because my next screenshots have them deleting Werecat from the iPhone to make room for fusion fodder.
Ingredient 1:
Beast Nekomata. She was polite enough to spawn immediately outside of the Bien Midway so they did not have to walk back to the 2F of Daedalus.
The second ingredient took a long time to get ahold of. Lots of wandering around the 2F trying to locate it. On the upside, Rachel leveled up and learned
Hanmahan, her second and final offensive spell. Hanmahan is a powerful Expel-based spell that cost 9 MP to cast. It hits twice but does massive damage. Like, the damage modifier is higher than all of the Agi-line and Zio-line spells. It's powerful. The downside is that 9 MP is a lot, so she can't cast it with the same freedom that she can with Agirama.
Nearly two full levels since they set out looking for one, Andy and Rach finally find a
Fairy Elf to recruit. We've long since blown past her being a useful addition to the party, so we're gonna immediately trade her in for a more powerful palette swap:
Beast Nekomata x Fairy Elf =
Genma Alraune. Alraune is the lowest-level Genma in the game. Look at that intelligence stat! It mostly goes toward healing, because she's got nothing going for her offensively.
Marin Karin and 8 Strength points. Pfft.
Mediama is always welcome, and...
Paraladi is always meh.
We've got one more ally to fuse before we move on. Back to the
Daedalus! Well, I guess "Fly back to Valhalla, then back to the Daedalus" is more appropriate.
Doru will let us through no problem. He says the same thing as the other Gate Keeper.
Anderson and Rachel level up again, which is perfect. They also delete
Tapir. Sorry dude, you were really useful once upon a time, but you just aren't third dungeon material!
Here's what we need:
Beast Cancer and
Beast Nekomata.
Together, they become
Holy Bastet, who is, by far, the best ally we've seen: A huge HP pool, great stats all around, and some mighty powerful magic.
Agilaon: 6 MP, fire damage, hits two to three times. It's the most powerful fire spell in the game (which, remember, still makes it weaker than Rachel's Hanmahan spell). She also has
Mediama and
Marin Karin, and, as always, Mediama = Yes, Marin Karin = No.
Bastet reflects Killing Curses, but I'm not entirely sure how useful that is.
While they're at the Midway, Anderson plays some
Big & Small to earn a few extra DBucks so he can do a little shopping.
...a little shopping in the final dungeon.
Look at that sweet Mode 7 action.
"ingressi estis palatium infini"
From the eastern gate of Bien, Anderson and Rachel enter the final dungeon and are immediately confronted with this inscribed on the wall. It's very... blue. It's not quite as striking as Daedalus was, to me at least, but at least it looks more interesting than the last three dungeons.
Our goal: Travel south through the door, then immediately west down the hall to a small, one tile room (where the pink tile is in the picture). There's a warp inside that will teleport the party to the north part of the floor. You can walk up there by going north from the entrance, but that takes more steps, and the less time we spend here, the better.
Immediately outside the room Anderson is teleported to is a
spinner. I don't really understand the point of spinners. You more than likely have Mapper active, the full automap is only a button press away, and you have a compass in the top left of the screen anyway. It's less an obstacle and more an minor annoyance because you have to wait for the spinning animation to finish.
There are three doors to the south as you travel west from the spinner room. The first leads to a
Junk Shop, the second leads to the
Armor Shop, and the third to the
Weapon Shop. These are the last shops in the game.
Armor shop:
- Orichalcum Mail (18,000 DBucks, Male only, 12 Def)
- Aura Armor (37,000 DBucks, Unisex, 14 Def)
- Aura Shield (25,000 DBucks, Male only, 7 Def)
- Aura Helm (25,000 DBucks, Unisex, 10 Def)
Weapon shop:
- Vermillion Blade (12,000 DBucks, Female only, 38 attack, hits 2-4 times)
- Reaper's Scythe (20,000 DBucks, Male only, 45 attack, hits 1-3 times)
- Sword of Perseus (30,000 DBucks, Male only, 48 attack, hits 2-4 times)
- Aura Blade (50,000 DBucks, Unisex, 74 Attack, hits 1-2 times)
So. This is it. The very finest things that money can buy. It's expensive, and if we really, really, really wanted to, we could go grind up more cash from Big & Small and get everything we wanted. But that would be overkill. Instead, Anderson just picks up an
Aura Shield and
Aura Armor from the armor shop and the
Sword of Perseus from the weapon shop. The Aura Helm probably would have been a better investment than the Aura Shield to be honest, but whatever.
Rachel doesn't get anything, although if you have the cash an Aura Blade would be worth picking up. I gave Anderson the Sword of Perseus because y'all know me, I love multiple hits.
Rachel trastarts the party back to the safety of Bien so they can heal and save.
Ok. We got endgame equipment and tons of levels. Let's blow through the
Halls of Valhalla.
...
First thing's first: Head down to Bien's Southeastern Gate to talk to
Garu. (Ok, actually, the first thing is flying Bien back to Valhalla, but whatever)
Garu: "Not only did you get my shield back, but you saved the town too! ... I want you to take this. It's an Amulet my friend Lor entrusted to me with his dying breath. It's supposed to have some sort of power."
Anderson receives
Lor's Amulet. This is the key item he needs to defeat
Loki, the Tyrant of Valhalla. Just like with the Statue of Tabatha, I'm not sure how it's supposed to help when Lor fought Loki and lost, but you know, whatever. Let's just say that Lor went on a suicide mission against Loki to create the Amulet. Like, maybe he needed one of Loki's hairs, or something. Does that work for everybody? It's better than the "Hey to stop Medusa from turning you to stone you literally need the remains of a creature she turned to stone earlier" right?
Next Time: We'll do Valhalla. All of it.
