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MechanicalTomPetty
Oct 30, 2011

Runnin' down a dream
That never would come to me

quote:

Bleakness will be used in a new production, so I believe that this time the staff successfully put together a mild atmosphere.

Coincidentally DDS 2 came out 1 year before the release of Persona 3.

Yeah, "bleak" is one way of putting it. :v:

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Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:
Did this come out before or after Nocturne, because that one was pretty damned bleak, with all 3 Reasons being terrible ideas for various reasons.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!
Pretty sure it was immediately afterwards. Nocturne even has a bonus trailer for DDS1 in it.

neongrey
Feb 28, 2007

Plaguing your posts with incidental music.
Not immediately after but pretty soon and basically out of nowhere. It went from announcement to release in practically no time at all.

Booky
Feb 21, 2013

Chill Bug


Dragonatrix posted:

Serph, what was it Heat said he'd do back there

I'm assuming there's a missing question mark for this bit? :v:

Since you were talking about it earlier, how bad is the encounter rate for DDS1 compared to the other games? About the same amount as normal?

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Booky posted:

I'm assuming there's a missing question mark for this bit? :v:

Since you were talking about it earlier, how bad is the encounter rate for DDS1 compared to the other games? About the same amount as normal?

DDS1 and DDS2 both have pretty crazy encounter rates, it's part of why the final dungeon in DDS2 is one of the most painful gaming experiences known to man.

Like I LOVE these games but holy gently caress that dungeon.

Elric
Mar 31, 2011


Feinne posted:

DDS1 and DDS2 both have pretty crazy encounter rates, it's part of why the final dungeon in DDS2 is one of the most painful gaming experiences known to man.

Like I LOVE these games but holy gently caress that dungeon.
Would you rate it as worse than or better than the Desert of Death from Breathe of Fire 3?

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Elric posted:

Would you rate it as worse than or better than the Desert of Death from Breathe of Fire 3?

Well I mean the problem is twofold because DDS has some really complex dungeons with lots of teleporters and such that the map doesn't properly get across and th

Petiso
Apr 30, 2012



It's not especially worse on average, the problem is that, unlike in other games, there isn't a fixed "cooldown" timer after each battle, so it's entirely possible to get consecutive battles after two steps.

Genaro
Sep 22, 2011
I'm kind of reminded of the Suikoden IV LP, a game with such a crazy encounter rate the LPer added a video of him trying to go from one location to another. In about 30 seconds of map-travel time, he spent many, many minutes in and out of battle screens.

Does the high encounter rate actually mean much for grinding purposes, or do you hit the point where they give you effectively nothing long before you leave the area?

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Genaro posted:

I'm kind of reminded of the Suikoden IV LP, a game with such a crazy encounter rate the LPer added a video of him trying to go from one location to another. In about 30 seconds of map-travel time, he spent many, many minutes in and out of battle screens.

Does the high encounter rate actually mean much for grinding purposes, or do you hit the point where they give you effectively nothing long before you leave the area?

As long as you can keep yourself in Mantras the Atma Points for killing things are always pretty useful even after they're not giving enough Karma to meaningfully advance your pa



No but seriously the random encounter rate is only really annoying in certain dungeons like Coordinate 136 and the very last one of DDS2. And that's allowing for the fact that it's VERY possible that 99% of the encounters in that dungeon will end before the enemies even get a turn if you didn't make a really stupid choice earlyish in that game and lock yourself out of something really loving awesome.

Feinne fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Sep 13, 2014

cdyoung
Mar 2, 2012
I think we get the ide

blankd
Mar 26, 2010


On-Topic: I think Nocturne made me more tolerant of the encounter rate. Call it SMT-Stockholm I guess.

KataraniSword
Apr 22, 2008

but at least I don't have
a MLP or MSPA avatar.
I am my own man.

blankd posted:

On-Topic: I think Nocturne made me more tolerant of the encounter rate. Call it SMT-Stockholm I guess.

Yeah, the encounter rate is bad, but it's a pretty consistent bad: it's pretty consistent with Nocturne's, and only mildly worse than the encounter rate in Strange Journey (which actually does have an Etrian Odyssey-like cooldown between battles).

The problem is that dungeons are long and winding and that does nothing to help alleviate the tedium of constant random battles.

CmdrKing
Oct 14, 2012

Maybe if I called it 'Interpretive Stabbing'...
That's true of most RPGs really. It's not usually the encounter rates unto themselves. It's getting lost and backtracking while ALSO having the encounters, doubling down on the sense of "oh for gently caress's sake I DID THIS ALREADY JUST LET ME FINISH THE DUNGEON lk;aj;lkajal;kal;".

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
Well, isn't that a hoot. At least the random encounters can't get me he-



GOD drat IT! In other news. Looking forward to seeing more of the LP, might buy this digitally for my PS3.

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Kemix posted:

Well, isn't that a hoot. At least the random encounters can't get me he-



GOD drat IT! In other news. Looking forward to seeing more of the LP, might buy this digitally for my PS3.

It's really worth the price of admission for the PSN version. I'm going to spout some sort of heresy here and say I think DDS is better than Nocturne, even.

Dwarsen
Jan 27, 2004
Dungeon Master
Oh, it's on the PSN? That's neat, might have to pick it up and give it another playthrough then. DDS is probably my favourite jrpg for the PS2, together with Shadow Hearts: Covenant. But maybe I shouldn't rank jrpgs on a system with so many great ones...

And I'll never get tired of the whole "my post is interrupted by a random battle". Hopefully.

Blogkb - because you too like video games, old and new (it's just a blog)

David D. Davidson
Nov 17, 2012

Orca lady?

Dwarsen posted:

Oh, it's on the PSN? That's neat, might have to pick it up and give it another playthrough then. DDS is probably my favourite jrpg for the PS2, together with Shadow Hearts: Covenant. But maybe I shouldn't rank jrpgs on a system with so many great ones...

Yep, all the PS2 era SMT games are available on PSN I picked this game and Raido Kuzunoha and the Souless army up myself not too long ago.

Montegoraon
Aug 22, 2013

David D. Davidson posted:

Yep, all the PS2 era SMT games are available on PSN I picked this game and Raido Kuzunoha and the Souless army up myself not too long ago.

A fine choice. It's not a super great game, but it has what is definitely my favorite plot twist of all time. (Even if the sequel somewhat invalidates it)

Montegoraon fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Sep 14, 2014

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.
It's also why we have Raidou vs King Abbadon, which is the Best Game.

a cartoon duck
Sep 5, 2011

Montegoraon posted:

DDS's story, which takes place in an incredibly gray world of constant total war, where people then start turning into demons and are forced to eat each other, and even that is barely scratching the surface of what's coming later on, is Kazuma Kaneko's idea of a "mild" storyline and atmosphere.

The first act of the first Shin Megami Tensei ends with the USA nuking Japan. The franchise had a bit of a skewed perception of what's mild and what's bleak since its beginning.

Drachir D Nalem
Aug 14, 2012
Any news on if they'll put those SMT games on the Vita or something? I don't have a PS3 and want to play these games on something else than an emulator.

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Drachir D Nalem posted:

Any news on if they'll put those SMT games on the Vita or something? I don't have a PS3 and want to play these games on something else than an emulator.

They're not on the Vita store right now sadly, though the whole Persona series is between the PSP ones and the Golden.

Drachir D Nalem
Aug 14, 2012
Aye, I already got those. Great games, though I want to play Nocturne and DDS again, it's been so long. Reading an LP of it is like eating cookies to stave off hunger, to use a fitting analogy. Works for maybe five minutes but won't be as filling as a real meal, the real deal.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Okay, the amusement park castle was pretty amazing. Nice of Heat to see through that transparent plan to turn him against Serph.

...wonder if we'll ever know what that staticky message said.

Montegoraon
Aug 22, 2013

Glazius posted:

Okay, the amusement park castle was pretty amazing. Nice of Heat to see through that transparent plan to turn him against Serph.

...wonder if we'll ever know what that staticky message said.

We will. Not explicitly, like we hear the actual recording, but yes, the meaning will become obvious in DDS2.

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

Montegoraon posted:

We will. Not explicitly, like we hear the actual recording, but yes, the meaning will become obvious in DDS2.

For some reason in my memories you can either hear or possibly just read a more complete version of the story but I suspect that's not true and the fact that I know what the story's about is making me think that.

Staticpulse
Nov 1, 2010

Herein I have explained the operation of the sun.

Feinne posted:

For some reason in my memories you can either hear or possibly just read a more complete version of the story but I suspect that's not true and the fact that I know what the story's about is making me think that.

There is a plaque in every room that has the broadcasted message if you ever wanted to read it again. However, the one in the room with the bad recording is erased or something of the sort.

blankd
Mar 26, 2010

Staticpulse posted:

There is a plaque in every room that has the broadcasted message if you ever wanted to read it again. However, the one in the room with the bad recording is erased or something of the sort.
I want to say that the one Heat punched out of existence is the badly recorded one.

Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!


...Okay, before we go and deal with what's at Coordinate 136 we'll go back to a few places and tear down some walls. Swadhisthana's first since we might as well do 'em in the order we did originally.

Hideout of the Chickens



The wall here's in the basement we ran through briefly before. Only real change now is that dude by the Red wall and what feels like a massively reduced encounter rate.

As in I only got a whole 3 fights my entire time here. How bizarre.



Yellow wall's just around the corner from there and leads to a very small outside area.



...Almost feels like the Blue and Yellow ones here should be the other way around. There's nothing here but this Vital Noise. Weird.



Next up's Manipura which has two walls for us to get past.


Hunting Field ~ Second Movement



Only problem is they're pretty far apart. One past Gate 6's closest so we'll head over there first.



Our second Power Noise is the only thing here. There's two rooms but one is strangely empty. Seems so weird that there are empty rooms gated off...



Anyway, the other Yellow wall's over on the second floor by Gate 2. Need both the Blue and Yellow keys to get to this one.



...It's, um, not particularly worth it. Just a single Soma Drop here.



Ah well, last we have the Citadel over at Anahata to contend with again.


Man's Tomb ~ Second Movement



Just the one Yellow wall this time. It's even pretty easy to get to since it's near the rooftop entrance and all.



This one has two rooms behind it as well but with only one item to get. It's the new bullet that was conspicuously absent the last time we were here.



It is the best one we could have right now by far. We could also buy them at this point but it costs like 15k a piece so bugger that. There's no point to buying any bullets except like one but that's a special exception we'll get to much, much later.



That's all the Yellow walls we've run into so far, so it's back to Coordinate 136 for what's next.


Point136



...Something seems different here. Can't quite put my finger on what, though. Maybe the castle did something different with its hair.

Anyway, let's talk to that Pyro Jack and see what's up.




Why are you still here ho? Mick's already winked off to the other world. I'm just chillin' with my partner here ho! Hee!



Sorry, not this time.

But, but! Get out! Out!



And that's because--
Why?
It's because--
Why?



A new K-hee-ng, ho? Interesting...

So go hee home! This is for the new king! You can't open the chest anyway, cus you don't have the key, ho! .......Please go hee home. I beg you.



Revel in...er-- Repent of your evil deeds ...and serve the King. Hee may give you some treasure ho!
I can look for it.



Our comrades may have already found it, though.

Alright, so we've got a key to track down in this place and there are a few places it could be. Unfortunately, most of them are out of the way and other than where the one we want is I don't remember where they are. :v:



So I just beelined for the third puzzle room and took the platform to the left of the entrance.



This actually takes us down a floor to a small room with another new bullet in it.



Probably should've gotten this before, but we didn't really need it then. Sort of don't now either, but it can Stun dudes so it has its uses.



Stood next to our new bullet is this lady. She seems awful familiar...




It's such a great honor to be queen that it almost brings me to tears... Hey! What're YOU looking at!? I get it! Now you're going to embarass me by telling all my comrades what you saw me doing! Not if I have anything to say about it, buster!



Hunting ~ Compulsion



So Titania's a pretty big chump. Good thing too, since I'll be sick of her by the end of this game.

Anyway, she's weak to Ailments. So I have Gale make her Panic.



She can cast some pretty strong spells, appropriately enough for a demon only found in the final dungeon and an end-game optional area.

...No, really. Punching waaaaaaaay above our weightclass here.



Her item drop when Panicked is a wonderful item called a Theory Cell. It's not a top-tier cell, it's actually around the middle of the ranks, but it sells for a pretty penny at this stage.



Once panicked, she drops quickly enough and she even... drops a second Theory Cell...


okay thats loving great i have plans for this now


Point136



Got the Sugar Key which we want to continue but first a minor detour back to Swadhisthana!



Getting back to a Terminal is easy enough, and we pass a Red wall immediately after leaving Titania's room. Guess we'll be back here later after all.



Theory sells for 60,000 Macca a piece at Maximum noise. Since we have two of them I can buy something special with this money. I need 100k for a Scheme and this does the job quite nicely.



Money and a new Mantra bought, we head back to the front door of Coordinate 136 and give Jack the key.


Let's open it, hee!



:swoon: oh my god the inside of the chest is wallpapered with smiling jack frosts eeee :swoon:

Okay. I'll take the treasure then, thank hee you ho. Ho ho ho! You're so naive, ho.



eeeee... Ahem. Anyway, Jack runs off with our hard-earned loot. That's cool. We never were really promised a reward, but we can go and meet the king now. Let's run aaaaaaaall the way back up to the top floor...



And someone new is residing in the princess's room.


Big Battle ~ Prelude



I know you're the King and all, but it's rather rude to stand on the bed's canopy!

This is the King's castle, HO. The King decides the HEE code. HEE HO Article One:



HEE HO Article Two:



ohmygod i just noticed the smiling face on his scepter that is sooooo adorable :allears:



Ahem! Anyway, it's time for our first optional boss fight!


Optional Boss: Fiend King Frost
no, that length is not a mistake; doing this a wee bit earlier than intended is all.

Hunting ~ Compulsion



Since everyone's packing a debuff for this fight we can use Debilitate ourself. Takes all our turns though so we won't be using it here. Too risky.



Speaking of debuffs, because we're around 10 levels under the recommended range for this fight (low 30s when you want to be at least 40), we're gonna need 'em. So starting off with Taunts then.

Thankfully the king cannot Dekunda.



He also has some real fuckin' nasty Ice attacks so we want to stop that. Drain would be ideal but I don't actually have that yet.



Void isn't good enough since the King alone gets 3 turns. Naturally he drains Ice so Repel is out of the equation save for emergencies.



Celestial Gift lets him summon a big Jack Frost. This one is tougher than normal, of course.



Also has Makakaja. If we didn't have Ice resistance this would be lethal.



The King likes having two subjects out so we can take advantage of that. Also want to use Dekaja in some form to get rid of the 4 Tarukajas that get added by Taunt.



The King has a lot of attacks, but he really liked using this one in particular.



Frost Rush has him summon a bunch of tiny Jack Frosts that body slam one dude. Naturally this is Physical damage and loving wrecks poo poo hard. That's 141 AFTER the Dekaja by the way.



The two Taunts were necessary to deal damage too. That's 135 after his defence has been crippled and without a resistance. Fire's out since he nullifies that, and the King has no weakness either.

Also he has somwhere betwen 4150-4200 HP. This might take a while...



Other skills in the King's arsenal are Power Wave which is weaker than Frost Rush (barely) but hits everyone. Swell.



His subjects seem to really prefer just trying to punch ya. And they can rack up the damage fast what with the 3 of 'em getting 5 turns and all.



So, Sukundas it is then. Throwing their accuracy into the shitter will help alleviate things but they still hit quite often even with 4 of them applied.



Although they do also miss a ton, which costs 2 turns everytime it happens.



...Buuuut the King has Megido. We don't have Makunda, so this damage can't be mitigated.



Thankfully it doesn't deal all that much; this is after one Makakaja after all. Plus Gale dodged, which is nice whenever that happens.



So, we can't weaken Megido but we can negate his Ice spells. That just leaves the physicals then; their hitrate is reduced but they can still pack a whollop whenever they land.



After 4 Tarundas, they're reduced to "managable" rather than "drop everything heal now." Gone from 140+ to ~70.



That done, we can now focus on blasting the gently caress outta the King. But since each hit doesn't deal much of a dent on his own this takes a while.



The mid-tier spells do come with random damage variants too. Only problem is, uh, in the random part. Getting a couple hits that deal more damage is nice buuuuut it does have a tendency to hit once too. Not worth it most of the time.



Also killing the minions is nice but only temporarily. He'll bring them back soon thereafter and the new ones aren't debuffed. Blargh.



Could buff our physical damage output and use Serph's pretty good strength to speed things up but the King resists Physicals so that's needed to just bring them on par with the spells.



Also once the King drops to around 1,000 HP, his critical sprite has his head droop and he looks sad. :(



So we put him out of his misery, gain a loving ton of Karma, 100 grand and a decent chunk of Atma too.


Point136



For beating the King, we get this. The Ice Crystal is the first of a few items that have a special use. Next time we use any Karma terminal...



Ice Crystal has been confiscated and King Mantra has been added to the Mantra Grid. Embrace this new Mantra, Child of Purgatory.



So that's our first hidden node opened up.



The King Mantra's lurking in the bottom right corner of the board and costs... well, what do you know. Exactly 100,000 Macca. How convenient!



Megido's a bit odd to be in here, honestly. It's the low-level Almighty spell but the better versions are on the board without boss fights shenanigans. Cocytus is mid-tier Ice and hits randomly but has a VERY high chance of freezing dudes.

Null Sleep is the real reason you want this thing. Despite its name, it does not nullify sleep. No, it does something else...



We'll worry about exactly what that is when it gets mastered though. That done, let's head on off to this ship Cielo found for us...

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 20:16 on Oct 30, 2014

Montegoraon
Aug 22, 2013

Dragonatrix posted:

[i]The wall here's in the basement we ran through briefly before. Only real change now is that dude by the Red wall and what feels like a massively reduced encounter rate.

As in I only got a whole 3 fights my entire time here. How bizarre.

I remember thinking that encounter rate is affected by your level compared to the level of the area. It may just be triggered by reaching a certain point in the story, though.

Also, King Frost. :3: I didn't think we'd be seeing his awesomeness so soon.

Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
Jesus H christ man! Do you ALWAYS do poo poo the hard way!? Surprised the game didn't just kill you right then and there!

Petiso
Apr 30, 2012



Dragonatrix posted:

Null Sleep is the real reason you want this thing. Despite its name, it does not nullify sleep. No, it does something else...

Wait what? Now you have my attention.

vilkacis
Feb 16, 2011

Genaro posted:

I'm kind of reminded of the Suikoden IV LP

I HAVE BEEN SUMMONED



Seriously the encounter rate in DDS never bothered me that much since for the most part, the press turn system is actually fun. Besides, Estoma actually works nearly 100% once the enemies are no longer a threat.

Also Cielo is the best character, gently caress weaknesses, best character.

Ah well, time to read the next upd

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat

vilkacis posted:

Also Cielo is the best character, gently caress weaknesses, best character.

I agree.

Also, I can't believe it took me this long to spot a new Digital Devil Saga LP. :swoon:

Feinne
Oct 9, 2007

When you fall, get right back up again.

PoptartsNinja posted:

I agree.

Also, I can't believe it took me this long to spot a new Digital Devil Saga LP. :swoon:

Oh my god that's so glorious I can't even.

Cielo is the sort of weird greatbad in this game where his weakness is either meaningless or tragic, in retrospect I'd use him MUCH more than I did last time I played this. Then in DDS2 he's just 100% awesome and you should probably always use Cielo if that is an option. That above and beyond how loving awesome basically every scene that involves him is in that game. Every scene in DDS2 is either really confusing or really awesome or both.

Feinne fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Sep 16, 2014

Green Intern
Dec 29, 2008

Loon, Crazy and Laughable

I just really like how upbeat Cielo is. It's just really refreshing when the rest of the world is so gloomy.

PoptartsNinja
May 9, 2008

He is still almost definitely not a spy


Soiled Meat

Feinne posted:

Oh my god that's so glorious I can't even.

I did Argilla and Serph too. The only problem is, I did Serph first so I didn't think to combine all of his human and berserk outfits into a single entrance like I did with the others. And Serph has to be gigantic to make the transition to Varuna properly. And WWE2k14 didn't have Argilla's hair.

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Lotus Aura
Aug 16, 2009

KNEEL BEFORE THE WICKED KING!

Kemix posted:

Jesus H christ man! Do you ALWAYS do poo poo the hard way!? Surprised the game didn't just kill you right then and there!

If I can and I know I can pull it off, or I know I can't but it'd be funny to see me flail miserably, yeah basically. Helps keep things more varied, just waltzing up to an optional boss super-early and still coming out with a win.

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