Alright, so we're heading right back to Ajna immediately. Trying to find this strange demon with beautiful, silvery wings and all. In order to get him to appear in the first place, we do need to speak with the two ladies outside the base proper.



...And in order to get THEM to appear, we need to have beaten all four of the Si Xiang and have the Red Ring. Just beating Orochi isn't enough on its own.

Anywho, once all that's done, we just go to the white configuration.



Thanks to Ajna being really small, it's quite easy to actually find this guy.



And he just so happens to be hanging out in the courtyard.

Big Battle ~ Prelude

We can also totally just lie and tell him we did, but unsurprisingly that leads to the same thing:



The random newbie opts to try and murder the crap outta us. Sorry dude, but you gotta die now.

Optional Boss: Aerial Metatron

Big Battle

Alright, so our first optional boss du jour is the highest ranked angel bar none.



As you would expect, he does quite like to Dekunda if you try to debuff him too much. Too much can be -4, -1 or anywhere in between. He doesn't do it too often but he can spam it a lot if he feels like it!



He also DOES Dekaja sometimes. But the emphasis is on sometimes. He won't do it too often normally, and on average maybe only once or twice a fight. You can buff pretty freely but if he does get Dekaja happy, he gets VERY Dekaja happy.



Also, from Power Charged Executioners, he takes around 2.5k damage on average (at +4 Str vs -2 Def). Considering he has 16,500 that makes it pretty easy to slice through him.

...Resistances? Oh, uh, Metatron kinda has none. Not really. Immune to light, dark and ailments, sure, but that's just regular boss stuff.



Attack-wise, he mostly likes to spam either Mahamaon or Maragidyne. Neither is a particularly big threat, so there's not really much of a need to worry about setting Null Expel on everyone or anything.



He also does sometimes try and smack you upside the head with a Revelation but its only more of a threat for the chance to Mute.



...Y'know if you still don't have Null Mute by this point anyway. Its damage is quite underwhelming, especially since by the time he bothers to try it you'll probably have a decent number of Rakukajas in play anyway.



After he drops below 10,000 HP, he does change things up a bit at least. Mainly picks up a couple nasty new tricks.



For instance, at this point he'll Makakaja twice in a row. If he was at -2, this is a good time to Debilitate to push Magic down to -1 again and everything else to -3.



Of course, he'll also try and Megidolaon you sometimes. It's not very threatening on its own though.



It's also in this middle stage that he picks up his unique spell. The fire of the mountain where Moses received the ten commandments is sort of threateni-



...oh.

See, Fire of Sinai IS actually a really dangerous and potent attack. Problem is, its random Almighty damage. So it could ruin you or it could hit one guy once.

At this point, he'll let you know when he's going to prepare something nasty. This line of dialogue occurs whenever he's going to double Makakaja... sometimes...



And immediately afterwards, I hope you're Rakukajad and he's either been Debilitated a lot or at least Dekajad! Because he'll Mind Charge and IMMEDIATELY...



Hit you with a powered up Fire of Sinai. If he's at base Magic and you're at 4x Rakukajas this can still deal a ton of damage.



And, of course, even a Mind Charged Megidolaon can get VERY dangerous!



But on the whole, he's really not all that threatening unfortunately. Kind of a shame considering he's, y'know, Metatron.

End

Ajna

The reward for this one is the Seraph Quill and... I'm sure you know where this is going by now.



Right into the Terminal to give us the Gyokuza mantra.



In terms of offence... Gyokuza is probably the best mantra. Fire of Sinai is relatively cheap for a Mega damage Almighty attack that hits multiple times. It has the potential to deal the most damage out of every attack in the game which is nice too.

Repel Expel and Death are nice but they're not massive game changers like Repel Element could be. They're also not really worth it but it could always be worse...

Spider's String ~ The Second Movement

We'll also take this opportunity to highlight just why having to run through the temple more than once sucks. There are four Large Terminals so it doesn't sound too bad. #4 is the highest in the place, of course.



That drops us off at just after where Garuda and Jatayu's boss versions were. That still leaves a lot of the dungeon to crawl.



So, at 12,530ft there's a couple of "secret" areas that I skipped past. Mostly because, uh, I couldn't remember which one led to the boss fight and which ones didn't.

...What? I can't exactly be expected to remember absolutely everything!



The map is kind enough to sort of indicate by proximity that you might just be missing something. And since this is a teleporter heavy area...



This one just leads to an unnecessary Revival Gem and the one small terminal we skipped over before.



So on the other side of the first area, there's another teleporter that flings us through a wall.



Sadly, this one just leads to a Fusion Cell. Not even a healing terminal here or anything.



That just leaves one in the next area of the floor. It doesn't seem like there's anything here but that's how you know its the right spot!



The wall is an illusory wall and it has a teleporter sitting behind it.



That one flings us through the wall to the east and drops us off exactly where we want to be.



Face-to-face with a red wall. Pretty safe bet that we've found it!



If that's not enough, how about a roboguard who's been obliterated?

Which is incredibly unimpressive but it fits the pattern.



As does the "hey there's a boss fight here!" message. Well, let's go.

Big Battle ~ Prelude

Optional Boss: Dragon Huang Long

[ Optional Boss: Dragon Huang Long (Full)

Hunting ~ Comrades

So, Huang Long is the only boss of this entire cavalcade of optional ones to get the initiative. He always gets the first action in this fight and that's actually a minor problem. See, the first like three turns are the hardest part of the fight!



Because he can do basically anything he likes and there is absolutely no way to prepare for it. An opening Mamudoon or Mahamaon are very rare but totally possible.

Hell once I had him open with two Megidolaons in a row. That was astoundingly unlikely to happen but it did anyway!



...Although a Mamudoon isn't as threatening as it sounds since Huang Long kinda sucks.



Mostly he'll just use his eye lasers to shoot you once and then Tarunda at the start though.



His second turn is exploitable. See, Huang Long (like all the recent bosses) switches phases throughout the fight but not at HP gates. He starts in a support phase which he's only in for 3 turns and its the only one where he can Dekunda and Dekaja.



The trick is that he will ALWAYS do it if there are any buffs and/or debuffs in play. So if you spend your first turn abusing that he becomes much easier already.

He'll also only do it in the first two turns of this phase.



His third turn (and third turn in the support phase period) is always a Celestial Ray opener. He doesn't care about buffs or debuffs here.



Celestial Ray is Huang Long's big unique attack. It deals Mega tier Almighty damage but hits everyone once. The real catch is that it can inflict any and every ailment in the game.

Now, ailment in this case means stuff that Cielo is weak to. So Charm, Poison, Mute, Sleep etc. are all fair game. It will never inflict Curse or Stone.

There are ways to make this completely unnecessary but you only really need Null Mute, Charm, Panic and Nerve to completely shut him down. Sounds like a lot to cover but it's actually not an issue. Don't exactly need a lot of attacks here.



See, Huang Long's main gimmick is... that he's a barrier changing boss. Everytime this message appears, he switches around to one of four elemental phases; Fire, Ice, Force or Earth. For some reason he doesn't have an Elec phase.



Point is, which one he uses and when is random. He likes Fire the most it seems but that's not a problem. The problem is that he resists everything when he's in these phases. The sole exception is the element he uses. Which he drains, of course. He does not give himself a weakness to its antithesis this way either.



And the only way to know which one he's in beyond throwing spells at random is to see which one he uses. And he only uses the Ma-dyne too. This sounds like a problem since he very, very rarely uses spells but its not really.



Remember that he can only Dekaja and Dekunda in the support phase. He cannot do them in the elemental phases. You can chill at +4 in everything and drop him to -4 in everything and he still won't do it.



He'll try and debuff you with Tarundas, Sukundas and Makandas (no Rakundas though!) sometimes but Makanda is like a free turn since it doesn't matter.



Of course, he can buff himself but only in very limited ways. And by limited I mean Tarukaja very, very rarely and Makakaja slightly less rarely.



Now, when I said he resists everything in this phase?



That includes Almighty. Huang Long is one of like three enemies to resist Almighty.



He's not QUITE as resilient as Genbu was when it comes to Physicals, but he's still very tanky. This is at +4 with Power Charge vs -4 and that still came out as sub-300 damage.

For reference, he has 20,000 HP.

So, what do you do then? In his support phase he might not be as resilient but you're better off gaming his AI then. He also only enters it when its the start of the fight and sometimes after a very special other one.



Not this one, though. When he pulls out a scream (as noted by the !! at the end), he's entering whats best thought of as his all-out-attack phase. He's not elementally inclined here, he doesn't dick around doing nothing of interest...



And instead focuses on doing an all-out-attack by trying to blast you every single turn with Celestial Ray.



...The problem for him is that when he does this, he doesn't just lose the resistances. He becomes functionally weak to everything (except light, dark and ailments obviously) without actually being weak to them. Essentially he takes double damage which is how you can do stuff like this.

The problem for you is that when he enters this is completely random. If he does it too early, you won't be prepared enough to handle it and you will probably die. If he does it too late, you're spending loving ages sitting around doing nothing because he can't hurt you and you can't hurt him either.



And when he leaves it is equally as random. He can stay in it for one turn. He can stay in it for five. Choice is his alone. Whenever he does leave it, he'll always enter a perfect-defense phase. This is the only time he does it and he never switches to anything else after attacking.



And when I say perfect, I mean perfect. He takes no damage at all from anything. Physical, Magical, Almighty... he doesn't care. Immune to the lot.



After this, his phase change is random again. Might be an elemental one, might be all-out-attack again... might be support. Usually it's support since this is the only time he can switch into it. And if he does then he'll Dekaja and Dekunda immediately.



And there's the problem with the fight. You can slowly chip away but until he lets you, you can't really hurt him. You do not get to win until the game decides that you do so. Which can take a very, very long time. It's entirely down to chance and that's just no fun.



To say he's one of the three final optional bosses (four if you count Beelzebub) that's quite disappointing. A fight that comes purely down to a test of patience rather than skill or anything is just boring.



You might disagree with that and think that trying to survive in the interim is fun and challenging but, again, you can fully buff and debuff and there's dickall he can do about it. No matter how you slice it, Huang Long is a badly designed fight.

End

Spider's String ~ The Second Movement

And then to make things just a little more annoying, you don't get your reward immdiately. You have to run a little bit further in first. There's no point to it. There's no random encounters here, no actual danger, no threat at all.



Just an extra room and a redundant red wall. Why is this even here? You can't get to this room without it, and you can't exactly lose it before now so it's just needless padding.



Our reward for all this is the Golden Orb which, yeah, gets us yet another new mantra.



And the Five Gods mantra is not worth the hassle, frankly.



Phys Absorb is so pointlessly niche I'd rather they didn't bother. Celestial Ray is the most expensive non-combo skill and its not really deserving of the cost. It hits pretty hard, sure, but it hits once and maybe sometimes inflicts random ailments.

It gets outdamaged by Fire of Sinai. It gets outdone in added effects by Death Flies. It costs 2 million macca for a bad skill and a useless passive!

But, hey, it's alright. No need to buy it anyway; never gonna use it so just save your money for something more useful.

Plus, y'know, we've only beaten two of the de facto final three optional bosses. Our final one is going to take us back to A--

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 03:26 on Feb 24, 2015

Tallgeese fucked around with this message at 00:29 on Nov 12, 2014

mauman fucked around with this message at 23:51 on Nov 14, 2014

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 21, 2014

Spider's String ~ The Second Movement

The Top Floor

Silence

And when we do so, we're attacked by a rogue penultimate cutscene.



Angel might not have been around when Sera reached the top of the temple, but she is about to pop in...



Her method of travel is identical to when we first/last saw her too.



Well, except for the giant light pillar. That's a bit different.



It's also way too bright for Sera to look at. The Rakshasa back there gives no fucks though.



...Huh, that doesn't look like Angel. Too human.

Maelstrom

Rakshasa is very clearly not amused here...



And Sera's even ballsy enough to use him to threaten her own life to get Angel to leave!

...yes, that is sanskrit floating around that little virus ball

...no, i do not know what it says!



And it's a pretty powerful virus ball, since it makes Rakshasa freak the gently caress out and start to vibrate.



Because he's disintegrating! Jesus christ.

Silence

Before we can ponder the hexagon cloud things, the Karma Temple... no, the entire Junkyard begins to shake. Violently.



The actual clouds higher up begin to part ways...

And the ENTIRE JUNKYARD is being disintegrated rather quickly in the exact same manner Rakshasa was.



Everything is disappearing. Nothing is safe and none shall remain.



Regardless of whether it was the best place for defence...



Or the best place for offence.

End

Spider's String ~ The Second Movement

End of the Junkyard

Silence

...How does one "delete" a person?



And as if to just put that off for longer, the gang turn up right at this exact moment.



Angel is in no way bothered by this, though. But now that she's here...



Gale sees the enigmatic crying lady

. Fortunately, this time it has purpose beyong being weird and foreshadowy.



Namely, it helps Gale realise that he straight up lied to us before and that he DOES know Angel!

And just from that one little sort-of command...



All five of the Embryon are frozen in place. Try as they might, they can no longer move...

Watercrown

But, it's in vain because just from blinking Sera adds extra pressure...



And forces them both to the ground.



Despite this, Angel is surprised by something...



Serph has too much protagonist in him to be stopped here. He pushes forward regardless, and in doing so his Atma is slowly being utilised.

Silence

Well, there's a mistake if I ever saw one...



Because the gloves come off and Serph immediately goes full Varuna.



But, of course, it's not like he's the only one here who can transform.



Angel can too apparently and she has more control over it, only morphing one arm.



It's enough to parry Serph for the time being and force him to back off slightly.



did i mention before that mary elizabeth mcglynn is loving fantastic as angel

because she is



Anyway! Now the rest of the Embryon can move freely too.



And because they can, that means it is time...

Boss: Onmyo Harihara

Hari-Hara

So, Harihara gets her own unique race and its just for this one fight. Onmyo means that she is the God of Yin and Yang (its short for Onmyōdō which means "the way of yin and yang") and that makes perfect sense here. Harihara is the unity between Shiva and Vishnu who are the functional antithesis of one another. It's also derived from their names, as Hari is one of the many, many names of Vishnu and Hara is an early name for Shiva.

This is actually replicated in this fight with Harihara switching between two forms throughout the battle. She starts in a slightly more timid stage that functions as the Vishnu form. Before we see what it does...



We'll immediately send her packing to the Shiva form instead. Each form has 1000 HP but with a catch. She doesn't transform immediately; instead its done as a free action at the start of her turn. This is actually clever and prevents you from steamrolling her paltry 4000 HP in a single turn or two.



also the initial/vishnu form has dekaja and dekunda just so you cant do that too

the shiva one inexplicably doesnt so i guess you could blitz the remaining 3000 here



But I wouldn't recommend it! The second form is all about the offense; Genocide is nowhere near as impressive here as you would expect.



Its damage is based on her HP and she only has 1000 for all it cares so its actually pretty crap!



And since that's all that form gets to do, we'll switch back to Vishnu and... well, huh. Vanity is actually pretty bad potentially. It's like Celestial Ray but without dealing Almighty damage, so you might think it can trigger Cielo's weakness. It can't.



It does, however, still throw around the chance of any and every ailment. Same conditions as Celestial Ray, so no stone/curse/instant death here.

This is probably one of the more threatening things that could happen in this part of the fight.



Speaking of, here's a quick rundown of everything else she never got to do. Shiva-form can use all 5 elemental Ma-dynes. Only the Ma-s though; none of the single target variants.



She can also drop an Executioner which sounds like it's going to be seriously lethal and deadly.



But, y'know, this is after 2 Rakukajas so it's not that threatening. Also she doesn't charge up or anything.



...wait what

Vishnu form can use Hunger Wave. That's a bad thing!

it means ravana was completely worthless and not unique at all poor guy



Also, y'know, it's only done here because Sera's here too. Song of Grace is still the only way to cure it.



Now, of course, where'd the fun be if they didn't have unique skills? These are also how where the Shiva or Vishnu form ideas come from; Vaikunta here is short for Vaikuntha-loka which is the eternal home of Vishnu (and Lakshmi as his consort).



Here, it just deals a crap amount of Almighty damage and has a chance to petrify dudes.



Bhairava is a form of Shiva associated with absolute annihilation. It was created when Shiva got pissy with Brahma for stepping all up in his territory and wanted to kill him. It worked.

(i realise i am over-simplifying some of these a lot)



Here, it deals a loving ton and a half of Almighty damage. It's probably going to slaughter the poo poo out of whoever it hits... unless that little survival thing there happens.



There is a VERY small chance of this happening from any attack that would kill you. Instead, whoever was meant to die endures it and survives with 1hp. This also has the drawback of forcing them to revert to human. There is a passive called Close Call which claims to make this happen. It doesn't; it just makes it more likely.

its never ever ever worth using

Anyway, Harihara here is super underwhelming. Has 4000 HP (functionally), and alternates between forms every 1000. After beating Shiva the second time, this stage of the fight ends.



But, of course, this IS the final boss we're talking about here. Ravana got two forms and he was basically some chump who was overhyped by the game to hell and back.



So, of course Harihara has an actual full on second form as well and unlike Ravana's it doesnt make her easier.



...Well, not directly. She IS laughably simple but for different reasons than Ravana.



It also does away with the "switching between two forms" thing and just mixes the two.

Final Boss: Onmyo Harihara (and 6 Cores)

Hari-Hara ~ The Second Movement

So, Harihara here is a bit different to almost every other boss we've fought. Like Huang Long, her resistances kind of shift around during the fight but there's a catch.



First off, your buffs from the first part of the fight carry over to this part. Debuffs presumably do as well, but I always leave them to til now just in case.



So, Harihara at present reflects almost everything. Physical, Fire, Ice, Elec, Earth and Force are all repelled.



Harihara and her 6 cores here also massively resist Almighty.



Speaking of the cores, their offense is none-too-impressive. They use single target Dynes of their relevant element, or multi-target... mid tiers. So the one here that casts Bufudyne can alternatively cast Mabufula. Exciting.



See, the cores are an intrinsic part of the fight whether you like it or not. Each one is associated with an element, it repels that one by default and is neutral to the others. So long as one is alive, Harihara also repels that element. Getting rid of the Red Core makes Harihara vulnerable to Fire, for example.



The ideal way to handle this fight only requires TWO attacks. A single target of one element to get rid of a core, and a multi-target of the other element. So, if you want to prioritise Fire here, bring, i'unno, Bufudyne and Maragidyne. You win on the spot.

Defensively? Pffft, ahahaha. Get rid of the cores, and you can bring in anyone with any weakness uncovered. It does not matter one iota. There is no reason whatsoever to worry about having multi-element coverage here.

Since Serph is punchyman, I went for Revelation for my multi-target hitter.



Needless to say, it is quite effective!

...Each core has 450HP for reference. Harihara's is around 12,000.



Now, Harihara herself only gets 1 action. There is a maximum of seven possible actions in the enemy turn phase, since each Core gets one too. Harihara also happens to spawn in a core at the start of her turn if there is any dead.

This counts as a free action, so it doesn't use her turns up. Which is fair enough; if it didn't, she'd be even easier than she is already or she'd get 2 actions even if none were dead and that'd be too much to reasonably deal with.



When I said "a" core, I meant it by the way. She just spawns the one. And this is why you only need 2 attacks to win. Your ST attack now is used only if she spawns the core you need out of the way. Anything else, and your MT attack both removes the newly summoned core AND hurts Harihara in the process.



Attack-wise, she's not particularly impressive for the most part. She has the usual Dekunda/Dekaja affair which she'll use somewhat randomly whenever theres a single buff or debuff in play.



She also keeps Hunger Wave from the first phase of the fight. It's more of an annoyance here that drags things out than anything actually threatening though.



Her regular attack seems fancy...



But it just pokes everyone for minimal damage. Whatever.



Of course, she also kept Vanity. Needs something semi-threatening I guess.

...Oh and she DOES have a combo attack if theres two or more cores alive at the start of her turn. It just deals Almighty damage to everyone; its a little stronger than Megidolaon but not by much. She just never, ever wanted to do it for me this time though. I even went back and sat around for over half an hour trying to get her to do it and... nope. Even with all 6 cores there, she was more interested in failing to be effective with her regular attack than anything else.



Not really a hard fight, just a long one. For the final boss (...of the first half), Harihara is PRETTY underwhelming! Even if I didn't go out and trash the Si Xiang and Metatron, she'd be pretty simple and not worth worrying about.

Silence

so how about that ending



Fortunately, Angel was more concerned with beating us in a straight fight before (pfft she wishes) to use that virus-y ball thing. Now she remembers she has it and could use it whenever.



Instead, she just keeps it held out of the way up until Serph tries to kill her again.



Rather than block by parrying his attack again, she uses that thing instead.



It... doesn't quite end as she'd like, though. It does create a small explosion, but....



It sends Angel flying right into the side of that staircase.



Serph too, and it even has the added effect of demorphing him...



Only, uh, it also did that. And that don't look good!

The temple itself is now breaking apart, and its not a slow thing either.



Everything around is tearing itself asunder.





I guess Gale trying to save Angel here makes sense, what with constantly seeing her in very brief flashback bits and all.

Speaking of which, when Angel looks at Gale...



She gets one too.



And then does accept his help, because she's actually confused by this. Huh.

Surely Again...

The Junkyard is now gone.



What remained had just been destroyed, so now the Embryon, and Sera and Angel are just...



Floating in nothingness.



But, c'mon, you think that's going to stop Sera and Serph from trying to finish what they just started?



They get close. Very close, even.



Close enough to barely touch...



But, we're not exactly here for a perfectly happy ending now, are we?



...that doesnt mean it has to be super kingdom heartsy though

The Rain Stopped

if you watched the video you mightve stopped here there is a bit more post-credits!!

And so, that's (the main part of) Digital Devil Saga 1. You no doubt have some ideas of what just went on, but are probably very, VERY confused and have a ton of questions right now. Just about everything ever IS going to be explained in DDS2 when we get there...



But for now, how about something that looks very familiar. Just... in a weird and new setting.



And, like before, a naked Sera comes out from within. Only this time covered in some sort of tubing and liquid.

Meanwhile, somewhere else...



Serph's found his way to... somewhere and is wearing a very, very makeshift robe of sorts.



He's also having flashbacks to something we just saw mere minutes ago.



Needless to say, he's not happy about that at all. Gonna have to do something about being separated from Sera.

and the other embryon apparently but mainly sera



Wherever Serph is though, uh... to put it as scientifically as I can: poo poo be hosed, yo.



also the sun is a giant black sphere

thats pretty obviously bad!!
















First we have something else to do. There's some stuff I missed before because of being an idiot or skipped over it for convenience. Theres some special mantras I never unlocked that let you do... very, very wacky and stupid things. There's also one - and exactly one - thing that is only available in New Game+ here.



Technically the only thing across both that is absolutely mandatorily New Game+ only. It brings with it a different question to answer. Some fight for law, some fight for justice, some fight for freedom. But why do you fight?

What is your Reason?

Lotus Aura fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Nov 15, 2014