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Devil Survivor 2: Record Breaker |OT| at Last

TWILT

Banned
Welp, just got my copy. I can't believe I did considering I'm still in the middle of Xenoblade + it's $60 over here in Canada, but I did. I put a lot of time in the original to get all the endings though, so I'm excited to play the game again in a few minutes.
 

Xenoflare

Member
So I went into day 4 as a 28. Was...that overleveled? Teammates were 24/25

Im now a 30, a bit into day 4?

I'm 31 at day four and my in battle teammates are around the 29-31 mark. Benched people are 28. I purposefully let my teammates to kill the grunts because my MC always ends up killing the bosses raking in large lumps of xp.

Assassinate and magic MC w/dance spells break the game. Like holy shit
 

Soulflarz

Banned
I'm 31 at day four and my in battle teammates are around the 29-31 mark. Benched people are 28. I purposefully let my teammates to kill the grunts because my MC always ends up killing the bosses raking in large lumps of xp.

Assassinate and magic MC w/dance spells break the game. Like holy shit

Cmon, I'm using Assassinate on a Str MC with 25 str.

You think you break the game? I hit 500 with it >.>

RIP difficulty. Tbh its making it stupidly hard to let anyone else level when me simply defending myself with the MC decimates anything.


In my attempts to break the game- day 4, noon, level 36 MC. The other two party members with me are 33/34.

What a waste of a half hour, now what do I do :V
 
I've played the DS version before, so this isn't news to me... But man, do I hate the fusion level cap in these games. Forcing you to fuse demons at your own level or below makes them obsolete REALLY quickly, and it just makea it difficult when your MC is below the current average levels of the enemies, unless you grind.
 

Soulflarz

Banned
I've played the DS version before, so this isn't news to me... But man, do I hate the fusion level cap in these games. Forcing you to fuse demons at your own level or below makes them obsolete REALLY quickly, and it just makea it difficult when your MC is below the current average levels of the enemies, unless you grind.

Well, I got my entire team from 27/28->~34 and MC from 30->36 in 35m, so it's not that bad grinding >.>
 

ohlawd

Member
that isn't unique to DS tho. applies for a whole bunch of other SMT games

and your demons aren't suddenly worthless just because their fusion level is 5 or so levels behind the MC.
 
Cmon, I'm using Assassinate on a Str MC with 25 str.

You think you break the game? I hit 500 with it >.>

RIP difficulty. Tbh its making it stupidly hard to let anyone else level when me simply defending myself with the MC decimates anything.


In my attempts to break the game- day 4, noon, level 36 MC. The other two party members with me are 33/34.

What a waste of a half hour, now what do I do :V

If you can solo with MC its far better to bench everyone else as much as possible (you actually end up gaining more XP, because the leaked XP is a percentage of how much the MC gains , and if you solo you get 4x as much XP to leak from (and since the leak amount is well over 25% you end up giving people way more XP). It's really more of a 2nd run tactic though, since on a 1st run you suffer from the degraded XP for outlevelling enemies and you need minions for Skill Cracking.
 
Just finished my run of the Septentrione arc. Thank god for the Blessed difficulty. Devil Survivor games are always really hard for me, and having already played through the game before, I enjoyed the eased difficulty. Now it's time for the new content!
 

Velcro Fly

Member
Should I be worried if my teammates die occasionally in battles?

I really need to flesh out teams and get everyone rolling with two demons quickly don't I? I think spreading damage across 3 instead of 2 will be a huge help so that things stop dying so fast. I know I have the auction so I guess I'll start there.

Haha I feel like such a fucking noob in this game though but it's really fun :(
 

Soulflarz

Banned
If you can solo with MC its far better to bench everyone else as much as possible (you actually end up gaining more XP, because the leaked XP is a percentage of how much the MC gains , and if you solo you get 4x as much XP to leak from (and since the leak amount is well over 25% you end up giving people way more XP). It's really more of a 2nd run tactic though, since on a 1st run you suffer from the degraded XP for outlevelling enemies and you need minions for Skill Cracking.

Ehh, I'm surviving. But yeah, the fact that I get no exp at 38 at the start of day 5 is sort of depressing.
 

Velcro Fly

Member
Yep having a full party of two demons and a human makes a difference.

Now comes the fun of trying to get Dia on as much as possible so I can carry the healing load. Pretty sure between skills and demons I have it on three and even have a pixie with Glamour. My auctions keep having this shitty Pixie that appears to have a reduced magic stat. Not sure if it's the same one until I buy it or what.

Babby strats for now but I'm enjoying the game. The complexity of basically having 12 party members but only four real groups is starting to come around for me. Not going to have just one dedicated healer I need multiple things in my group of 12 to carry the load. It's tough at first before you really realize it and treating the game like Fire Emblem and getting mad when a demon dies really hampered my fun at first.
 

atomsk

Party Pooper
Probably because most of gaf played the original on an R4 and don't want to spend $50 to play the new stuff

hu5qUqj.jpg

waiting on my next gamefly coupon to buy this one at $30

bought the original on launch and still haven't played it
 

Xenoflare

Member
Cmon, I'm using Assassinate on a Str MC with 25 str.

You think you break the game? I hit 500 with it >.>

RIP difficulty. Tbh its making it stupidly hard to let anyone else level when me simply defending myself with the MC decimates anything.


In my attempts to break the game- day 4, noon, level 36 MC. The other two party members with me are 33/34.

What a waste of a half hour, now what do I do :V

Oh I'm not using it on the MC. I use assassinate on peeps like Keita or even Daichi.

Jungo come on just a bit more push on one point of AGI please
 

MikeDip

God bless all my old friends/And god bless me too, why pretend?
Oh I'm not using it on the MC. I use assassinate on peeps like Keita or even Daichi.

Jungo come on just a bit more push on one point of AGI please

Heh, same here. So close, just pick it!
 

SephLuis

Member
So....I think I'm at the end of day 5
uh
Will this game ever provide a challenge like DeSu1 did? ;_;

No. Only one or other battle that I find it DeSu1 levels of difficulty, but the rest wasn't as hard. This time around, I also had many demons that were resistant/null to any kind of damage, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
 
I'm on day 7 and a couple of the Septentriones gave me a bit of trouble, but it's mostly been not to bad.

Although I have beaten the game before.

On my first playthrough I remember a few battles from the last few days giving me a bit of trouble, but I'm not quite at that point yet this time around.

DeSu 2 does give you a lot more skills and options though. I think it's the only megaten to have a resist Almighty skill.
 

Soulflarz

Banned
So I'm playing on Blessed difficulty and it's awesome because I am an INVINCIBLE KILLING MACHINE MWAHAHAHAHA!

You don't need to be on blessed. Im on the normal difficulty and I pretty much one shot- any of my teams would be reliable one group army if I wanted to go that route.
 

weevles

Member
Well, as relative SMT newb (despite playing a little off and on here and there), I'm grateful for blessed difficulty. I think I'm finally getting the hang of things. Using the Mecca DL runs for XP and mecca helps a lot, and it's nice that they scale with you.
 

Xenoflare

Member
I'm on day 7 and a couple of the Septentriones gave me a bit of trouble, but it's mostly been not to bad.

Although I have beaten the game before.

On my first playthrough I remember a few battles from the last few days giving me a bit of trouble, but I'm not quite at that point yet this time around.

DeSu 2 does give you a lot more skills and options though. I think it's the only megaten to have a resist Almighty skill.

It kinda ruins the point of "Almighty" attacks
 
Hidden Resistance to some form of almighty attacks (either by resisting damage or magic or physicals or rarely actually resisting almighty) is actually more common than you'd think in SMT.

Though its largely the property of bonus/final bosses and some special demons (eg DeSu Lucifer halves all damage as a hidden effect, can't remember if his DeSu2 version does). Making it explicit and allying your team access to it is the weird thing in DeSu2.

Edit to avoid double post.

The major challenge is methodically gaining all skill cracks since it usually forces some of your teams into poor positions.

Apart from that the really hard battles are Dubhe (largely because the game lies to you a lot. Doesn't tell you Dubhe's range and says he can move (he can't move until he's in his second form) and the escape squares are lies. What you actually have to do is get all 3 party members in their rough vicinity) and the Anti-Human one who banishes demons and splits in half.
 

Reveirg

Member
Picked it up because I locked it at 40$ CAN a while ago on amazon.ca.
Still got Nayuta no Kiseki, Etrian Mystery Dungeon and Code Name S.T.E.A.M. to go through, can't say I'm that hyped to play DS2 as I wasn't a huge fan of the first.

I hope it's better than than Overclocked, I found it to be the weakest SMT spin-offs out of those I played (DDS, Persona, Strange Journey, Devil Summoner, Soul Hackers). Still, I'll give this a chance soon enough.
Story was pretty good and the gameplay was alright for the most part. I can't say I really liked the characters and the music was really disappointing.
 

Xenoflare

Member
Hidden Resistance to some form of almighty attacks (either by resisting damage or magic or physicals or rarely actually resisting almighty) is actually more common than you'd think in SMT.

Though its largely the property of bonus/final bosses and some special demons (eg DeSu Lucifer halves all damage as a hidden effect, can't remember if his DeSu2 version does). Making it explicit and allying your team access to it is the weird thing in DeSu2.

Edit to avoid double post.

The major challenge is methodically gaining all skill cracks since it usually forces some of your teams into poor positions.

Apart from that the really hard battles are Dubhe (largely because the game lies to you a lot. Doesn't tell you Dubhe's range and says he can move (he can't move until he's in his second form) and the escape squares are lies. What you actually have to do is get all 3 party members in their rough vicinity) and the Anti-Human one who banishes demons and splits in half.

Joint skill cracks makes life a lot easier as the MC can crack multiple skills at once
 

Soulflarz

Banned
*truth*

Jungo now has pierce and assassinate. I feel like he can take over the world now.


Also this game is making me want to get a XL. This game is puny on that OG bottom screen.

Jungo? Psh, Str Build MC. People told me it would be harder so I went for it.
 

Xenoflare

Member
Jungo? Psh, Str Build MC. People told me it would be harder so I went for it.

Uhh Jungo is a phys build. I went with MA/AG like I always do.

Edit: For someone who already finished the game
I know that the "perfect ending" requires joining Daichi and recruit everyone sans AO (Fate 4) Do I also have to get people who joins me on Daichi's route from the get go to level 4 as well?
 

ohlawd

Member
Uhh Jungo is a phys build. I went with MA/AG like I always do.

Edit: For someone who already finished the game
I know that the "perfect ending" requires joining Daichi and recruit everyone sans AO (Fate 4) Do I also have to get people who joins me on Daichi's route from the get go to level 4 as well?

to get the true ending, yep. everyone at lvl 4 except AO. Daichi's team don't have to be lvl 4 at the start of the route but they need to be lvl 4 by the end.
 

Xenoflare

Member
to get the true ending, yep. everyone at lvl 4 except AO. Daichi's team don't have to be lvl 4 at the start of the route but they need to be lvl 4 by the end.

Thank you, although I'm just going through the character events randomly. Hopefully it doesn't bite me in the ass in the future...
 
T

thepotatoman

Unconfirmed Member
I hope you don't miss too much story related stuff if you don't remember anything about the first game. About the only thing I remember from playing the first game was that I really liked playing it.
 

OuterLimits

Member
My apologies but I could use a bit of help. Is it best to just put points into mainly 2 stats? I'm guessing trying to to evenly distribute points among all categories would result in disaster.
I honestly can't decide if I want to do magic or strength, or if agility is better than vitality. Ugh, decisions. Lol.
 

Soulflarz

Banned
My apologies but I could use a bit of help. Is it best to just put points into mainly 2 stats? I'm guessing trying to to evenly distribute points among all categories would result in disaster.
I honestly can't decide if I want to do magic or strength, or if agility is better than vitality. Ugh, decisions. Lol.

From what I hear
Mag>Str
Ag>Vit

Then again, I just hit 40 str on day 6, and im mauling everything :D
 
There's really no garbage stat. Everything has it's usefulness.

I wouldn't say that precisely , a perfectly split build (29/29/28/28) at level 99 would be pretty terrible, especially in the late game on a first play through where you're generally only in the 60s end game (which means that you don't actually qualify for the best physical or magical abilities and you rarely get initiative).

Split builds do tend to work fairly well early on, through mid game, because its actually a good thing to meet the requirements for skills (magic builds need >12 in Str and Vit and 15 in Agility for skill access that are pretty central to good magic builds (you need ~20 Vit to get Anti-Almighty if you're going for that)).

Physical builds can be a bit more lopsided, since Str/Agi and Str/Vit are both solid in their own right and their reliance on Mag is low. Though its generally true that Str/Agi is the better build late game (the Ag based physical "dance" skills are obscene), Str/Vit is better until you can really get those things going (Str and Vit give you a solid defense against pretty much all attacks).

ETA- I forgot how hard that first Osaka free battle is when you first encounter it. Those Evil Wave/Phantasm teams are monstrous (especially since so many of the available demons early on are weak to Zio).
 
I just finished up with the Triangulum arc, and thought it was really good. It took me around 14 hours to finish, but I did play on Blessed and used a few NG+ bonuses so those probably helped speed it up. The story was more much more interesting than that of the Septentrione arc (awfully predictable at times though), and a lot of the Fate events were pretty funny. I'm definitely happy with my purchase.
 
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