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You can get a lot done in 97 minutes. Make an elaborate dinner. Do those chores you've been putting off. Fritter away another irreplaceable sliver of your lifespan in your PvP game of choice. Instead of those equally excellent options, I recently gave in to my desire to play something like Metaphor: ReFantazio, the new JRPG from Atlus developed by a team of Persona and Shin Megami Tensei veterans, to tide me over until its release. Turning elsewhere to scratch this Atlus itch, I revisited Shin Megami Tensei 5: Vengeance specifically to spend an absurd amount of time beating a single, openly unfair boss fight. It was grueling. It was inadvisable. It was a decade of justice packed into 97 minutes of turn-based brutality so vindicating that I'm still waiting on the forklift I ordered to move my ego.
A boss out of time
Back in June, I had the chance to talk to Atlus veteran and now Metaphor: ReFantazio director Katsura Hashino, who got his start at the company with Shin Megami Tensei games and went on to direct 2003's Shin Megami Tensei 3: Nocturne. After the many times that Nocturne elbowed my teeth in when I played it over 10 years ago, naturally I took the opportunity to ask, in so many words, what was up with that, my guy? Hashino was a good sport, unexpectedly apologizing and also admitting that Nocturne is probably the hardest game he's ever made. At the time I had no idea that Nocturne was about to indirectly pummel me once again.
With its Vengeance expansion, Shin Megami Tensei 5 became one of the two 100+ hour RPGs that I've fully replayed. The other is Persona 5, via Persona 5 Royal. I have a hard time replaying games in general, and I truly thought I was done with SMT5 for good after this. But a questline in Vengeance kept gnawing at me after the credits rolled. I'd trounced a whole load of Fiend-type bosses throughout one side quest chain, and the prize awaiting me was a shot at the reigning champ: the Demi-Fiend, also known as the protagonist of Nocturne. It's the fight of the century: protagonist against protagonist, my beautiful blue-haired son versus my less-beautiful but still loved tattooed son. And it is, I'd decided, not worth the time.
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I've played a lot of Shin Megami Tensei games, always on hard mode, but I've usually skipped over their customary superbosses because they often require a fair bit of grinding to overcome, whereas I actively avoid grinding in JRPGs to save time and, more importantly, to preserve a sense of challenge. But with SMT5V, after finally airing my good-natured Nocturne grievances with Hashino, something about conceding to the Demi-Fiend really bothered me. I was born in Nocturne, molded by it. I was the Demi-Fiend for 130 miserable, amazing hours. Am I really gonna run from this?
Yes, I decided. At least at first. But then, eventually, the Demi-Fiend's taunts from hell pulled me back in. Still playing on hard mode, I gave the fight a shot and promptly had my entire party hit for around 15,000 damage – in a game where your max health is 999. OK, that was a fun rake to step on. Love the taste of my own blood. Am I really gonna do this?
No, I decided. At least at first. But then, darn it all, I began to think. I must've done something wrong – a reasonable thing to think, I think. There's no way that grinding alone could overcome that kind of damage ceiling. This giga-wipe has to be preventable. With a bit of – sigh – grinding, I worked out ways to counter all of the Demi-Fiend's summoned demons to simplify the fight and free me up to deal more damage to the big man himself. It turns out this is the whole point of the encounter: kill one of the summons every six turns to prevent the wipe, while managing whatever boss damage you can. OK, that's actually kind of cool. I can probably do that. Surely the fight won't get 20 times harder.
Vengeance
Reader, you're not gonna believe this: it got 20 times harder. The Demi-Fiend is what we in the business call some horseshit. He summons infinite allies, for starters, albeit on a rotation that you can exploit. Once per fight, he heals himself to full when you get him down to half HP. At set HP intervals, he casts an unavoidable AoE spell that has a non-trivial chance to one-hit everyone on your team and which always reduces your actions next turn, making it harder to recover. His allies cancel your buffs and debuffs while casting devastating heals of their own if you give them a chance. He has a spammable AoE attack that forces you to keep physical nullification in your party at all times. He has 60,000 HP, hits harder than an overdraft fee, and resists all damage types. This was gonna suck.
To make it suck less, I first beat Shiva, better known as Baby's First Superboss, to add him and his defense reduction to my team. I burned through countless saved items to power-level my demons and give them specific skills, ending with about 17 level 99 members and some mid-90s pinch hitters. The absolute GOATs of the whole run were Amanozako, an unlockable demon who can turn your party's debuffs into buffs when you sub her in, and Baal, who gives you an extra action when he's hit by a debuff. Baal stayed on-field the entire fight, and I rotated Amanozako in to cleanse the party. This is how fantasy football fans sound, people.
My A-team was rounded out by some essential healers as well as damage dealers of every element, tuned for mana conservation because, given the sheer length of the fight, your entire party running out of mana is a very real danger. I avoided all the popular cheese and skip strategies that I later found online – it feels great to see people clear this fight in 30 seconds, love that for me – though I did stubbornly try preventing the Demi-Fiend's 50% heal for a few attempts. In the end, I patiently whittled him down bit by bit, budgeting my mana and rotating my demons to counter his rotation. What was my main character doing? My beautiful blue-haired son? Mostly playing conductor to the demons, using items, crying, squeezing in some piercing Almighty damage, tanking hits with his boosted Vitality, more crying, and questioning life decisions.
At some point in this foolhardy grind, the Demi-Fiend came to represent all the frustrations I ever had with Nocturne, and SMT5: Vengeance became a shot at some vengeance of my own. Finally, I could be on the kicking end of this butt-kicking. So I tried and tried and tried again, wiping and strategizing day after day for nearly a week of bittersweet after-work sessions, grinding and then falling at the gates of glory for some 15 hours total, until finally the Demi-Fiend fell over.
My successful attempt was 97 minutes of uninterrupted, nail-biting, checkpoint-free, turn-based combat. When I saw the Demi-Fiend's health enter the red I thought my controller would crinkle in my grip. If I had thrown this run, my skeleton would've exited my flesh in outrage. But I did it! And I'm as ready for Metaphor as I can possibly be, my Persona and Shin Megami Tensei muscles thoroughly pumped. Did I then take the newly recruited Demi-Fiend into the fight with the game's real superboss, Satan? Nope! I have no beef with Satan, frankly, and that, reader, ain't worth the time.
Our Metaphor: ReFantazio review gives it high marks for stellar art, storytelling, exploration, and social elements.
