So as Eirikr said in response to my earlier blog post, it's starting to hit the fan now. Either I'm getting lucky at what I have ingested at the time of the boss fights, or the level's leading me to have the right tool for the right job, but Ose at the end of Nihilo wasn't as bad as I'd imagined he'd be. And after that, things got messed up. I don't know what shocked me more, Gozu Tennoh's dying or Diasoujou casting Mamadoon on my party. I was completely expecting Samsara, but his SP drain attacks to start the fight off were annoying enough, didn't need him jigging my party on top of it. Fortunately Matador was making it so when he'd try such silliness he'd skip out on the rest of his turn, and I was able to push through enough physical damage thanks to Focus attacks and Naga healing himself every strike to get through without having to burn a bunch of SP items.
Back in the headquarters, I met up with Chiaki and Isamu, and seriously, Isamu's kinda pissing me off at this point. I can't explain exactly what it is about Isamu that's making my teeth grind around him, but I felt more of a connection with Gozu Tennoh than I did with either Chiaki or Isamu. Probably when I find Takao it'll put enough of the pieces together for me to figure out what exactly is going on and what I want to do about it (although decisions I'm making now are having an effect, maybe on a second playthrough?) But while I gave a tentative offer to help Chiaki, I'm not set on helping out Isamu at all.
On the way to rescue the inventor manakin now, and while Hell Biker wasn't an easy fight, but I never felt in danger to dying to him either. Two more pieces of the Candelabrum acquired and it was on the way to the prison.
I really liked the layout and design of Kabukicho prison. The use of the fog and flipping everything upside down was interesting, and it seemed like when I started to get confused it had the right visual cue that I'd pick up on with Jack Frost standing on the ceiling. For fun, I also took out some of the very low level demons and sat them in my party, acquiring their skills while Matador, Baphomet and I went house on the monsters in the prison. Pixie goes to 6, Will O Wisp goes up to 6, and I registered and fused them into more demons which are picking up more skills because of the amount the fusing demons were bringing in. A couple thousand XP isn't going to help most of my characters right now, but those little guys are getting hooked up. It'll make them more expensive to drag them out, but I've topped 50K Macca now, and going through slowly is keeping my funds in good shape. I'm having a debate about picking up more of the Mitamas and beginning to use them to boost up the demons I'm using now. (Grab Kusi, fuse into Matador, bring Kusi back out, fuse again.) Maybe there's a limit as to how many times you can do it, I'll have to experiment around with it.
At the end of the prison two things I found interesting happened. First I used the option to tell Isamu to take a hike, as the leanings of him being a passive aggressive bastard wasn't helped by his dialogue. He drops into the Amala network and hell, I might chase him down in there and put a beating on him just out of principle. I don't know what it is, but I just really don't care for the character, not like he or Chiaki had much chance to build character before the Conception happened, but one seems like a passive aggressive twat, and the other seems like a poor little rich girl who desperately wants a pity party. Both of them seem to grasp that things have changed radically, but neither seems like they're letting go enough of their prior lives to move forward and really tackle the challenges. Then again, maybe it's just that they can't focus a lunge into a Mothman.
Second, it seemed like a perfect place where you could get "lost" at the end of that fight. But the manakin directed me at that point exactly where to go next. (Back to Ginza to receive more marching orders from Hijiri.) While the game to this point has flowed pretty naturally, it felt almost like a "Ok, you just cleared chapter one, now go here to get started on chapter two." The game's done a good job of leading you from place to place, and it was strange to see it almost break completely from that progression and blatantly point you to where you were going next. But damned if I didn't appreciate it.
I'm delving into the Ikebukuro Tunnel and it was strangely satisfying to see the train station from the beginning of the game. I even tried to hit up the vending machine to see if it'd do something else and spent some time moving the camera around to look at the writing on the plaques it's a good thing I have the light spells, so I'm using those to move around and it looks like the four Oni are next on the list of minor boss fights. Exploring the tunnels is slow as the enemies are actually having an effect on leveling up my demons, so I'll explore slowly and if I hit the wall, increase the enemy encounter rate for a while to make sure I'm ready for the next fight.
It's taken some adjustment, but over the weekend I hit the point of just letting the game happen. I think the story picking up again might have something to do with it and it seems like Nocturne shares the trait with Digital Devil Saga that it takes a bit for everything to get going, but once it does, you're going to want to see it through to the end. It feels like I just crested that hill where the game snowballs and you push through to the end.
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