Full disclosure: For the purposes of this video, I did use a save state between these two battles. So here’s what happened: I was stubbornly trying to defeat Merkabah while letting Gaston get the final hit in, just for kicks. It’s really difficult to set up correctly, so it took me a ton of tries, even though it wasn’t actually that hard for me to beat Merkabah. Anyway, when I finally got it right, I decided to set a save state between the two battles. I didn’t want to have to use it, but I kept it just in case because I didn’t want to have to go through the entire process of setting up the kill for Gaston again. Anyway, I beat Lucifer on my first try, but after the battle I realized that Gemori and Cabracan didn’t get enough experience to whisper Mediarama to Nanashi, which is pretty important for Odin. I went back to the save state so I could switch in those two at the end for an experience boost and won on the first try again, which is the battle shown in the video. The point is, I didn’t use the save state so I could win the battles, but so I could have a recording where Gaston killed Merkabah. I went back and did both battles without the save state later, but I didn’t bother recording it.
Not blaming you at all for doing so since it doesnt really matter, but couldn't you have gotten the exp for that on the forced encounter right before Odin?
It's not enough experience for either Cabracan or Gemori to level up, even with the extra experience from recruiting demons before Odin. The experience boost from ending the Lucifer battle as summoned demons is pretty massive because they get more experience from that battle, as well as from the Armageddon quest that is immediately completed after defeating Lucifer. Meanwhile, the forced battle you mentioned only awards about 50000 experience, which is nowhere near enough to level them up.
Thank you for stopping the citizens in one of the dialogue choices, I don't have Apocalypse yet, but I do enjoy wanting to see what happens when you pick certain choices! (Kinda sucks "Flynn" is sending people straight to their deaths but, when replaying it you see exactly how crapsack the entire battle is when only YOU can beat Merkabah and Lucifer) Cheers!
I got very lucky doing this fight for the first time. Merkabah only used Luster Candy once and Hexagram twice, then Lucifer only inflicted panic once the entire battle despite spamming evil gleam. A first try win despite a stupid mistake late in the Lucifer fight nearly costing me the whole thing. Only reason I won was choosing to select "a peaceful life with my friends" instead and getting a full support gauge. Was able to do enough damage with Nanashi and 1 demon left on the field to pull it off. Stressful fight
Well, this was disappointing. You can easily tell those two fights were originally designed in SMT IV rather than the (gameplay-wise) superior IV:A. Lucifer's skill-set, especially, would make him unbeatable under those restrictions if he were played by a human. If he just spammed Debilitate into Evil Gleam, there wouldn't be much of anything Bucket could do. The only reason he isn't much of a threat is that his AI keeps messing up, doesn't use Dekunda, etc. In IV:A, they generally did a better job of making boss fights actual fights. Bosses feel like opponents who are genuinely trying to win, making the most of their skill-set. Here, in IV style, the fight hinges on your opponent not using his "I win" buttons.
I must say, I disagree with everything that you said here. I can assure you that both these fights were designed to be significantly more strategic and less luck-based than any story bosses in SMT IV. You mention that these battles would be much more difficult if the bosses “played like humans,” but that has never been the case for any boss in this game. Just like players can’t spam skills because of MP concerns, every major boss in Apocalypse has set rules that they must adhere to that define their skill choices. Sukuna-Hikona can only use Infernal Hail or Needlestorm once per turn. Maitreya can only use Dekaja when a stat hits +3 and Adramelech can only use Dekunda when a stat hits -3. Most bosses can only use party-wide attacks once per turn, and some, like Merkabah and Lucifer, are restricted to using their strongest moves less than once per turn or at specific intervals (under normal circumstances). These aren’t acts of mercy, these are deliberate design choices made by the developers in response to the problems with boss design in games like SMT IV. Bosses can’t use “I win” buttons in this game because they don’t exist, and that’s quite noticeable if you pay attention to their move choices. Regarding the Lucifer battle specifically, powerful moves like Morning Star and Evil Gleam are normally used every few turns at most. The only reason you see them used frequently in this battle is because I’m using Tetrakarn, which the developers planned for and scripted Lucifer’s moves to work around. With Tetrakarn, it’s a calculated compromise; I allow Lucifer to use Evil Gleam every turn in exchange for taking physical and gun attacks out of the equation. The developers specifically planned for Tetrakarn use in a way that wouldn’t inherently favor either the player or Lucifer, but in a way that a smart player could use to their advantage. Here, I was able to put together a setup that could mitigate the panic effects with Sleipnir while still covering his other moves, so Tetrakarn worked to my advantage. This is just one way that the designers set up these bosses so good players could make the system work in their favor.
@@Bucketgetter When I said "I win" buttons, I was talking about Dekunda and Debilitate, which would have made Evil Gleam deadly, not the Evil Gleam itself. As you said yourself in the description, there isn't any known reason why he didn't use Dekunda at all. That's why I said the fight looked easy thanks to Lucifer happening not to use it. Indeed, all major bosses are scripted to some extent. For example, the final boss only uses "Infinite Power" at the end of his turn, because if he did it at the start, there wouldn't be any way to survive his +3 smirked Supernova. He is scripted to end his turn with "Infinite Power" so that the player is given a chance to remove the smirk / +3 buff. "Sukuna-Hikona can only use Infernal Hail or Needlestorm once per turn." Typically, that kind of restriction doesn't break the story immersion. You can easily assume that these moves are too energy-taxing for him to spam - even if there isn't any actual game mechanic to justify that. "Maitreya can only use Dekaja when a stat hits +3 and Adramelech can only use Dekunda when a stat hits -3" Again, it doesn't seem unbelievable that a boss would only prioritise removing buffs after they get past a certain threshold. Here, on the other hand, watching the video (just like when I played the game myself, if I recall correctly), I couldn't help thinking "why is Lucifer not doing anything about these debuffs? He has Dekunda!". I can agree that his answer to Tetrakarn is better thought-out though.
Well, after further testing I have confirmed that it is Makarakarn and Tetrakarn that essentially deactivate Debilitate and Dekunda in his script. However, I’m certain that this was fully accounted for by the developers when they made this battle. As I mentioned, Lucifer’s attack script heavily relies on Evil Gleam while Tetrakarn is up, which is a move that does about 480 damage with no buffs or buffs up. In his phase 2 script, he can easily deal a massive amount of damage to the entire team, since he gets Morning Star into Evil Gleam every turn Tetrakarn is used. From a game balance perspective, it simply doesn’t make sense to allow him to use Dekunda. If he could, then demons would need 600 HP minimum just to survive the Morning Star - Evil Gleam combo. If he could, then the battle would suffer from the same problem as battles like Beelzebub in SMT IV; there’s no viable strategy other than brute-force, with heavy buffing/debuffing and using demons with high HP. Apocalypse bosses were built around allowing multiple solutions to problems, which is why they had him lay off of the buff/debuffs when he’s throwing Morning Star and Evil Gleam out every turn. Also, as a side note, Debilitate and Dekunda could be worked around to some extent if I wanted to. I could have fed Sleipnir a little more experience for Dekunda at level 58. I could have used Isabeau for healing if I weren’t set on using Gaston. Dealing with Debilitate and Dekunda also wouldn’t be that bad with a null/repel physical demon in place of Tetrakarn, but Girimekhala is just out of reach at level 62. I think that there’s a good possibility that the developers recognized that null/repel physical wouldn’t be accessible in a low level run, so they altered his Tetrakarn script so that he would still deal a lot of damage with Evil Gleam and Morning Star, but that Debilitate and Dekunda wouldn’t make the battle impossible.
@@Bucketgetter I understand what you're saying. Generally speaking, party-wide almighty skills aren't necessarily the most interesting thing to balance. As you said, aside from brut-forcing with high HP, there isn't much strategy involved for the player. Either your team survives and you win, of they don't and you lose. That's the reason why I'd probably advocate nerfing resistances (for example by removing inheritable skills like null/drain/repel) in SMT V. As the game stands, resistances mean that late-game bosses need to brute-force the fights with almighty skills (or piercing ones, as the final boss does in IV:A), which in turns means the player has to brute-force with high HP. There could be more subtlety involved with resistances. With that said, Dekunda wouldn't necessarily make the fight impossible, if Lucifer were scripted not to use it on the same turn as Evil Gleam. He could have, say, a Dekunda --> double Debilitate turn into a Morning Star / Evil Gleam one. That way, while Lucifer would be more threatening, the player still gets a turn to re-apply debuffs.
Look, I get it. You want "more difficult" battles. But most of what you're asserting about battles isn't true and and the "solutions" you're suggesting simply aren't good game design or are completely unreasonable. So, for resistances: Using almighty skills and piercing effects is not the primary way bosses deal with nulls and reflects for the majority of the game. Most of them just choose not to target demons that have nulls and repels with single-target moves at all and won't use specific multi-target or party-wide attacks if nulls are present. This was a drastic change from Nocturne and SMT IV where bosses had very little targeting AI. Apocalypse made big changes by altering the meaning of nulls and repels. They no longer serve the primary purpose of removing press turns from bosses, but rather to redirect attacks and prevent bosses from using certain moves. Anyway, inheritable nulls/drains are very difficult to come by anyway. There are only three null skills available prior to level 78, and they're only obtainable on one demon each. At that point, most of them aren't even worth it anyway unless it's for covering up a weakness. Now, back to Merkabah and Lucifer. Let's take a step back. Each of them has 17000 HP individually, which is more than every single boss in the game prior to Dagda. And they're consecutive. Now, even with a +9 Hamaon and Mudoon, which is just about the most efficient attacking option, it still took me 6 Chakra Pots and numerous Chakra Drops to get through both battles, and I'm not even close to the end of the game. Can you imagine what it would take if I weren't prepared? You're suggesting that they should just throw out buffs and Dekaja/Dekunda whenever just because they can, so I would have to counter it with MP that doesn't exist. The developers recognized what was reasonable with the changes they made to MP and consumable use in Apocalypse, and set up their attack scripts and move frequency to match that. Just because a boss can a move doesn't mean that they should use it in a balanced game. Yes, I know I'm doing this without fusing and at a lower level than other players, so I don't have the tools necessary to deal with aggressive buffing and debuffing. But I shouldn't have to, because any well-balanced game provides ways for a good player to be good by winning with flawed tools. In SMT games, "fusion" is just another kind of grinding. Players invest time to fuse stronger demons so they don't have to strategize as much or so they don't have to execute as well. Pigeonholing players into fusing demons with specific characteristics to get by has never made battles interesting.
Merkabah's the only good voice acting in this dub. Where everyone else sounds overacted, stilted and awkward, Merk sounds... well, he's also stilted and awkward. But it makes sense for him.
Nah what are you talking about. All the main divine powers people, Dagda, Satand and Lucifer sound great. I think Lucifer especially was an improvement from smt IV, as it captures his cockiness and pride a lot better.
@@eugene9211 Apoc more so tried to go back on the Lucifer representation, and bring back some of his traits whenevee he is Louis Cyphre, thus the more arrogant tone. While less imposing, it more so invokes the feeling that Lucifer wants you to prove yourself to him
![Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse Boss Merkabah & Lucifer [APOCALYPSE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cV-iar97t0Y/mqdefault.jpg)
![GEEK TIMË [OFFICIAL AUDIO]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ry-6RvkH880/mqdefault.jpg)
Full disclosure: For the purposes of this video, I did use a save state between these two battles. So here’s what happened: I was stubbornly trying to defeat Merkabah while letting Gaston get the final hit in, just for kicks. It’s really difficult to set up correctly, so it took me a ton of tries, even though it wasn’t actually that hard for me to beat Merkabah. Anyway, when I finally got it right, I decided to set a save state between the two battles. I didn’t want to have to use it, but I kept it just in case because I didn’t want to have to go through the entire process of setting up the kill for Gaston again. Anyway, I beat Lucifer on my first try, but after the battle I realized that Gemori and Cabracan didn’t get enough experience to whisper Mediarama to Nanashi, which is pretty important for Odin. I went back to the save state so I could switch in those two at the end for an experience boost and won on the first try again, which is the battle shown in the video. The point is, I didn’t use the save state so I could win the battles, but so I could have a recording where Gaston killed Merkabah. I went back and did both battles without the save state later, but I didn’t bother recording it.
You King
Not blaming you at all for doing so since it doesnt really matter, but couldn't you have gotten the exp for that on the forced encounter right before Odin?
It's not enough experience for either Cabracan or Gemori to level up, even with the extra experience from recruiting demons before Odin. The experience boost from ending the Lucifer battle as summoned demons is pretty massive because they get more experience from that battle, as well as from the Armageddon quest that is immediately completed after defeating Lucifer. Meanwhile, the forced battle you mentioned only awards about 50000 experience, which is nowhere near enough to level them up.
Gaston jumps in! Not once but twice!
Thank you for stopping the citizens in one of the dialogue choices, I don't have Apocalypse yet, but I do enjoy wanting to see what happens when you pick certain choices! (Kinda sucks "Flynn" is sending people straight to their deaths but, when replaying it you see exactly how crapsack the entire battle is when only YOU can beat Merkabah and Lucifer)
Cheers!
Also, it's free souls for Shesha
nobody makes Merkabah smile like Gaston.
The joke would have worked...if Gaston could actually make Merkabah smirk, but he has no moves that Merkabah is immune to
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 cringe.
@@christopherbravo1813 Imagine they made Merkabah repel Phys for shits and giggles
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 that would be perfect.
@@kichiroumitsurugi4363 Smirkabah is already dangerous enough, and you suggest Repel Phys?
Blasphemy!
I got very lucky doing this fight for the first time. Merkabah only used Luster Candy once and Hexagram twice, then Lucifer only inflicted panic once the entire battle despite spamming evil gleam. A first try win despite a stupid mistake late in the Lucifer fight nearly costing me the whole thing. Only reason I won was choosing to select "a peaceful life with my friends" instead and getting a full support gauge. Was able to do enough damage with Nanashi and 1 demon left on the field to pull it off. Stressful fight
2:06 De-nied
Well, this was disappointing.
You can easily tell those two fights were originally designed in SMT IV rather than the (gameplay-wise) superior IV:A. Lucifer's skill-set, especially, would make him unbeatable under those restrictions if he were played by a human. If he just spammed Debilitate into Evil Gleam, there wouldn't be much of anything Bucket could do. The only reason he isn't much of a threat is that his AI keeps messing up, doesn't use Dekunda, etc.
In IV:A, they generally did a better job of making boss fights actual fights. Bosses feel like opponents who are genuinely trying to win, making the most of their skill-set. Here, in IV style, the fight hinges on your opponent not using his "I win" buttons.
I must say, I disagree with everything that you said here. I can assure you that both these fights were designed to be significantly more strategic and less luck-based than any story bosses in SMT IV. You mention that these battles would be much more difficult if the bosses “played like humans,” but that has never been the case for any boss in this game. Just like players can’t spam skills because of MP concerns, every major boss in Apocalypse has set rules that they must adhere to that define their skill choices. Sukuna-Hikona can only use Infernal Hail or Needlestorm once per turn. Maitreya can only use Dekaja when a stat hits +3 and Adramelech can only use Dekunda when a stat hits -3. Most bosses can only use party-wide attacks once per turn, and some, like Merkabah and Lucifer, are restricted to using their strongest moves less than once per turn or at specific intervals (under normal circumstances). These aren’t acts of mercy, these are deliberate design choices made by the developers in response to the problems with boss design in games like SMT IV. Bosses can’t use “I win” buttons in this game because they don’t exist, and that’s quite noticeable if you pay attention to their move choices.
Regarding the Lucifer battle specifically, powerful moves like Morning Star and Evil Gleam are normally used every few turns at most. The only reason you see them used frequently in this battle is because I’m using Tetrakarn, which the developers planned for and scripted Lucifer’s moves to work around. With Tetrakarn, it’s a calculated compromise; I allow Lucifer to use Evil Gleam every turn in exchange for taking physical and gun attacks out of the equation. The developers specifically planned for Tetrakarn use in a way that wouldn’t inherently favor either the player or Lucifer, but in a way that a smart player could use to their advantage. Here, I was able to put together a setup that could mitigate the panic effects with Sleipnir while still covering his other moves, so Tetrakarn worked to my advantage. This is just one way that the designers set up these bosses so good players could make the system work in their favor.
@@Bucketgetter When I said "I win" buttons, I was talking about Dekunda and Debilitate, which would have made Evil Gleam deadly, not the Evil Gleam itself. As you said yourself in the description, there isn't any known reason why he didn't use Dekunda at all. That's why I said the fight looked easy thanks to Lucifer happening not to use it.
Indeed, all major bosses are scripted to some extent. For example, the final boss only uses "Infinite Power" at the end of his turn, because if he did it at the start, there wouldn't be any way to survive his +3 smirked Supernova. He is scripted to end his turn with "Infinite Power" so that the player is given a chance to remove the smirk / +3 buff.
"Sukuna-Hikona can only use Infernal Hail or Needlestorm once per turn." Typically, that kind of restriction doesn't break the story immersion. You can easily assume that these moves are too energy-taxing for him to spam - even if there isn't any actual game mechanic to justify that.
"Maitreya can only use Dekaja when a stat hits +3 and Adramelech can only use Dekunda when a stat hits -3" Again, it doesn't seem unbelievable that a boss would only prioritise removing buffs after they get past a certain threshold.
Here, on the other hand, watching the video (just like when I played the game myself, if I recall correctly), I couldn't help thinking "why is Lucifer not doing anything about these debuffs? He has Dekunda!".
I can agree that his answer to Tetrakarn is better thought-out though.
Well, after further testing I have confirmed that it is Makarakarn and Tetrakarn that essentially deactivate Debilitate and Dekunda in his script. However, I’m certain that this was fully accounted for by the developers when they made this battle. As I mentioned, Lucifer’s attack script heavily relies on Evil Gleam while Tetrakarn is up, which is a move that does about 480 damage with no buffs or buffs up. In his phase 2 script, he can easily deal a massive amount of damage to the entire team, since he gets Morning Star into Evil Gleam every turn Tetrakarn is used. From a game balance perspective, it simply doesn’t make sense to allow him to use Dekunda. If he could, then demons would need 600 HP minimum just to survive the Morning Star - Evil Gleam combo. If he could, then the battle would suffer from the same problem as battles like Beelzebub in SMT IV; there’s no viable strategy other than brute-force, with heavy buffing/debuffing and using demons with high HP. Apocalypse bosses were built around allowing multiple solutions to problems, which is why they had him lay off of the buff/debuffs when he’s throwing Morning Star and Evil Gleam out every turn.
Also, as a side note, Debilitate and Dekunda could be worked around to some extent if I wanted to. I could have fed Sleipnir a little more experience for Dekunda at level 58. I could have used Isabeau for healing if I weren’t set on using Gaston. Dealing with Debilitate and Dekunda also wouldn’t be that bad with a null/repel physical demon in place of Tetrakarn, but Girimekhala is just out of reach at level 62. I think that there’s a good possibility that the developers recognized that null/repel physical wouldn’t be accessible in a low level run, so they altered his Tetrakarn script so that he would still deal a lot of damage with Evil Gleam and Morning Star, but that Debilitate and Dekunda wouldn’t make the battle impossible.
@@Bucketgetter I understand what you're saying.
Generally speaking, party-wide almighty skills aren't necessarily the most interesting thing to balance. As you said, aside from brut-forcing with high HP, there isn't much strategy involved for the player. Either your team survives and you win, of they don't and you lose. That's the reason why I'd probably advocate nerfing resistances (for example by removing inheritable skills like null/drain/repel) in SMT V. As the game stands, resistances mean that late-game bosses need to brute-force the fights with almighty skills (or piercing ones, as the final boss does in IV:A), which in turns means the player has to brute-force with high HP. There could be more subtlety involved with resistances.
With that said, Dekunda wouldn't necessarily make the fight impossible, if Lucifer were scripted not to use it on the same turn as Evil Gleam. He could have, say, a Dekunda --> double Debilitate turn into a Morning Star / Evil Gleam one. That way, while Lucifer would be more threatening, the player still gets a turn to re-apply debuffs.
Look, I get it. You want "more difficult" battles. But most of what you're asserting about battles isn't true and and the "solutions" you're suggesting simply aren't good game design or are completely unreasonable.
So, for resistances: Using almighty skills and piercing effects is not the primary way bosses deal with nulls and reflects for the majority of the game. Most of them just choose not to target demons that have nulls and repels with single-target moves at all and won't use specific multi-target or party-wide attacks if nulls are present. This was a drastic change from Nocturne and SMT IV where bosses had very little targeting AI. Apocalypse made big changes by altering the meaning of nulls and repels. They no longer serve the primary purpose of removing press turns from bosses, but rather to redirect attacks and prevent bosses from using certain moves. Anyway, inheritable nulls/drains are very difficult to come by anyway. There are only three null skills available prior to level 78, and they're only obtainable on one demon each. At that point, most of them aren't even worth it anyway unless it's for covering up a weakness.
Now, back to Merkabah and Lucifer. Let's take a step back. Each of them has 17000 HP individually, which is more than every single boss in the game prior to Dagda. And they're consecutive. Now, even with a +9 Hamaon and Mudoon, which is just about the most efficient attacking option, it still took me 6 Chakra Pots and numerous Chakra Drops to get through both battles, and I'm not even close to the end of the game. Can you imagine what it would take if I weren't prepared? You're suggesting that they should just throw out buffs and Dekaja/Dekunda whenever just because they can, so I would have to counter it with MP that doesn't exist. The developers recognized what was reasonable with the changes they made to MP and consumable use in Apocalypse, and set up their attack scripts and move frequency to match that. Just because a boss can a move doesn't mean that they should use it in a balanced game.
Yes, I know I'm doing this without fusing and at a lower level than other players, so I don't have the tools necessary to deal with aggressive buffing and debuffing. But I shouldn't have to, because any well-balanced game provides ways for a good player to be good by winning with flawed tools. In SMT games, "fusion" is just another kind of grinding. Players invest time to fuse stronger demons so they don't have to strategize as much or so they don't have to execute as well. Pigeonholing players into fusing demons with specific characteristics to get by has never made battles interesting.
I feel like the SMT V writers took a look at this fight and chose to base the narrative around completely invalidating this version of Lucifer
Merkabah's the only good voice acting in this dub. Where everyone else sounds overacted, stilted and awkward, Merk sounds... well, he's also stilted and awkward. But it makes sense for him.
Nah what are you talking about. All the main divine powers people, Dagda, Satand and Lucifer sound great. I think Lucifer especially was an improvement from smt IV, as it captures his cockiness and pride a lot better.
@@eugene9211 Apoc more so tried to go back on the Lucifer representation, and bring back some of his traits whenevee he is Louis Cyphre, thus the more arrogant tone. While less imposing, it more so invokes the feeling that Lucifer wants you to prove yourself to him