Follow TV Tropes

Following

Awesome / Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey

Go To

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

  • Watching the demon lords of each sector lose their marbles by means of a Shut Up, Hannibal!.
    • Talk to the demons in the final sector. If they aren't on your side, they freak out when they realize who you are. You've become so powerful that ancient gods and devils fear you on reputation alone.
  • Asura's rage-inflicting Asura Roga attack makes the fight against him very frustrating if you try to fight him normally. The solution? Fight him all by yourself, no demon allies, and just heal whenever you're not busy tearing him to shreds.
  • An Offscreen Moment of Awesome for the people of Earth revealed at Carina: when the team contacts the Joint Project for the first time, they learned that the Schwartzwelt has advanced to the point that the Project can no longer cover it up, and demons have been appearing in populated areas. However, it's also stated that in the face of this new threat, all the world's nations have put aside their differences in order to fight back! It gives the player hope that maybe, just maybe, humanity can learn its lesson from the Schwarzwelt crisis after all.
  • Occasionally, Horkos summons a minion, which he will eat a few turns later to recover HP. If you inflict a status ailment on the minion, Horkos will contract it upon consumption. Food poisoning!
  • Commander Gore, restored by the power of the Ubergestalt, comes back and implores you to Dare to Be Badass and to ignore the temptations the demons and angels offer to finish the mission. If you agree to his request, he empowers you to see Mem Aleph and thanks you and the crew, finally fading into the greater beyond. One of the few occasions in the series where you're praised by choosing the higher path, and a CMOH to boot.
  • The Neutral path ending becomes a CMOA for artificial intelligences everywhere, as the "enlightened" Arthur refuses to return to Earth with the crew and detonates the Schwarzwelt from within using a nuclear device strapped to the four Cosmic Eggs, both to save Earth from the Schwarzwelt as well as to prevent mankind from misusing the vast supernatural knowledge he has gained. Arthur, we salute you.
    • Speaking of the Neutral path: Your teammates cheering you on as you approach Mem Aleph. A Shin Megami Tensei game where you actually get respect for choosing Neutral? Yes, please.
    • And the crew in the Neutral ending is implied to travel around the world to spread what they learned in the Schwarzwelt, to damn well ensure that another Schwarzwelt doesn't happen. So instead of "kill everything" like series tradition, you get "kill the forces of Law and Chaos, but spare and save humanity."
  • Mastema as he falls, defeated, in Horologium. He curses you, and rages and screams... and then Louisa Ferre appears, calls him out on his ridiculous pretenses and rubs on his face how low he's fallen.
  • Sealing the Demiurge back into its can. Smug bastard deserved it, and it's a victory you've EARNED. If you're on the Law route, if you opt to not seal the Demiurge away, he will join you. Yes, the superboss joins you.
  • When you defeat Captain Jack, the half-demonic Jimenez comes in for the finishing blow. Sweet, sweet Karmic Death.
  • Having the ultimate That One Attack, M.A, actually fail to hit! Check this out! Watch the impossible happen right before your eyes! What makes this particular example even more awesome is that the music fades out to crank up the tension... And then reveals the attack missed.
  • Alex has an utterly epic one in the New Law and New Chaos routes of Redux. She manages to talk Zelenin or Jimenez into pulling a Heel–Face Turn and creating their ideal world the right way. She manages to talk the walking incarnations of Well Intentioned Extremism in a series well-known for Principles Zealots who will never see the light into seeking a better path, turning two of the most horrific endings in the series into two of the most idealistic. Holy shit.
    • In the New Law path, Zelenin decides to abandon the Wise Men after learning of the normal Law ending and simply use her song to remove hostility. She ends up displaying this herself when Mastema appears in the Empyrean Ascent and has a breakdown on-par with the original's upon learning of Zelenin's defection. Zelenin's response after he leaves? No anger. No hostility. She just thanks him for helping her along the way and moves on. Her best ally abandons her over her new ideals, and Zelenin responds with a demonstration of how she's better than him using those ideals.
    • In the New Chaos path, Jimenez decides to create a world based on freedom instead of strength. You and him proceed to kick the shit out of Mem Aleph, Zelenin, and Shekinah before creating a new world that truly lives up to the ideals of Chaos.
  • In Redux, the New routes in essence: when all seems lost after Demeter snatches the Cosmic Fruit, Louisa Ferre appears to inform you that she has fled to where the Three Wise Men are and helps you track them down and stop them from executing their mad view of paradise... (Which shows that Lucifer really cares about humanity, and yes, she even supports the lawful choice, since in this case it was mankind's own decision, not Sheiknah's). When you confront them, they reveal indirectly they were Shekinah all along and transform into their true form (which is admittedly weaker than YHVH at full power, since YHVH even after being fused via Metatron and Demiurge hasn't quite returned to full power yet), threatening to destroy you... and you beat them. TWICE. Yes, another MegaTen game that lets you Kill the God. Even funnier and cooler as well is that the actual YHVH you can form via Metatron and Demiurge on New Game Plus can be used to punch out Shekinah. Yep, God is under your control and even he gets a chance to Kill the God, as weird as it sounds.
  • In essence, the New Law Ending, New Neutral and New Chaos Ending are this, and not just for the reasons listed:
    • In the New Law Ending, Zelenin has her faith in humanity restored, and she decides to use her song not to brainwash humanity, but rather to remove its capacity for hatred and toxic aggression. The World of Law that occurs is one where humans still have the capacity to defend themselves, but gone is their impulsive nature, and in its place is a desire to seek cooperative solutions whenever differences arise. On top of the ending being awesomely empathetic, the whole ending is one major Moment of Awesome for Zelenin. Even though she'll always be thankful to the angels for guiding her along the path she believes in the most, she promptly demonstrates just how and why she'll always be better in demonstrating those ideals, giving one giant "fuck you" to Shekinah in the process.
    • In the New Neutral Ending, you realize that the responsibility of stopping the Schwartzwelt is not just a one and done affair. Humanity now has to face this problem for the rest of their existence, but since Jimenez and Zelenin have gone off the deep end, you decide to take matters to your own hands to fulfill your promise to Gore. You complete your mission by destroying the Schwarzwelt as usual, but this time, you accompany Arthur to see to its destruction, as the Cosmic Fruit has made you an immortal being who will continue to protect humanity from the Schwarzwelt's recurrence. The final scene of this ending reveals that you and Arthur continue to uphold this duty for 150 years, destroying the Schwarzwelt six more times and likely becoming The Dreaded among demonkind. You've become the SMT equivalent of Doomguy.
    • In the New Chaos Ending, Jimenez also has his faith in humanity restored and promptly kicks the shit out of both the angels and the demons, and uses the Vanishing Point to create a world where freedom and adventure reigns absolute, only without the toxic social Darwinism present in the original ending. A world where even the lowliest of humans can rise to greatness with their demons and their skills, Jimenez creates a World of Chaos that represented what he believed before his temporary Face–Heel Turn: one where everybody can make it in their life, and one where humans and demons alike can coexist in harmony together.

Top