Just because Shin Megami Tensei is infamous for being Atlus Hard doesn't mean you can't break it. Hell, in some cases, these breakers just might be your only chance at victory.
In General
- Fusion Accidents, while it is usually something unwanted, it can sometimes spit out some unbelievable results that the player might not be meant to have at the point in the game they might be in. That includes demons that might be way above their current level. Stories range from players getting demons with every resistance in the book, to yet others getting powerful endgame demons before having even left the starting zones.
- Skill mutations can have some incredibly powerful results, depending on what's being mutated. If you're lucky, you can mutate a mediocre skill into something you wouldn't even begin seeing for at least 10 more levels. This gets really strong with anything that raises the chance of skill mutations. It's much riskier in the older games, though, as they don't tell you what's changing and what it'll change into.
- Luster Candy and Debilitate are by far the most sought-after buffs and debuffs, respectively, in any game that they appear in. The former boosts your entire party's attack, defense, and hit/evasion, while the latter reduces them for the entire enemy party. While the MP/SP cost is often relatively high, you're combining three or four buff/debuff skills into one move so you can hit maximum efficiency for fewer actions. It even retains its value in the Persona even though Heat Riser and Debilitate in those games only affect a single target and only lasts 3 turns.
- The Charged Attack skills: Focus / Charge / Power Charge for physical attacks and Concentrate / Mind Charge for magic attacks (the names vary by game). They force you to wait until the next turn to do damage, but causes that next attack to do at least double damage. In most cases the damage multiplier is 250%, allowing you to do more damage than if you just attack every turn, even more if you can get some multiplicative damage buffs on top of that. Even in games where these skills only multiply damage by 2, they're still useful for conserving MP; using 75 SP to cast a Mind Charged Megidolaon is still 60% more efficient than using 120 SP to cast it twice in a row. Some games have the charge effects expire after one turn, but the more recent games make the charge last indefinitely until expended, meaning you can charge first before taking the time to prepare buffs that might get countered or dispelled.
- Most games have Victory Cry (sometimes with another name, such as Auto Soma), a passive skill that completely heals the character who has it after every battle. While these may not be much help during combat, they make grinding and regular dungeon exploration quite easy. In games where SP healing is rare or expensive, the game might as well be over as soon as you get these skills; naturally, it's on par with your Last Disc Magic.
- DLC-exclusive demons/Personas have the capacity to learn strong skills ahead of the curve on top of a good resistance spread. Some of them have exclusive skills that are especially powerful. Of course, this has a side of Bribing Your Way to Victory. The really strong examples are elaborated below.
For examples from the Persona sub-series, see here.
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Shin Megami Tensei
Shin Megami Tensei I
- In Shin Megami Tensei I the Zio line of skills stun almost everything in the game. With high enough speed, the heroine can immobilize pretty much everything before it even has a chance to move. The Bufu line of spells works just as well, but you need demons for those.
- Marin Karin works on the vast majority of bosses. Get it to stick, and you can sit back and watch the boss beat itself to death.
- One of the best swords in the game, the Hinokagutsuchi, can be acquired about halfway through if you know the proper fusions. One attack is usually enough to kill anything short of the final boss and his lackeys.
- In Shin Megami Tensei II, its damage and defense buffs and debuffs, which stack with themselves and last until they are dispelled, something that not every boss is capable of. But more-so is the Divine Retribution spell. It tears off a quarter of an enemy's health with an alignment opposite to to the spell's caster, and it works on bosses with no reduction.
- Speaking of stackable stat buffs, there is a passive Game-Breaker that can, if one is not averse to Level Grinding and item farming, turn your main character into a stat buffed tank. This is achieved by farming gemstones from demons until you have nine of each type, whereupon stats buffs are applied to your permanent stats as long as you don't reduce the gemstone count, and this condition is stupidly easy to honor, since the only two ways to lose gemstones is to spend them as currency at a certain store (which can make the game easier for some gamers but never need to be visited) or use them as trade items in demon negotiation, which, again, need not be done because all demons can be bribed with other materials. This doesn't mean that the stat buffs make passing the skill check for the bonus dungeon easier (the check goes by your natural skill level, ignoring buffs), but this can be used to make certain story event skill checks effortless.
- Having save data from other Atlus games when you reach the Appraisal Shop in the Domain of Sloth will get you 18 extra stat points (effectively letting you reach level 117 in a game with a 99 max), increases all of your demons' HP permanently by 25%, gets all of the buff spells on your partner, Sabbatma, and ten somas. That's ten party-wide full-HP and MP healing items, a spell that lets your partner summon demons, and the three most useful spells in the game!
- The Domain of Sloth is also the first place you can buy Dolphin Helms, which reflect Curse attacks in a game where the Curse-elemental Mudo is That One Attack.
- The Domain of Envy sells the Skull Keikogi, which reflects physical attacks. The only downside is that it's only equippable by men (and the two male partners don't visit the Domain of Envy).
- Mastering the combo skill mechanic can lead to hilariously overpowered results. Combos are formed when more than one party member attacks at the same time using the same skill. The effects vary depending on the base skill, but they always get stronger when more party members are involved, to the point where a 4MIX or 5MIX combo can easily reach 4-digit damage totals, even in situations where attacking normally would struggle to even deal double-digit amounts.
- Pulque is a plug-in that doubles the maximum HP of its wielder, in exchange for halving their maximum MP. This turns just about any demon into a tank. While the MP reduction may make putting it on a magic-focused demon may sound like a bad idea, it can still work, since most spells are relatively cheap, and MP-restoring items are fairly common.
- Vishnu is available fairly late in the game, at level 78, but once you fuse him, you have basically all of your healing needs taken care of. He has a unique skill, "God Bless", that restores the HP of all allies to full and removes all status ailments, and unlike other multi-target healing skills, it isn't locked behind the combo mechanic. And if that weren't enough, he resists everything except Almighty, and has several powerful offensive skills, including Megidolaon.
Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne
- Fog Breath drops the accuracy and evasion of every enemy by two stages and can't be blocked. You can get this skill from the second Magatama as early as Level 21, and although the MP cost is steep at that level, Fog Breath retains its value right up until the endgame due to how the game penalizes missed attacks.
- Focus: Raises the damage of the next physical attack by around +150%, and can be learned as early as lv23. It's not hard at all to hit 4 digits as early as against Matador (who only has 1000 HP), or 5 digits later in the game due to this.
- Multi-hitting physical moves can mangle anything not immune, only impeded by its random targeting nature. Bosses are mostly solo. Taken with the above Focus skill and most powerful enemies are in for a beating. Best part, Berserk is an early skill that can be gotten from the first Magatama you get, and it will see a lot of use.
- Bright Might and Dark Might give the character's normal attacks guaranteed critical hits during a Full or New Kagutsuchi respectively. Spread it around your team a little and do a little Phase stalling before engaging a boss, and you can easily get a lot of free turns with it. Add buffs and debuffs to this and you get to auto-attack a boss to death! Add Pierce (makes attacks ignore all resistances except Repel) and you get to do this to most random encounters as well!
- Recarmdra causes a demon to sacrifice itself to fully restore the HP and MP of the rest of the party. You can then revive it with Samarecarm and resummon it. It takes a few Press Turns to set up this loop without any Press Turn loss for the next round, but you don't need to perform this too frequently and you have no net loss in MP.
- Black Frost joins the party from the Third Kalpa if you've beaten him in the frozen Kabukicho Prison about two-thirds into the main plot, and he comes as a level 66 demon without caring for your base level. He's got a fantastic set of resistances, resisting Phys, voiding Expel, reflecting Fire and Death, and absorbing Ice, so he can only be reliably damaged with Elec and Force attacks. His skill set looks pretty sparse — Berserk and Diarama are not very impressive for a level 66 demon — but you can augment him into a fine combatant by fusing him with Mitamas and passing their skills into his empty spots.
- Atropos already comes with Bufudyne, Ziodyne, and Zandyne, and as you level her up she learns the respective elemental Boosts. You can add on Agidyne and Fire Boost for her to make her a fantastic quad-dyne caster, and a great base to transfer the Boosts to elemental specialists.
- The Fiends are very good demons to fuse because they retain their Contractual Boss Immunity — they will be at minimum immune to ailments and both One-Hit Kill elements, and then they have their own innate elemental damage immunities that make them great combatants. Hell Biker, Red Rider and Mother Harlot are excellent examples since you only need three immunity passives to make them invulnerable to everything that isn't almighty. Of course, you'll need to defeat them first.
- Daisoujou is level 37, immune to every status ailment in the book in some way, has a good Magic stat, and can restore his own HP and MP during boss fights with Meditation, and also learns Prayer, which makes him a stellar support caster, especially if you sacrifice demons to level him up and/or give him skills like War Cry, Fog Breath and/or Debilitate. Give him Makatora and he makes a near-bottomless MP tank for your travels, as he can refill your party in between combat before draining it back at the next random encounter!
- White Rider's a level 52 demon, accessible from the midgame, and comes with God's Bow, which is a guaranteed instant kill on any enemy without Expel immunity. Great for sniping troublesome demons!
- Hell Gaze has a very high chance of killing anybody not immune to Death, and it's relatively common among recruitable demons, the earliest instance of this coming from Pazuzu in the Obelisk.
- Life Drain functions like a slightly weaker version of Daisoujou's Meditation — it's an almighty attack that steals the target's HP and MP, which is great for support characters and sustainability in long trips, and it can be freely passed around through fusion. While it naturally appears only after extensive leveling of certain Night or Foul demons, you're bound to encounter it from a Shady Broker in the first Kalpa of the Labyrinth of Amala, who sells a Pisaca with this skill, Watchful, and a plethora of exploration skills. For 15,000 Macca, not only do get a great utility demon but the accumulation of experience makes it great sacrifice fodder for transferring either Life Drain or Watchful.
- Dante/Raidou, though he can only be recruited near the end of Labyrinth of Amala. They resist all non-Almighty damage, are immune to Light and Dark and ailments, and know a good variety of skills for nearly any situation; they have a high-crit physical skill, their own version of Maziodyne and Mazandyne, a free Taunt that can refill their MP, and their own Dekunda. They also learn a single passive that gives a 50% overall damage boost and Pierce (unless you're playing on the original Maniax), and an almighty physical skill that can instakill. They can't be fused off, dismissed from the roster, or enhanced with Mitamas, but their own strength makes them worth a permanent roster spot.
- Surt is the only demon in the game with a Fire-type normal attack, making it the only normal attack capable of being boosted by Fire Boost. Because it's physical, however, it can also be enhanced by Pierce, Focus, and either Bright Might or Dark Might. Giving Surt these skills, as well as any skill that covers his Ice weakness, makes Surt capable of dishing out tons of damage from his normal attacks.
- The end-game Masakados magatama gives you immunity to everything but almighty attacks and a whopping +10 to all stats except Luck. This game's stat cap is 40, by the way. As you gain levels with this magatama, you also pick up passives for repelling each element, so you can become immune to everything without needing it. It's your Infinity +1 Sword because you have to gather all the other magatamas and then defeat the four Devas, which is not an easy task.
- Freikugel: Almighty damage, very high critical chance, and abnormally high damage output that can be augmented with Focus. It's simply the strongest damage skill in the game, and useful even as late as you could get it. In addition, on the True Demon Ending, due to it being an odd mix of Physical and Almighty, you can combine it with Pierce to break one of the last bosses in the game, who is a Barrier Change Boss resistant to Almighty.
- While it took a while to be discovered, Kamikaze is in a similar boat. It's classed as its own form of damage, which scales off of Strength but also isn't entirely Almighty, meaning the only bosses immune to it are the ones with gimmicks built around self-destructing minions (Spectre 2 and Pale Rider). Backed by Tarukaja and Focus, this attack can one-shot most mid to late-game bosses, and the only price to pay is one Demon missing out on the exp.
- The HD Remaster has a free DLC that adds the Merciful difficulty, which tips the numbers so far in your favor that it vaporizes all challenge from it. You even gain more EXP and money so that you never really need to stop to grind. For perspective, Normal is regarded as "tough but fair" until things escalate in the late game, while Hard is as Nintendo Hard as it gets, potentially unfairly so. To give you an idea as to how watered down the difficulty is on Merciful Mode, even an underleveled Demi-fiend can kill Matador just by switching on Auto-battle.
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey
- The way Strange Journey's reflection equation works (damage is calculated entirely based on how much it would have done to the target of the attack, not how much it would do to whoever it's reflected back onto) a smart enough player could have a team of low level demons reflecting attacks back for THOUSANDS of damage, only having to heal their Main Character occasionally and watch out for Almighty moves.
- There are several guns that allow you to cause the Stone element. This counts as instant death. Almost everything except bosses are vulnerable to this attack. Your Main Character gains 4x the EXP he would normally get if you have no demons out. The Manshonyaga is the easiest gun you can obtain that contains the Rock Bullet skill, and will allow you to gain levels every 2-3 fights for a while.
- The 4x EXP bonus can also be gotten by softening up an opponent with your demons then giving them the return order and finishing the battle on your own. This makes it trivial to break the game in a different way.
- The Eternal Rest spell in conjunction with any sleep spell is also effective, as status ailments work quite often on a surprising amount of enemies, and the combo can lead to a near Disc-One Nuke if you get it early enough.
- Grand Tack (Grand Piercer in Redux) is an abnormally strong Gun skill, hitting as hard as a Zan-ei on a New Moon, but without any conditions tied to it and costing a humble 10 MP. It's accessible as early as level 26, off Pabilsag's D-Source. At level 55, you get Kresnik's D-Source, which contains Riot Gun, that's almost twice as strong.
- The Double Down Sub-App guarantees a skill mutation whenever your demons level up. You can get very impressive results like Mamudoon becoming Debilitate or Megidolaon becoming Big Bang, gaining access to powerful skills before you can fuse demons that innately have them.
- Victory Cry + Jihad (called Antichthon in Redux: Megidolaon-level of almighty damage + Debilitate debuffs) or any powerful almighty-type spell on a demon - you get to annihilate enemy formations with devastating damage, and receive full healing at the end of the battle to recoup the losses. Both skills are Last Disc Magic, so they'll only come into play when you're at the endgame.
- While Jihad is commonly considered the ultimate skill, it isn't necessarily the most damaging. That falls to the ultra-rare skill Desperate Hit (only naturally on Demonee-ho, and can only be passed on via demon source), which does a random number of almighty hits. If it does 3 or more to a single enemy, that enemy takes more damage than it would from Jihad. VERY useful against bosses for just 40 MP (half the cost of Jihad).
- Huang Long can learn Megidolaon and Victory Cry, being strong to all elements and physical skills, and immune to Light and Dark skills outright. Doesn't hurt that he's quite accessible for an endgame-tier demon with a base level of 78.
- Several accessories become available in New Game Plus, but none stand out quite like the Solomon Ring. It grants the protagonist immunity to Expel and Curse on top of reflecting all other magic elements! Slap this on with the Armor Vest (which resists phys and gun, but has an elec weakness that's automatically covered by the ring), and the protagonist is now Nigh-Invulnerable.
- Forneus from Redux has Death Bite, which deals "light" physical damage but always hits 4 times. Compare this to Megaton Press or Madness Crush, which deal stronger individual hits, but strike randomly between 1 to 4 times — the former will need roll its maximum of 4 hits to match Death Bite, and the latter will only surpass it at 3 or more hits. As far as consistency is concerned, Death Bite stands among the strongest physical skills in the game. Forneus also comes with Charge and Acid Breath to let him hit even harder. Impart Phys Boost and Phys Amp via D-Sources, and watch him lay waste to anything not resistant!
- Redux also adds the Lucifer equipment set, all of which are Purposely Overpowered but are obtained by defeating the new superbosses. With them in hand, you can sweep through the rest of the game's content and blaze your way to seeing new endings.
- The Lucifer Sword, a single-target sword that pierces through any resistances to physical damage. This trivializes any enemy that resists, nulls, absorbs, or reflects physical.
- The Lucifer Gun, a multi-target gun that has the Final Seven skill that inflicts a guaranteed Critical Hit, which lets you trigger Co-Op attacks on demand.
- The Lucifer Mail, a vest that gives Curse immunity and resistance to Fire, Ice, Elec, and Wind.
- The Lucifer Ring, a ring that nulls all status ailments when equipped, even Rage (which normally cannot be protected against).
- Shin Megami Tensei IMAGINE has Erosion Hex, a skill that can hit paralyze, poison, amnesia and stone all at the same time, and has a huge area of effect. When combined with the soulstones of Mothman (+50% Amnesia rate) and Catoblepas (+50% Stone rate), this skill can make everything not immune to mystic/amnesia and death/stone easy targets. It has such low requirements to be learned that nearly every build in the game can incorporate it with minimal effort.
- Magic Bullets have the Enchanting Bullet Hole, which has a base 40% chance of hitting charm. Then there's the nekomata soulstone that raises that chance by 50%. And then there are dozens of different ways to get the 10% remaining to have 100% charm. Considering Magic Bullet skills completely ignore enemy resistances for calculating ailment chances, anything that doesn't null mind/charm will become charmed when shot by this.
- Shin Megami Tensei IV also (ahem) inherits the "pick and choose" skill system of Devil Survivor mentioned at the top of the page, but instead of selecting only a few, it gives you full customization of the result. This means you can toss aside undesirable innate skills from the demon's base skill set and fill it up with whatever you want from its fusion components. Anything you want can become a quad-dyne user with buffs and heals, for instance, and your only limiting factor would be the demon's HP/MP pool and stat spread.note This customizability got nerfed in Apocalypse as it introduces demon affinities that influence skill efficiency, encouraging you to play to the demons' preferences instead of just slapping the same skills on everyone.
- The MP recovery apps give you passive recovery as you walk around the field. Since you can choose when to engage random encounters, you can just pace about safe zones to fill yourself up between combat.
- The Skill Augment app makes demons more likely to mutate skills. With a little luck, it's possible to get useful skills early in the game and get even more powerful skills as you proceed. You even get to see what skill's being changed and what it will become before deciding, removing most of the risk around skill changes.
- Odin's Thunder Reign attack is a Severe-level, all-targeting Thunder skill... that costs only 22 MP. To compare, Maziodyne is one tier lower, also targets everyone on the enemy team, and costs 32 MP. While Odin himself has a pretty bad Magic stat, Thunder Reign can be passed on either via Demon Whisper if you have a high Magic stat, or to a new, magic-oriented demon via fusion. This was, ahem, reined in in Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse, where it instead costs 70 MP before affinities.
- Demonee-Ho's Desperate Hit is back... which is now more useful considering that it can be passed onto your character. Basically, it's an Almighty attack that hits enemies multiple times, but it also has physical attack attributes. Not only does it bypass all weaknesses, but it can also be charged and can get critical hits. Combine with the MP recovery apps and you'll find it hard to use any other skill.
- Judgment Light can also qualify. Yes, its MP cost is huge, but it's an all-target Light instant kill with insane chance of hitting. If you cast this, it's pretty much all but guaranteed to kill every enemy or all but one... and that's when they are not weak to Light. And since in this game humans have natural immunity to Light, passing it via Whisper means that you can spam it with all day with no fear of Reflection as long as your MP holds. Mix it with the aforementioned MP recovery app and you can destroy nearly every random encounter with the press of a button.
- The accessories dropped by some of the Fiend Superbosses are incredibly powerful. Matador's grants immunity to Gun, Light and Dark on top of greatly boosting agility (accuracy and evasion), White Rider's adds a resistance to all four elements on top of Victory Cry, and Trumpeter's combines Phys Repel with Enduring Soul (revive with full HP once in battle).
- For a different kind of Game-Breaker, Streetpass Exploit. Want to increase a certain demon's stats without level grinding, (or if it's already at level 99) or using up Incenses? Just have at least another 3DS with Streetpass enabled on both of them, attach the demon to your DDS card, and insert the cartridge from one system to the other when you get the data from either of them. If done correctly, the attached demon's stats will increase (along with a possible gift) when you access the Streetpass feature on your gauntlet. Just save afterward (This is very important in order to keep the increased stat), and go back to the menu where you can then receive more Streetpass data from the other 3DS. This even works with demons only available through DLC, even if only one 3DS has the purchased data required. Without said data on the SD card, the DLC demon attached will appear as a question mark and be unplayable (with the possible exception of the Archangels, whose names still appear as "???") but will still get the stat boost(s). Meaning you can get something like Masakado's Shadow with maxed out stats before or after it reaches Level 99 in a much easier fashion that doesn't require using up a single Incense or waiting to receive Streetpass data from more players.
- Kannuki-Throw is already a very unbalanced skill — it hits from 1 to 15 times for Physical damage, and it's the signature skill of Uriel, a demon who has very high HP, extremely high natural Str and Dx, and a good propensity for Critical hits. But if you take some time to build him up, you can give him Phys and High Phys Pleroma (multiply natural Phys damage by 1.20 and 1.50), Pierce Physical, and your pick of Beastly or Draconic Reaction (increases accuracy+evasion, therefore, number of hits), Speed or Haste Lesson (increase agility, ergo, accuracy), and Bloody Glee (increase Crit chance). Uriel can already deal obscene amount of damage per hit on base with this skillset, but if during battle he is further buffed with Charge + Dark Energy (increase damage of the next Physical attack by 150 and then by 200% respectively, and they stack), then an Archangel's Law on him for the Smirk multiplier (or three Tarukajas to specifically buff Physical attacks, since Smirk and Tarukaja doesn't stack), along with potentially three Rakundas (reduces enemy physical defense); there is absolutely nothing in the game who can survive a 15-hit Kannuki-Throw doing over 2000 HP of damage per hit. Pair him up with a demon with Guardian's Eye, and your only concern for the rest of the game is activating the combo before a Fiend or Sanat Kumara can knock out Uriel.
Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse
Due to very similar mechanics, most examples in the original Shin Megami Tensei IV will also apply here.
- Steel Bazooka + Mute Shot, not so much for damage, but for stunlocking capabilites. The former, eventually rewarded to Nanashi by the Hunter Association for completing 60% of the Challenge quests, hits for a maximum of six times, and the latter causes the Mute status, which only a fifty of the enemies, bosses included, can resist against. Watch the difficulty dropping with each successful Mute proc, signalling your target being forced to waste their turns!
- Pair this gun with the Bind Shot, and you can instead bind entire groups of enemies, leaving them free for you to fundraise.
- Conversely, there's the Mist Rush skill. Inflicts Daze, which carries the same advantages from Mute above, and hits for 2~4 times per use. Stack both at your heart's content!
- Matador is one of the earlier Optional Bosses you can find in Twisted Tokyo. Defeating him unlocks him for fusion, and he carries his Signature Move, Andalucia. This hits a tremendous number of times (4 to 12) and he innately learns Phys Pierce to make the attack completely unblockable. Combine this with Pleromas, Charge, and maybe even Bloody Glee, and you can lay waste to bosses with a good chance of any one of these hits becoming a critical. For players of Nocturne who had to deal with his incredibly hard boss fight, this is pure catharsis.
- Trumpeter's unique skill is Evil Melody, an Almighty skill with nearly-guaranteed instant kills when used while Smirking. It's not very useful for boss fights, but when you're making runs through Twisted Tokyo and have to contend with hordes that have mountains of HP, a Smile Charged Evil Melody can simply vaporize them in two turns tops.
- As with the previous game, accessories dropped by the Fiends continue to break game balance. Mother Harlot's grants immunity to all ailments on top of Enduring Soul, while En no Ozuno's grants a massive boost to all attacks, which when equipped on Nanashi, stacks with Awakened Power below.
- Once defeated and the method discovered, Krishna can be fused for you to use. His Raga skills can each inflict three possible ailments at once with 2 applications of an attack or defense debuff, making him useful both against random encounters and bosses, and Combat Tara is his own, cheaper version of Luster Candy. Keep him alive and he becomes a fantastic support party member.
- Nanashi's Awakened Power is obtained near the end of the game, once you've made your decision to take the Bonds or Massacre route. It powers up all his attacks and lets them bypass all forms of resistance. Since the player can fully control his stat growth and dump a lot of stat points in his main attacking stats, this makes Nanashi an outstanding attacker.
- Your allies can border on this too once their final skills are unlocked.
- Navarre gains access to the immensely helpful Doping and Debilitate skills, which have had their costs dramatically increased as compared to the previous game, thereby saving you hundreds of MP as you won't need to cast them yourself.
- Asahi, at her full power, has her healing output dramatically enhanced, allowing Mediarama to heal for upwards of 800 health, keeping your party consistently fresh. When she doesn't need to heal, she can provide free Smirks as well.
- Once Isabeau stays in your partner list permanently, she becomes less of a Jack of All Stats and more like a straight-up Master of All. Once she reaches level 82, and you and your entire partner list will on the two neutral routes, she has all four standard -dyne spells and Megidolaon for offense, Mediarama and Diarahan for healing, and Luster Candy for buffing. And her AI is smart enough to prioritize healing, Luster Candy, and attack in that order, meaning she's rarely ever useless. You can lose her on Massacre by picking another final partner, but let's be real, you'd be hard-pressed to not pick her unless you're doing a Self-Imposed Challenge or want to see your other partners in the role of your Goddess. She doesn't get an Awakened Power like everyone else does, but she doesn't need one.
- From the DLC Demon Market, one can purchase several custom-built demons, thereby skipping the process of needing to fuse them oneself. An example includes Demiurge with the highest-strength single target inheritable elemental spells, Concentrate, and Antichthon. While his low MP and middling Magic stat puts him at Cool, but Inefficient despite his great attacking affinities, he becomes valuable fusion fodder for other Magic-oriented demons as well as passing and augmenting these skills to Nanashi via Demon Whisper.
- While several of the Magatsuhi skills are Purposely Overpowered, Atlus went a bit overboard with them in this game.
- Omagatoki: Critical is your default Magatsuhi skill, available to everyone, but its simplicity makes it one of the best ones. It makes every attack, including Magic, to be a guaranteed Critical Hit. With a single use of the skill, you can decimate any enemy within a single turn or in the case of bosses, take a large chunk of their HP. Since every attack is a critical hit, your Press Turns won't immediately disappear allowing for some set up game, especially early on where a single round of said skill can turn a number of bosses into nearly jokes through proper planning. The only downside to the skill is that you can still miss and lose Press Turns but with all the power the skill provides, it's almost negligible.
- Omagatoki: Critical seems almost tailor made to work with several skills locked specifically to the Nahobino; Aramasa, Wrath Tempest and Murakumo in specific can make a Strength based Nahobino sever huge chunks of HP bars all at once. Add in Impaler's Animus if you want to abuse Wrath Tempest for extra carnage.
- Omagatoki: Savage makes all skills cost twice the MP, but deal double the damage. If you have an efficient setup, this allows you to absolutely burn through most of the tough mid and lategame encounters by spending one turn on nuking bosses to death. This is especially true if you have critical build with Strength, since your crit will now strike for four times as much damage as the basic attack, and the extra press turn you earn from critting will potentially let you do it again.
- Rasetsu Feast is the ultimate boss/Abscess softener. It works like a turbocharged Debilitate; for three turns, all enemies have their stats reduced to their lowest level. This affords you crucial time to buff and inflict ailments before the enemy can really get going, and also gives you more room to go on the offensive against bosses that would otherwise require large amounts of setup. The only downside is that it requires a Jaki in the party, and the highest-level Jaki (Hecatoncheires) is an early-late game demon, though it thankfully is a well-scaling Strength-based demon that can remain relevant for a while. All in all, Rasetsu Feast is the reason why most players will keep a Jaki around for most of the game, and why Turdak, Rakshasa, and Hecatoncheires are viewed as mandatory recruitment or fusion demons.
- Accursed Poison doesn't seem like much. A free Debilitate and a random ailment slapped on top? Surely there are better uses of your Magatsuhi gauge, you might say. Well, you'd be right... later in the fight. As it turns out, a free opening salvo of Debilitate and an ailment is pretty powerful, especially if you get something like Seal (itself an example of Gamebreaker as detailed below), Charm, Sleep or Mirage, which can cause the boss to waste turns. The sheer head start that Accursed Poison allows you can make certain boss fights much easier than they would be otherwise, as the boss either wastes turns buffing themselves back up or wallows in the ailment until it wears off. The skill prioritizes "stronger" ailments, meaning it will actively try to find whichever ailment your opponents are weak to, and then default to Seal if it can't find any. Since Magatsuhi builds up fast in this game, it's entirely possible for a player to debuff a boss with Accursed Poison, buff themselves to high heaven, and then debuff the boss again to nullify most of the danger they pose. As a final bonus, you get the talismans needed to use it in the very first area - the Raptor Talisman for beating up the Oni during the "Moving On Up" quest late in Minato and the Avian Talisman for finding 30 Miman.
- On the other side of things, Fairy Banquet is a very powerful way to open a fight or recover from a dangerous situation. Your party's stats will get buffed to the max with this skill, and since it's a Magatsuhi skill you still get to execute an attack the turn you use this. It's essentially two Luster Candies with a Dekunda, saving you several hundred MP and a few turns' worth of setup to mount an offense right off the bat. This is absolutely huge no matter what part of the game you're in, thanks to Luster Candy being so expensive compared to most other games in the franchise.
- Omagatoki: Critical is your default Magatsuhi skill, available to everyone, but its simplicity makes it one of the best ones. It makes every attack, including Magic, to be a guaranteed Critical Hit. With a single use of the skill, you can decimate any enemy within a single turn or in the case of bosses, take a large chunk of their HP. Since every attack is a critical hit, your Press Turns won't immediately disappear allowing for some set up game, especially early on where a single round of said skill can turn a number of bosses into nearly jokes through proper planning. The only downside to the skill is that you can still miss and lose Press Turns but with all the power the skill provides, it's almost negligible.
- Dampeners. Cheap, easily-purchasable items that are obtained from Cadaver's Hollow, dampeners can be used to completely nullify one elemental attack on every party member for one turn. This includes physical attacks. There are some catches: you can only hold three of any dampener type at once, you can only be shielded against one type of attack at a time, and any other type of attack will ignore the dampener's effect, but those are very minor weaknesses in contrast to their ability to completely end a boss's turn if you guess correctly. A player who understands the A.I. Roulette can also accurately guess what attack an enemy or boss is going to use on the turn after they charge Magatsuhi, meaning it's entirely possible for a boss to set up for a powerful attack only for you to null it and completely waste their turn. If you've obtained the Miracle that provides bonus Magatsuhi on blocking an attack you can fill a good portion of it in one go, too! Dampeners are useful the moment you get you get your hands on them and remain powerful right up until the end of the game. Even better, since the Knowledge of Tools miracle lets your demons use items without needing to dedicate passives to enable it, it's entirely possible to roll through an optimized turn, earn four additional turns, and then drop a dampener right at the very end to protect yourself and obliterate the boss next turn.
- Seal is the best status in the game, bar none, primarily because it is an A.I. Breaker; although enemies will be unable to use any skills that require MP, they won't stop trying to, wasting their turns completely. Combined with the way resistances to statuses work (only blocking it completely prevents it from happening) and Seal can completely break the game open, making many bosses much easier as a result.
- This also makes Dark Sword (a double-hit medium damage Physical attack that has a chance to inflict Seal) one of the best skills in the game because it allows damage dealers to try to inflict Seal without wasting a turn on a missed ailment spell. Dark Sword is also accessible in the second area of the game, and remains relevant even through to the later portions of the game where it becomes a weaker yet cheaper option.
- Taunt and Fierce Roar, which Draw Aggro to the user. If it's used by a demon that blocks whatever element that the enemy uses, it can cripple their offense by taking away their press turns. Girimehkala and Siegfried, who reflect and absorb physical attacks respectively, can remove all of the enemy's press turns if they're so much as hit with a basic attack, which is so strong defensively that it can even be worth pitting them against enemies and even endgame bosses that can hit their three weaknesses simply by having them use these abilities.
- Idun's Signature Move, Golden Apple, both heals the party a moderate amount and raises all of their stats. What makes this so powerful is the level you can access this skill: Idun can be fused at level 42, about mid-way through the game. To put it in perspective, by the time a player can fuse her, they likely only recently got access to Ma-kaja skills (that raise a *single* stat for the party) in the mid-late 30's, Chironup's Cautious Cheer (which is a little short of Luster Candy) a little earlier, Luster Candy (which raises all of the party's stats) doesn't come until endgame at level 67-70, and Tao's Light of Order (which is Golden Apple with Dekunda for good measure) is not available until the last quarter of the game (even on a New Game Plus due to the nature of the "demon"), and she leaves before either the final dungeon or the final boss, leaving you without that skill. Therefore, from the moment you fuse Idun, you can access a level of buffing that the game doesn't expect you to have for another 30 levels, with a party heal tacked for good measure. The only thing stopping it from being completely broken is its prohibitively high cost, but its common for players to keep Idun until the end of the game thanks to how powerful Golden Apple is, especially if you re-fuse her in order to boost her skill levels so the cost of Golden Apple is reduced.
- Yoshitsune's game-breaking Signature Move from the Persona titles, Hassou Tobi, makes its mainline debut in this game and is no less busted, always dealing eight hits of damage and always critting, guaranteeing the player an extra press turn. Thanks to the new Demon Essence system it's absurdly easy to Elite Tweak him to maximize Hassou Tobi's damage potential without having to rely on lengthy and complicated fusion chains. Abilities like Charge, Critical Zealot, and any number of Omagatoki buffs will let Yoshitsune rip through most enemies. This can even include demons resistant to or otherwise immune to Physical moves if Omagatoki: Pierce or Impaler's Animus are applied beforehand. Even though he's a mid-level demon instead of an endgame one a steady diet of Strength Incenses will ensure that he'll be able to keep up long after other demons around his level have fallen off.
- Yabusame Shot, acquired lategame, is one of the strongest Physical skills in the game through the sheer utility it provides. It deals low damage, but it hits all enemies, pierces through their resistances, and is a guaranteed Critical Hit. In short, using this skill always costs only half a Press Turn, guaranteeing that you get more actions per player phase provided you don't miss a target.
- Impaler's Animus. It gives the user a Charge/Concentrate, and a Pierce effect, all for 50 MP. This is as powerful as you can imagine, because not only does it provide essentially the effects of both Charge/Concentrate, but the Pierce effect allows all attacks made to become an Armor-Piercing Attack, regardless of what resistances the enemy has. Something as powerful as this seems rare, but it becomes common place quickly, and while the 50 MP cost is a lot, it arguably is better then the other buffs later, because it means any attack can do max damage, rather then needing specific skills. Even end game bosses like Shiva will fold to a team using Impaler's Animus, making it incredibly powerful.
- Getting Warrior's Conception and Unforgotten Memories Miracles with the Prayer skills completely breaks the game later on. This is because they all synergize to make demon fusions hilariously broken; Warrior's Conception and Unforgotten Memories give any newly fused demons stat bonus and EXP based on the stats of the demons fused respectively, while the Prayer skills always ensure a Demon will gain a point in one of their stats when leveling (ex: Prayer of Luck giving +1 Luck on level up). Combined, it means any newly fused Demon will gain a ton of EXP and stats, which can allow them to then fuse into another Demon, and essentially build up stats and EXP that will snowball into Demons jumping sometimes as high as +40 to almost all their stats. It allows Demons around level 50 to outright hit almost 100 in some of their stats, and can make Special Fusion Demons even more busted if you re-fuse their needed Demons to give them more stats. Nothing says powerful then fusing Yoshitsune using this process, and him having over 100 Strength before he hits level cap.
- Cleopatra is a level 61 demon automatically added to your party after her defeat in her DLC quest. She already comes with very good innate resistances and can be improved further by manually fusing her — one of her components is Lamia, who innately learns Resist Dark to help cover her Dark weakness. She also comes with very good skills and potentials to back them up, having +6 on a Hamabarion, +5 on Mabufudyne and Mazandyne, and maxed-out +5 healing and support potentials. She learns Luster Candy at level 63, and her signature skill, Frolic, debuffs all enemies' attack and defense two ranks and can inflict Charm on them. Essentially, she's a fantastic demon for both boss fights and random encounters. The only drawback to Frolic as opposed to Debilitate is that if an enemy is immune to Charm, they're also immune to the stat reduction from Frolic.
- Mother Harlot comes in packing 3 of the worst status ailments in the game for the enemy to be hit by. Confuse, Charm and Seal, the first two tied to powerful AOE Almighty attacks and the last one an AOE status move. She also pack Trisagion to get past any resistances to her attacks and can be bred to have immunity to force, her only weakness. Most damning however is her ability to repel Physical attacks and Drain Lightning, meaning many bosses end up wasting their turns when targeting her, basically making her ruin many bosses in the end game, such as Odin and Zeus, and can even serve well against the three final bosses. Having decent Vitality and obscene magic for her level, which isn't that high at 62, means that she can be easily tweaked for end game carnage, and can make the fight against the Demi-Fiend a bit easier.
- Trumpeter's Evil Melody has a very high instant kill rate that can terminate Demonic Spiders that would otherwise be a headache to fight. He also learns Ma-barions of four elements with adequate potentials for each to sweep down random encounters, and he's one of the few demons in the game with no weaknesses and a well-rounded resistance spread. If you earn his Essence you can give the protagonist these resistances and go about without ever needing to worry about getting a weakness struck. The cost to getting there, though, is fighting through all the other Fiends in the Demi-Fiend DLC; Trumpeter's the last one you face before the final showdown is unlocked for you.
Other Shin Megami Tensei
Digital Devil Saga
- Cocytus in the first game. It's a random-hit ice spell that has an absurdly high rate of inflicting the Freeze status, which makes the target lose all their resistances and turns any physical attack on them into a Critical Hit. Also, if it hits the same target twice, it deals more damage than Bufudyne, the top tier ice spell. Slap Ice Boost and/or Ice Amp, and the game will be a walk in the park for the most part. It's especially useful against the Boss in Mook Clothing Arahabaki enemy, which nulls everything but Ice (which it's weak to), Expel, and Almighty. It was nerfed in the second game, though.
- Null Sleep, especially in the first game (in which it’s learned on the same Mantra as Cocytus above). That title is a misnomer; it doesn't make the user immune to sleep, it makes them dodge all attacks if they're asleep, causing the enemy to waste precious turns. While it is rather unreliable (it requires party members to be afflicted by the Sleep ailment), the fact it can pretty much neutralize any sort of attack makes it an excellent skill to ensure party members survive a turn. Enforced in the first game, as it's part of a strategy which makes the Ultimate Boss of the game, Demi-Fiend, even possible to take down, because it enables the user to dodge even the strongest Almighty attacks.
- The Death Flies skill from Nocturne makes a comeback in this duology: Guaranteed insta-kill if targets don't null Death, and Almighty damage equivalent to Megidolaon if they do.
- The Null Attack skill nulls everything except Almighty attacks. This makes you effectively invincible for 90% of the game as only the last two dungeons have random encounters that make use of Almighty attacks and none of the storyline bosses (except for the last boss) use Almighty as their main form of attack. It won't help you against most of the bonus bosses however since they generally have unique Almighty attacks. In particular, the aforementioned Demi-Fiend will rip you to shreds on his first turn if you dare to have immunities equipped, and the second game’s Ultimate Boss Satan will simply negate any resistance you have which are imparted by passive skills in his first turn.
- As for Serph, pump up his Magic stat all the way till 99, then pump up his Vit. Congratulations, now Serph can be your primary healer and damage dealer rolled all in one.
- Petra Eyes is extremely useful, at least on the first run, since petrified targets can be instantly killed with a physical or force attack and cannot act in the meantime. Seeing as this is an Atlus game filled with Goddamned Bats where a huge part of them aren't resistant...
- Drain. It does Almighty damage (which means that 99.9% of enemies can't resist, null, deflect, or absorb it), is surprisingly damaging, and robs the enemy party of their HP and MP while replenishing yours. To make it even more lethal, 2 and Overclocked give high-level Tyrants the Blood Treaty Racial Skill, which triples the effectiveness of all healing and draining skills.
- Holy Dance, which does multiple hits of almighty damage to random targets. While it is much more expensive than your elemental Dances, bear in mind that in Devil Survivor it is fairly common to encounter enemies and bosses with resistances to multiple, if not all, elements. Holy Dance gives reasonable damage output (especially on bosses, where all the hits focus on it) without worry of losing Extra Turns.
- Pierce bypasses resistance to, nullification of, and draining of physical attacks, unless the demon's name starts with "Bel" and ends with "dr". Pair this up with Deathbound and you can demolish bosses that would otherwise make a physical assault hopeless, such as Belzeboul and Naoya. The only limiting factor is that you can only have one team leader using Pierce, until Overclocked introduces the Pierce+ Auto Skill which makes fielding a second physical user viable.
- Anti-Most gives resistance to elemental damage and Mystic/Curse all at the cost of one passive slot. It's not as effective as an immunity passive for covering a targeted weakness, but it conveniently lets you give anything a good well-rounded defense and is perfect for demons with multiple weaknesses. Anti-All turns up later and gives resistance to everything that isn't Almighty.
- If you have Battle Aura, attacks that do 50 or less damage will not harm your team at all, and it comes with a very low cost of 10 MP per skirmish. Pair this with Anti-Most or Anti-All and you can No-Sell most attacks barring Pierce-enhanced ones.
- Some skill combinations for demons certainly count. For example, usually the biggest weakness of a Squishy Wizard demon is their physical defense. No problem, pass on Phys Repel to one via fusion, and you now have a magic user immune to Phys attacks and also has high resistance to magic because of their stat focus. This allows demons of all kinds last a LOT longer past their normal practical use because of the skills you give them. This is easier still in Overclocked with the addition of the Demon Compendium. The only problem, thus, is how deep your pockets go.
- Not every race was created equal, and some racial skills are significantly stronger than others:
- Flight passively increases your movement range and ignore any terrain restrictions, letting you dart across the battlefield without needing to circumvent obstacles so you can chase down rogue enemy teams or even ignore certain level gimmicks. The movement range bonus also helps with leaders with less mobility, like Yuzu and Amane. Phantasma comes close, exchanging the movement range bonus for reduced delay between turns.
- Tyranny basically gives you regenerating MP based on how much damage you dealt. When you're throwing out Megidolaons with their costs halved from Magic Yang, you will be able to cover its hefty cost. If you have Awakening, that temporarily raises your magic damage, the MP regen will also cover that too!
- The aforementioned skill combinations can be further enhanced with an effective party member composition.
- Beast and Kishin demons on the same team. Beasts let you move again after you attack, and Kishins let you attack twice. With Kishin and Vile / Dragon type demons, As long as your opponent doesn't have a demon of the same type, you can attack for two turns without the other team even touching you. This does come with a drawback, as taking more actions during a turn also means the team has to wait even longer for their next turn, and Viles or Dragons further increase the turn delay in exchange for being able to strike at range. Still, it might hardly matter if you can annihilate one or two enemy teams in one fell swoop.
- Two Berserkers on the same team as a Magic-heavy leader with healing spells makes that team very difficult to defeat. Berserkers always have Endure as one of their passive abilities and although they are weak to ailments, it's easy to cover that gap in their defenses if you know what you're doing. You can alternatively give them Paladin Soul so that they will take damage for the team leader if the attack will be lethal and reduces the damage taken. This team setup gets used against you a couple of times in the first game and can't be used in Devil Survivor 2 because Berserker is a unique demon in that game.
- Phys Rise + Phys Jump + Pierce + Rage Soul. Sure, it limits the team it's equipped on to just its basic attacks, but when that team is, say, Atsuro's, and he's rocking extremely high Strength demon partners, 3.6x physical damage magnification gets kind of nuts. He can tear through pretty much anything not reflecting Physical in one or two rounds, maybe three rounds for bosses. And yes, Bels are included in the three-round maximum, as are some final bosses.
- Drain Hit + Pierce results in physical attacks that bypass most forms of resistance, on top of healing their user which compensates for their HP cost. This makes it possible to spam Deathbound without losing out on damage output and without worry of putting its user in danger of dying.
- The Auto Skill Grace + Drain. Grace has your character cast Prayer at the start of every battle, which heals your party to full and cures any status ailments. If you give Drain to someone with a high Magic stat, the MP stolen from enemies will both offset Prayer's high cost AND heal the player if they still need it.
- Rolling Recarm chains. Especially effective against the game's superboss. Each squad has two demons faster than their human and the human faster than their targets; both have Recarm or Samarecarm. Demons do whatever, human does something that gets reflected which kills them. The next human revives the first one, then does the same demons do whatever, human suicides thing. Since a character that's just been resurrected acts immediately after their reviver, this creates an infinite chain of revivals that keeps enemies from ever getting their turn, which can only be broken if your team gets wiped out in one go during a skirmish.
- Multi-Strike is an extremely powerful attack in Overclocked. It costs less HP than other physical abilities and deals additional hits with higher Agility. Put this on a physical-oriented MC and work on boosting his agility, and he'll almost always go first and pretty much instantly kill all three enemies in one turn. Combined with Pierce, you can kill almost everything instantly. Combined with Phys Drain instead, and you'll heal yourself to full against anyone with Phys Repel (fairly common near the end).
- Overclocked adds in Extra Charge and Extra Savings, two moves that, when cracked, make the rest of the game a joke. Extra Charge doubles the damage of your attacks on Extra Turns, while Extra Savings reduces the cost down to zero during that time. Combine the two with Magic Yin, and you can destroy nigh on everything in one turn while rarely ever needing to replenish your magic.
- Also in the Overclocked remake, the combination of Makajamon + Grimoire + Death Call. Makajamon has a high natural chance of success (higher than Petra Eyes) but just mutes the enemy. Grimoire boosts the chance of status effects working. Death Call kills all muted/stunned enemies. The result? Instant death to anything that isn't immune to Curse/Mystic.
Due to this game having very similar mechanics, most of what applies in Devil Survivor above will also apply here.
- Watchful and Vigilant are supposed to bestow Leaked Experience onto whoever's using it, but what it doesn't tell you is that if that skill's user is deployed in combat they actually earn more experience. Stacking Watchful and Vigilant on the main character while deploying only him results in him rapidly leveling up, and due to every other team leader experiencing innate Leaked Experience, it's great for mass Level Grinding, especially on a New Game Plus.
- Now that racial skills can evolve, previous combinations in the previous game become EVEN more broken than before if you put a good combination.
- Evil Flow + Matchless = Attack twice from 6 squares away from the enemy AND heal yourself twice if needed.
- Evil Flow + Chaos Breath for functionally 8 attack range in exchange for barely getting turns.
- Winged Flight + Chaos Breath gives you a net movement bonus on top of a greatly increased passive attack range.
- Winged Flight + Evil Flow lets you reach at least halfway across most battlefields to snipe an enemy team.
- Blood Treaty, the upgraded Tyrant racial skill, adds an option to triple the amount of recovery. This includes the Tyrant's passive MP regeneration to the team, letting you throw out Megidolaons endlessly without needing any cost reduction. This option also makes Drain hit exceptionally hard.
- While there's several new races with new racial skills available, above them all is the Fiend race. Every single Fiend is a Unique demon and must be recruited by defeating an Optional Boss, most of whom are only available on New Game Plus, for good reason: their racial skill Unearthly Form lets you spend MP to immediately make it your turn again. You can only use Unearthly Form once per turn, but this still allows you to travel a staggering 16 squares in one turn if paired with Devil Flash, or twelve squares while teleporting with Winged Flight, or attack four times in one turn with Matchless, or make up for the large MP cost by making your other member a Tyrant or Divine so you can use it over and over. No other racial skill even comes close to the power of Unearthly Form, especially if the Fiend also has Victory Cry and Drain to keep their MP full.
- With the addition of new skills, there are a number of exceptionally effective skill combinations:
- A lethal one is a variation on Keita's strategy: combine Rage Soul with Double Strike, Attack All and Ultimate Hit. See how many enemy teams survive that.
- Grimoire, +Stone, and Multi-Strike. Strength hardly matters in this combination, as you will deal a lot of hits, each with a chance to petrify — and once the petrify lands, every subsequent hit has a chance to instantly kill its target. A viable skill set to use for Joe.
- Crit Up + Ares Aid + Phys Amp makes any critical hits you land hurt like a truck. You can trade Ares Aid for another passive (like Pierce or Phys Boost) if using Racial or Auto skills that boost crit rate, or Mighty Hit which is a physical attack that's a guaranteed crit.
- Endure + Rejuvenate makes a team leader very hard to kill — they have a Last Chance Hit Point, and if they're not knocked out in an Extra Turn afterwards, starting another skirmish lets Rejuvenate fully heal the leader. This combo is used against you by Otome, on the 7th Day.
- Da Peng is the highest-levelled Avian and one of the best demons in the game. Not only is its Winged Flight racial skill valued for the mobility its team will get, but it's got a fantastic stat spread for an optimized Multi-Strike, and its one weakness to Fire can easily be patched up if you get it by ranking up Suzaku, which learns Fire Drain on its own.
- Titania, Purple Mirror, and Metatron in Devil Survivor 2 are immune to all but two elements. Fusing them with the exact right passive abilities makes them invulnerable to everything but almighty attacks. Use the Release Passive add-on to add Hero Soul (take attacks for the leader if your resistance is higher) and their leader is safe from a good 80% of attacks. The former two are actually of low enough level to be used in the endgame without needing a New Game Plus.
In Record Breaker, the Frost Five join the ranks of immune-to-everything demons. They have only one weakness and are immune to everything else, but one of their fusion requirements, Black Frost, already comes with a passive that can cover this weakness. Of course, given the level restriction, you can only feasibly start using them on a New Game Plus, but there's nothing stopping you from using them against some of the superbosses.
Other
- Demikids Dark Version's Fusion system that affects only stats. While it's not as unique as the Light Version's classic system, this is arguably better. With some easy work, and extremely abusable battle arena that gives out mid and high level demon as a prize, this allows you to Elite Tweak your party to ridiculous level.
- The skill giving items. Oh gosh, the skill giving items. Similar to the Updated Re-release of Persona 3 they allow you to give skills to your demon, except your options in this game are limited to some exclusive moves instead of almost every move in the game. The catch? Wind Robes are available pretty early, are very easy to get with a little Big and Small abuse, and give you Wind Dance, a move that hits 8 times randomly that is available to pretty much every demon in the game with fairly strong base power and sometimes extra effects. This basically renders every other move barring healing moves completely obsolete since you can spam this move to win any kind of fight. Combine with the fusion system above and even the Superboss won't last more than one round.
