Dracula's Dungeon of Classic JRPGs and Other Nonsense

[Dracula]

So I've been playing...

Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei

I've had this one on my to-play list for quite a while - the cart has been on my shelves for at least a half-decade now. I started playing it on a whim a few weeks ago and I'm totally hooked. So I figured it was time to dust off the old dungeon again.

Background

Everyone these days is at least a little bit familiar with the Megami Tensei series by way of Persona if nothing else. It's wild to think about this, but the internationally popular high school drama simulator with demons has its roots in this humble dungeon crawler from 1987. And Megami Tensei isn't even the primary text here - the story spins off of an OVA from the same year, which itself was based on a series of novels.

So what's the deal? Well, it starts with computer genius high schooler Akemi Nakajima. Now this kid is a real computer whiz, but instead of using his talent to, I dunno, compare the women in his class to farm animals, he goes ahead and invents a program that summons literal demons into the material plane. This goes about as well as you'd expect. The world might have ended then and there if it weren't for his friend Yumiko helping him get the demons back in the computer where they belong.

Unfortunately, it didn't stick. Not long afterward, a mysterious demon-filled ziggurat appears in Japan, and its masters claim they will soon conquer Earth. Nakajima takes his laptop and Yumiko into the dungeon to sort things out. And that's where the Famicom game picks up. Literally!

Every time you start the game you get this cute little cutscene of Nakajima and Yumiko walking up the stairs into the temple.

And there's no preamble at all, you just start your journey on the eighth floor of this temple, which is known as the "Tower of Daedalus." It's the only entrance from the material world into the world of demons. The manual has a helpful illustration of the shape of our journey:

Daedalus is the temple on the left. We need to presumably find and kill the giant skull on the right. The eighth floor of Daedalus comprises the village of Mykon (I assume after the village of Mykonos), contains no enemy encounters, and lets us get our bearings before plunging into the depths. So let's talk a little bit about how this game works.

Like all 3-D dungeon crawlers, you use the D-pad to change direction or move forward. The A button is used to access the menu, which lets us open Nakajima's computer, check our stats, cast Yumiko's spells, or use a jewel. Pressing "B" moves the screen left a bit to display an automap (usually hidden), your cardinal direction, and your characters' levels.

Unlike nearly every other JRPG from this era, there are no perishable items and no equipment menus. Equipment can only be purchased and it automatically replaces whatever you're wearing in the same slot (and the shopkeep buys back your old stuff). Items besides jewels function only as plot devices.

Before descending the stairs to the seventh floor, there are a few things you can do in Mykon.

• Visit several NPCs who give you vague hints about the gameplay systems.
• Find a chest with 500 makka, the game's currency.
• Visit the Mykon village elder, who gives you a password. For a while, this is the only way to get a password.
• Visit the Cathedral of Shadows, where ally demons can be fused together into new ones. Death and status elements can also be fixed here, and for a while, this is the only place to do that as well.
• Visit a healer. There is no inn or tavern equivalent. The healer in this game heals individual characters, and the service costs money dependent on how many HPs/MPs he needs to fix.
• Visit the frontier shop. Here, you can buy new weapons and equipment. Since both characters start with no equipment, you have to spend your initial makka wisely here.
• Get frustrated when you can't enter the room with the elevator.

Once equipped, you can go past an NPC guard who warns you about the monsters living below and begin exploring lower Daedalus.

Your two main characters start off pretty weak, but they do have specialties.

Nakajima can equip better weapons and armor than Yumiko. He is also the only one who can access the computer, which is necessary to speak to and summon demons, about which more in a moment.
Yumiko can cast spells, and she is the only character whose spells can be accessed from the menu. At the outset, her spells include medi (heals some HP) and the vital mapper, which when cast causes the menu to display the automap. If it weren't for this spell I likely wouldn't have gotten so hooked on this game. The automap makes it so much easier to draw out the maps of the dungeon. It costs 2 MP every time you cast it, and the spell wears off every time there's a new moon, but this cycle is generously long and there's basically no reason not to have the spell on all the time.

Of course, you'll be facing hordes of enemies in the dungeon, and for that you need friends. Demon friends.

"Five skeletons appeared! What do you do?"

Megami Tensei introduces the demon-summoning system that's inherent to all SMT games, and crazy enough, it's very similar to the system seen in modern entries. The basics:

• As long as Nakajima is alive, you can use his computer to talk to any enemy that appears in an encounter.
• If there is only one enemy, it may respond by asking for money, jewels, etc., and might join you depending on how you answer.
• Like most SMT games, the determination seems fairly random. However, two things do affect the outcome: Moon phase, and intelligence. A new moon and high intelligence help create a favorable outcome. Demons get rowdier on the full moon.
• Unlike modern SMT games, only certain families of demons can be recruited, and the game does not reveal which families are eligible. Trial and error, baby.
• Once acquired, an ally demon has to be summoned. This costs money and is a big barrier to keeping a full party in the early game.
• When summoned, ally demons drain another resource known as "magnetite." This counter decreases by a certain amount with every step depending on which demons you're using. If it goes to 0, the demons' HP start to decrease instead.
• You can heal demons' status ailments by returning them to the computer and summoning them again. It costs money, but is often more convenient than hiking all the way back to the healer in Mykon.
• Dead demons have to be revived at the Cathedral of Shadows. If you get a password and reload a game without reviving a demon, it disappears from your list.

One other thing that I enjoy: JRPGs tend to use the word 仲間 ("nakama") to mean "member of your party." Megami Tensei uses the word 仲魔, which is pronounced the same, but swaps the second kanji for the one that means "demon." Very cute and clever and not very easy to translate.

So those are the basics. Next we'll talk a bit about the rest of Daedalus, the floating castle of Bien, and the Valhalla corridor.

 

[WildcatJF]

Great to see you Drac! This is really helpful for me as I'm covering Megami Tensei for my next Femtendo book. I'll be looking forward to future updates!

 

[Falselogic]

I thought a few times about trying to play this game. But I never carried through... Looks neat though.

 

[FelixSH]

I'm happy to see this thread active again. And generally, to see you around. Looking forward to further posts.

 

[Felicia]

Funnily enough, this and Jack Bros are the only two Megaten games I've played to the end thus far. I've been meaning to continue the series now that the other Famicom game has gotten a fan translation as well, but there's just been too many other games grabbing my attention.

Speaking of fan translations, the first two books in the original Digital Devil Story novel trilogy have been fan-translated into english, if you want to check out the series origins. Beware that Nakajima is a pretty damn unsympathetic protagonist (though this might have been intentional by the author).

 

[Yimothy]

I love the label on that cart.

 

[Dracula]

Hey, thanks for the kind words, folks! Glad you're here to read about some weird old games.

Beware that Nakajima is a pretty damn unsympathetic protagonist (though this might have been intentional by the author).

Years ago I watched the Megami Tensei OVA and I remember having this same thought about him. Luckily, he has no voice whatsoever in the Famicom game.

I love the label on that cart.

Me too. The labels on all of Namco's Famicom games use a charming combination of graphics from the games (clearly captured by aiming a camera at a TV screen) and official artwork.

Tower of Daedalus

The game's first proper area consists of eight floors. Every floor except the last is made up of an 8 x 8 grid. This is helpfully explained in the manual as a way to encourage players to map the dungeon out themselves. It even goes as far as to claim it's a key element of enjoying the game.

And I agree! I will admit that I'm using a couple of guides as I'm playing Megami Tensei. There's a nice and thorough one on GameFAQS, and I also sometimes translate pages out of this scanned guide from the same era the game was made. Mostly I do this to get a sense of what demons are good to recruit, and which ones make good combinations. The game is fairly punishing in terms of resources, and I am not a child with an infinite amount of free time, so these tips have helped me greatly in my enjoyment.

I do not, however, look at the guide for the maps unless I've already completely mapped out an area. I draw the maps and make notes. It's fun!

Anyway, Daedalus' upper floors are home to your basic arrays of slugs, blobs, slimes, and undead.

Just look at this excellent slime. By the way, all the monsters in this game have two frames of animation. Green Slime here blinks his eyes.

Only a couple of demons on the early floors are recruitable, and even those are better off fighting for experience and money to buy better equipment. The encounter rate is pretty generous in this game - in fact, it's extremely low in the corridors. When you pass through a doorway, there seems to be about a 50% chance you'll get jumped, so you can pretty easily plan out what routes are safer, and after you explore an area, it's pretty easy to pass through it again.

Besides makka, enemies will sometimes also drop magnetite (needed when you have demons in your party) or a jewel. The jewels can be used from the main menu and will fully heal one party member. Demons will sometimes also request them during negotiations.

Once you've slaughtered enough gnomes, heqets, and mud slugs to trade in your pathetic jack knife for something nicer, you can start poking around in the lower levels. More powerful enemies start to appear - harpies, orcs, ghosts, sickle-handed Lemurians, and so forth.

This is Megami Tensei's idea of an orc. I love him.

NPCs warn you about the Minotaur who lives on the bottom floor, and words written on the walls describe a once-prosperous place known as the floating city of Bien.

Also, the lowest levels are home to one of the iconic Megami Tensei monsters: Cerberus.

Cerberus was Nakajima's ally in the Megami Tensei anime, and he features heavily in the iconography of this game, showing up several times in the instruction manual and even in the title screen. This should be your hint to recruit him, because he's easily the best demon ally you can find in Daedalus.

My favorite random encounter in Daedalus is an enemy called "Bug." I didn't take a picture of him, but fortunately TCRF has a nice gif:

There's no context for why something like this happens to live in Daedalus - it just does. Bug can't be recruited, and it has an ungodly amount of HP for where it's encountered, so I always run from it.

The bottom level of Daedalus is made up of three 8x8 maps that line up in a row. If you look at the manual's map layout, you can see that tracks with how the whole dungeon is constructed. Minotauros lives in a room that blocks access to the middle part of the first floor, but there are actually two doors leading toward Valhalla - so you can just walk past him and start exploring other areas first, if you want to. And you probably will, because you'll likely be too weak to defeat Minotauros the first time you find him.

Past Daedalus is the game's third major area, the Valhalla Cooridor, which connects to the second area, the Floating Castle of Bien. However, you can't access Bien until Minotauros is defeated, and Valhalla will quickly overwhelm a low-level party. So you really need to finish off the boss battle first.

Minotauros gets his own boss music (and this is not a given for Famicom JRPGs). The first time I fought him, my team of Cerberos, Dryad, and Nekomata were quickly stomped into the pavement. The boss hits with a couple of attacks that strike more than one target, dealing 30-40 damage each time, and you need to deal about 700 damage to him. Even the best demons available to you in this area will deal only about 20 damage per hit at best.

If you lose to Minotauros, you get this charming screen:

"I thought you had a little more spunk, but you're all bark and no bite!"

So I mapped out the rest of Daedalus that I hadn't seen and spent some time recruiting and combining demons until I was able to flesh out my party with Baku (whose medical spell heals one party member fully) and Treant (who has high speed and some nicely damaging spells).

Defeating Minotauros nets you the "silence gem," which allows passage into the Daedalus elevator and therefore quicker access to the resources in Mykon. It also lets you access a room off the elevator shaft in level three, where you find an old shield that will help us get into Bien.

Next, we'll see what the floating city has to offer.

 

[Falselogic]

is there any demon fusion in this first game? Like can you take some of those low level demons are fuse them up into something more useful?

 

[Dracula]

is there any demon fusion in this first game? Like can you take some of those low level demons are fuse them up into something more useful?

Yep! It's vital, in fact, if you hope to defeat the first boss. Of all the demons you can find early on, really only Cerberus has any fighting chance against him. I suppose you could venture into Valhalla and try to recruit some higher level demons there, but realistically players are going to take weaker demons from Daedalus and fuse them. That's how I was able to get Baku and Treant on my party.

More about how the fusions work in the next post.

 

[Dracula]

How to Fuse Goku With Vegeta to Get Broly

Demon fusion has been a major element of the Megami Tensei series going all the back to this Famicom game. Up to the point I've played, there's so far only one place to do it, and it's located in Mykon village. On one side of the village is a doorway leading to a long hallway, and at the end of the hallway is a room where you meet this guy:

Later MT games will give this fellow a name (Mido), but here in Famicom world he's just a strange muscly green fellow with a cool hat and a snake. His location, however, does get a name, helpfully displayed in vertical kanji to the left of his portrait. It's called 邪教の館, "Jakyō no Yakata," which translates to "House of Heresy." This name is fucking awesome and obliterates "Cathedral of Shadows," which is how localized SMT games refer to Mido's crib.

Anyway, at the House of Heresy you can do two things. If any of your demons are dead, snake bro will revive them at the cost of their HP in makka. Also, if you have any dead demons, you can't do anything else at the House of Heresy until they are revived.

If all your demons are alive, you can do demon fusions here. Your party list will show up and you can select any two of them to fuse.

Oh yeah. I didn't mention this before. You can have a total of seven demons recruited in your computer. Only three can be added to your party. As far as I've been able to tell, you can't have two of the same demon recruited (if you chat with a demon you already have, the enemy and ally have a genial meeting and the combat ends).

So, fusions - once you pick two demons, the master of heresy will then show you the result of the fusion. If the fusion is possible, you'll get a message telling you the demon's total HP/MP and a yes/no prompt. However, if you're too low of level to summon the demon, you'll get a message explaining that you're too weak.

Also, there is a somewhat confusing compatibility system. Fusing two incompatible demons will always result in a Dryad:

This isn't necessarily an unfavorable result. In the early game, Dryad isn't a bad companion, and you can use it as a springboard for a better fusion. Plus, you can always press "no" if you don't want it.

Fusions are free, thankfully, so there's basically no reason not to come back to Mykon and see what you can get out of your party.

Now, let's talk about Medusa's Moving Castle.

 

[Dracula]

Medusa's Moving Castle

Just past the final area in Daedalus is the westernmost edge of the Valhalla Corridor. The first thing you'll probably notice upon entering Valhalla is the dungeon tile set changes, and there's also new music. Again, these things aren't a given in a game of this vintage, so I was pleased with the change of pace.

West central Valhalla is another neutral zone with no enemy encounters. There are several things you can do here before choosing a path forward:

• Access the game's first Warp Point. Entering a particular room in this area warps you to a room just outside the elevator in Daedalus. This would be useful...except you can't exit the room in Daedalus. A mysterious force keeps you out.
• Learn about a "Statue of Tabatha." An NPC tells you that if you find it, to take it to another NPC who lives in the area.
• Learn about someone named "Rick" who is supposedly imprisoned nearby.
• Visit a hypnotist. This guy will essentially teleport you to the entrance of Daedalus, and he won't give you a choice in the matter.
• Find a new Frontier Shop, which sells better stuff than the shop in Mykon.

This map has six exits. Two just lead back into Daedalus the way you came. One leads in to Valhalla's basement; one leads to the map directly to the south; and two lead into Bien. The Bien exits are protected by NPC guards. The northern guard (Dor) wordlessly blocks the passage. The southern guard (Gar) lets you go past him if you give him his shield, which can be found in Daedalus after you get the Silence Gem.

Finally, the Valhalla neutral zone is divided into two sections, and the rooms that connect them are blocked off by the same mysterious power that prevents us from using the warp back to Daedalus. So for a while, you have to hike back through some corridors in Daedalus every time you want to visit the top or bottom part of this area.

Now once you get past Gar you can start to explore Bien.

Bien has five floors, and the second one consists of four 8x8 maps. The area also has a new tileset and music track. This "castle" looks uncannily like a street in Tokyo, complete with bars, storefronts, streetlights, and the like. However, everything is an eerie shade of gray, and despite the friendly appearance, enemies run riot in the streets.

The monsters here are also a grade up over the strongest ones in Daedalus. Demons like Caim and Fungus cast massively damaging spells; ghouls and Apeps cause PALSY which might force a trip back to Mykon; goblins and Banders hit really hard. One of my favorite demons I've run into in this area is 黄泉醜女 ("Yomotsu-Shikome"), AKA "Ugly Girl of the Underworld." She comes from the Izanami mythology (which is also a big part of this game), and is supposed to be a hag sent by Izanami to chase her unfaithful husband, Izanagi. In Megami Tensei, she looks like a weird face with glowing eyes:

Another good one is Viy, apparently taken from a Russian horror novella. In MT he shows up as a one-eyed floating Martian Manhunter head:

I guess this is a good a time as any to talk about the art in this game. Much of Digital Devil Story's legacy is tied to the artwork of Kazuma Kaneko. But he didn't start working on the series until the sequel to this game, released on Famicom a few years later. I'm not sure who did the art for this game. It stands in stark contrast to the designs people tend to associate with the series. The monsters are chunkier, more cartoonish, with blinking eyes or puckering mouths. They sit somewhere between the cute monsters of Dragon Quest and the illustrative creatures of Final Fantasy. I like it. Seeing what new demons show up in each area is a big part of this game's appeal for me.

Continued...

 

[Dracula]

Now the guide I sometimes refer to suggested venturing into Valhalla to pick up some new demon allies. I have decided this is bad advice. Valhalla is way too tough to explore at the level you're likely to be. I generally had to turn around after one or two enemy encounters. There is one area I probably would have liked to discover prior to visiting Bien, but I will get to that later. At any rate, the demons you recruited to beat Minotauros will generally do pretty well in Bien as long as you pick your fights wisely for a while. I also recruited a Bander (evidently short for "Bandersnatch," though he looks like an armored guy with a sword) who helped out quite a bit.

You have to follow a winding, indirect route through Bien to get to the big second floor. As you explore the area, you're likely to notice a few oddities:

• Petrified people. You'll run into a village elder and, strangely, what appears to be a ship's captain complete with helm. However, as they are turned to stone, there's no way to interact with them.
• More areas sealed off by a mysterious force.
• Fixed encounters with an enemy called "Medusa's Shade." She has tons of HP and can petrify you, so I always run from these.

The goal on the second floor is to locate the item known as "Tabatha's Statue." If you read the game's manual, it explicitly describes the usage of this item: defense against Medusa's petrification. In order to get to it, you have to wind your way around the second floor and finally walk through a large chamber full of tiles that damage the whole party. The room is also guarded by another Medusa Shade, which you will have to encounter once on the way in and once on the way out.

If you take the statue back to the NPC in Valhalla, he just tells you the thing's usage, which is nice if you don't have the manual, I suppose.

Once you've got the statue, it's time to face Medusa herself. She lives at the top of the castle in an area that a sign on the wall amusingly names "MEDUSA COMPANY."

Dark Mistress Medusa has 300 more HP than Minotauros, but she is a bit easier than him as long as you've gained a few levels and brought the statue with you. She will often waste her turn trying to inflict STONE on the party (using a spell named "CONCRETE"), which never works if you have Tabatha's Statue, so as long as you keep an eye on HP, it's not too hard to finish her off.

Once you defeat her, you receive the "Bull Key," which removes the mysterious force that kept you from entering certain areas before. Also, the petrification of Bien wears off, and the entire second floor becomes a neutral zone. In this area, you now can:

• Visit Bien's elder. Since he looks like Password Guy from Mykon, I assumed he would essentially be a save point. Nope! He gives you a ton of cash and a "ticket."
• Visit the captain. If you got the ticket, he will fly Bien to Valhalla, Mazulka, or Anfini. I had hoped he might also fly us back to Daedalus, but, nope. Not on the route.
• Use the elevator to access any of Bien's floors.
• Find a new area in the southeast corner (previously blocked off) that contains the game's third Frontier Shop and a healer.

Unfortunately, Bien doesn't have a House of Heresy, so we still need to go back to Mykon to fuse or revive demons. There's also no password guy here, but by this point Yumiko will probably have learned the "Swordnar" spell, which lets her generate a password anywhere. Regardless of where you get a password, you always start back at Mykon with all your demons returned to the computer.

Next we'll venture into Valhalla, the game's largest dungeon environment yet.

 

[Falselogic]

How much grinding do you have to do in this one to get you and the monsters up to fighting shape? Like how much was it for Minotaur and then how much for Medusa?

EDIT: I have to say I've been enjoying the sprite work in this one. I should look up a sprite sheet and see all of it.

 

[Dracula]

How much grinding do you have to do in this one to get you and the monsters up to fighting shape? Like how much was it for Minotaur and then how much for Medusa?

In classic JRPGs I try to spend as little time grinding as I can. In this game I've done no grinding for exp or money.

For Minotaur I did do a bit of grinding-adjacent activity, but it was entirely for the purposes of recruiting a couple of particular demons. It might have taken 20 minutes or so?

For Medusa I did a little bit of the same, but I think it took even less time. It seems to me if you map the game out as you go, the exploration by itself will help a lot in getting your characters up to the right levels.

 

[Felicia]

I've played through this game to the end, but I'm still not sure I "get" the demon fusion mechanic, specifically how you're supposed to figure out which demons to fuse to get a desired result without consulting a pre-written guide. When I played the game I drew up a big grid on graph paper and tried to fill it out with every possible combination, but I get the feeling that this isn't the intended strategy, and I imagine that it would be way too unwieldy in later games.

 

[Dracula]

Yeah I have no clue how the game determines what demons fuse into what, and TBH, I didn't really understand this even in a modern SMT game. I used a guide to get some ideas for which demons would be good to fuse, but as I progress I may do this less and less.

ETA: The table in the House of Heresy will indicate whether or not two demons will fuse into something new or into a Dryad, but that's the only thing it indicates.

 

[FelixSH]

In the games I played, demons simply (regarding fusion, spoilered in case you don't want to know Dracula, but it won't help if you do, I think) have a certain type (like Angels or Megami, something to fit the type of demon). There are two factors at play here: the combination of demon types you use, and the level the demons are at. Like, every type has a set of demons, depending on level - like, there is a demon from the level range of 1-7, then from 8-14, and so on. Two types would basically always result in a specific third type (like Angel and Megami could always result in a Beast type demon). Which specific demon of that family you would get depends on the level of the demons that were used as fusion material. There are a bit more details, but that's the main idea.

It also doesn't really help that much. Even knowing that, I always just took demons and fused into what seemed good, or maybe just looked cool. Which was also enough - I'm pretty sure the idea is not, that you are supposed to fuse a specific demon. Partly, because you can simply recruit the demons you want to get anyway, when you see them. In later games (and I count the SNES Shin Megami Tensei there too), you simply fuse all the time, whenever you can, and it will work out. I mean, you can often create more or less useful demons, but that is more using the ressources you have in the best way.

I don't think there is any essential stuff in there, it's all very basic, I think. But still, spoiler, just in case.

With regards to Megami Tensei: I really like the demon designs, clearly the highlight of the artwork at play here. I do wonder: That ressource you use up, whenever you have demons summoned, with every step (magetite, or something like that?) - do you get enough of that easily? When playing Shin Megami Tensei, the SNES one, I got to a point where I simply ran out, and didn't get nearly enough from random encounters. I used a cheat code for an infinite amount of that (leaving everything else, this one thing just ruined the game for me, because restricting my demon usage felt like it ran too counter to what I wanted from the game). How is it here? Do you have enough of that, if you just don't run away much?

Also, since I played through Phantasy Star last time, I realized how much drawing your own maps adds to these games. Doing that, and simply collecting information about the dungeons, is fun. I need to be in the mood for that, but if I am, it is a bonus, not a problem.

 

[Dracula]

I do wonder: That ressource you use up, whenever you have demons summoned, with every step (magetite, or something like that?) - do you get enough of that easily? When playing Shin Megami Tensei, the SNES one, I got to a point where I simply ran out, and didn't get nearly enough from random encounters. I used a cheat code for an infinite amount of that (leaving everything else, this one thing just ruined the game for me, because restricting my demon usage felt like it ran too counter to what I wanted from the game). How is it here? Do you have enough of that, if you just don't run away much?

For the first couple of areas I almost didn't think about the Magnetite at all. You would easily get more than you needed as long as you didn't run away from every battle.

As I press further into Valhalla it's become more of a resource crunch. The enemies drop more than enough to keep you stocked, but I've noticed that fewer enemies seem to drop it. Plus the higher level demons drain the resource a little faster. So there have been a few times where I've stopped at a doorway to fight a few times to gain Magnetite before proceeding.

It doesn't seem too bad, though. I just wait to summon my party until I get to the relevant area now, and I return them when I'm wandering around a lower level area.

Anyway I've been out of town for a few days and hope to get back to this this week!