Devil of Decline

[Ghaleon]

So since a gameplay patch was released relatively recently for Devil of Decline, I decided to give it a go.

The only DoD topic I was able to find via search in HME is:
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,11701.msg768236.html#msg768236

and you can snag the gameplay patch (and read up on its progress) at:
https://www.shrinemaiden.org/forum/index.php/topic,18295.0.html

Thank you to everyone who made this patch possible. Not just the current workers like Validon98, but everyone who invested time and effort into getting to that point previously too!

Anyway... I'm playing this game now, and I'm enjoying it, though so far I think genius of sappheiros was better. Here are my observations, I'm curious what other fans think.

1: I rather liked those 25 point skill charts in GoS where you could spend, reset, and resend on demand to suit your current needs, boss fights. etc. It was strong character customization that was also flexible and interesting. I've rarely seen customization options in a game that was interesting AND flexible, normally if they're flexible, they're pretty basic. DoD seems to have lost that system completely. I IMAGINE that choosing who is 'wearing' which 3 shikigamis is supposed to be the replacement, and that's an interesting system too. But there's just no way that assigning 3 characters to your 'masters' is as deep. Not to mention there are some obvious bad choices there like trying to put ailment-inducing characters on reimu or something.

2: The 'masters' themselves don't really seem that interesting themselves. They have their unique stat growths and last words...But as far as I can tell, that's IT. They don't have their own spells. No fantasy seal for reimu, or persuasion needle, no magic missle for marisa, remilia doesn't have spear the gungnir, madness!

3: Probably an issue because early game is mostly outdoors in woods and swamps and whatnot, but so far I'm noticing more tedious to navigate dungeons where the difficulty lies in you figuring out the correct path from point A to B by traveling unseen behind giant tree/cliff/whatever terrain blocking your view of the path.. I'm not talking about the odd secret or whatever hiding like that.

4: I've heard this game is easier until the final dungeon. I've noticed that the first dungeon is indeed much easier than GoS' first dungeon. But after that the trash seems about the same so far. Bosses on the other hand are proving to be complete pushovers so far. (the most recent boss I defeated was some fire demon thing that was with orin, so if they get way harder immediately, eh).

Of course, GoS is a great game, and despite that, I like some of the changes too.

5: Choosing your starting character is cool, having their own starting companions/shikigami/etc is also cool.

6: GoS had some great music, but I think I'm enjoying this game's even more! and no, I don't actually like chinese tea that much (I mean compared to other touhou songs, I like it but not especially so).

7: Having every character (at the time) as either a master or shikigami is great...and finally a touhou rpg with hatate! EEEK... I just hope she doesn't suck =P

I have some questions though...

1: Vitality is supposed to affect defense, and potential is supposed to affect resistance/crit... Why then, despite my vitality and potential growing more and more... my defense/resistance 0 if you take away armor?

2: What is the significance of the different weapon types that belong to the same family? For example, short sword has a pretty standard looking sword icon, but shamshir has a thinner, more eastern looking sword icon. But they both share the same sword skills? I also have a mace, which looks like a mace in the icon, and then the battleshovel has an icon that looks like something you'd see a brutish ogre to lug around or something. I'm not talking about their graphic which is obviously unique for each item. But I mean the tiny little icon that is more to tell you the family of item something is.

3: so far I'm having no difficulties, so I have yet to craft anything despite having the mats to do so. Are early game crafting mats still useful later in the game? or will they just be useless then. Basically, by saving now, will I be helping myself later if i need something crafted later? Will all the 'stone's and 'steel's and whatnot turn into 'obsidian', and 'mithril' or something? I mean I expect to see new mats for higher end items, but I'm wondering if they'll require stone and stuff still TOO.

[Serela]

The basic materials (iron, bamboo, mirrors, elemental shards) can be upgraded to the better ones later in the game but the more eclectic materials (Youkai's Memories) are just irrelevant later. Overall though, as long as you don't go crazy on crafting, full speed ahead. Materials are a lot less limited than in GoS until you get to endgame recipes (which have lots of special materials)

The bosses will slowly scale up in difficulty but apart from like, two exceptions, the game really doesn't get much harder until the final dungeon where it decides to start demanding a sacrifice of your unborn children. That's where it gets, ah, "fun", so as you unlock more shikigami it's important to make sure you're leveling up ones that look like they'll be useful later (which can be hard to tell when their moveset isn't filled out, admittedly!), and not just mostly using shikigami that have nice random battle clearing moves.

The one other difference between characters is weapon skill learning types. Protags and

Spoiler:

Kogasa, who has a super easily missable recruit scene late in the game

are the special Type 1 which has the best moves and a large variety, most of the magician-type characters are the second best Type 4 (think of it as a consolation prize for the low str, except for utsuho), and everyone else is 2 or 3. Chart of how it works

Explanation:Type 1 characters are great at learning type 1 moves, alright at learning type 2 and 3, and have a big penalty when trying to learn type 4 moves.

Another thing about weapon skill learning is there's a lot of skills that you can learn -much- sooner and at a much higher chance if you use a certain other weapon skill. In a few cases it's the only way to learn it at all. (Early example:Falcon Slash can inspire Sonic Blade at a much lower proficiency level than a normal attack, and with a higher proc rate)

anyway I beat the game a week or two ago and I'm also a nerd who knows everything about it even -before- I played it, so <.< >.> if there's any questions

[Validon98]

To answer the question about the different sword icons and whatnot, from my understanding there's no major difference. There are very specific weapons that help spark very specific skills, but that's about it, and none of those weapons even show up until like... expansion or endgame content.

But yeah, the game is much easier early on, but it starts kicking you in the nads once you get to the final dungeon (which takes up roughly the last third or quarter of the game anyways, so yaaaaaay). Although the game does kick you in the nads much earlier with Xia Zhuli, the boss of the first Clock Tower of the End, who you should save for much later because taking her on first is nigh suicidal, despite her Clock Tower being the easiest of the three in terms of random encounters. So yeah, the start is a bit slow, but it picks up, don't worry.

Oh right, to answer about the vitality thing, the DEF and RES stats only measure what you have based on your equipment and whatnot, not how much VIT and POT affects them. This is sorta eh in my opinion, but at the same time the visible stats from equipment are generally more prominent anyways. So having, say, a 50 MDEF is going to be a lot more effective than having 50 POT, because the equipment stats have a much greater effect.

[Ghaleon]

I WISH I could know everything but navigating the japanese wiki is painful for me. I did find new things that make me go huh though.

1: Nitori recently got a lightbulb moment, and did some attack called counter-something (and no she wasn't using any skill that allowed her to counter things) while using a spear, it looked like some kind of computer scan thing then a stab with an explosion...however she didn't learn the actual move after. what gives?

2: I don't really want people to tell me exactly what party to use per say, but I currently am using youmu, mokou, raymoo, patchy, and nitori (dumping marisa for patchy was hard but I'm a remi/patchy fanboy so I had to, and I didn't want 2 squishy mages). I'll have to dump someone for remilia after, and I don't really wanna dump nitori because she's my go-to status character cuz of her high dexterity... plus her defenses aren't bad...heck, nothing about her seems to be bad except her int I guess. I'm thinking of dumping mokou or youmu (probably youmu, she's more useful than mokou for me currently but I imagine mokou's last word is just too damn good endgame, and youmu's will become nothing special I suspect), making reimu or nitori replace them as a tank (for 2 girl tank formations, maybe I should switch to 1 later though). Is it viable end game to have only 1 dedicicated brawler type character who can take a beating? Can raymoo support that role?

3: Do physical/magic attacks noticeably scale better than another late game? Just curious

4: Any advice towards which shikigami are deceptively useful? Like which ones look like crap at first but are really good because they learn some of the best skills later on? Does that early game one in the chest who has a single target nuke of each element get something amazing later? She's super good now just for versatility on my only good mage, but I suspect she'll become pretty lame later on as other characters learn their own elemental nukes if she never learns anything new...Is there a maximum number of spells they can learn? like 5 or something? Cuz if I see a character with 5 and I don't like any of their stuff that much, I'll know to give up on them.

5: In the bestiary, right on the bottom, next to their exp reward, is some kinda area where stars are displayed, what the heck is that?

Thanks again.

More observations

I like how this game doesn't really have a set path for you to go, some areas are harder, but not to the point where it's impossible to do them first or whatever (probably because leveling up is so minor in these games).

Muenzuka is bs =P. I almost had a party wipe (would be my first) like 4 times now from trash encounters... the enemies aren't hard per say.. it's the big packs with like 3 wheels and 3 chips where they can all move faster than my entire party, paralize my whole party, trip half my party, etc... oh, and that these moves seem to be THEIR MOST COMMON CHOICE.. ugh ugh.

[Validon98]

Okay, going to do my best to answer questions and whatnot.

1- Here's the thing with learning skills: If you already have four skills and then learn a fifth, then you have to swap out one of your existing skills in order to have it equipped. As well, if you learn a skill, but get wiped out, you lose the skill you learned and have to relearn it.

2- In terms of someone being a "tank" character, I've used Yuuka, Reimu, Mokou, Yukari, and Byakuren in my different runs. Really, ANYONE can tank as long as you throw enough defensive shikigami and items on them, and it's a good idea to make sure you get monster shikigami for that role, because having a dedicated tank is going to be crucial for later boss fights in order to soak up the big fuckoff attacks bosses will have (much like Alice in GoS). And don't worry too much about character choice, as you can see in my signature I describe the run of DoD that I'm actually on hiatus from as "team underused", because these are characters I haven't used extensively on my Reimu (my "I'm learning how to play" run), Meiling (my "I'm LPing so I'm min-maxing with my masters" run), or Yukari (my "I'm going to start working on this English patch so I should just try other characters" run) runs of the game, so I'm giving them some limelight. You really can go with ANY combination of masters and as long as you make sure that characters that join later can catch up in terms of levels and element levels, you'll be fine. There are some that are more suited to certain roles than others (and then there's Sunny, who just plain sucks and I'm just using her for my backup mage and support), but do whatever.

3- Scaling for physical and magical damage is very weird. Both actually stay fairly relevant throughout the entire game, although magic generally is better for clearing the easier random encounters and affecting the land during boss fights, while physicals are better for boss fights in general and for taking down tougher random encounters. Within physicals, the four major weapon types have their own scaling. Swords start off slightly weak due to a general lack of random clearing potential, but they become the best weapon type bar none for boss killing and single-target damage, as well as slayers. Spears start off okay since they can kill off some of the more dangerous monsters like Mind Flayers and whatnot, but they fall flat later in the game, and become the worst weapon type in general because they are so weak AND prevent shield usage. Blunt type weapons are in this strange limbo in which they are rather decent all game for physical damage and random clearing since they get a LOT of AoE attacks, but otherwise are rather average in terms of dealing damage. You might as well keep one around in case, given some of them ignore defense, but otherwise they are just barely worse than swords. Staves are useful all game given the fact they always boost magic damage, which is obviously good for your mages. They can't learn any weapon skills since they boost magic, but you don't really need weapon skills on your mages anyways. Much like with masters, use what you want, but I do recommend having at least two sword users, a blunt user, a mage with a staff, and maybe a spear user (although it's usually better to have two mages or a mage and a support using the staff that boosts casting speed and recovery magic power).

4- Shikigami learn no more than 5 skills, but that does not mean that they stop learning passives. As a general rule, most early shikigami will end up being useless later on, but there are some that do stay semi-relevant (I'm still using Parsee in the expansion, although I'm probably going to replace her with the Unseelie Court that IIRC I just picked up). There are too many shikigami in the game that I can't really recommend any off the top of my head, but on the subject of Isohime, there will be later shikigami that will outclass her in terms of being multi-element magic shikigami.

5- Sorry about the bestiary being untranslated right now, I have no idea how to clean it myself, and I'm still hoping someone will be able to do something with it, but those stars aren't going to be relevant until you finish one of the Clock Towers of the End. Once you beat one and recruit Satori, you will be able to recruit certain monsters as shikigami. The stars represent the difficulty of recruitment (the more stars, the less chance the monster will join), and if an enemy has no stars, then it cannot be recruited at all.

Sorry for the longwindedness, I'm just trying to explain as best as I can. I've beaten the main game with all four main characters, so I would like to think I'm somewhat knowledgable. :V

[Ghaleon]

PFFFT... someone apologizing to ME for long-windedness. Nah, I appreciate massive amounts of detail in pretty much every topic, so I refuse to excuse an apology, and thank it instead.

no worries about the star thing, it's pretty simple to figure out what is what in the bestiary...except the star thing =P. But now I know thanks.

I had a feeling early shikigami would be less useful but I have a feeling aya may remain pretty darn good for awhile... double action can't ever be bad I reckon! I'm also curious as to why orin is taking so much longer to learn a 3rd spell than letty or yamame (or aya but her 3rd spell is actually her first, and it's not a nuke).

I thought hina would be good, or any stat debuffer really. But I've noticed this game seems to make it so status reductions rarely land. I'm not talking mute, petrify, poison, etc. But strength-down, agility down, defense-down, etc. I have hina and some other stat reducer (a prismriver iirc) on nitori, whose dex is really quite impressive, but I have yet to see any stat down land once after attempting it only like a dozen enemies, how lame.

[Validon98]

Variety effects seem to honestly land more off of weapon skills in my experience than off specific skills that are designed for inflicting said status effects. I don't know why this is the case, but one thing I have noticed is that shikigami focused on status effects tend to, other than Koruri for some reason, tend to have larger stat bonuses, so there is that. You'll probably want to use status effects moreso on bosses anyways, and Mystia can help out with that once she gets Mysterious Song (it lowers enemy RES for a couple turns and has a pretty high chance of working, which can help land a few more effects).

Also, I nearly forgot about Aya, she is definitely useful all game because she not only gets you a nice Electric attack that'll last you for at least the majority of the second stratum and part of the third, but she has Thunderclap Gale and First Strike, two skills that are extremely good for boss fights or for fighting against some of the tougher enemies.

[Ghaleon]

You dirty rotten knowledge hoarders! I was browsing on my phone today and didn't have motk loaded up so rather than entering the url and clicking this link, I just googled motk devil of decline... it took me to some lets play in akyu's arcade, at which point both Serela and Validon mentioned some mysterious "blog that has everything technical about the game"... what is this blog! Must have! It isn't linked on the wiki! qq... pleeeeaseee *clutches ankle* pleeeeaaassseee!

Also, I imagine this is a bug with the game, not the translation patch, since I imagine the translation patch doesn't even touch the files that would cause this with a 10 foot pole.. but uhh.. whenever I kill enemies with canyon clap, which isn't supposed to cause petrify or anything...the enemies killed kinda turn dark like they were turned to stone, and do not get removed from the battlefield (though they are considered dead in that you can no longer target them, and they no longer perform any actions).. Also, the same spell for whatever reason always makes patchy and marisa perform the run away animation for like a second (only the squishy mages for whatever reason.. It could be people in particular formation slots though, I didn't try moving them and seeing).

[Validon98]

The blog of which you speak of is a Japanese blog that's linked on the Japanese wiki for the game, and it really does have a lot of technical information. So hereeeeeeeee you goooooooo!

http://blog.livedoor.jp/maroku/

It has stuff for other Strawberry Bose games too, but since you want Devil of Decline, well... pick the one that has stuff on Devil of Decline. :V

Hilariously, that chart Serela linked to in his post earlier? That's on this blog too.

And the Canyon Clap thing is always present, it apparently messes up the coordinates and such since lel screen shake, so things that are out of place move back (including enemies killed by it). Don't worry about the dark versions of enemies, they're not actually there, it's a graphical glitch thing that's always present with spells like that.

[Ghaleon]

yay thanks... this site is much more manageable to understand than the wiki using google translate...though first place I looked at is the damage formulas.. base attack force and such.. I don't see strength or vit mentioned in there AT ALL. Many confuses.

edit: oh wait, strength is mentioned once in some magic correction formula. didn't bother looking in the magic section.. must be a typo swap thing.

[Validon98]

Most likely it'll refer to those stats by their Japanese names (force is usually STR), so there might be some confusion there. It's not like in the English version where they're STR, VIT, etc.

[Ghaleon]

Thanks but I considered that annd... well... uhh. let's just focus on vit for defense for now.

○ basic defense force

Physical: defense of the target * (100- defense ignored effect) / 100 + shield defense force of the target
○ base damage


Damage
Physical: (basic attack force - basic defense force) * (weapon magnification + skill magnification -100) / 100

For basic defense force, I'm assuing 'defense of the target' is the 'def' stat, if you think it's vit, than that only makes me question if  defense is the useless stat (the one wearing armor I mean), which I don't think is the case. defense ignored effect is an offensive trait, most likely something along the lines on if it's a mace or a spear or mirage cut or whatever... and shield defense isn't what I'm talking about... maybe vit is facotred in the damage formula?

note basic attack force isn't strength per say, that's a formula on its own, one devoid of any target defenses (or anything from the target really). weapon magnification is what I assume to be again, spear, mace thing.. and skill is probably skill power... no vit. and if it is defense of target, then no defense... that's why I'm confused.

I'm really sorry to pester on a point if you wish not to talk about it. I don't want people to try and figure it out for me or anything but if they have a fast easy answer that will give me a lightbulb, that's what I'd like =) But please don't waste time on my needless obsession.

[Validon98]

I actually have no idea, to be honest. I never studied the formulas carefully enough, and right now it's so late where I am that I don't feel like studying the formulas to see what affects what. Go with what the blog says over what I say, really. :V

Do note that STR does directly affect PATK, but I don't know how VIT affects anything, really.

[Ghaleon]

actually, simple question. I got the hookshot, and forgot all the areas that need it. I got sunny and her pals, and uhh. I went to the northeast area of heaven's falls, which led to a cave which as far as I can tell was a dead-end without any significant treasure (hint hint, did I miss something?)...but thought there was more that I forgot about that I seem unable to find atm.

[Validon98]

You missed Momiji, simple as that. :V

[Ghaleon]

nono.. she was at the very door in that cave I mentioned. So I got her right away, found some cave, explored it, and found it holding nothing of value... now you may argue momiji was of value, but why wasn't hte cave empty except for her like so many other areas are like for parsee, mystia, orin, etc... the fact she was in a cave with some size, and enemies...and seemingly nothing else made me think maybe I missed something that wasn't something I'd literally walk into upon entering.

I was more asking if I missed other hookshot locations, I'm convinced I did at least one.. reading your lets play I mentioned earlier, there's some secret area YOU missed on your first play featuring every chest you previously missed or something, I can't find that one =P

[Validon98]

Ohhh... huh. I forget if there's anything else in Momiji's cave. You can fight enemies there and yukkuri'll pop up every so often, but other than that, I don't thiiink there's anything else?

And I know what you're talking about, and I don't think I missed it (maybe on that one run, but I know it exists). That's in Chaos Plains 3, by the way.

[MetalStudios]

Anyone know a good place to level grind pre castle of chaos?
I've been doing it in the cave where I got Momiji but I was wondering if there was anywhere better to do so......
I know there's a similar place in the final area but I haven't gotten that far yet......

[Mew seeker]

I'm really sorry to pester on a point if you wish not to talk about it. I don't want people to try and figure it out for me or anything but if they have a fast easy answer that will give me a lightbulb, that's what I'd like =) But please don't waste time on my needless obsession.

I am not familiar with this game but I am somewhat familiar with the SaGa games which use the lightbulb mechanic. (Many Touhou fangames are inspired by SaGa games.)
In those games, enemies have a "spark rate", a value which determine the likelyness of sparking a new tech.
The ones with the best rate are usually high ranking monsters or some bosses which mean that you need to progress at least a bit to learn the good stuff.
Also some tech may require you to learn earlier tech to be learned or at least more easily learned.
In Romancing SaGa 2, not every characters can spark every move and they don't have the same sparking rate either.
Also, some weapons in that game can spark weapon related moves.
In the PS2 version of Romancing SaGa, the best move for sparking new stuff is most of the time if not always the basic attack.

So what to get of all this? The specific varies but it starts with finding powerful opponents and bosses and then trying lot of attacks on them.
Because I don't know the specifics, I suggest to start from there and experiment a lot.

[Validon98]

...I don't think he was talking about the sparking system there, Mewseeker. I think he knows what that is already. :V

[Ghaleon]

err yeah, I know what the lightbulbs are for and that's not what I was talking about, thanks anyway!

[Fishin]

1: I rather liked those 25 point skill charts in GoS where you could spend, reset, and resend on demand to suit your current needs, boss fights. etc. It was strong character customization that was also flexible and interesting. I've rarely seen customization options in a game that was interesting AND flexible, normally if they're flexible, they're pretty basic. DoD seems to have lost that system completely. I IMAGINE that choosing who is 'wearing' which 3 shikigamis is supposed to be the replacement, and that's an interesting system too. But there's just no way that assigning 3 characters to your 'masters' is as deep. Not to mention there are some obvious bad choices there like trying to put ailment-inducing characters on reimu or something.

It's funny, I felt like GoS had a problem where there was far too much customization required; between every boss battle and dungeon exploration, you would have to rearrange your party, your skilltrees, your spells, and your equipment (with three accessories!) and I got kind of tired of switching everything back and forth all the time.  In DoD your actual party remains relatively static and all you really end up switching around is equipment and Shikigamis, and there's still a lot of depth in the shikigami choices you have but a lot less actual manual reconfigurating.


Anyways, DoD/Festival is probably tied with the Labyrinth games for my favorite Touhou RPG (I wrote a bunch of the boss strategy on the wiki), so it's really nice to see it getting a translation.  And yeah, the soundtrack is fantastic.  I didn't like Nightmare of Rebellion nearly as much from the bit of it that I've played, but that's neither here nor there.

[Ghaleon]

I kept my builds in gos static except for bosses... And those super rare encounters in stage 21 or 22 or whatever it is... I admit having to need very specific builds for rare random encounters was bs... But at the same time it was cool having trash that nasty.

Anyway. I am almost done the 2nd stratum in dod now. I cleared everything in it except the hell area, the boundary by entei, and the long range hookshot thing in heaven. The tower boss really was a joke compared to the first stratum. I thought that when people said the first stratum tower boss was hard, they meant because she rewuires advanced tactics, or that she can be cheap like mindflayers. I didnt expect that her stats are simply out of this world.

Im still finding nitori's spear use to be pretty darn good, and i have yet to get a good overall sword skill. The slayer skills are nice but for bosses they stink since every remotely big boss is unknown type.

[Serela]

Oh, I forget about this thread. Weapons~

Swords tend to get the best skills, especially once you get a better variety of slayers. Even against bosses, swords learn some realllly good damage skills in time, and there's some really good swords to go with it. (+elemental damage weapons are awesome against anything that doesn't heavily resist them) Spears don't fall off as hard as suggested earlier, but you -do- need to actually build for p.atk (and have a decent str stat) to make them work the farther in you get, since they don't pierce DEF at -all-, and honestly the type 1 spear attacks vastly outclass all the other spear skills until the end-postgame in terms of damage, much harder than the other weapon trees do; I had my protag use spears so I'm used to having them around :V

Even when spears do fall off though (this doesn't really happen until postgame even without special atk builds, in any case, although they don't have cool sword slayers) you start getting skills with more relevant Quick effects like All Stats Down, Physical Defense Down, Atk Down, etc, and since these are quick and only last one turn they have pretty strong effects (like 50% more physical damage dealt for that turn).

Blunt weapon variety effects may seem easier to land, but until the later blunt weapon skills (like skill lv. 24+) they're going to be notably weaker in effect than a dedicated debuff. Of course, since they also deal damage, they're still good~

The tower boss really was a joke compared to the first stratum. I thought that when people said the first stratum tower boss was hard, they meant because she rewuires advanced tactics, or that she can be cheap like mindflayers. I didnt expect that her stats are simply out of this world.

Yeah, she's vastly more powerful than the other tower bosses. The only reason it wouldn't be surprising for some to do her before the third tower boss (who is again, much easier) is because the third tower is literally the last area you get to before the final dungeon anyway.

More importantly, something worth noting since the dialogue isn't translated; once you kill a tower boss, you can now recruit certain random battle enemies as shikigami. It's a random chance, but there's very few with a recruit rate worse than 1/8 until the final dungeon, and a large amount of those are 1/4. Anything with stars in the bestiary is recruitable (although you have to kill a lot before the stars even show up there, so) but I'd moreso recommend just using a machine translator on that page of the jp wiki to see which ones are. There's a lot. Also, any touhou characters you may have run into in random battles have a 100% recruit rate on defeat.


...anyway, about hookshot, in terms of first stratum, there's three. The other one is on the upper left of the world map somewhere in a Chaos Plains? The only thing behind it is non-prorated-exp generic fairies and chests containing any items you missed in the tutorial, though. And yes, momiji's cave only has a similar thing as that, except with a better yukkuri encounter rate and no chests or save point. I'm not sure if you'd have run into any of the ones in stratum 2 yet... unless you did a lot of the stratum before going to the area with the hookshot, probably not.

[Ghaleon]

Yeah I replaced hina with satori, I really didn't want to because I like hina, and because I really like stat debuff spells in most rpgs ever. But hina's never lands ever (on bosses)...even though I was wearing launch goggles with her.

Also, the hell stage is even cheaper than mindflayers. I got party killed my 2nd and 3rd time now from groups of two mages and 3 caviars.. mage casts "everyone on our team goes first", caviars spam HDD crash.. full party wipe before even my fastest characters can possibly move.. can't even get a CHANCE to run away ffs.

[Serela]

Bosses can specifically resist each category of variety effect seperately, so even if thorn bind/melt weapon/etc doesn't work well, there's a good chance the basic Stat Decrease skill is fine (I don't think it's resisted much at all). All Down is also another category on it's own I think? Been awhile since I checked. A lot of shikigami/skills have Decrease-type things though. DEX significantly influences hit chance (although you probably know that) and POT is the status resist stat and also has a significant effect (earlygame a POT buff has a pretty large effect on mitigation, not as much later)

Those mages have Rapid Stream? Wow, I guess I was lucky for never seeing that? <.< I was speedkilling that area with ice/elec/fire spells tbh

[Ghaleon]

Lucky is right. I thought they were hard coded to cast it every time there are at least 2 others who would benefit...

Speaking of which, i noticed the enemies in this game seem PARTIALLY intelligent. like when I was leveling remi up still. She could hit about as hard as everyone else, but was even squishier than patchy for awhile. And these enemies (angrls i think) would 1 shot her with plasma ball every time. I mean every encounter with them, one WOULD nuke her with that spell on the first turn every time. Not only was she supposed to be a rare target via formation, but plasma ball was rarely cast otherwise by that enemy. It was like they intentionally did it just for her asap every time.

Those mages never cast rapid stream when their party is small, or they alone, etc.

I kinda like it how the computer seems to try a little rather than be random, and not predictable per say.

Good to know about ebuffs, thanks. Im opting to use kisume now since she has atk and mag debuffs.

edit: in late stratum 3, new questions.

1: Kanako seems to grant spells that do medium damage in areas at relatively high mp costs... do they do more damage than stuff like razor wind or something? because it doesn't seem all that great otherwise..
2: Spells that say "do damage based on user's level"... is that the level of the shikigami, or the master, or both?
3: Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?
4: As mentioned, it's kinda hard to know what shikigami's are good late game because you can't really see what skills they get without leveling em first. I COULD look at the blog for each one but kinda don't want to for that reason (it's good for other things though). But I will if by end game there is virtually no good way to level em up reasonably high fast.
5: I haven't bothered looking yet, so just say "google it" if it's easy, but in case it's not, is there a handy youtube channel or something with all the DoD music that only features music from the expansions NOT included with the english patch? I wanna hear what I'm missing... Alice maestra is really good btw, wish there were more good rearrangements for that song.

Seems like Makai always has the best bgm IMO, which is good because makai is like half the game so far =P

edit: Done everything I can but zhuli now...she can still 1shot anyone she pleases with hard hit or frost hand (oddly enough her ultimate spellcard nuke can't 1shot anyone), and my hits typically only hit for like 100... heck, on turn one I use eruption and disintegrate, and on turn 2 she somehow has the water guage healing her by 176 per turn already. lbhalfjk. I did take her down to 1k once but everyone was out of mp then.

moar edit: yay got her at 30. I figured out she doesn't seem to resist def down as much as other status downs, then I'd put atk up on remi, and have her spam speed blade or whatever it's called.. some high- sword skill with 8 mp and 0 cd.. she'd hit for like 500 each time after buff/debuffs.. Despite this I'm hating remilia.. I see her last word more often than every other characters' last word combined during boss fights. yarg.

[MetalStudios]

Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?

It's in the Demon Castle of Chaos, the final level of the main game
Specifically it's in the Middle tier of the castle, which looks like a middle eastern city, you'll find it in a white chest in a room with a couple enemies that looks like the first portion of the castle

Speaking of the longshot, besides the one in Heaven, where are the other longshot areas? I can't remember where they are for the life of me..... Isn't there one in Muenzuka?

[Validon98]

The other L. Hookshot areas are in the Forest of Magic and the Nameless Hill, but I think besides those, that's it (you get another one of those mini farming areas in the Forest of Magic, and Koishi in Nameless Hill).

1: Kanako seems to grant spells that do medium damage in areas at relatively high mp costs... do they do more damage than stuff like razor wind or something? because it doesn't seem all that great otherwise..
2: Spells that say "do damage based on user's level"... is that the level of the shikigami, or the master, or both?
3: Where the @%#@#%ing @#%#% do I get the longer hookshot? Or did I without realizing it?

Kanako's stuff for the most part is usually just for higher power multi-target stuff (her passives also boost the power of those kinds of attacks), but usually I just use Ichirin with Gale Sword for my multi-target needs, particularly since Youmu has low MP and Gale Sword is a nice high-speed and decent damage dealing attack.

Spells that do damage based on the user's level are the master if it's specifically a Last Word or other weapon skill, or the shikigami if it's a shikigami skill.

In terms of the music thing, I think there's literally nothing else added in the Banquet version. I have heard there is one new song or something that was added, but I forget where I saw that, so I can't confirm it. Otherwise you'll be able to experience the full OST.

Also, advice for Zhuli: GET THE SHIVERS SHIKIGAMI (the area behind the Hakurei Shrine lets you fight all the "tutorial" enemies again, and the Shivers is one of them). That will immensely help because it has the skill Water Wall, which blocks all Water damage for a turn (although it won't block the Instant Death effect from her spellcard). For that, also try getting the Fairy Maid shikigami from off the second Clock Tower of the End, because it gets Control Land, and the Instant Death from her spell card has an extremely low chance to proc when the land is shifted towards Fire.

[Serela]

I think a good chunk of skills that are based on user level even from shikigami, are actually based on the master's level, but I'm not sure. Kanako's specialty skill is pretty strong due to this modifier, in any case, and she gives pretty high stat bonuses. (Also, Koruri's poison skill is not only the strongest+most accurate in the game, but it powers up based on her level as well, even though that's not in the description. Also, you can stack poison procs for more damage.)

Ichirin is nice, but unless your protag is Byakuren you won't have her for a long time.  And yeah, Banquet has no extra music; it's just some rebalancing to stat gains, the levels shikigami learn things, equipment power, and now you can also see what levels shikigami learn their moves at. And the third tower boss has vastly more HP the first time you fight her in Banquet, which she needed.

Zhu Li is still really hard even with water wall, but that only increases it's necessity. Giving blunt resistance to a tank in a luring formation slot is also critical, as is the fire land manipulation as stated, and a dose of luck. Tough boss.

It's not easy to get shikigami to a decent level until literally the final area of the end of the postgame. When you want a shikigami leveled up for support skills in bosses or whatnot, it's a priority to put them in the party for randoms far ahead of time. The game's tough if you don't use a wiki! Not that that is necessarily a bad thing.