Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey/YMMV

• Acceptable Professional Targets: It's probably no surprise that the single most vile character in the game is the Private Military Contractor.
• Anvilicious: The game drops a lot of anvils about everything wrong with humanity, especially in conversation with demons. Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped, though. The Demon Lords are excellent at hammering the point. A point likely to keep bugging you, long after you turn off the DS.
• Breather Boss: Kanbari, guardian deity of the privy. Being weak to phys, you can just spam basic attacks and get a Demon Co-op every time. He does sometimes cast Tetrakarn (which reflects one physical attack on the turn it's cast), but if you can outspeed him, it just wastes his turn.
• Breather Level: After what you had to go through in Delphinus and Eridanus, Fornax is relatively simple and straight-forward. Of course, Grus follows after to pick up the slack...
• Broken Base: The fandom is divided over whether this game is main series or a spinoff. Those who call it a spinoff refer to the lack of a number, the absence of Tokyo, and slightly different gameplay. Those who count it as the fourth main game claim that there are enough similarities with the main series for it to count, as well as the fact that this game was going to be a part of the numbered series until Atlus decided against it.
• Complete Monster: All of Jack Squad. All of them.
  • Jack himself is one of the most vile villains in the series, spinoffs included. It's worth noting that when Jimenez is about to kill Captain Jack, "Stop him" adds Law points to your Character Alignment. "Watch", on the other hand? Neutral. It doesn't count as Chaotic to let him die. This is a game where not shaking someone's hand is Chaotic! That is how evil he is.
  • His lieutenant, Ryan, somehow manages to be worse. The boss at least had the courtesy to be Affably Evil. After Jack dies, and he's no longer under any danger, he becomes raw Neutral Evil. Gets Mind Raped into submission. And even as a fanatical zealot, he's an idiot jerk.
  • Mitra also counts, as he's one of the few demons to actually earn the title by virtue of being an Evilutionary Biologist trying to find a way to induce the perfect insanity in humans. He succeeds. Through repeated testing.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The regular battle music alone will make you quake in your boots!
  • The game's Chaos Theme is undoubtedly the best yet.
  • Both Jimenez and Zelenin's themes from the Neutral route. The only time you'll ever be able to listen to them is the Neutral Route though.
• Game Breaker:
  • Victory Cry + Jihad (or any powerful Almighty-type spell) on a demon. 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.
  • There are several guns that allow you to cause the Stone element. This counts as instant death. Almost everything except bosses are weak against this attack. Your Main Character gains 4x the EXP he would normally get if you have no demons out. Manshonyaga (an early game weapon with the stone element) 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.
  • 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. Not to mention it's only 40 mp.
  • It's possible to fuse Rangda so she reflects everything but Almighty and the two instant death elements. This means that almost any time an enemy casts a hit-all spell at your party, a chunk of it will bounce back and damage them. Gets even funnier if they target her with an ability that has a chance to cause a status effect, as it also bounces back; they can wind up inflicting Charm, Petrify, or even Instant Death on themselves.
  • The password system lets you get yourself just about any demon you want if you have the cash and are at a high enough level. Find some good ones on the internet and suddenly, the game is far easier.
    • IF you have the absurd amount of Macca to purchase really strong ones, that is. Plenty of demons cost so much that they will only be realistically purchasable late in the game, where you can likely fuse them anyway. Unless you grind all of it, in which case you're just going to be overpowered anyway. Though it is very useful in getting Luster Candy and other good spells to pass on to demons, making it a subversion.
• Genius Bonus: Mastema frequently makes a big deal out of the fact that the team's ships are made out of iron. This would seem to be a reference to one of the stranger verses in The Bible, which depicts the Israelites, with all of God's power behind them, being unable to defeat an enemy armed with the then-latest technology, iron chariots.
• Hell Is That Noise: A good deal of the game's soundtrack uses rather intimidating/panic-inducing chorus vocals.
  • Also: the sound of a successful Hama or Mudo going off. It's a tiny stylized scream as the target is zapped out of existence.
    • Sounds to me more like the sound of a bullet whizzing by like in those old west gunslinger movies.
• Love to Hate: Mastema despite of, or perhaps because of, his rather manipulative personality and outright Hate Sink nature has made him among the games' most popular demons, ranking in 4th place in Atlus' official popularity poll.
• Moral Event Horizon: Everything Mitra does.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • "[Demon Name] became your demon."
  • A successful Mudo or Hama going off on one of your enemies.
  • The "splutch!" of an enemy being Charmed or Muted.
  • "Unidentified forma successfully analyzed!"
  • The rumbling when a boss demon is defeated.
• Nightmare Retardant: Pay close attention to the Ominous Chanting in the soundtrack, and you will quickly realize that it's not Latin- it's nonsense language that resembles nothing so much as "hee-ho hee-ho hee-ho," Jack Frost's Verbal Tic.
• Non Sequitur Scene: The ex mission where you fight the god of toilets.
• Older Than They Think: Jihad, the game's ultimate spell, did not debut in this game. Demon Fury, a combo move in Digital Devil Saga, was a move in a previous game in the franchise that had the same effect, except it required specific moves and took up a whole turn.
• Player Punch: Captain Gore's death hits the crew, and probably the player, pretty hard.
• The Scrappy: NOBODY likes Mastema.
• Some Anvils Need to Be Dropped: While a bit heavy-handed, the Demon Lords drive home some hard-hitting points about humanity's flaws that are sure to stick with you long after you close your DS.
  • Of course, since there doesn't seem to be much in the way of realistically practical suggestions for improving humanity, it can come off as just the writers unloading their spite towards humanity onto the players through the game.
• That One Attack: Asura Roga, Disaster Cycle, MA, Bites the Dust, Wave of Death, any sort of Mudo or Hama, the list goes on. Special mention goes to the new "Bomb" status ailment; it makes the afflicted physically fragile. If they get smacked around too many times, they explode, and do damage to all other party members equal to their own total health. Just one "Bomb"ed party member (including yourself, for an instant Game Over) can wind up blowing up your entire team. Annoyingly, you can't inflict "Bomb" on the enemy.
  • Mother's Kiss turns the final boss for the Law and Neutral routes into a luck-based mission. Mother's Kiss is a 6-8 hit (random target) physical attack capable of total damage above 1000 on capped characters. The only way to prevent it from working allows the boss to instant-kill you via Curse (or Expel, depending on armor in use), as the only equipment that negates or reflects Physical attacks is an accessory, and the only equipment in the game that nullifies Curse and Expel is a different accessory.
    • Just that? MA is 100% guaranteed instant death for whoever is targeted—arguably the most bullshit attack in the entire game. You have a 1 in 4 chance of getting a Game Over every time it's cast (even higher chance if you have empty slots). It doesn't matter if your entire team is level 99. It also heals the boss, but that doesn't matter when you're DEAD.
  • A different sort of horrid attack: Macca Beam. It'd be one thing if it stole a set amount of Macca, but it doesn't. It steals a percentage of your current cash. If a Preta in the second dungeon hits your New Game+ party with it, you can lose six-digit amounts of money.
• That One Boss:
  • This being an Atlus game, there's quite a few of them, but the one that gets the most attention is Ouroboros, the final boss of the fifth block. Her first form isn't terribly hard, except for the fact that she heals about 160 damage per round, which is more damage than you can do to her unless you exploit her weakness to fire. Her attacks include Wild Thunder, a powerful group lightning spell, and Disaster Cycle, a spell that hits for moderate physical damage and inflicts random status ailments. That last one is really nasty because sometimes she gets really lucky with it and manages to either leave you with a dead weight party or petrify the main character (instant game over). Fortunately, your chances of seeing Disaster Cycle are slim. All this is just her first form, however. Her second form no longer regenerates every turn, but now she uses Disaster Cycle almost every turn, and whenever she's not using Disaster Cycle, she's using Wave of Death which hits the whole party for nearly 300+ physical damage per hit! Her liberal use of Disaster Cycle almost makes the fight a Luck-Based Mission. Fortunately, you can save between her two forms.
  • Maya, the boss of Sector G, also qualifies. For starters, if anyone on your team uses an Elemental- or Almighty-skill, they're dead. No exceptions. She can safely be damaged with Phys. and Piercing skills, the latter of which she is weak against, but just hitting her can be a problem as she has a tendency to use Illusion Ritual, which doubles her agility. Oh, and she knows pretty much all of the single-hit -dyne spells, extremely powerful Gate spells which can oneshot anything vulnerable to their element, and Ultraviolence, a hit-all attack that deals gobsmacking amounts of physical damage. Basically, if you don't have the ability to nullify her stat changes and/or have demons that block or repel Phys., you're not going to win.
    • A demon with Luster Candy helps here. Stack three shots of this, and you can usually hit Maya even if she does Illusion Ritual, and it'll also soften the blow of her elemental spells. Unfortunately, she also has a move that randomly petrifies people. If this hits the MC, game over.
  • The final boss of the Law and Neutral paths. When you reach it, you will probably be around level 75. At that point, any of its attacks will kill you in two hits (three if you're guarding). It has extremely powerful spells of all elements as well as a particularly nasty physical attack that hits up to eight times (random target each hit) which is perfectly capable of killing a guarding protagonist at full health. It is also capable of cancelling all buffs and debuffs (healing about 600 HP in the process) and possesses the Disaster Cycle attack of Ouroboros. This is its first form. The second one, which is a Clipped-Wing Angel in appearance but a One-Winged Angel in gameplay, does about twice the damage the first form did and gets the ridiculous MA attack, which instantly kills a party member and absorbs their HP without fail. Pray it doesn't happen to the protagonist. All in all, your best bet is to get demons that reflect as many of its attacks as possible and hope for the best. Even the "perfect final boss party" you can get through passwords isn't a guarantee you will win.
    • Then again, it IS the Mother of all demons. No one said it would be an easy fight.
    • Hell, even with the best possible equipment (read: equipment that prevents Curse and Expel [which it just LOVES to spam] from working and reflects all elements and reduces damage from Phys and Gun), you can still be killed on turn 1 of the second part of the boss with Mother's Kiss (6~8 hits, as mentioned above), even if your first action is to summon a demon from a full set of 12 level 99 demons (which, due to the game mechanics, gives you the first action automatically regardless of agility).
  • Captain Jack also qualifies. Unlike many of the bosses in the game, he has no real gimmicks. Just absurdly high damage output and the ability to heal himself to full whenever he wants. The battle is basically a matter of doing as much damage to him as possible in a short amount of time.
  • Commander Gore on the Law and Chaos routes. His normal attack does 5 hits to one party member (enough to kill if you're not careful), and his abilities don't help either. Self-Denial heals him and boosts his attack. His other abilities do very high random-target phys or gun damage... and when he Turns Red, he starts spamming Charge + Adaptation, which is fatal if you're not both strong to phys and guarding (and still can be even then). Not to mention that when he hits 0 hp the first time, he gets healed 7500 hp. His starting health is 15000. That puts his total (22500) as the highest in the game. The only thing going for you is he's weak to wind, and if you were smart, you picked up something with Garudyne (differing by alignment) back in Grus, and maybe the Reaper Colt gun while you were at it.
• That One Level: Sector Eridanus doesn't seem so bad at first... until you get a particular plot-character to move out of the way to get to the bulk of the level. Suddenly, you're dealing with unavoidable poison floors, enough hidden pits to turn the maze into Swiss cheese, one-way doors and a series of teleportation rooms with no rhyme or reason that forces you to memorize sequences just to figure out what'll let you finally move on. It's a dungeon-crawler-player's nightmare made manifest.
  • The game even lampshades it. Jimenez says he hates the area.
  • There are later levels that pull similar annoying stunts, but with much less frequency and intensity. After Eridanus, they seem like cakewalks.
    • With the single exception of the monstrous secret passage leading to freaking Alilat in Grus. Mix enough teleporters and pitfalls to make Eridanus turn green with envy, a fucking HORRIBLE maze with one-sided doors and two subdimensions you have to traverse over and over and over to unlock the stairs leading to the "exit", ditch in a powerful boss with Diarahan (full HP recovery for one), reflecting Phys and Gun, and capable of firing off Mind Charged Megidolaons... and begin losing that hair.
    • Normal Grus, just as much (if not more so).
    • Let's face it, the developers love torturing us. They haven't had a chance to make a ridiculously complex dungeon since Nocturne.
  • Floor 5 of Delphinus, anyone? It's a massive maze of conveyor belts that you need the Visualizer to see; in other words, it requires a Rare Forma that can be easily missed and/or ignored, and the conveyors don't show up on your map, even with the Visualizer. It's almost a Guide Dang It to figure out how to get to the upper floors.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Masayuki Doi reworking the art for deep was meet with mixed to extremely negative reception from series fans with many thinking that the new art looks very Off-Model. The fact that Strange Journey is considered one of Kaneko's best artistic contributions and that Kaneko vs Doi is already a touchy subject for the fanbase doesn't exactly help.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Subverted. One of the trailers for Redux contained a trailer for a Jack Bros Metroidvania game taking place in the Schwarzwelt... that says it's fake and doesn't exist. Needless to say, people wished that it was real, until a few days later when it actually came out in Japan as a limited time offer.
• Tier-Induced Scrappy: Did you get your Demonica to be tuned around your Magic stat? Might as well reset because your Magic stat only influences the power of single-use somewhat-common-but-not-exactly-spammable attack items, not your gun skills that are spells in all but name.
• Ugly Cute: Several demons.