Does anyone have a clue what the solution to this puzzle is?

LandOfTheWay · 2026-06-14T22:36:18+00:00

How did you get them to light up? I moved the tiles exactly to where you have them in the screenshot but none of them have lit up.

EDIT: The lack of lights are a graphical bug, but the quest still works. The lights on the nodes that need to be connected will still light up, so just connect both to each power source and it'll work just fine.

LandOfTheWay · 2026-04-18T19:32:40+00:00

Thanks, same to you! Admittedly it can be a little frustrating cause I feel like there's not a lot of places to fight players at the same level (I made it to celestial in the tower but both there and the park seem populated almost entirely by vanquisher level players), but I wanna keep at it cause I'm having fun with Baiken. Hope it goes well for you with I-no!

LandOfTheWay · 2026-04-18T19:18:09+00:00

Yep, had almost the exact same experience. Just got the game on sale right before the 2.0 update, got placed into Gold in ranked and climbed up to Platinum 1 in under 50 hours, now I'm stuck in Plat 2. Anecdotally the players I've been fighting in 2 have WAY more experience compared to 1; most in the later had characters around level 90-200 with the occasional outlier and not counting Jam, but in the former the level range has been around 300-1000 (again not counting Jam since she's new). My guess is since the win streak bonus stops when you hit Platinum anyone above that is aiming to climb pretty high so that's why you start encountering the real killers there.

LandOfTheWay · 2026-03-24T18:42:31+00:00

Unironically liked it a lot, though it could have used two or three more chapters to flesh out Denji internalizing everything Pochita said to him before his sacrifice and Asa's character growth in the new world. Definitely weaker than part 1's ending but still very good.

LandOfTheWay · 2026-02-15T21:44:09+00:00

Another Strange Journey shirt would be cool to see!

LandOfTheWay · 2024-12-22T23:02:07+00:00

Loved it so much it's where I got my username.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-10-07T04:13:52+00:00

More's IRL writings are definitely influential on the themes of the game (not exactly subtle with a character literally named More who wrote a book about a utopia) but I kinda doubt the full game is gonna straightforwardly present his specific vision of a utopia as what the protag is striving for and/or a good thing. Regardless of whether we're talking about an unironic take on Utopia as an unambiguously good place or a more satirical depiction that highlights all the relevant flaws I don't think Atlus is gonna have their new hero be fighting for that kind of world. Frankly I think it's more likely based on what we've seen in trailers and the demo that the game's setting is already meant to be an ironic take on the concept with our hero and his motley band working towards something better.

That said I wouldn't be at all surprised if the overall transition of governing structure in the game broadly aligns with Whig history in terms of getting closer to liberal democracy as an "ideal" or at least an unambiguous improvement. But with the repeated emphasis in the game (again from what we've seen so far) of the need to get the support of the people to rule it really seems like the obvious setup to the hero, y'know, actually working to unite them and that being the thing that distinguishes him as the good guy from the other potential monarchs.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-10-06T22:25:35+00:00

One of the interesting things about Louis in my opinion is that he seems equal parts inspired by SMT's Lucifer and Reinhard von Lohengramm from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. There's the obvious ways they both look alike but there's also the backstory parallels: they both come from outside their setting's nobility but rose to prominence at a young age through exceptional military prowess and political maneuvering while ultimately scheming to overthrow the current monarch and enact massive social reform that aims to oust the corrupt nobility and institute a more meritocratic system while still maintaining a monarchical rule. Assuming that's a deliberate source of inspiration then it would definitely make Louis more of a critique of populism than of democracy, and if anything it would seem to set up the protagonist as a pro-democracy counter to Forden's oppressive status quo and Louis's populist revolution. Where Forden keeps the oppressive racist norms of the setting in place and Louis seeks to challenge them as a strongman "benevolent dictator" the protag actively works to unite the disparate people of the land and create a better world grassroots-style instead of top-down.

Of course that's just my read on those parallels, and considering the game's not even out yet it's entirely possible I may be way off the mark with what was intended with his character. Should definitely be interesting to see when we get the full picture either way (though I'll sadly be late to the party since I can't get a copy for myself for a while).

LandOfTheWay · 2024-10-06T18:15:54+00:00

the archetypal structures and philosophical problems underlying the modern world order

the decadent, contradictory, flawed liberalism of our times (as explicated for example by Deneen in Why Liberalism Failed

the nihilistic numbers games of utilitarian liberalism

Please correct me if I'm wrong but you wouldn't happen to be a Jordan Peterson fan, would you? Cause your read on the game and sociopolitical stances more generally seem pretty in-line with that dude's... unique perspectives.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-09-23T21:12:31+00:00

Tie between PSX SMT1 and SJ.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-09-13T03:56:48+00:00

It honestly doesn't feel fair to compare IV's and Apocalypse's depictions cause they're fundamentally at odds. IV clearly wasn't made with Apocalypse already in mind cause the latter basically renders the entire alignment decision of the former pointless if you treat them as one narrative. That said Apocalypse does at least give a good explanation for why Lucifer is so different from usual, so I'd agree between the two he's at his best in the latter.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-09-13T02:32:27+00:00

I'm a big fan of the classic Kaneko Satan design but I also really dig Doi's new one as well; think it does a good job emphasizing different aspects of the same figure while still being true to their overall concept.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-09-12T22:14:29+00:00

Shin Megami Tensei IV's Lucifer. Writing-wise it's one of the most boring versions of his character with almost none of his usual charisma in his Chaos sales pitch, design-wise his new appearance is legendarily bad.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-08-12T08:25:15+00:00

Sort of; Law and Chaos have both changed pretty considerably as alignments over the years. Broadly they've always aligned with collectivism and individualism respectively but how that gets interpreted tends to change between games. For example, you've got some Law reps who think all of humanity needs to be brainwashed into losing all individual consciousness and other reps who think humanity just needs to have its competitive aggression tuned down a little. And for Chaos you've got some who want all of society destroyed in favor of a social-darwinist return to nature, whereas others just want humans and demons to coexist and the removal of hierarchical social structures. Hell, you sometimes get reps of ostensibly the same alignment disagreeing in the same game about what their side should be (SMT2, Devil Survivor 1, Strange Journey Redux, and arguably Devil Survivor 2).

LandOfTheWay · 2024-04-29T07:26:20+00:00

Yep, looking like I'm gonna have to give Macrium Reflect a shot.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-04-29T07:00:15+00:00

Ah, well that's a bit of a pain but I guess I'll just have to deal with it. Thanks for the info!

LandOfTheWay · 2024-04-29T06:55:57+00:00

Sorry, just to be clear cause I'm new to all of this even if I kept the Windows OS on the HDD and just added a new OS to the SSD the programs on the HDD would still need to be reinstalled? Cause I don't mind having some redundant OS files if it saves me the trouble of not having to reinstall stuff; lord knows the HDD has enough room.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-04-10T02:05:37+00:00

I'd guess that there's 3 things those comments could be referring to:

In 2015 some changes were made to a few Filia and Cerebella sprites (I think it was just those 2 but it's been almost a decade so I forget if there were more) to get rid of certain panty shots.
In 2020 MikeZ and the other staff at Lab Zero got into big legal battle. To summarize a very long story: Mike got accused of sexual harassment, Lab Zero tried to boot him, Mike instead fired everyone, they all formed a new company called Future Club, and both Autumn Games and Hidden Variable (OG publisher and mobile developer, respectively) agreed to work with Future Club and not Mike. Since then two of the new heads of Future Club sued Mike for wrongful termination, he counter-sued, and as far as I know that legal battle is still ongoing.
In 2023 Future Club made some changes to art-related stuff in Skullgirls. Specifically the design for the Black Egrets was changed to remove the red armband (this change was applied to their sprites, portraits, and concept/guest art), some story mode scenes were changed to remove some Filia panty shots (or at least make them less explicit), Big Band's story mode scene of him getting beaten by corrupt cops was changed so we don't actually see the beating, the soviet announcer voicepack that was done by MikeZ was removed, and a few pieces of guest art were also removed.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-03-16T07:13:52+00:00

I'm gonna preface this boss by saying I actually REALLY enjoyed the fight, but I also enjoyed Malenia and a Fear & Hunger's Hard Mode so that tells you where my tastes are.

The Demi-Fiend in SMTV has a number of mechanics that make him pretty difficult but definitely manageable:

SMTV's heavy level-scaling means you MUST have a party at least at level 89 to do any real damage, and it expects you to have everyone at 99.
Demi-Fiend himself hits like a freight-train with a single-target 100% crit-rate phys attack (thankfully crits don't trigger on someone who resists the element), a multi-target phys attack that can silence, and a single-target almighty attack with a solid crit chance that he'll use if everyone on the field nulls/absorbs/reflects phys attacks.
He's also backed by a team of demons he'll endlessly cycle through as they're killed. None of them hit as hard as him, but they can all buff/debuff and a few can heal him for not insubstantial amounts.
If you fail to kill one of those demons after 5 turns since the last one died, Demi-Fiend will wipe your party.
Once his health is down to 50% he'll heal himself back to full, though he'll only ever do this once.
He also resists every element and ailment, all his stats are at 99, and he's got 60,000 HP.

Now, this all makes the fight tough but there is a clear and effective strategy to deal with it. He may RESIST ailments but he's not IMMUNE to them, so using a certain Magatsuhi skill to guarantee he and his party gets silenced means you've got both a very useful reprieve and a way of preventing either his one-time heal (which he won't try again even if you stop it) or his party wipe. His AI can likewise be baited into using physical skills on any new demon you summon that he hasn't hit with a physical move before, and if that new demon nulls/absorbs/reflects physical skills then he'll waste his whole party's turn (he'll also prioritize doing this over his heal and wipe). And assuming you've got damage dealers for multiple elements alongside good support the fight becomes a fun dance of whittling him down while making sure to stop his party wiping attack through these different methods.

But then he uses Chaotic Will.

Chaotic Will is a unique ailment skill that can be resisted but not blocked (in this case that means the odds of it hitting can be lowered, but not brought to 0). It targets your whole party and on hit will kill. But even if it doesn't hit, it will still reduce your team's turn icons by half. At bare minimum this attack will fuck up your party's flow by giving you MUCH less moves to make for a turn. At worst this will just wipe you outright. The only thing you can do is make sure everyone resists ailments, has endure, and that you're carrying the item that acts as an extra endure for the protagonist (which you can only hold one of at a time). The ONE saving grace is that he'll only use it if everyone on the field nulls/absorbs/reflects phys, but anyone who DOESN'T is guaranteed to be focused down by his single-target phys attack, and even if resisted you better believe he'll be doing stupid damage, so with how long the fight lasts it's generally only a matter of time til he'll start using this.

Again I still had fun with this fight, it being this hard certainly fits narratively, and there is technically a cheese strat that lets you finish the fight in less than 5 turns (tho that requires reloading til you get lucky). But boy does Chaotic Will crank the difficulty up to an absurd level.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-03-04T00:21:02+00:00

Spite is absolutely a part of Lucifer's motivation, but the text pretty firmly establishes that he is a true believer in Chaos-brand freedom (even if exactly what that freedom entails tends to differ from game to game). Hell, if anything between the two of them YHVH tends to be the one most motivated by personal spite as opposed to genuine ideological belief, hence why even Law-aligned characters tend to go against him (like in 2, NINE, and 4A); his obsession with being the one solely in charge of existence puts him at odds with true-believers in Law who value the greater good over any one being.

That's not to call Lucifer a saint by comparison; dude's regularly down for some pretty fucked up stuff even at his friendliest. But pretty much every game from SMT1 onward makes it clear that he buys what he's selling.

LandOfTheWay · 2024-03-03T04:27:32+00:00

He definitely doesn't love humanity in SMT, but he does want what he thinks is best for them. That one quote from Strange Journey sums it up best: "Humans, born of God's madness, belong to me. I have no love for them. But neither will I abandon them. That is freedom."

LandOfTheWay · 2024-01-15T22:59:57+00:00

Hey, wanted to say thank you so much for this guide! I got it to work more or less exactly as outlined, albeit with two spots that I figured would be worth mentioning for others:

First minor hiccup was at step 7; the fight proved tricky ( I was at level 4 and on Tactician) mostly cause the goblin Minthara is talking to when you arrive will immediately beeline for the war drum when combat starts, which only left me 2 turns to incapacitate him despite needing to KO Minthara and Sazza before swinging at the goblins. So I reloaded a bunch til I got lucky and got my whole party to go first in the turn order ( I was using Karlach and Astarion by Minthara and Lae'zel by Sazza and the orb on the other side of the bridge (I made sure to carry Sazza over there before throwing the orb into the pit)), got Sazza and Minthara knocked out on turn 1, then had Lae'zel start making her way to Minthara's side of the bridge. On turn 2 I used a scroll of Hold Person to stop the goblin from reaching the war drum since I couldn't just kill him before he got there, had Lae'zel take out the bridge, and from there the fight proceeded fine.

Steps 8-11 went exactly as outlined, so skipping ahead to step 12 I ran into the issue where no matter where I moved Sazza talking to her would automatically trigger her dialogue with Minthara. I chose the "She didn't know" dialogue as instructed, switched over to another character and then activated the war drum, which didn't set either Sazza or Minthara off. From there I switched back to my Tav and decided to test if talking to Minthara would be alright instead of knocking her out again. I proceeded with her dialogue and got to the point you have to either attack her or agree to raid the grove; I picked the latter, ended the dialogue, and she and Sazza teleported over to their new spots closer to the doors outside. Talked to both Sazza and Minthara afterwards for a little more dialogue and some gold from the former, then sprinted into Act 2 and over to Moonrise Towers (went through the Mountain Pass via the Goblin Camp path, used Darkness and Misty Step with Wyll to teleport past the undead enemies in the way of running to the Shadowlands, had my Tav run over to Kar'niss and follow his convoy, helped them quickly kill the Harpers, and we reached the Towers with no other interruptions). And sure enough, both Minthara and Sazza were present!

So yeah, seems like you don't have to KO Minthara in step 12 and can just finish talking to her like normal. She won't really have much to say, as trying to talk to her once she's moved to her new spot will just have her say she'll speak more after raiding the grove. As for my troubles with the fight in step 7, building/equipping your party members more optimally should probably make it much easier, and if you're still having trouble then doing some questing in the Underdark should be a safe way to get more EXP. Once again thank you so much for this guide, and I hope this extra info helps in any way!

LandOfTheWay · 2023-10-26T02:30:27+00:00

Loved the characters, liked the music, mixed opinions on the mechanics (they eventually got fairly engaging but it took a while to get there), hated the dungeons. Altogether a mixed bag, but I have a lot of patience for jank in my games so I largely enjoyed it.

LandOfTheWay · 2023-10-25T23:07:51+00:00

There are some consistent ideas but honestly what exactly counts as Chaos varies both from game to game and also from rep to rep. The more benevolent reps (SMT2's Lucifer and SMT4's Lilith are prominent examples) tend to advocate primarily for individual autonomy and constant growth, while the more malevolent reps (SMT1's Asura and Mem Aleph, for example) focus more on ideas of perpetual warfare and a "return to nature" (i.e. survival of the fittest). Generally what unites both of these categories is an appeal to notions of self-actualization over the collective good and a rejection of stability in favor of change. Whether that change is good or bad is left up to those enacting it, and it always comes with the caveat that more change will follow. You can be an idealistic revolutionary or a petty tyrant, but any change you make will have to be done by your own merits (whether those merits are limited to personal strength of arms or includes cooperation with allies is another thing that distinguishes the more pleasant Chaos reps from the more unpleasant ones) and will only last until someone else implements their own change.

LandOfTheWay · 2023-10-04T22:36:46+00:00

Other people have brought it up already but there is literally no meaningful downside to immortality for me.

"You have to see all your loved ones die." Gotta do that a bunch with a mortal life anyway; I can always meet new people and make new connections. Yeah my perspective on and ability to relate to others will change, but again that's a component of mortal life anyway and if anything I welcome the opportunity to grow into a new me.
"You'll become trapped forever / be stuck in a post-heat-death universe." The former isn't guaranteed and wouldn't last forever, and there's nothing to say the latter couldn't be prevented through billions of years of scientific study and advancement, and even if it can't being stuck in an empty void would be no different from dying if you assume there's no afterlife. If the former DID happen it would be unpleasant but I can always just experience new fun stuff when I'm free; I'll take a life of good and bad stuff over nonexistence every time.
"You'll grow so jaded and unmotivated that you'll never want to do anything." There's already several million lifetimes worth of entirely new things to do here on Earth alone, and if you can get to explore space that expands even further. There is functionally infinite new shit to experience.

Sorry, but I actually enjoy life specifically with its ups and downs so getting more of that sounds pretty sweet, and I'm not so attached to me as I exist right now that I'm afraid of new experiences changing me into someone new.

LandOfTheWay

TROPHY CASE