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Tried out the opposite sides of some quests to switch things up, so I wasn’t sure up until the alignment cutoff. In the end I ended up on law route for this playthrough.

As I mentioned on the Tiamat video, for a first playthrough the balancing in Vengeance does on average feel more forgiving than vanilla. Bosses do go down a bit faster than what I am used to, but are still very fun to figure out, build for, and fight. The new bosses so far have been the highlight with Vengeance for me, serving as an opportunity to go in without any previous information and experience what I loved with vanilla all over again. There are also bosses I feel were balanced and handled better in Vengeance. Lucifer here being a very good example. In vanilla it was always a bit sad to me that Shiva ended up feeling like the true final boss if you are going for True Neutral. The final section in Vengeance feels better balanced in this regard. Tiamat, Tehom, and Lucifer all put up resistance despite having met the level requirement to enter and defeat Shiva. Getting the ability to fight an “extremely powerful” version of Lucifer on top of all that felt extra rewarding. Three phases and higher stats made the fight feel a lot more like a final boss fight, which I feel was very deserved. All in all, I am very satisfied with the difficulty balancing on Hard in Vengeance. I can not speak on CoC, as I have not played through it yet, but the plan is to go for it once I am done with things in CoV. I look forward to seeing how the innate skills change things there, as well as how the other new bosses feel.

This can be done using the party menu before initiating a fight. Selecting the main character like you would any other demon allows you to then select another active party slot to swap with.

I would say that Vengeance on average feels more forgiving than the original version for a first playthrough to me, this in large part is due to the level scaling. In the original version being a few levels below the boss had a large impact on the fight with noticeable detrimental effects. As my goal back when I played the original was usually to beat the boss below its level, I got used to this scaling. Not having the team be as weakened because of level difference and fights being shorter because of it took a bit of getting used to, but I wouldn’t call the balancing change a negative. I still feel that Vengeance both has the difficulty and feeling I would expect from an SMT game, at least on Hard. Can not say anything about Normal as I have not tried it out. One aspect regarding difficulty which I really feel Vengeance improved on was the endgame. In the original, if going for the True Neutral ending, I felt it was a bit sad that fulfilling the criteria for the ending resulted in being too powerful for the final section and final boss. Which then made Shiva feel like the true final boss in terms of difficulty there. Vengeance felt like it fixed this situation in a fun way for me. I also look forward to eventually trying out Godborne Mode and seeing how that feels in terms of difficulty. As for the question regarding innate skills. For battles with regular enemies, I felt the innate skills did not play a large role in how I approached the fights. For bosses they sometimes did, most often for the bosses which are new in Canon of Vengeance. The earliest example of a fun innate skill on a boss that made me reconsider my approach and added a fun aspect to the fight was Matador. I also really liked how the fight with the Qadištu had their innate skills play into each other and the effect it had on my planning and approach there. I also enjoyed the innate skill design of the next boss after Tiamat (on Law route) as well as the final boss. In the situations where the boss did not make use of its innate skill as a part of its design it felt like the innate skill was instead for when the demon is on the ally side. An example of this is Zeus, who’s innate skill “Herkeios” increases Zeus accuracy and critical rate of electric attacks based on the number of able allies in the stock. An effect that is not useful during the boss fight but is substantially more useful once Zeus is on the ally side. Other examples are Fionn’s “Healing Hand” innate skill and the Four Horsemen whose innate skills are related to keeping buffs and support effects when swapping from one of them to another during battle. As for innate skills in the context of ally demons, I feel like this is where Vengeance shines. It made for an enjoyable extra strategic aspect to consider when team building. Adding both value to some demons that I would have moved on from and gave me a reason to fuse some others. Was also very rewarding to find an innate skill that plays well into a boss fight.

For Heliopolis Dawn (the giant fireball) everyone needs to end the turn with Shroud applied to them from Khonsu Ra's counterattack on the turn before. It is this effect which reduces the damage of the follow-up and allows everyone to live through it.

@ oh wow did not know that.

I had the White Rider fight appear on the map after a cutscene featuring the Four Horsemen in Shinjuku 2nd Block (upper right area of Da’at: Shinjuku). Unsure if any of the other Menorah holders have to be defeated for it to show up. The rest of the Horsemen are unlocked by defeating the previous.

Ah just an extra note but what particular ending are you going for if any this run? There are only two in COV but I'm sure you already know the requirements for each which are incredibly simple compared to getting main game neutral, as in you don't need any specific quests for either

I’m aware of how the endings in this work, but for a first playthrough I usually don’t aim for any specific ending. Main plan for now is to enjoy the game and see which ending I end up getting once I get there.

Thank you for your concern, I’m aware of the extra pass turn received when attacking during Omagatoki Critical. I’ll admit this fight didn’t make the most efficient use of it.

My copy should arrive on Monday, will be interesting to see what fun bosses the game has to offer. From what I’ve heard SMTV:V will include all the DLC demons and their related quests as standard features in the game, which does include Demi-fiend.

@@Icepool_Wolf That's pretty fantastic. Hope you have a great experience with it as well and look forward to any Boss fights you show in the future as well!

Death end re quest 2

Yeah, it will be a while before I get around to buying and playing the DLC. But it is still something I want to eventually get around to doing. As for my final builds at this point, I’ve uploaded a video compiling the builds I used on a boss-by-boss basis. th-cam.com/video/QwPFnlMBlKU/w-d-xo.html