Dark Yashiro is the major boss of Chapter 5 and is the only major story boss with a mandatory party member. This is a very unique battle due to his duplication mechanic, which acts in three-round cycles. In the first round he’ll take his main form, which is weak to Lance attacks and has immunities to all four elements, but at the end of that round he’ll split into two copies, which both embody two different types of attacks, have two elemental weaknesses each, and can perform Sessions with each other. At the end of the three-round cycle his copies will disappear and reform his main form. Once he drops below about 40% HP he’ll instead split into four separate copies, each specializing in a different attack type and carrying two elemental weaknesses, and all four Session with each other as well. His original form acts four times per round and has Flame Strike, Frost Strike, Gust Strike, and Heat Wave, his doubles act twice per round and split those skills between themselves while both gaining access to Counter, and the quadruples each act once and carry one of those skills plus Counter. The splitting and reformation processes both erase any debuffs he has applied and he retains damage he has accumulated, although I’m not sure exactly how that works. With only one free party member, there’s not a lot of flexibility in possible approaches to this battle, and it’s more about optimizing a single approach. Touma has by far the best survivability of the other five characters with an immunity to Heat Wave, plus he has high HP, Rakukaja, and Piercing Void for consistent damage. Yashiro’s best way to contribute generally means using Counter on most turns to draw aggression, while Itsuki can buff, heal, or attack with Ziodyne. Itsuki and Touma’s Life Gain passives are very important for this battle, and I equipped Itsuki with the Wanderer’s Manacle accessory to further increase his HP. Despite this, Itsuki is still constantly at risk of being knocked out, especially in the quadruples phase of this battle. One of the unique keys to this battle is identifying which rounds it’s necessary for Yashiro to use Counter and which ones he can perform another action. Generally, if Dark Yashiro or his doubles are going to act four times or more between Yashiro’s actions, he should use Counter but if not then it’s fine for him to use Charge or an item to support Itsuki or Touma. It’s important to use the Turn Order bar to attempt to glean this information, but this is complicated by the fact that the process of Dark Yashiro splitting and reforming scrambles his actions to a degree. Usually seeing the current order is good enough to make an educated guess about where his actions will fall even though it’s not possible to know with certainty. The doubles also use Counter, but it’s possible to identify which one has it active by taking note of the double’s position relative to a party member during the Counter animation. While it could also be bypassed by using Javelin Rain, I prefer to use Piercing Void instead because it has higher accuracy. Lastly, only one of the doubles is weak to Electric, but that one always appears to Itsuki’s right so he can always use Ziodyne on those turns. Aside from what I mentioned above, this battle mostly boils down to Countering, keeping Rakukaja up, attacking with Piercing Void and Ziodyne when possible, and healing with Energy Drinks, Mediarama, Microwavin’ Heart, and Microwavin’ Soul. Most of the SP in this battle was saved for Mamori since I didn’t want to use my Bead Chains, even though Touma would sometimes have to use an Energy Drink on himself as well. It’s not too bad when only dealing with the doubles, but the quadruples are horrible to deal with due to their Session chain. While it isn’t apparent in this recording, I suspect that during that phase the Flame Strike quadruple has a much higher chance of targeting Itsuki, which will effortlessly knock him out with three Session follow-ups. Touma doesn’t have the same problem since the Session follow-up to Frost Strike is Ice-Slash, which he is immune to. Having Itsuki guard protects him from the Session, but then there aren’t enough actions to damage Dark Yashiro. My solution was to try to bypass the majority of the quadruples phase so I wouldn’t have to deal with that. Dealing enough damage to Dark Yashiro to skip most of the final phase was pretty difficult, so I had to set it up earlier in the battle. In the first round I swapped in Kiria so she could use Concentrate, hoping that Dark Yashiro wouldn’t use Heat Wave in the following round so she could immediately swap out. I also had Yashiro save Charge for most of the battle, all in preparation for the final turn. In Round 19, I executed my plan; once Dark Yashiro’s quadruples had reformed into one, I had Yashiro activate his one-time guaranteed Ad-lib of The Hungry Man, then swapped Kiria in for Touma to use her Freeze Over Special Performance. Those two combined for 5020 damage, just barely finishing off Dark Yashiro, as the final strike from Touma was the literal finishing blow. Freeze Over was a great solution for this battle since it increases in power with respect to how many rounds have passed, so it was the strongest attack I had at my disposal (aside from possibly Wild Ecstasy). Despite that, I actually slightly overestimated how much damage those last two skills would do, since I wouldn’t have finished him off if not for a lucky critical on The Hungry Man. I had to do this when Dark Yashiro wasn’t quadrupled since I don’t really know how the damage distribution works when he splits, plus Freeze Over only applies the damage boost to its primary target, despite striking all enemies present.
About 20 months back, as I was nearing the end of my low level, no fusion/demon customization playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei V, I left a cryptic comment on my own video of the Nahobino Tsukuyomi boss fight, which read “Boku koso ga shin no Tsukuyomi”. The meaning of that comment was undoubtedly unclear for most, if not all of my viewers, but the truth is that it was actually a reference to this very battle. From what I can tell, Dark Yashiro says “Boku koso ga shin no Tsurugi Yashiro” as he duplicates himself, which according to Google Translate roughly translates to “I am the true Yashiro Tsurugi” (at least I think it used to, as now it seems that Google Translate now produces “I am the new Yashiro Tsurugi” from the same phrase). The joke I was making at the time was that Tsukuyomi’s duplication gimmick was quite reminiscent of this fight, even though transferring the quote from Dark Yashiro to Tsukuyomi doesn’t actually make any sense out of context. You see, I was playing the long game! It was a hint to all my viewers that in the future, which turned out to be in over a year’s time, I would upload a low level playthrough of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE! Unfortunately, I fear that my joke may have gone over the heads of my entire viewer base due to the relative obscurity of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and the lack of memorability of the voiceline for players who actually did play the game. There may even be some whose opinion of me lessened because they thought I was trying to quote something stupid in Japanese or took it as evidence that I had no understanding of the Japanese language. Both of which are true, as I was indeed trying to quote something stupid in Japanese and I still don’t have much of an understanding of the language. At least I can come clean about all of this now and hopefully restore my tarnished reputation.
Dark Yashiro is the major boss of Chapter 5 and is the only major story boss with a mandatory party member. This is a very unique battle due to his duplication mechanic, which acts in three-round cycles. In the first round he’ll take his main form, which is weak to Lance attacks and has immunities to all four elements, but at the end of that round he’ll split into two copies, which both embody two different types of attacks, have two elemental weaknesses each, and can perform Sessions with each other. At the end of the three-round cycle his copies will disappear and reform his main form. Once he drops below about 40% HP he’ll instead split into four separate copies, each specializing in a different attack type and carrying two elemental weaknesses, and all four Session with each other as well. His original form acts four times per round and has Flame Strike, Frost Strike, Gust Strike, and Heat Wave, his doubles act twice per round and split those skills between themselves while both gaining access to Counter, and the quadruples each act once and carry one of those skills plus Counter. The splitting and reformation processes both erase any debuffs he has applied and he retains damage he has accumulated, although I’m not sure exactly how that works.
With only one free party member, there’s not a lot of flexibility in possible approaches to this battle, and it’s more about optimizing a single approach. Touma has by far the best survivability of the other five characters with an immunity to Heat Wave, plus he has high HP, Rakukaja, and Piercing Void for consistent damage. Yashiro’s best way to contribute generally means using Counter on most turns to draw aggression, while Itsuki can buff, heal, or attack with Ziodyne. Itsuki and Touma’s Life Gain passives are very important for this battle, and I equipped Itsuki with the Wanderer’s Manacle accessory to further increase his HP. Despite this, Itsuki is still constantly at risk of being knocked out, especially in the quadruples phase of this battle.
One of the unique keys to this battle is identifying which rounds it’s necessary for Yashiro to use Counter and which ones he can perform another action. Generally, if Dark Yashiro or his doubles are going to act four times or more between Yashiro’s actions, he should use Counter but if not then it’s fine for him to use Charge or an item to support Itsuki or Touma. It’s important to use the Turn Order bar to attempt to glean this information, but this is complicated by the fact that the process of Dark Yashiro splitting and reforming scrambles his actions to a degree. Usually seeing the current order is good enough to make an educated guess about where his actions will fall even though it’s not possible to know with certainty. The doubles also use Counter, but it’s possible to identify which one has it active by taking note of the double’s position relative to a party member during the Counter animation. While it could also be bypassed by using Javelin Rain, I prefer to use Piercing Void instead because it has higher accuracy. Lastly, only one of the doubles is weak to Electric, but that one always appears to Itsuki’s right so he can always use Ziodyne on those turns.
Aside from what I mentioned above, this battle mostly boils down to Countering, keeping Rakukaja up, attacking with Piercing Void and Ziodyne when possible, and healing with Energy Drinks, Mediarama, Microwavin’ Heart, and Microwavin’ Soul. Most of the SP in this battle was saved for Mamori since I didn’t want to use my Bead Chains, even though Touma would sometimes have to use an Energy Drink on himself as well. It’s not too bad when only dealing with the doubles, but the quadruples are horrible to deal with due to their Session chain. While it isn’t apparent in this recording, I suspect that during that phase the Flame Strike quadruple has a much higher chance of targeting Itsuki, which will effortlessly knock him out with three Session follow-ups. Touma doesn’t have the same problem since the Session follow-up to Frost Strike is Ice-Slash, which he is immune to. Having Itsuki guard protects him from the Session, but then there aren’t enough actions to damage Dark Yashiro. My solution was to try to bypass the majority of the quadruples phase so I wouldn’t have to deal with that.
Dealing enough damage to Dark Yashiro to skip most of the final phase was pretty difficult, so I had to set it up earlier in the battle. In the first round I swapped in Kiria so she could use Concentrate, hoping that Dark Yashiro wouldn’t use Heat Wave in the following round so she could immediately swap out. I also had Yashiro save Charge for most of the battle, all in preparation for the final turn. In Round 19, I executed my plan; once Dark Yashiro’s quadruples had reformed into one, I had Yashiro activate his one-time guaranteed Ad-lib of The Hungry Man, then swapped Kiria in for Touma to use her Freeze Over Special Performance. Those two combined for 5020 damage, just barely finishing off Dark Yashiro, as the final strike from Touma was the literal finishing blow. Freeze Over was a great solution for this battle since it increases in power with respect to how many rounds have passed, so it was the strongest attack I had at my disposal (aside from possibly Wild Ecstasy). Despite that, I actually slightly overestimated how much damage those last two skills would do, since I wouldn’t have finished him off if not for a lucky critical on The Hungry Man. I had to do this when Dark Yashiro wasn’t quadrupled since I don’t really know how the damage distribution works when he splits, plus Freeze Over only applies the damage boost to its primary target, despite striking all enemies present.
About 20 months back, as I was nearing the end of my low level, no fusion/demon customization playthrough of Shin Megami Tensei V, I left a cryptic comment on my own video of the Nahobino Tsukuyomi boss fight, which read “Boku koso ga shin no Tsukuyomi”. The meaning of that comment was undoubtedly unclear for most, if not all of my viewers, but the truth is that it was actually a reference to this very battle. From what I can tell, Dark Yashiro says “Boku koso ga shin no Tsurugi Yashiro” as he duplicates himself, which according to Google Translate roughly translates to “I am the true Yashiro Tsurugi” (at least I think it used to, as now it seems that Google Translate now produces “I am the new Yashiro Tsurugi” from the same phrase). The joke I was making at the time was that Tsukuyomi’s duplication gimmick was quite reminiscent of this fight, even though transferring the quote from Dark Yashiro to Tsukuyomi doesn’t actually make any sense out of context. You see, I was playing the long game! It was a hint to all my viewers that in the future, which turned out to be in over a year’s time, I would upload a low level playthrough of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE!
Unfortunately, I fear that my joke may have gone over the heads of my entire viewer base due to the relative obscurity of Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE and the lack of memorability of the voiceline for players who actually did play the game. There may even be some whose opinion of me lessened because they thought I was trying to quote something stupid in Japanese or took it as evidence that I had no understanding of the Japanese language. Both of which are true, as I was indeed trying to quote something stupid in Japanese and I still don’t have much of an understanding of the language. At least I can come clean about all of this now and hopefully restore my tarnished reputation.
That’s bad ass
**L's theme starts playing**
Charge/Concentrate persisting through switching is a really cool mechanic. Never knew that.
That microwave is absolutely cracked
I had no clue that Tokyo Mirage Sessions was a turn based game until now. I always thought it was a rhythm game.
How was The Hungry Man guaranteed? Was it because you just unlocked it?
Yes, the first attack that can trigger a newly obtained Ad-lib always triggers it, after that it's random