Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey: Difference between revisions

* [[Dump Stat]]: For your Demonica, Magic. You'd expect it to influence how powerful your Gun skills are, seeing as Gun skills are basically your suit's version of magic spells, but that's actually the domain of the ''Strength'' stat. Magic instead influences how powerful your attack items are, which don't come very often and thus can fall into [[Too Awesome to Use]] territory easily, while MP can be recharged onboard the ''Red Sprite'' and at healing stations in the field for a small fee.

** At higher levels, your dump stat becomes Agility for a number of reasons. Since your character's damage output is limited by his inability to use magic or skills, it is often the demons that will be pulling the weight of the party around, meaning that his primary use becomes the item caddy (where every item has a maximum stock of 99). Since items have turn priority, it doesn't matter how slow he is, he will still go first. Since a missed attack is more or less just a missed attack, the main character has no reason to invest in accuracy unless he really wants to be an active participant for damage. The last and probably the most important reason is that with the way armor works, it is entirely possible to have your character take next to no damage from attacks simply by stacking magic and vitality. By the end of the game, the only stats that really matter to you is Magic (magic defense), vitality (physical defense and HP) and Luck (survival).

* [[Encounter Bait]]/[[Encounter Repellant]]: Both abilities exist as sub-apps in the Demonica, each with two levels of effectiveness: Enemy Welcome and Enemy Challenge for the former, and Enemy Begone and Enemy Lullaby for the latter. After beating the game once, you also unlock Red Carpet, which turns off random encounters entirely. ''Redux'' adds Enemy Banish, obtainable very early by completing an EX Mission in the Womb of Grief, and can be obtained on the first playthrough. This app prevents encounters with enemies a certain number of levels below you, making it functionally identical to Red Carpet if you grind enough.

* [[Evil Makeover]]: Arguable on the "evil" part, but par for the course amongst ''Shin Megami Tensei'' games. A couple of times, you see an important character leave behind their humanity, and they gain a radically new appearance which is simultaneously badass and off-putting.

* [[Expy]]:

** Arthur (see [[Shout-Out]] below) to [[2001: A Space Odyssey|HAL 9000]]. Especially at the end of the Neutral path, {{spoiler|when he confesses fear before performing his [[Heroic Sacrifice]]}}. By the same token, {{spoiler|the ascended Gore is Arthur's counterpart: an expy of David Bowman}}.

* [[Five-Token Band]]: There's the main protagonist (Asian in the Japanese version, Caucasian in the NA version), Jimenez (Hispanic), Zelenin (Caucasian) and Gore (black).

* [[For Science!]]:

** Once they've gotten over their reservations and initial fear, [[Gadgeteer Genius|Irving and Chen]] are positively ''thrilled'' at devising new and exciting equipment with the Forma (Schwarzwelt-borne materials) you scavenge for them.

* [[From Bad to Worse]]: How the Schwarzwelt expedition kicks off. And how it continues afterwards.

* [[Fusion Dance]]:

** As per ''[[Shin Megami Tensei]]'' tradition, you can fuse demons with one another to create another one, which can inherit skills from its progenitors. However, since demons don't learn skills by leveling up (all they do is replace existing skills or drop their [[Green Rocks|Demon Source]]), feel free to fuse fuse fuse with abandon.