Metatron (Low Level, Hard, Extra Enemy Turn) - SMT Nocturne HD

When God speaks, buff your ears.
Rules:
- EXP gain must be minimised, limited to forced encounters where possible
- Using Bright Might or Dark Might for guaranteed crits is forbidden
- Use of demons from the Maniax/Chronicle release is forbidden (This includes Fiends, Beelzebub, Black Frost, Futomimi, Metatron, Sakahagi and Dante/Raidou)
- The goal is to collect all Magatama and achieve the True Demon Ending
Metatron is without a doubt one of the best fights in the game. he embodies all of the qualities of the Beelzebub fight but with a generally better AI and more distinct phases.
At the beginning he will alternate between normal attacks, Mahamaon, Holy Wrath and Megidolaon. In addition he will cast Dekaja or Dekunda if he detects buffs or debuffs respectively. Thankfully he will only cast one of these per turn. I think this is the most dangerous phase to be honest. With an extra turn your party needs to be able to survive two Megidolaons in a row when there is an at most +1/-1 buff differential in order to get through it reliably. Thankfully I've been making plans for this fight for a good while. All of that EXP I fed into Seiryu (Qing Long) pays off here.
Once you deplete about 25% of his HP he changes tact and will stop removing buffs or debuffs in favour of applying his own. In this phase he always starts his turn by casting either Tarukaja, Makakaja or Debilitate and will follow the former with normal attacks and the latter two with Megidolaon. Once he's in this phase +4/-4 buffs can be applied to remove most of the danger until he's in his last phase in which he'll begin to cast his signature attack Fire of Sinai which is a randomly-targeted version of Megidolaon. Its random targeting makes it both volatile and extremely dangerous as it can hit the same target twice and occasionally even three times. He also seems to cast Dekunda again sometimes but not as aggressively as in the first phase.
As a last note for the benefit of anyone doing their own low level run, I'll share how I got past the stat-check doors in the 5th Kalpa to get to Metatron. There are two doors that you need to open in order to get to Metatron, the first requires a demon with 25 strength and the second requires a demon with 20 Agility. Horus is an easy solution for the second door but the first one is less obvious. There are no demons that can be fused at this level that have enough strength to open the door. Thankfully Black Frost can be recruited in the 3rd Kalpa after defeating him regardless of your level. His base Strength and Magic are 24 so if you give him an incense for both of those stats you can then use him to open the respective doors that ask for those stats. There's also a door that opens specifically for Black Frost in the 5th Kalpa as well. You must use incenses to increase his stats though, the doors won't accept stat increases via Mitama fusion.
Mods used:
Extra Enemy Press Turn: gamebanana.com...
Display Future Skills: gamebanana.com...
OST Quality Music: gamebanana.com...

[@P33P33M4N]

The thumbnail makes me cry its too good

[@christopherbravo1813]

imagine if there was a way to make the enemies player-controlled. a Metatron boss with a human brain behind it would be *terrifying.*

[@ZephhyrAgain]

Well if anyone discovers how to re-script the bosses in this game, I have some thoughts on how to make them much more challenging.

[@christopherbravo1813]

@@ZephhyrAgain like having them specifically target party weaknesses?

[@ZephhyrAgain]

@@christopherbravo1813 that would be a cool idea but would be rendered moot by good team building (which I wouldn't mind, that's the whole point of this challenge run after all). A good start would be having more bosses actually use their buff removal. Ahriman and Noah should be a lot more threatening than they are because they basically don't care about buffs.

[@christopherbravo1813]

@@ZephhyrAgain I mean, that is a press turn down the drain. then again they waste two going for team members who nullify their attacks...

[@ZephhyrAgain]

@@christopherbravo1813 its not really down the drain if it effectively adds the conditions that buffs and debuffs cannot be used without immediately being removed. It would make the remaining turns much more threatening.

[@azure5293]

Ngl that thumbnail is equivalent of ultrakill Gabriel being called cringe lol.

[@notasalad2833]

Imma need that thumbnail fr fr

[@ZephhyrAgain]

i.imgur.com/2drPxIR.jpg

[@JohnBluemon]

I fully believe that Metatron and Beelzebub should always had 3 press turns.

[@namespelldwrong9779]

Are you gonna give him like, 5 press turns and do some more experimentation?

[@ZephhyrAgain]

I'm going to give him 4. I definitely don't think 5 would be possible. Nothing I can do currently would make me able to survive potentially 4 Megidolaons. I'd say 5 was too many for Beelzebub to be reliably winnable, I just happened to get lucky in a small number of attempts.

[@teddysaliwa5770]

You have posted cringe #megidolan

[@onedepressedgamerm6525]

Never bring birds to this fight