Surt, Mada & Mot (Low Level, Hard, Extra Enemy Turn) - SMT Nocturne HD

The New Years Diet.
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
These are the first 3 of 5 bosses in the Diet Building. I'm grouping these 3 together since they're all supposed to be short gimmick battles.
Surt - 0:21
Normally a joke since he can be pretty easy to wall out given that he only has fire and physical attacks, Surt was actually the toughest of the 3 here for a few reasons. Firstly the way I've routed the game requires me to ingest Marogareh here so that I have Pierce for the next fight but that makes Demi-Fiend vulnerable to Ragnarok which hurts a lot. Secondly for reasons I can only attribute to the mod, Surt seemed over-eager about casting Dekunda to the point of using it even when I hadn't debuffed him and sometimes even using it multiple times (not shown, you'll have to take my word for it). I was originally planning to use Surt to fish for a skill upgrade into Bolt Storm but for these reasons I held off until the next fight.
Mada - 5:36
Mada can be inconvenient thanks to his ability to summon Pazuzu to aid him, In the spirit of the challenge run I can't really allow him to do that. Besides this he has Hades Blast, Agidyne, Debilitate, Dekunda and his own signature ability Intoxicate which has a 60% chance to cause the panic status. He absorbs physical attacks but Pierce allows the Demi-Fiend to ignore this property and his HP total of 2500 is very meager at this point in the game. I spent a couple of hours resetting this fight, fishing with a small army of low level demons that have Watchful and Megido trying to get one to upgrade it into Bolt Storm and when I finally got it, I got it twice. I've sped up the footage of all of these demons levelling up because otherwise it would take up a third of the video although the video quality had to take a small hit for this.
Mot - 8:00
The infamous one. If you've heard of a Nocturne boss besides Dante or Matador its probably Mot. He resists basically everything but is weak to electricity and has a mercifully small HP pool of 3500 so winning is usually fast but you'd hope so because losing is often also quite fast. He has many attacks but his favourite thing to do is cast Makakaja some number of times and then Megidolaon. Mot's infamy stems from the fact that he also has Beast Eye but in the PS2 versions of the game he will not only cast it once. There's no shortage of footage of him giving himself practically infinite turns and buffing himself to the max before flattening the player with as many Megidolaons as it takes. This AI quirk was fixed in the HD remaster but the extra press turn mod has surfaced some strange behaviours in some of the recent bosses and Mot's multiple Beast Eyes is certainly among them. This take was about as smooth as this fight gets.
As for the party, Berith's combination of nautrally draining fire and resisting physical attacks makes him a shoe-in for the first two fights. Naga Raja is used for Surt for his similar properties but he's not likely to see much more use now. Horus's high agility was useful for Mada and I fused another Horus with Bolt Storm for Mot so that I had two attackers for that fight. Ongkhot evolves into Hanuman who will in turn evolve into Seiten Taisei (Qitian Dasheng) who will be useful for Ahriman so he's being fed EXP from all of the bosses in this dungeon. Lastly Yatagarasu learns Wind Cutter and Force Boost which will be useful for Noah.
Mods used:
Extra Enemy Press Turn: gamebanana.com...
Display Future Skills: gamebanana.com...
OST Quality Music: gamebanana.com...

[@YurificationTrademark]

Have a taste of the 4-Surt-20's Dekunda spam three times in a row!

[@raybob8668]

That thumbnail is perfect. Just *MOT*

[@glyphidbulkdetonator]

"No! I must get rid of my debuffs!" "Ok I didn't really many debuffs on you anyway-" "No! I must get rid of my debuffs!" "Uh, dude, are you sure you know what-?" *"No! I Must get rid of my debuffs!"*

[@tomatopawah6877]

I love your thumbnails so much

[@RetroSixGaming]

This is insane dude.

[@pourygin9496]

I think sacrifice on hanuman would be ideal for mada and the other low hp mini-bosses , but I guess the exp is a necessity in a low level challenge run.