Digimon Hacker's Memory - No Digivolution Part 7: Gryphonmon & Masked Maids Leader (Chapter 9)
7Challenge playlist:
• Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker's ...
Happy Easter, everyone!
First challenge video since September, and a resurrection of a challenge runthrough that I initially started over 7 years ago, with the last video dated 2023. Does that sound promising yet? Not nearly as hardcore as me bringing back the FF3 DS challenge with the Cloud of Darkness video, but it seems very characteristic of me nonetheless. My thinking, as you would suspect, involved watching the recent news about the new Digimon story game being teased for release this year and thinking 'hey, I'd better complete the old Hacker's Memory challenge in case I want to jump right into a run of this game'. Is this thinking grounded in reality at all? The last Digimon game, Survive, offered absolutely no depth in terms of gameplay, and Namco has been reluctant to show any real gameplay outside of clips of Digimon, whose roster is promising to be enormous, executing their special moves, so we're not guaranteed anything stellar gameplaywise, and the Digimon game series certainly hasn't pampered us with that during its lengthy stay in the gaming world. Still, one wants to hope...
This video follows up where I left off, not recording anything from chapter 8, whose claim to fame in featuring the first Mega level boss failed to live up to expectations, where I most notably saved the black market from being destroyed, allowing me to claim some powerful Megas in the final chapter of the game much later down the line.
Gryphonmon is the second Mega boss, fought without allies, and one that can actually kill somebody in a party designed optimally to kill it, should we operate with dire negligence (ill-advised). As a Data Digimon, it calls for a Virus party to be fought securing us an advantage, with a unique trump card being its skill of inflicting the Bug status on one of our Digimon, potentially turning a Virus digimon's resistance into a type disadvantage. Though it doesn't happen on this run, it should be cured on sight when it does occur. I would also like to draw attention to Gryphonmon having access to self-healing, which is potent but not necessarily used intelligently.
The second boss battle that makes up the video is a fight against Masked Maids Leader at the end of the optional Territory Capture case, who uses Myotismon, alongside the rookies Dracmon and DemiDevimon. Playing the quest's minigame of capturing the medals turns the potential crippling threat of starting the battle confused, which is reverted to inflict the same status on the opposing team. The boss may still end up ignoring the ailment due to his resistance, but it just so happens to land here, with us starting the fight with all three opponents confused.
My first turns are wasted switching my initial party away, as their sole purpose was scanning Myotismon for him to be recruitable later on (I don't really have any immediate application for a dark virus with an MT magical special, but I might as well add him to the collection), after which my Vaccine team starts assaulting the all-Virus opposition. The rookies don't exactly pale in comparison to Myotismon in the bulk department, but their initial confusion lets me have a painless start without worrying much about incurring any negative ailments myself - the team composition displayed here speaks volumes about what could transpire in my own ranks.
Why not scan Gryphonmon while we're at it, you might ask? As a Mega, a fully-equipped party gets his base 5% scan to 95%, which is still insufficient for a full recruitment. I can only properly scan him when he's found in the wild endgame, by which point I can just buy him at the Digimarket if I so please. Now, if we were to face TWO Gryphonmons in that battle... Considering his access to a piercing move as a Mega, let's just say it would trivialise the entirety of the midgame chapters to come...
Anyways, it feels really good to be back to doing what I'm meant to do, which is posting challenge content on YouTube, and my next video in this series will be easily the hardest fight in this playthrough yet. Stay tuned!