Hope you guys like this video, a series of this length was ill-conceived and destroyed me mentally. I burned out on these games like eight times over the course of several months. Part two will be up soon, the worst is yet to come.
thank you so much for this effort and the amazing content you put out. i always love watching your videos! please make sure to take a break and have some fun for yourself though haha
Recent Megami Tensei games: "No MC don't die your party is useless without you!" Last Bible: "Hey MC sacrifice yourself so the party has a chance at fighting the final boss."
Just you wait until Last Bible III comes around. The plot is so unhinged that at one point it has the balls to actually (SPOILERS) firstly kill off the main character's parents via a freaking magical satelite with the power of a nuke while he was tripping balls in a Moonside-esque dream town for months, then later feature Ciel get casually shanked by two random NPCs near the end of the game after defeating the primary main villain Ben Shoa, causing him to actually die in the process, and have him literally fight his way to reach the center of the underworld for a chance to be revived by his best friend through the power of Force, and by the time he comes back, Alek, the new main villain, has plunged the world into perpetual darkness with his legion of demons and caused Luciferium to rise once again, meaning he won
@@LucasRCD Don't forget that (MORE SPOILERS) That acid trip of a dream created a copy of his dead teacher to keep him wanting to stay in the dream while also mentally torturing him by forcing him to remind himself that she's dead in order to wake up.
I've been thinking about the final battle of Last Bible again, and I think I understand what Coquitoelcos does from a lore standpoint. A core concept in the franchise is that Humanity created the demons through conceptualizing parts of life as living things. Like the Sun not just being a star, but rather the god Helios, that sort of thing. So what Coquitoelcos does is have the protagonist weaponize this to conceptualize the Universal Will as a living *thing*, a demon if you will, because now that it's *alive*, it can now *die*. That's so fucking badass.
interesting note about The becquerel ore, Becquerel is actually a unit of measurement for radiation, named after the person who discovered radioactivity. This explains why it is making people sick (radiation poisoning), and everyone calling it "toxic air" is just because the people have no way to explain the effects otherwise. I find this especially interesting due to how many times nuclear war and atom bombs come up in megaten games.
A million community posts, bargaining with satan on several occasions, and saying fuck you you're getting this in 3 different parts later... its finally here. Thanks for the grub, Marsh.
So basically at the end of the first game you transition to an ancient mystical world, the fifth planet on the solar system, in which magic and demons are the norm to a universal restart in which Terra (earth in latin) becomes the new planet for humans to inhabit, the protagonist is essentially the creator God of this canon while your companions Akira and Rei basically serve as Adam and Eve. Really really cool.
@@thatitalianlameguy2235 Another Bible was simply that....another bible. Maybe it's the one before last? Or the second? Or the 999th? It's just another bible made before the final one was. If it helps, 1,2 n 3 are testaments in the final bible. Another Bible is simply a previous bible before the final one.
A weird fun fact about last bible, these games are very well known on bootleg game boy circles due to the fact that a specific multicard mapper (basically a file telling the game boy where specific data like sprites or the logic for the game are stored) where every known multicard that uses said mapper uses last bible music on the menu where you select the game you want to play
@@ProfessionalNamielleLewder69 funny story, played an untranslated emulator and got confused as a kid when I tried to emulate persona 2 a few years back
It's even more crazy when you play through specific games in the franchise that hype up the Great Will that is so incomprehensible that only Stephen Hawking was capable of understanding and doing so gave him singularities for regular attacks
@@Pactastic042 I suppose I was just waiting to get into the mood for one. I've started Nocturne and am a decent way in so far, but I've put it on hold for a bit
So, is Cerberus like the predecessor of Jack Frost? He pops up in all the old megami tensei stuff a lot that you start to think he was the original mascot or something. Either way, amazing video Marsh! We salute you for putting time into these games so we dont have to.
most likely, or at least was given more signicance as a party member due to being like the go to demon of the original Megami Tensei protag, as someone else mentioned
@@sarafontanini7051 Side tangent, but like, Jack Frost is treated in a mascot manner so damn well in the Devil Survivor manga, he just, really does feel like he fulfils a Pikachu-like role in the story's cast and I am going on too long without knowing what the hell I'm actually getting at
In the original Digital Devil Story novel, Cerberus was the demon who helped the main character, Nakajima. To represent this, he appeared in the original Megami Tensei as a special demon who was very powerful when you received him. This became a running theme in the series that lasted quite a while. This is also the reason Cerberus looks like how he does appearance is from the novel. Jack Frost became the series mascot likely because he was an original creation of the franchise. He was not from the novel series and is an early game demon with a cutesy appearance.
I’d rather not call myself a Last Bible fan and more of a Last Bible Enthusiast as I am only going through the Game gear version and the Testament to see a certain person return.
When I was a kid a classmate showed me this game while we were at a ballpark. He showed off how he could fuse a slime and pitched as a pokemon game where you could fuse monsters. ...He told me it was Dragon Quest and left me confused for over a decade.
The only SMT protagonist I'd put in a power level above Last Bible's protagonist is Marsh's own documentary voicework. It's just perfect, and cannot be beaten.
Man, I was just bitching and complaining about how nothing ever happens with that whole Axiom/Universal Will plot point that gets mentioned in some of these games. Turns out I shoulda been playing fucking Last Bible on the Sega Game Gear, of all things. What a twist. Thanks Marsh. Sure showed my stupid ass. Your videos are always a treat worth waiting for.
You are my favorite retrospective content creator. Just the way you explain the games and the mix of interesting facts and jokes are always such a treat. You are awesome and I hope to see you do many more video !
Holy shit the ending fight of Last Bible that's actually cool as hell. Like, every other fight in a true end boss in SMT is typically, a slug fest, but. Damn. Your character really did that. That's sick.
Crazy to think nakajima is pretty much everywhere in SMT. He gave the SMT 1 Hero pascal, he wrote the world of last bible, hell, he was even implied to have recreated the world after the last conception with yumiko in nocturne
Says something that Last Bible II, this Megami Tensei game, a series based around monster capturing and fusion... Has one fusion place... AND A FUCKING 6 HUMAN FINAL PARTY. good Universal Will...
You seriously deserve an award for all the hard work you put into these... as well as suffering on our behalf. I salute your efforts to keep us both informed, and hella entertained!
Late to the party but the sudden shift into swearing for a bit in a fan translation strongly suggests that a new editor or translator worked on that segment. A very common amateur mistake in Japanese fan translations is to translate くそ/kuso as "shit" or a similar harder curse, but depending on its context and delivery it can vary from "argh" to "darn" to "damn" to "crap" to "shit" to "fuck" to "FUCK!" - it's a general (rude) expression of displeasure.
@@rashyre1519 la mayoria de los juegos que Marsh juega no fueron localizados en ingles,mucho menos español, y Persona 5 Royale fue el primer juego de Persona en español
I love how marsh never noticed that with his naming of the other protagonists he reunited himself with Rei and akira, the two most reliable human party members he has had in any game by far
I only bothered playing the third Last Bible, and I dropped it a couple hours in. This video has given me newfound motivation to play through it. I never got to the truly amazing music the game has. Also, if Last Bible gave you this much trouble, I get the feeling the Devil Children/Demikids subseries would actually break you.
Okay update: I'm currently at the Military Island part of the game. I have to say, I misunderstood A LOT about the mechanics of the game back when I first tried it years ago, and now the combat is a lot more enjoyable now that I understand it. The dungeons actually have some substance to them, and the bosses aren't completely mindless. Being able to customize Ciel's magic and choosing what you specialize in at the start is actually quite interesting (granted you have to grind to get the higher tier gaia magic; I went with all All Target skills and two single target ones). The only gripe I still have is the insane encounter rate, but thankfully I got a demon with Estoma to mitigate that. I'm already enjoying this 100x more than Demikids Light Version, that's for sure. Last Bible III would've been the first SMT game I beat, had it not been for me beating Demikids Light Version first.
Another update, extremely long post incoming: Currently attempting the Death Valley's Trial of 100 Beasts, with save states of course because I don't have the patience to deal with all the RNG involved with Mudo and paralysis spells with just a single party member. I'm still having a blast, with some caveats. The game opens up quite a lot once you get the Shark Ship, it's actually quite overwhelming and astounding how big the map is. I like how there's a bunch of hidden bosses scattered throughout the overworld, usually in suspicious corners of landmasses or in conspicuously contrasting details like a singular lighter grass patch away from other patches. I may have made the game too easy by virtue of overleveling at the start for those upper tier spells and by seeking out those hidden bosses. I can say with confidence that the game is a its hardest when you don't have access to beasts, such as with the Battle Arena portion. The fight after the Thor one as legitimely the first time I game overed multiple times in a row, it was quite refreshing. Those Feys with powerful group healing and the Valkyrie with double attacks legit caught me off guard. I have to keep going until I at least reach the point where the Underworld Forest theme plays, easily the best track in classic SMT, spinoffs or otherwise, if you ask me. It's the most well known track in Last Bible for a good reason. I love how unique all of the tracks sound, the mix of accordions and synths with wooden sounding percussion giving it a very unique vibe, along with the compositions often sounding so ethereal. I've spoiled myself by listening to the music before ever finishing the game, but it surprises me that the game has three separate regular battle themes, and I'm not even at the point where the SECOND ONE starts playing. I'm also glad the game has two boss themes, because if it only had the first one, that'd be very ill-fitting given how wimsical it sounds. It's good to have a second boss theme for all the serious, plot-important bosses. I can certainly see why so many people fall off the game in the later portions though, there's a lot of vagueness on where to go next to progress the story to the point it's easy to burnout on continuing playing. This is an exhausting game to play, no wonder the playtime averages at around 50 hours (from what I've seen).
Final update: Just beaten the game. Final game time of around 49 hours. Holy shit this game's plot becomes unhinged in the last few hours. The endgame however feels rushed. The Underworld is just a couple of mazes you need to solve with some bosses and checkpoints in between, alongside a red herring section (protip: don't go to through the north exit of the town of Usher, that one leads nowhere and just loops around. You're supposed to go through the east exit). I appreciate that you get two new standard battle themes for the Underworld and the subsequent return to the surface world respectively. Luciferium is laughably short for a final dungeon. No gimmicks or anything, just a miniboss and some items. Very reminiscent of the first two games in terms of lame dungeon design. Alek was a decent challenge, I lost to him the first time around because his Mudoon decided to hit all my human party members at once, just my luck. His second form, Gilgurk (which by the way, is an awesome design, I love the fact you can still see a tiny Alek somewhere embedded amidst the mess of lapis that forms that beast. Conceptually, it reminds me of Hazama's true final boss form in SMT if), was a tough battle of attrition, until I found out you can just stunlock him with Mochowa's confusion Prism (which is guaranteed to hit Gilgurk) since recovering from confusion in a turn still uses up that character's turn. Prior to that, I went through all my Soma and High Soma and used every last one of my beasts to keep the damage going. I was so accustomed to Auto Battle due to being overleveled that I usually didn't bother with buffs or status effects. Well, for this final battle, it saved my hide on what would be a pretty frustrating one otherwise. I don't regret my time playing this game. I can see why I fell off the game initially, but I stuck around and got to experience all the insanity it has to provide. Thank you, Marsh. Thank you for making this video and giving me the motivation to return to this gem of a third game. I ain't touching the first two with a ten foot pole though.
Dump question but does it have an English translation (that's not broken like SMT1's) I also played the snes game years ago but dropped it within the first hour and after these videos I feel like just skipping straight into 3
@@Sigismund697 It has a pretty good English translation patch, with only some minor visual bugs that you're unlikely to run into, and they're just text-based and harmless.
the coquitoelcos realization at 57:25 is some legends of localization shit that you should be really proud of figuring out. Really does make this final sequence much cooler.
I have been waiting patiently on thia for months and it came out just as good as I hoped. I love your videos, I really enjoying being exposed to niche-r subjects in one of my favorite series in a pretty relaxed and down to earth manner. I hope you continue to make videos like these! Or at least similar ones that aren't as personally draining
I fear that all these old MegaTen games have warped Marsh’s perception as back in the days of SMT If and DDS: Megami Tensei he hated warps but now it seems that he is excited to see them now.
There's a lot of Bible stuff in the second game. Esau, -Gog and Magog- Goku and Magoku, a king ordering everyone under the age of 2 killed to stop a prophesied savior from overthrowing him, etc. I guess you'd expect that from a series called "The Last Bible," but there wasn't anywhere _near_ this much Bible stuff in the first game. That mostly just grabbed well-known names from Christian esoterica, like Lucifer and Michael.
Late to the party, but two dollars off the Universal Will might be a reference to the custom of putting coins over the eyes of the deceased so they can pay the ferryman. Just food for thought considering all the other esoterica that Atlus like to borrow. Someone else mighta said it, but I ain't seen it.
As a person who knows a thing or two about Megaten Powerscaling (yes that's real) I can confirm that the Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible protagonist is indeed stronger than all of the canon mainline protags, the only one coming close is Nanashi who dethroned True YHVH (with help in both Anarchy and Peace endings) and took his place as the Will of the Universe (I'm not counting the DLC as that is dubiously canon.) Great video, never would've been able to witness the glory of the MTG:LB protag without it.
I’m pretty sure even if the dlc was canon, nanashi wouldn’t neccessarily be stronger than the will because Steven has never been stated to be as strong.
Interesting, I think the end of Last Bible 1 is also meant to explain the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Also, Lete is surely Lethe, the river of forgetfulness in Greek mythology.
The sequel to the Stephen fight is the first LB protag coming in and obliterating him, before fighting the messiahs in his place and absolutely bodying them all.
Great video. Come on, you have to do Devil Children (Demi-kids) next! They're actually pretty fun games and the exploration and the graphics is just like this game. Your protagonist even gets a demon that has evolutions, it's pretty amazing. They're inspired by Pokemon games, but they actually have distinct routes and differing protagonists and demons depending on the game you play (Demikids Red, Black or White) I liked the story of them too - they actually have a whole city that gets burnt down in the plot which you'd never see in a Pokemon game. 😅
Yeah I never mentioned this in the video but if you move a demon to the first spot in your party, the overworld sprite changes to a generic monster. You can play as the other two party members on the map screen by doing this too
Im slowly trying to play through the whole megaten series, just finished the first last bible this week, your videos on the series are great and have a lot of work and research on them, great job man ^^
How dedicated are you to everything SMT I am just waiting for the day that you invent Demon Summoning Program JUST TO SPITE GOD. Great video keep it up.
I always wanted finish the other games, I only played Revelations and thought it was a very charming game despite all of its flaws, at least the GBC version. I started Last Bible II many months ago but dropped it to finish Giten Megami Tensei, so now that I finished it I think now I should finish LBII since it's not really a long game
@@rossman8919 I think the story, characters and world building were very interesting compared to the games I have finished (which aren't many), but it was very enjoyable from start to finish
As much as I love Evangelion the ending was basically lifted wholesale from Kubricks 2001 Space odyssey. 1. The games Protagonist encounters a black monolith on the moon that upon contact teleports him. This is a direct reference to a Space Odyssey and it’s monoliths as there were no prior stories involving such a device. In the film prehistoric man finds the first black monolith on earth, then millions of years later another monolith is found on our moon before finally the movies protagonist is teleported by the third monolith in Jupiter’s Orbit. 2. The Games monolith transports the Protag to a white room that seems to be outside the bounds of time and space inhabited by incomprehensible forces. Again this is a direct reference to the film with the only difference being the games room has a checkerboard floor( maybe a twin peaks reference ?). The pilot in the movie gets sent to an all white bedroom with renaissance furniture and beautiful art. Everything in the film leads you to believe this room isn’t a real physical location but somewhere that godlike beings inhabit outside of normal reality only having made the room to communicate with the pilot. The pilot is shown himself in the 3rd person and he watches himself age and die in a manner of seconds. The scene in the film is told visually rather than through dialog like the game. 3. The final ending is also a space odyssey reference but less direct and more of a storytelling/thematic reference. The games protagonist is reborn as a full grown man and is placed on a planet to watch the sunrise as he must be the one to rebuild humanity from scratch or whatever race this game uses ( which I agree is maybe also an EoE reference). In a space odyssey the pilot dies in the white room without speaking a word to anyone however the next scene he has been reborn as a star child which is a glowing floating fetus. This fetus floats in orbit space as it watches the earth. Now a space odyssey is less direct in its themes so it is open to interpretation but both stories ending on a reincarnation and with the protagonist watching over a planet seems very overt to me. So while the plots of the film and the game are rather different that final ending section seems to be directly referencing a space odyssey as the black monolith and the white room are two of the most iconic scenes in cinema and at the time this game was made a Space Odyssey had a much larger hold on the public imagination than today. Also while the film doesn’t involve the pilot bargaining with god in the white room, he does interact with the monolith leading to psychedelic visuals before he is reborn. I personally don’t know if I believe this is him communicating with the monolith but I have heard it argued that Kubrick intended all of the psychedelic scenes to be the pilot interfacing with the higher power through the monolith. Which could then make the similarities with the games even closer. The games less subtle in its writing as it explicitly says the character talks to god but it is a video games from the 90s running in 8bit so it would be hard to communicate this visually also it’s not high art so I can’t really complain. If anyone wants to add or correct me please do as I just found this very fucking interesting that an obscure Japanese game from the 90s would have its final act make such massive references to Kubrick and a Space odyssey. Also I realise this is a massive fucking comment but I’m a PHD student on holiday so being an autist about this shit is expected 😂😂. @Marsh
The only protagonist who can even pose a threat is Persona 3's protagonist, and yeah of course even he takes a L. He's only a seal. Last Bible's protagonist is a ram in comparison.
Truly the miracle that keeps on giving- that miracle being that you haven’t lost your sanity doing all this yet lol. Your dedication to excellent content is truly admirable my guy. 👍🏼
12:08 As much as I liked Nocturne, demon communication felt a lot like this a lot of the time, just with sacrifices that were easy yeses, and not having that consistency with question answers. Every time negotiation ended in a question, it felt like a coin flip. And sometimes they’d just run even after giving them everything they wanted.
Can't wait for Last Bible Special to come shoo all these DragonQuest-ass kids of it's lawn and yell about how RPGs used to be great back in the year 1980.
The timing for when I finished Cvit's video about the retro gaming market, in which he mentioned your twitter posts, then see the notif for your vid. I just love when there's stuff like that happening, can't help but smile. Anyway, this week-end is gonna get real comfy for me, thank you Marsh.
I love your videos, I was rewatching them all this past week. Today, I'm in the hospital and my wife gave birth, as I lay here on the pull out couch I open up RU-vid and find this 2 hour video. What a joy, I can't wait to dive in. Thank you!
I think the "2 dollars" I think it was meant to be 2 cents as in "to put in my two-penny worth" given what the Will says after you beat it. still interesting start
1:12:40 Yeah wow, pretty spot-on, Marsh. If i had a nickel for every dude exclaiming his hatred of another race with little to no subtlety while hoping i'm not offended, i'd be 200.000 dollars in debt.
I often have fever dreams where everything is the same except SMT got really popular off of Revelations: The Demon Slayer and as such became permanently known as Revelations instead of SMT
57:52 Namida ga afureru no wa kimi ga soba de hohoemu kara... Dakishime takunaru no wa kimi ga soba ni iru kara! Naze umarete kitakanante. Kangaete mo wakaranainda. Dakara ikiru tamashii moyashi ikinuite! Mitsukedasu itsuka... Onaji jidai ni ima de aeta nakama tachi yo. Warera omou yueni warera ari! Atarashi rekishi ni kogidase nakamatachi yo. Warera omou yueni warera ari! Jinsei wa daremo minna ichido kiri sa... Omoi no mama ni!
After having played Last Bible 2 myself and finding it be a decent enough time-waster I have some minor things to add. *The Demon daycares also can make demon become weaker (It might be my fault for forgetting a demon there for half a game) * 1:55:10 - You don't need Star Knuckles here. I ran into this spot before I found them and i managed to get past the boulder. * 2:11:38 Other way to deal respectable damage is to use Rankaim. While it takes a while to setup it deals 900+ damage a pop.
