So a few nights ago I hit my first roadblock in Shin Megami Tensei IV, in the form of the Medusa boss battle. Up until that point I had been cruising along, never facing any particularly challenging moments. I was enjoying the progression of the story and the flow of the gameplay, when all of a sudden the cruel and monstrous Medusa showed up and stopped me in my tracks.

The fight felt like it was going well, until the first dialogue choice came about. Medusa asked my opinion of her statues and I said that they were ugly….Oops! This enraged her, thus increasing her attack power and she wiped out my entire party on the very next turn. Not cool.

So I walked myself out of Hades, determined to put an end to Medusa’s treachery. The next battle went about as smoothly as the first, and when presented with a dialogue option, this time I praised her statues which in turn lowered her attack power. “Hooray!” I thought, this is going to be easy now.

Not so much. I made it to the second dialogue exchange, which from what I understand marks the 2/3 point of the fight (or at least 2 out of the 3 dialogue exchanges) but soon after my character was killed which left me unable to swap my creatures out for fresh ones and also left me unable to use items to heal them. I wiped again.

I tried the fight two or three more times with no success, and decided it was time to grind. I brought all my creatures up an additional two levels (to the 12-13 level range) but fared no better in the fight. So I went back to the grind and got my Gremlin to transform into a level 18 Raiju once it hit 14. I’m hoping this will give me an edge when I return to Medusa’s chamber again later tonight and finally attempt to finish her off. Wish me luck!

I apologize for the glare, was grinding away in my car earlier as I had some downtime and it was bright outside.