SMT: Nocturne - Dante (Low Level, Hard, 100%, No Compendium/Evolution/Crithax)
Featuring Dante from Naughty Dog's Blockbuster series Crash Bandicoot™.
Lowdown on the restrictions of this challenge:
EXP gain is only permitted in forced encounters and must be minimised where possible.
No summoning demons using the demonic compendium.
What? PIKACHU is evolving? No it fucking ain't m8. No evolving any demons.
Taking advantage of Dark and Bright Might for 100% crits vs bosses is strictly forbidden.
Raising anyone's stats artificially (e.g. Mitama, Incenses or even Magatama bonuses) is forbidden.
Demons of the Fiend class are banned... MC aside :^)
This will be done on the TDE path and collecting all Magatama.
An amusing team of surprisingly useful rejects and an all-new strat for this one. It isn't totally consistent, but I think it's the best you can do. Just one Attack Mirror would improve it a lot, but on balance it's probably still better spent on Matador.
Dante's attack pattern changes when he loses 40% (960) of his HP. Before this he will use Holy Star immediately whenever he detects a debuff, but afterwards he will never use it at all. So the idea is to start lowering his defence and then push him into the second phase in the same round. If you time this well you can finish him off in just 2 more rounds. Bullet-Time can of course mess this up, probably not with damage (which is rather pathetic vs a phys resist team) but with panic status. But it messes up a more defensive approach in exactly the same way, it just has more chances to do so. So I say abandon all defence and just try to finish him off ASAP.
Getting Makakaja and War Cry in one battle was good enough for me, but based Will o' Wisp went above and beyond with that skill morph at the end. Respect.