Last Bible Special

Not to be confused with the Game Gear version of the first Last Bible game.

Last Bible Special
Developer(s)	SIMS
Publisher(s)	Sega
Genre	RPG
Platform(s)	Game Gear Game Gear Micro
Release	Game Gear Japan March 24, 1995 Game Gear Micro Japan October 6th, 2020

Megami Tensei Gaiden: Last Bible Special is a 1995 role-playing game for the Game Gear, and the fifth entry in the Last Bible series. It was developed by SIMS, published by Sega, and released on March 24, 1995. It received a re-release in the Game Gear Micro line on October 6th, 2020, on a model that also contained the Game Gear version of Last Bible, as well as Columns and The G.G. Shinobi.

To date, Last Bible Special has not seen an official release outside of Japan. It has received a fan translation that was released on August 11, 2017.

Blurb

迫力の３Ｄダンジョン、１９０種類の魔獣、転職システム、１２８種類の魔法、そして白熱の対戦モード⋯。とにかくすべてが驚きの連続！

Hakuryoku no surīdī danjon, hyaku-kyūjū shuroi no Majū, tenshoku shisutemu, hyaku-nijū-hachi shuroi no mahō, soshite hakunetsu no taisen mōdo…. To ni kaku subete ga odoroki no renzoku!

Impressive 3D dungeons, 190 kinds of Beast, a job change system, 128 magic spells, and a blood-pumping battle mode. More than anything, it's one amazing thing after another!

セガオリジナルで制作された、異色のラストバイブルシリーズです。魔獣を率いて聖地を占拠した魔獣王グライアスを討伐するため、青年マテルがパーティメンバーを集めて冒険に旅立ちます。ダンジョン表示は3Dとなって、女神転生らしさが深まりました。

Sega orijinaru de seisaku sareta, ishoku no Rasuto Baiburu shirīzu desu. Majū o hikiite Seichi o senkyo shita Majū-ō Guraiasu o tōbatsu suru tame, seinen Materu ga pāti menbā o atsumete bōken ni tabidachimasu. Danjon hyōji wa surīdī to natte, Megami Tensei-rashi sa ga fukamarimashita.

This is a unique entry in the Last Bible series produced by Sega. In order to subjugate the Beast King Gryas, who has led his Beasts to occupy the Holy Land, the young man Mattel gathers party members and sets out on an adventure. The dungeon visuals are now in 3D, intensifying the Megami Tensei feel.

Synopsis

Last Bible Special follows Mattel, a hero born on a full moon who was chosen by the clergy of Constance to reclaim Jerusalem from the dark lord Gryas, the king of the Beasts.

See full plot...

Gameplay

Last Bible Special is a hardcore first-person dungeon crawler in the style of the Wizardry games. Players progress through dungeons, solving puzzles while being attacked by enemies. Outside of dungeons, players can recruit human allies with various jobs, as well as the Beasts that fill the dungeons.

Towns

At each town, the player can heal, revive or cure status conditions, save the game, and purchase items, as well as enter the previous dungeon or the next. Using town functions costs macca, and the cost of healing a party member depends on both the standard rate of the town as well as the level and condition of the party member in question. Upon being defeated in a dungeon, Mattel will return to the nearest town fully healed; however, his party's condition will be identical to the condition it was upon game over. Towns serve mostly as intermediary points between the various dungeons, where the majority of gameplay takes place.

There are various bugs related to healing that are notable. For example, if the player has exactly five human allies and seven Beasts in their party, then the cost of healing is completely free, despite displaying the cost of the transaction. There is also a bug where healing in a town can cause the player to have infinite money.

Jobs

Main article: Job

Each human party member has a job that influences its stats, skills, elemental affinity, and speed of leveling up. To recruit a new human party member, players must go to Rhazes Plaza or Zosimos Plaza. An ally with a random job will then appear and players can choose to either have them join their party or reject them. Jobs can be changed at Constance Cathedral; though they cannot be changed freely and require hitting certain level milestones defined for each job. Certain jobs can only be acquired through promotion, while others require special items.

Dungeon exploration

Dungeons are explored in a first person view, with no map unless Mapper is used. The compass can also be used to determine the direction one is facing. As players explore, Beasts will appear and attempt to defeat the party. The goal of each dungeon is to reach the entrance to the next town. Dungeons consist of multiple floors each with a unique layout and encounter table, with later floors typically being much more difficult than previous floors. Dungeons frequently feature locked doors that must be opened by solving a puzzle or finding the relevant key item; they also contain a variety of traps such as pitfalls, spin tiles which change the direction the party is facing at random, and traps, such as tiles that force encounters. Boss encounters will also impede player progress; these powerful enemies must be defeated to continue.

While exploring, the exploration menu can be accessed. The menu has five options: Magic, Item, Ranks, Status, and System. The magic menu allows players to use certain skills outside of battle, such as Di and Patra. The item menu comes with a sub-menu containing four options: Use, Equip, Give, and Discard. The use and equip commands are simple commands for the use of consumables and equipment of armor, weapons, and accessories, while the give command allows a party member to give an item to another member of the party. Discard allows one to remove an item from the inventory to free space; however, the item will be lost. Ranks comes with a sub-menu with five options: Add, Return, Swap, Release, and Reorder. In order, these allow players to add members to their active party, return them to their reserves, replace a current party member with one in reserve, release a Beast from the party, and change the order of the party. The status menu is a simple menu where one can view the stats, equipment, learned spells, and inventory of a party member. The system menu allows for changing the speed of text as well as the color of the menu.

Party mechanics

Only six members of the party can be active in combat and exploration at a time, but more can be in reserve. There is a maximum limit of 7 beasts regardless of party size, and a similar limit of 8 human allies. Including the main character, there can be up to 12 party members at a time in total. Each party member can hold up to eight items, including equipped items. Human party members will earn experience as enemies are defeated and level up, but Beasts cannot level up and can only grow stronger through fusion. Upon earning experience, the earned experience is distributed equally among the active and alive members of the party, including Beasts. When leveling up, there is a random chance that a party member will learn a skill from their pool of possible skills.

The party's order can be set during both the combat menu and exploration menu. Generally, those closer to the front will be targeted more often, while those in the back will be targeted less. Party order has no influence on attack and defense calculations, and is solely for targeting priority.

Additionally, all party members have a series of five stats. Each time a human party member levels up, they will be allowed to increase a stat by 1 point, up to a maximum of 40 per stat. The effect of each stat is so:

• Endurance (EN): Determines HP growth when leveling up
• Intelligence (IN): Determines MP growth when leveling up
• Strength (ST): Determines the power of physical attacks
• Agility (AG): Determines the order of attacks during combat
• Luck (LU): Determines the frequency of critical hits

Moon phase

Main article: Moon Phase

As the dungeon is explored, the moon will change phases every 16 steps. A full cycle is completed every 255 steps and can be influenced using the skill Muntenhan. Certain dungeon elements require certain moon phases; during a full moon, negotiation is also impossible. New moons cause skills like Mapper to be disabled, and casting Mapper again will have no effect until the next moon phase begins.

Fountains

Fountains are found sporadically throughout dungeons. These fountains can be used repeatedly and provide a variety of effects based on the color of the water. There is no limit to the amount of times the fountain can be checked, and the color will be randomized each time. Party members cannot use a fountain if they are incapacitated, asleep, or otherwise unable to act. There are also two colors exclusive to the fifth floor of Hohenheim Lab - black and white.

A fountain

Color	Effect
Red	Recover HP
Orange	Recover MP
Yellow	Recover full HP and MP
Green	Lose MP
Blue	Take damage
Purple	Fall asleep
Black	Recover HP
White	Recover MP

Combat

While exploring, enemies will appear at random and initiate combat. In combat, there are six options: Fight, Auto, Status, Escape, Talk, and Ranks. Upon selecting fight, there are an additional four options to choose what that party member will attempt to do on their turn: Attack, Magic, Item, Defend. Additionally, under Ranks, there is Add, Swap, Reorder, and Return.

The options in the Fight menu are used when deciding what to do during a round of combat. Each party member will get to make a choice from the menu. The attack option will attack using physical damage, while magic will cast a spell at the cost of MP. Beasts have exclusive use of a category of spell called "Extra" that does not cost MP. Item will allow for the use of a consumable or the skill of a weapon in the inventory, similarly to the usage of certain weapons as items in Final Fantasy IV. Defend will reduce the incoming damage to that party member by 1/4th regardless of turn order. Auto will act as if every party member chose Fight then Attack.

Status allows players to view information on their party members before acting, and displays the same menu as the Status option while exploring. The escape option will have the party attempt to flee, with success being more likely if the Agility stat is higher; however, failure to escape will inflict down on the entire party and give enemies a free turn. Talk will initiate negotiations with a Beast, and Ranks has the same functions as it does when exploring the dungeon, with the removal of Release.

During combat, all combatants will move based on their Agility value. If all allies have the same speed, then they will act in party order; if all enemies have the same speed, then the center of the front row will move first, followed by the front right, front left, back right, and back left. The size of the enemy party is generally determined by the strength of the allied party, meaning that the size of enemy parties can be lowered by returning Beasts to reserve until combat has begun.

Equipment

There are four categories of equipment: Weapon, Armor, Shield, and Accessory, with Weapon and Armor being subdivided further into types. Each job is limited in terms of what they are allowed to equip. Every piece of equipment affects elemental damage calculation, including weapons and accessories; however, only Armor significantly affects the values on its own. Weapons can break after repeated use, but will not leave the inventory. Instead, they must be repaired either at Trevisanus Forge or using the skill Repair. Repairing at the forge will cost a fee equal to half of the weapon's sell price. Certain pieces of equipment also have an associated skill when used from the inventory rather than equipped; allowing the skill to be cast repeatedly free of charge. This does not affect the durability of weapons. Lastly, using the skill Armor, equipment can be fused with Beasts to create new pieces of equipment, some of which are exclusive to the use of Armor.

Category	Types	Effect
Weapon	Axe, Claw, Sword, Spear, Bow, Staff	Increases attack
Armor	Armor, Mail, Clothes	Increases defense and changes elemental resistance
Shield	Shield	Increases defense
Accessory	Accessory	Increases either attack or defense and has a skill

Damage calculation

As Phys is not an element in Last Bible Special, physical damage will not be calculated using any values other than attack and defense. There are three kinds of critical hits: a standard critical hit that doubles the damage, a rarer critical hit that quadruples damage, and a fatal blow that will instantly defeat an enemy. If a weapon is broken, then damage is lowered significantly, as the attack value of weapons is the primary source of physical damage. Attack is calculated with the expression Weapon Attack + (Strength ÷ 2) for humans, and Level + (Strength ÷ 2) for Beasts. Defense is calculated with Equipment Defense + Endurance for humans, and solely via the Endurance stat for Beasts. Note that due to a bug, the status screen display for Defense for Beasts uses (Level * 2) + Endurance, displaying an incorrect value. The final damage formula is expressed as so:

1 + (Level * 2) + Attack - (Defense ÷ 4) + α (random value 0~16)
* Level + Attack (for attackers)
* Defense (for defenders)

Magic damage is instead calculated through a simpler formula:

Spell's Power * Defender's Elemental Resistance as a %

Resistance to elemental attacks is determined by the average of a set of numerical values comprised of the unit's inherent resistance as well as the resistance of weapons, armor, shields, and accessories. While speculated to be a bug, the value of armor is multiplied by 3, and the value of shields and accessories is multiplied by 0, despite the fact that shields and accessories have programmed affinity values. As Beasts cannot use equipment, their inherent resistance alone will determine their affinity to all elements. As an example, the damage received by Fire-affinity skills will be calculated as such:

Sage	Moon Rod	Bufu Mail	Diamond Shield	Air Helm	Expected damage
100	100	250 * 3	0	0	190% of normal
Sufi	Diamond Claw	Magus Clothes	No shield	Warding Mask	Expected damage
0	100	0 * 3	-	0	25% of normal

Through this system, the potency of both resistance and weakness is reduced for non-Beast party members. However, it also means that even with inherent nullification, a party member cannot null an element unless it is not equipped with a weapon, as all weapons have values of "100" for all elements. The effectiveness of Death, Debuff, PC, and PS skills, regardless of whether or not they also do damage, is also calculated using this percentage rate, and is more likely to fail completely with a lower expected effectiveness.

Status conditions

Status conditions affect the capabilities of a given party member.

Condition	Effect	Cured after battle
Bind	Only the "Defend" command works.	✔
Charm	Actions cannot be selected, and are chosen at random.	✔
Confusion	Actions are taken at random.	✘
Curse	Actions will fail at random.	✘
Darkness	Accuracy greatly decreases.	✔
Death	HP is 0 and unable to act. Game over if the entire party is afflicted.	✘
Down	Actions can be selected, but if the party member cannot get up, it will not be performed.	✔
Invisible	Evades 100% of all physical attacks.	✔
Paralysis	Unable to act. Game over if the entire party is afflicted.	✘
Poison	HP decreases every turn.	✘
Possessed	Possessed by a spirit, causing all stats to change.	✔
Seal	Magic cannot be used.	✔
Sleep	Incapable of acting.	✘
Stone	Unable to act. Game over if the entire party is afflicted.	✘

Negotiation

Negotiation makes use of the group system to determine how a Beast will respond to the answers given. The Beast will ask a series of questions and will either join your party or launch a surprise attack, ending your turn. Due to the use of the group system, the options in the negotiation system are incredibly limited. Beasts will ask a single starting question from a pool of three, leading into a branching path of questions that loosely follow the responses given prior. The success of negotiation depends entirely on the Beast's group and the path taken, for example, a series of Yes, No, Yes, No answers may please a group D Beast depending on the starting question, but cause all other Beasts to attack.

Fusion

Fusion allows players to combine two Beasts into a new one and makes use of the group system. When fusing Beasts, the level of both beasts is added together and then divided by two, and the result will be the next demon with a level greater than or equal to the result. Unlike most titles, there are no accidents in fusion. Group H Beasts will always fuse into a Beast of the same Group as the other component used in fusion.

Last Bible Special Fusion Table

Group	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H
A	H	F	E	C	D	G	B	A
B	F	H	D	A	C	D	E
C	E	D	H	F	G	B
D	C	A	F	H	B
E	D	C	G	B
F	G	D	B
G	B	E
H	H

Communication

	This section is in need of research.
	Reason: Information on how the battle mode works during battles.

Using a Gear-to-Gear Cable, two players with copies of Last Bible Special can press the "Communication" function on the main menu to access a multiplayer battle mode where two players can have their parties fight against one another. During multiplayer battles, up to five characters can participate per player. There is also a function called the "Door to Another World", which allows one player to send a unit they have recruited (other than their main character) to the other player's save file.

Version Differences

Game Gear Micro

The experience of the Game Gear Micro re-release is largely unchanged from the original, however, it includes a new easy mode which doubles the rate at which macca and experience is gained. This version also removes the 2-player battle mode, which is no longer compatible with the Game Gear Micro's hardware. There is also some light graphical censorship; all pentagrams have now been modified into hexagrams. Lastly, some names were changed or censored:

GG	GGM
エルサレム Jerusalem	聖地 Holy land
コンスタンツ Constance	カテドラル Cathedral
ものごい Beggar	ホームレス Homeless

Development

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Trivia

• Despite the blurb claiming that Last Bible Special features 128 skills, only 124 can be seen in gameplay. The last four skills (Makarakarn, Sing, Blow, and a variant on Steal) exist in the game data but are never used.

Nomenclature

Names in Other Languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	女神転生外伝 ラストバイブルスペシャル	Goddess Reincarnation Side Story: Last Bible Special

Gallery

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  Back cover

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  Spine

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  World map

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  Title screen