The second entry in Escu:de's Yami Somen series has just come out, and the battle system is identical to the first game, so this walkthrough uses the first game to explain the whole loop. A lot of guides give broad strategy, but new players usually need concrete step-by-step instructions. This is a from-zero run: what to click, what to fight, when to corrupt, and when to run.

After the tutorial and the first corruption of Asahina/Ernest, you have 276 magic and 500 HP. Magic is your raw power; high magic makes skills hit harder. HP is HP—hit zero and you lose. The line at the top of the screen is your current objective. In phase one it is meet all five heroines within ten days.

There are five heroines at school. Each bubble has a symbol. A question mark means if you click her, she is guaranteed to appear at night. Start with the magical girl/student council president.

This is the student council president event: the current president and vice president are injured, so Kirishima has to step in. Question-mark events are important and tie directly into the corruption plot.

You get two daytime actions. The roulette spins. I want to fight Ernest and the blue-haired heroine later, so I pick the purple-haired big-breasted heroine. Purple is the strongest early and very hard to corrupt; wasting the meeting is fine.

At night, besides anyone you talked to with a question mark, the game randomly sends enemies. This time it sends Ernest. Let's fight the president first.

Before battle, check the preparation screen.

Under each skill is a bar that shrinks from loud to quiet; this is that skill's effectiveness against different enemies. My two attack skills are dark attribute. They are great against the president and blue hair, average against Ernest, and useless against purple and black long hair. So prioritize blue and blonde.

In battle you will see ANALYSIS. This is the demon lord's most important ability: learning. When the enemy uses a skill, the countdown next to it drops by one; at zero you learn it. Analysis also reveals enemy abilities so you can prepare. The president has a skill that halves the charge of one of your skills. If you predict it, you can play around it. Empty her HP bar to enter the corruption phase.

The screen fills with taunts; the point is to corrupt her crystal. Watch ZONE CONTROL. Above 50% you have the advantage; below, the enemy does. Taunting consumes your zone. If I spend 15%, I have 44% left—slight disadvantage. If I spend 30%, only 29% remains—bad. So spend 15%, release the restraint, and go back to battle.

Second corruption: my skills counter her, so it is easy. This time the figure is 54%, not higher than before. That is normal. Early on the demon lord is weak and cannot do much real damage. She still has HP, so corrupt another 15% and continue.

Third corruption: only 42% zone left, HP is down to two-fifths, and her SP is almost full. Once SP fills she uses her ultimate and you are unlikely to knock her down again. Best choice: corrupt 20% and run.

The battle gives 15 expansion POINT, analysis progress, all attack skills cooldown -0.1s, and magic +20: 11 magic from corrupting 33%, 9 magic from three knockdowns. One battle made us stronger in several ways.

Late at night, three gauges grow. The first is stamina: each fill raises max HP by 15, which is crucial for surviving more fights. The second is magic potion: gives one battle a strong buff such as opening zone increase, big cooldown reduction, or HP boost; key for hard fights. The third is skill: when full, choose an existing skill and copy it. Good skills are how you get stronger. You can adjust the growth ratio in settings. I think HP and skills matter most, potions are only okay early, so I set 50% 0% 50%. Adjust to your style.

Day two: HP recovers to half max, back to healthy. Besides question-mark bubbles, exclamation-mark bubbles appear. An exclamation event is required for successful corruption. If you corrupt without doing the exclamation event, after the adult scene the crystal returns to 50%. Is that all bad? No—corrupting to full without the exclamation event gives a separate adult scene. If possible, do one failed corruption per heroine to collect CG. But note: a question mark guarantees the target appears that night; an exclamation mark does not. You can waste an action. We fought the president last night, so clicking her now may be wasted; purple is too strong to corrupt anyway. Among the four, Ernest is easiest. Pick red hair.

Red hair's event is very sweet: the protagonist is a bit creepy, but Asahina still likes him most and does not mind hair touching or contact. Childhood-friend love is enviable. Niche trivia: her CV is the same as the winter loli in the Venus Blood series.

In the afternoon, purple gets a green-star event. Green star is daily story that unlocks later scenes. When you have nothing urgent, click green stars.

At night, besides red hair from the question mark, the system randomly gives purple. No blue or blonde—annoying. Fight Ernest anyway.

Each heroine has battle traits. The blonde student council president has strong zone control; even when you knock her down, your zone suffers. Ernest is not good at zone but has high attack and defense; after one knockdown her SP is over half and your HP is not safe.

I choose to corrupt 27% and run. Skill cooldown rises, expansion +9, magic +13. We analyzed one skill and learned Physical Resistance Magic Armor. This is important later; learn and copy it early.

Third night, fight blue hair. Because we counter her, she drops to low HP fast, but zone does not grow as fast as against Ernest. She is knocked down, yet zone stays average. This is where Zone Dominance matters.

The spherical attack has 85 attack and 72 effectiveness against blue hair.

The scatter attack has only 40 attack and 34 effectiveness—almost half. Its CD is 6.6s versus 11.3s, so at first the spherical looks better. But look at ZONE Dominance: the spherical has only 10, while scatter has 60. If you knock the enemy down but cannot raise zone dominance, you are wasting the knockdown. Scatter is far better. I copied a new scatter through skill copy, so now I have three. Combat power up.

Keep raising abilities and fight everyone within ten days. We have fought blue, president, and Ernest; next find purple and black long hair. Black long hair has low damage, high combo, well-rounded skills, and will not let you leave easily. Purple has extremely strong offense and defense. Good news: it is their first fight, so go all out.

On weekends you can date one of five. Later dates collect CG. I pick my favorite, blue hair.

The three new charts are one-time accumulation gauges: after three or four days they give a free potion, free skill copy, or free HP boost.

After fighting all five, you should have copied skills two or three times. Build a better deck. Since I like blue hair, start with her. Copied skills have a + that gives extra effects: battle start with 31% CD already charged, dominance +1, and other small bonuses—do not obsess over them.

Push two stat caps first, equip four scatter copies, and put only passives in the third slot. Our perfect deck is taking shape. Try it on blue hair. At battle start, the two scatters with cooldown acceleration go crazy and knock her down fast. This time it is completely different: we are barely hurt, she is down, and zone dominance flies to 88%. Soon blue hair cannot resist and is ready for corruption. The demon lord shouts his usual rude line about her chest. Blue hair gives up and becomes my wife (not really).

With good skill synergy, potions, HP and magic growth, copied skills, and more skill slots, you are basically invincible. Even Ernest gets pushed to 95% zone every time under our combo. Even purple Aquila, who resists our skills and has strong offense and defense, can be knocked down once easily with the starting skills. Who can stop this?

After ten days we have corrupted one heart for each of the five. The demon lord praises us. If you only want to clear, talking to everyone is enough. Next phase: corrupt three hearts. With fifteen days, that is easy—probably enough to corrupt all of them.

At the end of the first playthrough you fight the goddess. She is light attribute, so the scatter skills saved from the first run counter her. The main god gets pushed to 100% in one wave. Total jobber.

That is the basic loop: fight each heroine, copy and arrange skills, gain magic every night, use potions, and repeat. Simple.

Advanced play

If you only want story and easy play, I strongly do not recommend the advanced content. It is genuinely boring. But if you want maximum efficiency and power, read on.

How to unlock every skill quickly

Except for ultimates, enemies do not use all their skills in one battle. Different corruption heart counts make them use different skills. To farm skills, first make them able to use the missing ones. Check the battle screen to see what is missing.

Some enemies show all skills unlocked; no new skill can be obtained. Blue hair, for example, still has one skill unanalyzed and one locked. Hover over unlocked skills to see them.

The top red-and-blue skill is the SP ultimate and cannot be analyzed. The three large red skills above are specials used after certain rounds. The smaller ones below are normal skills. For example, Multi Shield: first analysis gives the green version, second gives D, the red version. All specials can give one D and one A. Barrier, a shield that nullifies one instance of damage, has not been analyzed yet, so we do not know what it gives. Either way, you must first encounter these skills, so fight blue hair.

From two hearts to three hearts, she uses one of the unanalyzed skills, Multi Shield. It still needs four uses. How do you make her cast more?

1. High dominance, low damage. Bring skills like 60 dominance and 40 damage. You cannot kill her quickly, but you control zone well, and you will not die just because you are stalling.
2. Bring damage reduction and healing. D Healing restores 10% HP, cost 5. With 24 cost you can bring four; filling two of the three skill blocks with it can restore around 80% HP. It has 35s CD, 30s at max proficiency—barely enough. You get this from purple, but her version restores 40%, so ours is the downgraded copy. Another recommendation is Barrier Magic Armor, which reduces damage by 5%. At first it looks weak, but it can roll cost -1, filling spare points. Four healing copies plus one 5% reduction copy can give roughly 80% healing and 10% reduction; stacking ten copies gives 50% reduction. These two skills greatly improve sustain and let the enemy cast more skills.
3. Use potions. HP enhancement is obvious. Since you fight a lot, it prevents one ultimate from killing you. Farm potions from black long hair and the student council president.

How to farm expansion POINT

You need Victory Expansion +4, cost 3. Fill every slot and each win gives +40; five or six wins unlock one final skill slot. This skill is learned from blue hair and sits at the bottom of her list. Now you see why blue hair matters: her low-damage high-dominance skills counter her, she is needed for cost farming, and her counter skills also work on the goddess. No reason not to love her.

How to raise skill proficiency fast

Proficiency is tied to knockdown count. More knockdowns means more proficiency. A 70-damage no-dominance skill works best on black long hair. She does not like to flee; after six knockdowns we lost only a little HP and cooldown rose by 0.3s. The skill's original CD is 8s, so one battle gives 20% proficiency; five battles max it. If blue hair is the skill-unlock and slot tool, black long hair is the proficiency tool.

Also note: fighting the magical girl gives a cost 8 passive with a + chance 7 that raises skill proficiency by 20%. The cost is so high that 8 and 7 are not much different—you can only bring three. Sustain is poor, so use it for grinding, such as night battles with corrupted heroines. If you could bring six it would be 120%, but at cost 8 you usually cannot. I prefer grinding black long hair; if you lack someone's skills, bring this passive and fight corrupted heroines.

Use post-corruption battles well

Usually the first or second heroine you corrupt gets a heart icon at school. Click it for an adult scene, and at night you unlock a battle against her corrupted form. The dark chibi sprite is cute. This battle has no helper, the enemy has one life, and beating her gives fixed magic. You can fight every night, and proficiency gain is decent. Most importantly, winning unlocks a new adult CG for the corrupted form, and she uses all her skills in battle. That is excellent for skill unlocks, proficiency, and CG collection. She uses all nine skills plus her ultimate. If you skip the daytime adult scene, you can still fight at night, but you will not unlock the new CG.

That is the current walkthrough. See you next time.