Flynn smirks.
Smirk (ニヤリ, Niyari, icon: 
) is a feature in the series.
Appearances
Profile
When an abnormal effect on a turn icon happens due to an offensive action scoring a critical hit or is nullified, the beneficiary will have a moderate chance to receive the "Smirk" status until their next active turn. Any ailment will prevent the unit to receive smirk. This status wears off no matter what action the unit takes in the next active turn, including passing their own active turn or scoring another critical hit. If the smirking unit is inflicted with any ailment, smirk will be removed instantly.
The effects of smirking include maximizing Tarukaja (boosts attack damage), boosting critical chance of physical attack to 95% and 70% for gun attack, boosting hit rate of normal attack and damage dealing skills to 100%, removing their own weakness and preventing the enemy's critical chance, boosting evasion rate to 85% for all incoming attacks but no effect on ailment inflicting chance. For this reason, it is more beneficial if smirk is triggered near the end of the player phase to take advantage of its defensive aspect. If all 4 player combatants are smirking at the same time, they will have half of their maximum HP and MP recovered. The attack power enhancement bonus by smirk will not erase nor multiply any previously applied stat modifiers if the smirking unit has not maximized all stat enhancements or is under any stat penalty effect. The stat modifier will revert to the state before receiving smirk.
One situation that could frustrate the player is that while all combatants of both the player and enemy teams can smirk when a condition is met, the guest allies (e.g. Isabeau, Walter and Jonathan) cannot. Moreover, since the player cannot directly interfere with the guest's actions nor apply any stat enhancements for them, a guest's failed attack will uncontrollably trigger the enemy's smirk status and jeopardize the player's survivability.
In order to prevent the enemy to receive smirk, particularly the boss, it is always a good idea to inflict at least one ailment on the target, such as poison and sick which do not wear off easily and their related skills generally have high chance of infection.
In Shin Megami Tensei IV Final, this feature is expanded to activate the additional effect of certain skills. For example, "Muscle Punch" which normally deals moderate physical damage on one enemy, will cause the "Daze" status ailment in addition when its user is under Smirk. Some response during the boss conversation will grant the Smirk status on the whole combat party.
Demons that ambush the protagonist will start off with smirk.
Trivia
- The icon of smirk resembles the icon of the ailment 'Possession' from the Persona 2 duology.