Colors Flying High - Let's Play Persona 5 Royal

[Timrod]

Click Here for Update 19

: It’s 5/20. Dungeon time.

: I’ll just skip the rest of this. It’s the game hinting at you to do the beef bowl job to start Yoshida’s confidant, but we’re already well ahead of that.

: This gets us all of 3 charm points, which is honestly kinda underwhelming.

: This is just another tutorial. The Megami Tensei series wasn’t enough like Pokemon (despite the fact that Megaten came first) so they gave every Persona a passive ability.

: And now we can actually start the dungeon.

: Interestingly, most of the stealable items regenerate. There’s a few near the entrance that don’t, but most of them do.

: Meet an annoyance - lasers. They don’t really do anything but make you press X to go through them.

: “Tch.. it’s an infrared laser device. If we touch it, the security will increase!”

: It’s actually what’s called a “near-infrared” laser, which manages to be just enough outside of the spectrum considered to be infrared that it’s still visible. Unless they’re implying that having a Persona lets you see infrared.

: “Hold on, there wasn’t anything like this last time though!”
The laser towers were in fact there the first time, but they weren’t activated.

: “The rumors might slowly be making Madarame become more wary of us.. Joker! They’re not easy to see, but you should be able to do it with your skills. Be careful!”

: The gallery is now full of enemies. Let’s just grab one and see what happens.

: The museum is honestly kind of all over the place difficulty-wise. Most of the enemies in the parts we’ve already seen are way lower level than we are: some are as low as level 9. We already have Mokoi, so I just gun these ones down. They have just a bit too much HP for a clean gun-down - it’s more like a full magazine dump plus one attack.

: We also run into Hua Po. Hua Po is weak to guns, and is also of an arcana we don’t have - they’re Hanged Man. We definitely want one, but the first couple of times I tried to grab one they ran instead.

: Hua Po can also be a bomb shadow, which makes taking out the other enemies laughably easy.

: Here’s another Persona I think we had in some incarnation or another in both Persona 1 and Innocent Sin. It’s Apsaras. In this case, we want her because she’s the lowest-level Priestess persona.

Returning Persona: Apsaras

Origin: India

First Appearance: Megami Tensei II

Dancing water nymphs in Hindu mythology.

: There are impassable laser grids blocking the exit, so there’s really only one path through here.

: The next room used to be just another enemy hallway, but now it’s a laser grid.

: On the other side of the grappling hook spot, I finally got a Hua Po.

New Persona: Hua Po

Origin: China

First Appearance: SMT Nocturne

Chinese tree spirit formed when three or more people hang themselves from the same tree.

: “The security will probably get a little more fierce as well. Make sure you don’t touch anything or run into any of the displays, all right?”

: “What’re you lookin’ at me for?”

: In the room just ahead of us..

: Is our first save room. If I had been thinking when I recorded, I would’ve saved here.

: As soon as I turned the corner, I ran into something new. Shiisaa here was not an enemy in the base game - and was retuned significantly for Royal.

: Their inclusion here was a very strange choice, to say the least. For one, they’re level 15 - higher than I think the game expects you to be and significantly higher than most of the other enemies.

: Second, they’re extremely annoying to deal with - in fact, I got lucky. They’re neutral to Gun, but resist physical attacks.. and their only magic weaknesses are Curse and Psychic. Unless you kept Arsene around for no good reason, you’re very unlikely to have either of those.

: They wouldn’t necessarily be a wall that’s impossible to overcome, but it’d cost you a lot of SP to deal with them. I think the idea is that the game assumes you’ve grinded Mementos and have Kodama - which right now is the only source of Psychic spells we have access to. Thankfully, I fused Kodama earlier and then gave Psy to Kusi Mitama.

: Unfortunately, I failed the negotiation. This was very bad.

: Just down the hall from where the Shiisaa were is a red shadow. I went “Fuck it, we’re level 15, we can take it” and entered battle.

: Meet Shiki-Ouji. Shiki-Ouji is a piece of shit. He nulls Gun. He nulls Physical. He has a shitload of HP and is not weak to anything except Nuclear damage.

: Ordinarily, it would be very difficult to get Nuclear damage at this point. There’s only two Personas at level 15 that have it - one would require a bunch of money to fuse and the other is Shiisaa.

: And so I reset, not realizing that there’s actually an accessory IN THIS ROOM that gives you nuclear damage.

: Anyway, we’re now back in the room before where Shiki-Ouji is. This was where we found the map, but I forgot to take a shot of it the first run through.

: I got an Apsaras, a Hua Po, and now..

New Persona: Shiisaa

Origin: Japan (adopted from China)

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Holy beasts from Okinawan mythology. Said to repel disasters and misfortune. Statues of them are often seen outside houses and temples.

: Shiisaa’s a pretty solid Persona. Not only does it resist Physical (which most enemies use) but it has Frei and is also only weak to Psychic and Curse. I don’t think anything in the museum can do those.

: At this point, I realize that there’s a side room, and I go to check it out.

: Inside is a fight with a new enemy: Koropokkuru. I didn’t get one here, but I did get one a bit later - they’re the lowest-level Hermit Persona and thus we want them for confidants later.

New Persona: Koropokkuru

Origin: Japan (Ainu mythology)

First Appearance: Soul Hackers

Race of tiny people in Ainu folklore. Name literally means “people below the leaves of the butterbur plant”. Believed to have lived in the Ainu lands before the Ainu, they were once friendly with humans until a young Ainu man captured one, causing the Koropokkuru to flee the Ainu lands.

: Unfortunately, the wiki doesn’t have the stat block for Royal’s version of Koropokkuru. They removed his gun resistance for Royal.

: On a side note, the Koroks in Zelda are based on the Koropokkuru.

: In this room is a chest with the Atom Ring, which lets any Persona use Frei. I gave it to Ryuji.

: We can then open a door going back to the room with the giant sculpture in it. This is useful if we want to bypass the Shiki-Ouji entirely.

: Up the stairs is a security room we can’t do anything with.. yet.

: I like that he’s looking directly at Ann’s ass when she’s walking away, and then tries to disguise it by being horny for gold instead.

: “I know it might be tough to take with us, but don’t you think it’d sell for tons?”

: “Hold on, you’re steppin’ on something!”

: “Isn’t this bad!?”

: “Urgh, and you were the one makin’ us be careful too… So, whaddya wanna do? Run outta here?”

: “No, passing through all of these lasers will draw far too many enemies to our location!”

: “Oh, hold on! Joker’s not trapped!”

: “Sorry Joker, but we’re going to need you to search for a way to turn off these infrared lasers! This is a museum, so there has to be some switch to let the workers avoid these lasers. Find it!”

: The first thing we need to do is use this stack of boxes to climb over the glass wall near Ann.

: There’s a fight with a single Shiisaa here, but thankfully Joker has Psy so it’s not hard to deal with.

: And now we have Ann back. There’s also a brief cutscene showing a catwalk lowering between the two glass walls.

: On the other side is another single enemy (it’s a Shiisaa) and a mysterious painting with footprints going toward it. How neither of these guards noticed the lasers activate is a mystery.

: This one lowers the wall so Ryuji can get out.

: It’s okay, we can just leave him there. That’s his home now.

: “There has to be a control room for them! I don’t know if it’s nearby though…!”

: “…We just gotta trust him. C’mon, let’s try lookin’ for it!”

: There’s a vent on the side of the room where Ryuji was that’ll take us to the security room we passed on the way in.

: “But… it looks like we need a password to use it.”

: “Uh, they probably ain’t gonna just leave it lyin’ around.”

: “Then what are we supposed to do…? Look for someone who might know it?”

: “Did you hear that?”

: “Sure did. C’mon Joker, let’s go say hello to that terminal thing!”

: This is where I picked up the Koropokkuru I mentioned earlier.

: “It looks like it worked!”

: “Sweet! Let’s go grab that stupid cat and get movin’!”

: “Sheesh… weren’t you the one tellin’ us not to go around touchin’ shit in the exhibit?”

: “Urgh, that is true.. I can’t believe I made such a novice mistake, even for solid gold… but something was drawing me to this vase.”

: “What do you mean? Isn’t it just an ordinary gold vase? I wonder if there’s something special about it. Should we take a closer look just in case?”

: The rest of this is a tutorial, and it doesn’t really explain the mechanic well. This is a Treasure Demon - they’re the P5 equivalent of the Metal Slime in Dragon Quest.

: Treasure Demons are strong against most attacks, and usually have one uncommon weakness. In this case, Regent is weak to Psychic and Nuclear but resists everything else.

: Because this is a scripted encounter, I don’t use SP and just let Ryuji do a follow-up attack for an instant crit.

: All of the Treasure Demons are named after actual treasures - in this case, the Regent Diamond, which was at one point mounted in Napoleon Bonaparte’s sword pommel.

: Unlike regular Personas, Treasure Demons can’t actually be used (which is kind of dumb). They’re part of a long-standing tradition going back to the original Megami Tensei games (where you could fuse two demons of the same family to get an elemental).

: When they’re used in a fusion, Treasure Demons will boost certain arcanas of Persona to the next rank of Persona in their arcana. As an example:

: If we used it on the Agathion we had but tossed for Koropokkuru, we’d get a Slime. If we used it on the Slime, we’d get Shiki-Ouji. This is mostly useful for getting Personas that you’ve out-levelled.

: The good news is that Regent still counts as an Emperor Persona, and we need one of those for an upcoming confidant.

: There’s another save room past the laser trap.

: Note the hole in the wall on the right side. It’s kind of hard to see, but if we kept going we’d run into a laser grid.

: There’s bathrooms off to the side which have treasure. Bathroom treasure. The men’s room has a stealable item in it, while the women’s room..

: The Chakra Choker is easily the best pre-Tae accessory. It boosts max SP.

: There’s a hallway here with a female shadow. They’re easier than the regular guards in that they’re almost always two Hua Po and an Apsaras.

: As soon as we go into the room on the other end of the hallway, a bunch of laser barriers shoot up.

: The two Shadows in this room are the easiest way to grind money. They usually spawn in one of three configurations: either the two you see above with a Disaster Shadow, or a third one with a Shiisaa, a Hua Po and an Apsaras.

: I actually grinded the party to 18 in this room on stream. It took me about an hour, and by the time I was done I had over 180,000 yen.

: Keep in mind we’re basically at the halfway point. The enemies in this room also frequently drop dirty armor that we can start selling in early June for full price.

: I didn’t capture it, but there’s a really obvious grapple point you can use to get to the button that lowers the barriers.

: Now, there’s two ways we can go from here. One way goes upstairs, and the other (which you see here) goes to the point at which we’ll be forced to stop.

: Upstairs, there’s a Shiki-Ouji and.. hey, wait a second.. we’re level 18!

: Shiki-Ouji is an asshole to fight, mostly because he has one ability that can and will oneshot people if they’ve taken any damage whatsoever.

: The trick here is to give the Nuke Ring to Ann, and then have Shiisaa on Joker for a second nuke. Cast Frei, do an all-out, repeat until he’s at a sliver of health.

: Just like Berith, Shiki-Ouji will not negotiate unless he is at extremely low health.

NEW PERSONA: Shiki-Ouji

Origin: Japan

First Appearance: Devil Summoner

Paper doll used by Onmyo mages to capture Shikigami (an invisible demon). Shikigami can possess animals and people and are known for flipping out and killing their summoner.

: Shiki-Ouji fucking rules for several reasons. First, he has an innate skill that halves the cost of Psychic skills.

: This can also stack with Ann’s passive skill, which has a chance of lowering the SP cost of any spell cast by a party member. In addition, he nulls physical attacks.

: In case you’re wondering, Ryuji’s passive is like Ann’s but has a chance to increase damage on physical attacks (and only physical attacks) and Morgana’s is.. something to do with healing, I forget.

: From upstairs, we can hook up to a catwalk to get to…

: The first Will Seed. There’s also a chest down there with some crap in it.

: Now that we’ve got Shiki-Ouji and have probably enough money, let’s go to the end of the dungeon.

: You’ll notice that there’s a very obvious save room on the minimap. Unfortunately, we get railroaded into going away from it - I actually wanted to use it to make respawns faster.

: “It definitely looks like something important would be hidden away in there…”

: “Let’s go find out!”

: “This level of security only proves there’s something worth protecting up ahead.”

: “Wait, there’s something written on the sign..”

: “All personnel: This door can only be opened via the security room that lies beyond it…please be cautious, as it is impossible to open from the outside.”

: “So it’s never gonna open!? How’re we supposed to get past!?”

: “Wait.. that door.. I think I’ve seen that pattern somewhere.. oh right! There’s no mistaking it! That’s the same door I saw earlier! Guys, let’s head back!”

: “Huh? Why!?”

: “I think I know what real-world door that’s based on. There may be another way to open it! In any case, I’ll explain later! Come on, let’s go!”

: This is the only time the game ever pulls this. I mentioned earlier that Madarame’s dungeon takes four days to clear. The first day is getting to the door, the second day is just opening the door, the third day is actually reaching the treasure, and then there’s the calling card and the boss.

: On the way out, I figured out the best way to grind money. What you want to is have Shiisa on Joker, have the Atom Ring on anyone else (preferably Ann) and then fight Shiki-Ouji a lot. Hit him with Frei, do an All-Out, repeat until he’s at a sliver of health, and then ask for money.

: This will get you anywhere from 5500 to around 8000 yen per negotiation, making this by far the most efficient money grind spot.

: I went until I ran Morgana’s SP dry, and yielded nearly 237,000 yen. Keep in mind we still have another full day in here, and my plan is to grind as much money as possible because we are going to need a FUCKLOAD of it.

: To get an idea, about a week from when we finish the museum, we have to spend 51,000 yen playing pool. I don’t think we actually have to in the sense that it’s a permafuck, but that’s what the guide does.

: We also have two very expensive confidants coming up. One costs 5,000 yen every time you meet with them, the other has an up-front payment of 100,000 yen before you can do anything. They’re also the two best confidants in the game for the perks they provide.

: In the process, the entire party hits Level 19, which is higher than the boss is. We are very overlevelled right now, and the problem is that it’s a result of me needing to grind money.

: “I dunno.. you think there’s some kinda off switch somewhere?”

: “Looks like this is where I come in.”

: “Mona?”

: “I have a suspicious place in mind. Remember? This shack is the basis for Madarame’s Palace. I actually scouted it out the last time we were here.”

: “Whoa.. so this was your plan from the start?”

: “Correct.”

: “..You only went ‘scouting’ because you were bored.”

: “So? Where’s this suspicious place?”

: “It’s on the second floor. I noticed an unnaturally hefty lock on a door up there.”

: This is on the border of being another “fun things are fun” or “people die when they are killed”.

: “But don’t we wanna be openin’ the door in the palace?”

: That last sentence sounds like something you’d hear in a Youtube Poop.

: “Yes, and we’re going to do that by opening the real one in front of Madarame’s eyes. Basically, we’re going to change his cognition that the door is unopenable.”

: “In other words.. when we open the one in Madarame’s house, that area in his Palace will open on its own?”

: “I’m not really gettin’ it… is that gonna work?”

: “Trust me! There’s no chance it won’t open! …I think! You understand, don’t you, Joker?”

: “Well yeah, but..”

: “Why don’t you trust me!? It’s worth a try!”

: “But even then, there’s still that hefty lock we have to deal with in reality, right?”

: “Oh, that’ll be a breeze. Just give me a hairpin and I’ll handle it. It will take some time though. Doing everything by myself in front of Madarame would be impossible.”

: “If only there was someone who could distract him for a while…”

: “…Huh?”

: “Oh… Ohhh! Man, how are we even gonna get into his house? We’d get reported for sure if we force ourselves in..”

: “What?”

: “I guess the only way is.. havin’ you go nude.”

: “WHAT!?”

: Dammit, cat!

: “This isn’t funny!”

: “We’re not sayin’ you should really get naked.”

: “It’s simply the best excuse for you to enter Madarame’s house without raising suspicions… so, we’d like for you to play the role of decoy, Lady Ann.”

: “This is way too sudden.. I mean, I don’t even know where the locked door is.”

: “Don’t worry, I’ll accompany you.”

: “But that’s still technically only me.. worst comes to worst, what if I get found out?”

: “We can run into the Palace.. or something?”

: “Is that really gonna work!? I mean, you’re not giving me much confidence in this plan! Do I have to be the bait?”

: I like to think that Joker knows that Yusuke is gay, and that sending Ann in on a horny decoy mission is not going to work.

: “Hey! Why aren’t you saying anything!?”

: “Lighten up. It ain’t gonna be so bad. All you gotta do is trick Yusuke, have him take you to that room, then just open the door.”

: “You make it sound so easy! But if there’s no other way… I don’t.. I don’t… I don’t have a choice…”

: “Urghhhhh! God! Fine, I’ll do it! For justice!”

: “Seriously, you better pull this off!”

: “If it’s for your sake Lady Ann, I won’t stop scratching even if all my claws were to break!”

: “We’ll be countin’ on you, Morgana! Dont let Yusuke notice ya, all right?”

: “If he tries to force my clothes off.. I’ll tear that house down! I’m really gonna lose it if we do all this and the Palace door doesn’t open. Got it!?”

: “We’re workin’ to get dirt on that guy’s crimes either way. It won’t go to waste. All right, let’s get down and dirty tomorrow.”

: “Tomorrow!?”

: “Earlier the better.”

: “Um, b-but… will Kitagawa-kun agree?”

: Even though none of the choices matter (apart from the ones in confidant events) I wanted to point this out.

: We spend the night period studying once again. Next time, we’ll see what’s probably the best scene in the game, laugh off a couple of mini-bosses, and recruit Yusuke.